I, in the guise of Aplomb Pomilio in Second Life, will be reading my original short story “NetWorld” this Saturday evening (February 19th at 6pm SLT). This story originally appeared in Undercurrents, published by Third Person Press.
This is the fifth of The Quillians Fantasy and Science Fiction Workshop monthly readings and other special events, occurring on the third Saturday of each month at 6pmSLT (9pmET/6pmPT).
If you miss it, you’ll have a chance to catch the recording once our new podcast gets rolling, but you’re urged to attend now as the podcast won’t be starting up just yet.
The reading will take place in the Workshop building, on the second floor beside the traditional meeting circle. The reading is a voice event, so attendees are encouraged to come with their “ears on” and their microphones off. Since the event is also being recorded, we request that you refrain from using audio ‘gestures’ or other devices that create ambient noise.
About nancy
Website: http://nancysmwaldman.com
nancy has written 21 articles so far, you can find them below.
A Reading in SL
Anti-Valentines Day Challenge
Sherry Ramsey, fearless, interim, co-leader of our online, Second Life writing group affectionately known as The Quillians, issued a writing challenge last week. We were to write an “anti-Valentine” poem.
Here’s my tongue-in-cheek, bumpity-thumpity response:
heart words: an anti-valentine poem
february 14, 2011
thump
beat beat-beat-beat
heart beat-beat-beat
up beat-beat-beat
thump lump skippity-beat
beat thump red hot
sweet date
pump fate
lub-dub respirate
pump bump thumpity-hump
breast beat chest bump
in-flate
vibrate
pump-pump circulate
up beat pumpity-pump
ping pang pittery-pat
in-spire chest fire
thump-thump-thump desire
bump breast ache beat
stiff beat hump bump
soul white heat mate
pulsate
palpate
bump-bump procreate
pump pump pumpity-hump
mate thump thumpity-hump
beat beat-beat-beat
beat beat-beat-beat
off beat-beat-beat
red vein fake feign
spit spat pittery-pat
blood bleat vain cheat
stalemate
ingrate
bleed thump violate
lub dub thumpity-pump
trump beat off dump
beat down break up
ache beat bleed deep
thump dump slump chump
pump dump bumpity-lump
pang ache jumpity-jump
ping pain pulse rate
prostrate
deadweight
thump-bump defibrillate
beat beat skippity-beat
beat beat-beat-beat
soft beat-beat-beat
pump red heart hate
sensate
oxygenate
hate hate hate hate
thump bump thumpity-pump
beat bleed beat beat
heart beat-beat-beat
thump
Thanks Luta for a fun exercise!
Other entries from the group:
Gary Henderson
Authors with Glasses
It is Airborne night next Tuesday, February 15 at Governor’s Book Pub: Authors with Glasses starting at 7pm.
Come hear Sherry D. Ramsey and Julie A. Serroul read from their stories published in Third Person Press’s Airborne.
There’s also an open mike and, just so that the three-legged entity that is Third Person Press doesn’t become unstable, I’ve been promised a spot to read one of my post card stories. Come out and support Cape Breton’s speculative fiction authors!
Governors Pub & Eatery
233 Esplanade
Sydney
7 – 9
The Nashwaak Review
Check out my short story, “Worker Bee” in the new double issue of The Nashwaak Review (St. Thomas University, Fredericton, New Brunswick).
From the website:
“The list of international award-winning contributors in this issue shows how far our magazine has come,” says Stewart Donovan, Professor of English Language and Literature and Irish Studies at St. Thomas University and editor of the Review. “Its reputation now attracts some of the finest writers in the country and beyond.”
Award Winning Poets and Short Story Writers
Award-winning poets and short story writers from across Canada are featured in the issue including Bert Almon whose most recent collection of poems A Ghost in Waterloo Station, won the City of Edmonton’s Book Prize and the Writer’s Guild of Alberta’s Award for Poetry.
Roger Nash, winner of numerous literary prizes including the Canadian Jewish Book Award for Poetry, has two poems in the publication. Fern Carr, who has had her work published and distributed in over twenty countries and composes and translates poetry in five languages, has three poems in the issue.
Acclaimed poet and fiction writer Cyril Dabydeen is also a contributor. Dabydeen’s novel Drums of My Flesh was long listed for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Prize and won the Guyana Prize for Fiction.
The issue publishes writers living and working in remote and exotic places: Julian Hoffman is living in northern Greece; Elena Johnson was the inaugural writer-in-residence at a remote research station in the Yukon; Joshua Learn recently spent a year freelancing in Latin America.
Emerging Writers
The issue also features many emerging writers. Deborah Herman from Toronto is a graduate student at York University. St. Thomas University’s Troy Fullerton, who was published in The STU Reader, has one poem in the book. And Matthew Cook, a student at Cape Breton University, earned the 2009 David Alexander Prize for the best essay written by an undergraduate in history at a Canadian university for his essay “Going Down the Road: Rural Cape Breton Migration to the Sydney Steel Plant 1899-1920”.
The artwork on the cover is by Lynda Lou MacIntyre, a recently retired school teacher from Cape Breton and artist of four previous Review covers.
A New Chain Story!
The Cost of a Tasmanian Tiger
The Chain Story is pleased to release its twenty-third story, The Cost of a Tasmanian Tiger by Paul Genesse. Click on the story title to read to the tale.
Paul Genesse is the author of several short stories featured in anthologies such as Steampunk’d, Fellowship Fantastic, The Dimension Next Door, Furry Fantastic, Imaginary Friends, Catopolis, Terribly Twisted Tales, Pirates of the Blue Kingdoms, and more. He is also the editor and the co-author of the origin story for The Crimson Pact anthology series. His first novel, The Golden Cord, Book One of the Iron Dragon Series has become the bestselling book his publisher, Five Star Books has ever had. Book two, The Dragon Hunters is out and more novels are on the way. Paul writes when he’s not working the night shift as a registered nurse on a cardiac unit in Salt Lake City, Utah, where he does his best to keep the forces of darkness away from his patients.
In his spare time he has worked as a writing instructor/motivational speaker, computer game consultant, copyeditor, and proofreader. Listen to podcasts, read free samples or watch videos about the Iron Dragon Series and his other works at www.paulgenesse.com.
Book Review: Remnant Population
Remnant Population by Elizabeth Moon
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Ofelia is an old woman who only wants to do just what she wants with the rest of her days without criticism or interference from anyone else, including her own inner critic. When the colony she’s lived in for forty years is evacuated for business reasons, she hides and stays behind… perfectly content to be by herself until the day she dies.
But that’s not what happens.
The story is an exploration of old age, solitude, self-determination, self-expression, being needed, being known, the importance of listening, and the idea that even though we can never control our future, we also never know what adventures and new relationships lie around the next corner.
Excellent, interesting and fun read.
View all my reviews
Book Review: Steal Across the Sky
Steal Across the Sky by Nancy Kress
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
The Atoners–an alien race–has set up a base on Earth’s moon and asked for volunteers to “witness” human populations on distant planets. They admit to having committed a wrong against the human race 10,000 years earlier. Having these Earthlings visit settlements is their first step in making atonement. The story is full of mysteries surrounding what the Atoner’s crime against humanity actually was, why they’ve chosen these people and what they are suppose to witness.
The novel opens with three of the volunteers–Soledad, Cam and Lucca–and their experience on twin planets with disparate cultures. Part Two sets up the fall-out from this journey on the volunteer’s lives. What they discovered has had a major impact on North American society. The third and fourth parts resolve, mainly through the action in Soledad’s life, what the atonement will be and the various human reactions to it. Much of the narrative is interspersed with ‘documents’ from the world-at-large that are related to the unfolding story such as Oprah interviews, newspaper accounts, advertisements, intelligence briefings. These serve to show the effect of the action of the story on the larger culture.
While engaging and fun-to-read, the novel suffers from some structural difficulties. Soledad is the protagonist but we don’t know that until well into Part 2. It’s also at that point that witnesses who went to other planets–one of whom becomes a major character–are introduced for the first time. It begs the question of why their story wasn’t important earlier in the narrative. Some of Soledad’s actions were not consistently believable, the characters of Frank and Lucca edged on stereotypical, and there were quite a few untied loose ends. Still, my review is weighted toward the positive because the story held my interest, was an interesting, fun and thought-provoking set-up and plot that came to a reasonable conclusion.
View all my reviews
There’s still time
Third Person Press has announced an extended deadline for its next anthology, Unearthed–Volume 3 of The Speculative Elements series.
Writers have until the end of February to polish your story. Make sure to read the full guidelines here to improve your chances of acceptance. The stories MUST be speculative and you MUST have some connection to Cape Breton Island in order to submit.
Airborne Launches!
We here at Third Person Press are thrilled to announce the publication of Airborne, Volume II of The Speculative Elements Series.
Third Person Press is an independent publishing venture based in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. Third Person Press, founded by Sherry D. Ramsey, Julie A. Serroul and myself in 2007, is interested in promoting speculative fiction by writers from (or who have a substantial connection to) Cape Breton. We enjoy the challenges and rewards of working with both new and more established writers in bringing our readers one simple thing–great stories.
As of October 6, 2010, Airborne will be available at thirdpersonpress.com and Amazon. Digital downloads and e-reader versions will be available for sale online in all the major formats.
Take a look at the Airborne trailer, put together by Sherry Ramsey:
A book launch reception will take place in Sydney, Nova Scotia on October 6 from 6:30 to 8:30 at the McConnell Library. Most of the 16 contributors will be in attendance. Several of our authors will read from their work, we’ll have refreshments, book sales and signings and music. If you’re in the area, please come down!
Volume I of The Speculative Series, Undercurrents (released in December 2008) is also available online. Submissions are open for Unearthed, Volume III until the end of this year. Please see the guidelines page at Third Person Press for all the scoop on what we’re looking for.
Quality I – Critiques
Last time, I wrote about the benefits of quantity as a beginning writer. The more you write, the more experience you gain, the more you know, the easier the process becomes. Practice, practice, practice. But, of course, that’s not the whole story.
Improvements in quality come mainly from repeated revisions. That doesn’t mean endless revisions. You must move on at some point whether the story you’re working on is perfect or not. No, it means writing as many stories/novels/poems as you can and then—after reworking each one on your own—finding at least one generous, sensitive, and clever person to help. This is because it’s difficult to see our mistakes at any point, but especially when we’re beginners.
We need our readers to tell us what’s missing, what’s unclear, what should be pushed farther, what gets boring, and whether the pacing and tone is consistent. They can point out whether or not the characters are believable, interesting and if they can be easily distinguished from one another. They can confirm whether or not it all comes together and makes sense. They can suggest ways of fixing the problems. This kind of constructive criticism is invaluable for improving, not only the piece in question, but also our writing skills.
You may be able to get this kind of help from writing classes. You may need to find (or start) a writing group, or join an online forum. You can do an exchange with one other writer. You might be lucky enough to cultivate that one special someone who is always willing to take on another one of your works. But however you go about finding readers who can give appropriate criticism, having them is a necessary component of nurturing quality in your work.
Please note, I said, “appropriate criticism.” The ability to give helpful critiques is a skill and so, the right kind of feedback may be difficult to find. Empty accolades (“I love it!”) are like candy. You may get a quick rush but it doesn’t last long. Comparisons—either good or bad—to other works/authors don’t help you improve this story. Vague feedback such as “It was interesting” leaves you with no idea how to make it better, or even if it needs more. Harsh feedback can be debilitating (though writers must develop a thick skin against this kind of criticism).
To improve your chances of getting the help you need, here are a few suggestions.
- Do not give out your first drafts. Do at least one complete revision before submitting it to someone else.
- Use family members with caution. Because they know you well, relatives may have difficulty critiquing what is on the page, but may instead bring irrelevant knowledge about you into the feedback. They may be too close to be honest or overly critical without realizing it. This is not a hard and fast rule, as some husbands and wives or mothers and sons critique each other effectively. It’s just a caution.
- Give your reader some idea of what will be most helpful. That depends on whether the story is in an early stage (needs overall comments about plot, characters, issues with pacing, tone, believability) or an an almost-finished stage (needs line editing – grammar, typos, spelling, suggestions for tightening and improving awkward sentence structure).
Once you get your critique back, then the real work of building quality begins.
Coming next: Quality II – Honest Work
Quantity
quantity
Some people don’t want you to know this, but writing is like most things*: the more you do it, the easier it gets.
Way back in the 90′s when, for the first time in my life, I decided to take writing seriously, I signed-up for classes. One of my teachers, an assistant professor of literature at a prestigious university in the northeast US, told us, “When you start a new story, it’s always as a beginner—no matter how many stories you’ve written.”
O-kay. A bit of a downer, I thought. Don’t you learn from experience as a writer? I didn’t assume she was right but I did remember it and now realize that this unpleasant idea has been the back of my mind all this time. It’s been bothering me. I won’t blame this teacher for my slow progress; there are a few [jillion] other factors that go into that. But now that I am completely sure she was wrong, I do wonder how many stories she had written. Maybe that was her experience simply because she hadn’t yet written enough words.
There’s an oft-quoted phrase from Ray Bradbury where he suggests, that if you want to be a writer, “write a million words,” with the idea being that in writing, as in everything else, practice really does matter.
I am in the middle of the best writing year I’ve ever had. It feels as if I crossed an invisible line. I’m in new territory where I find it easier to start, easier to finish, easier to revise, easier to polish, easier to find my way when I’m in the vast wasteland of the middle of a story, easier to send my work out, and out again, and adding to all of the above, easier to trust myself as a writer.
I know that this is, at least partially, due to the number of words I’ve written over the last ten years. Maybe not a million words, but after nine years of NaNoWriMo, dozens of short stories and poems, a hundred or so online articles and blog posts and numerous revisions of all of the above, I’m in the neighbourhood. Hi Ray! I made it!
I’m not a successful writer—yet, but I am a working writer and even that feels pretty darned good.
It doesn’t mean that if someone’s been writing for years, it’s always an easy jog to the finish line with every story. Anyone at anytime can have a difficult project that gives them trouble. But, it does mean that they have experience which informs their writing process.
I have, in fact, learned from experience. The more writing I do, the more I push through all of the great reasons not to write, and get the words out and down, the easier it becomes to do it the next time. My teacher was simply wrong.
I just Googled her name. She’s listed in various professional positions and articles, but I can’t find any publications for her. I take no pleasure in this. I wish her well. I just hope she’s been working hard, writing a lot of words, and is feeling, as I am, that practice really does help us to be experienced—and therefore, better—writers.
*things that don’t get easier the more you do them: moving. Anyone else want to add to this list?
Next time I’ll write about that other part of being a good writer: Quality.
Leaving Leftism Behind
This is a reprint from my creativity zine, The Practically Creative Quarter…with a few changes.
While in the process of writing an article about using the non-dominant hand in journaling as a way to reach the R-mind, I had an epiphany. I realized that my icon and ‘short-hand’ talk of R-mindfulness, based on Betty Edwards work regarding the use of brain hemisphere dominance to teach art, is at the least out-of-date and at the most, offensive 
to the small percentage of left-sided creative brains out there. The good news is that those people don’t know they’re offended because most of us haven’t had our brains examined.
The traditionally-dubbed *creative side* of the brain is usually but not always the right. The dominant hemisphere of a person’s brain is not necessarily the left side although research supports an estimate of left brain dominance in at least 70% of people. And in looking at this today, I’m reminded that ‘dominance’ isn’t always about language but frequently about motor skills. Handedness is one of the ways this has been studied and, researchers have found that not all left-handed people (approximately 15% of the population) are right brain dominant even in motor skills. This is an area of research that has no definitive answers but there are some studies that have suggested that the more firmly dominant the left-handedness is, the more likely that person is to be right brain dominant at least in terms of language.
Confused? Me too. Every time I wade into the marshy bog of *Creative Sides of the Brain* I feel that I’ll soon be up to my elbows in a thick peaty mush of ideas that do not have scientific studies to back them up. So why bother? Because it’s fascinating! Because we all have brains and because conventional wisdom is that we use a fraction of the power of the brain in our everyday life. Because the kinds of exercises that I’ve been calling “R-mindfulness” do work on some level for most people to trick the dominant, organizing, practical side of our brains into letting go for a while, so that we can put the non-verbal, metaphorical, visual sides at the forefront while we’re creating.
But because not everyone accesses the right side of the brain when they do my R-mindfulness exercises, my referring to the R-mind is—what shall I call it?—hemispherism? leftism?
Wikipedia in talking about the historical and cultural bigotry surrounding left-handedness (or just ‘left’) points out:
Even the word “ambidexterity” reflects the bias. Its intended meaning is, “skillful on both sides.” However, since it keeps the Latin root “dexter,” which means “right,” it ends up conveying the idea of being “right-handed at both sides.” This bias is also apparent in the lesser-known antonym “ambisinistrous,” which means “clumsy on both sides” and derives from the Latin root “sinister.”
So from now on, the articles about R-mindfulness will have to reflect my newly raised-consciousness about this. However, the phenomenon discussed in these articles is the same whatever side of the brain is less dominant. The point is to access the lesser used portions in tricky ways so as to circumvent the normal functions. It’s complicated so I have to call it something simple!
How about…full-mindfulness? F-mind? ooh. Not so good. The innocent letter “F” has an undeserved and much more negative bias even than left-handers. There’s mind-fully or, quite appropriate in a metaphorical sense, fully-mined. 
Well…that probably gets us off-track. Fully-mindful is too fully-mouthful. Whole-mind is used in other ways to teach reading and such. Non-dom, short for non-dominant? That’s a bit negative. Alternate-mind. Alternate-hemisphere? Alt-mind? That sounds like a keystroke shortcut. Oh, there you go: Alt-control! 
Hmmm. Alt-hemi? Demi-hemi? Semi-demi-hemi?
Okay. This is a total illustration of brainstorming…how the brain works creatively, seemingly coming up with lots of funny and often useless ideas until something workable pops to the surface. In this case: C-mind—for Creative Mind. It’s simple and it works.
For a brief description of what I’m talking about, here’s the first article I wrote about the R-mind.
Here’s another one called Changing States.
There’ll be more C-mindfulness articles coming along…so check back or subscribe to get my updates.
What People Say