Category Archives: writing

Zombie Novels That Aren’t About Zombies

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Just in time for Halloween, Mira Grant (aka Seanan McGuire) has published Feedback, the latest in her series of zombie novels. The original books were Feed, Deadline, and Blackout, collectively known as the Newsflesh trilogy.

Sign of infected areaThe thing is, they’re zombie novels, but they’re not really about zombies. Oh, there are plenty of undead, infected creatures roaming through the novels, trying to bite the living, converting them to more zombies, or simply feeding on human flesh. There are brave zombie hunters who defend civilization against the shambling menace with intelligence, courage, and a vast amount of firepower. There are excitement, chase scenes, well-drawn characters, stunning surprises, and all the things that make a good horror-scifi-action-thriller.

So what are these books really about? Not Jane Austen, that’s for sure.

Fear. Okay, you probably expected this one. A zombie novel about fear. But in the Newsflesh books, fear of zombies is the least of it. There are alarming secrets that turn out to be symptoms of big, appalling conspiracies. One of the novels’ underlying messages is that fear can be – is – used to manipulate people and control them. If the threat is big enough, and scary enough, and relentless enough, people will do anything, give up anything, completely change their way of life to avoid the danger.

And people who know that can pull their strings.

Safety. Again, a fairly standard topic for a zombie book. But in this world (and ours), there is no guarantee of safety. All you can rely on are yourself and the few people around whom you can trust – and sometimes not even them. Mechanical defenses have holes; strategies have deficiencies; friends have their own agendas. In the end, you have only yourself and your principles, and maybe a few other people if you are very, very lucky.

Journalism. The main characters are bloggers, who form teams that gather the news, poke zombies with sticks, or write fiction. This gives the author plenty of room to explore how modern technologies have affected news-gathering, as well as the consumer’s desire for real-life action-adventure, poetry, and stories too. Large questions are explored: How far does the public’s right to know extend? Are there secrets that journalists shouldn’t reveal? What happens when the journalists become part of the news themselves? Have no fear (except of the zombies and conspiracies); these subjects operate in the background while the plot continues to rocket ahead.

Politics. The blogger-journalists are embedded with the campaign of a possible candidate for President, which makes the books all the more timely. Politics and zombies may not sound like a fascinating combination, but when the dead are rising everywhere in the world, people look to governments to address the problem. Whether those governments and the people in them make sound decisions, put responsible policies in place, and fund research can affect the outcome for individuals. Anyone who can’t make connections with the current political climate just isn’t paying attention.

I hope I haven’t scared you away from the novels. There are plenty of gore, ambushes, narrow escapes, heartbreaking deaths, and all the other accoutrements of your standard zombie novel, if that’s what you want. There’s even a zombie bear. You don’t have to pay attention to the various subtexts, though your reading experience will be richer if you do.

Not content to stop after writing the trilogy, Grant has revisited the near future, post-zombie-apocalypse world with short stories, novellas, and now the new stand-alone novel. (I say stand-alone, though its plot runs roughly parallel to Feed.) She explores interesting questions: What is this character’s backstory? What would happen in zombies got loose in a science fiction convention or a school? Who was responsible for starting the zombie plague? Is the zombie situation the same in Australia? Clearly, this is a fictional world with lots of room for expansion, despite the definitive ending of Blackout. It’s an impressive piece of world-building.

Grant is a gutsy writer (pun intended). Writing under the name Seanan McGuire, she has even written a novel in which one of the major plot points is Evil Pie. And for some reason, it works. (It’s in Chimes at Midnight, one of the October Daye series of urban fantasies.)

For more about Feedback, the other Newsflesh novels, short fiction, and Mira Grant, see miragrant.com.

Muse Blues

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Where do you get your ideas?

It’s a question most writers have heard. And struggled to answer.

Those of us with blogs or columns get our ideas from daily life – family, news, travel, and what’s going on in the world around us. For example, I’ve written about ratatouille, possums, education, books, toilets, advertising, bipolar disorder, ghost towns, grocery shopping, and feminism, to name a few. Subject-specific blogs get their ideas from (duh!) the subject matter – recipes, medical conditions, politics, or whatever.

But sometimes the muse eludes us. It’s not writer’s block, exactly. That’s when you know what you’re writing about, maybe have even made a start at it, but hit a blank wall. This is the blank sheet of paper phenomenon, or Creative processthese days, blank screen. It gapes. It mocks. It snickers. It yawns. You rack your brain for amusing anecdotes, clever observations, strong opinions – anything at all worth writing about.

We’ve all been there.

But what can we do about it?

First of all, do not ask any friends or relatives, “What should I write about?” Ninety-nine times out of hundred you will get either “I dunno” or something exceedingly lame. That’s why you’re a writer and they’re not. Don’t ask a writer friend either. You don’t want to take an idea that she or he might want to use later.

Look at pictures. These can be snapshots of yourself, nature photos in National Geographic, or other sources. I belong to a photo service that I use to find the illustrations that accompany my blogs. Sometimes I browse through them and see if something strikes me. Mystery writer Sue Grafton even goes to secondhand shops and buys old photos from other people’s abandoned shoeboxes. It worked for Ransom Riggs, too.

Go somewhere. Really, you’ve looked at all the stuff in your house a million times and it’s just not speaking to you any more. Walks in nature often work for Thoreau-types. People-watching in malls and cafés (and, frankly, eavesdropping) can work too. Go to your basement or attic and see if that stirs memories as well as dust.

Read. Read a novel. Read the newspaper. Read your Facebook newsfeed. Someone else’s thoughts can trigger your own. Agree, disagree, explain, apply something to your own situation or town or friends. Read your old blog posts. Maybe you’ve changed your opinion, found a better recipe, or seen a follow-up news story. “Bathroom books” full of trivia and weird facts are good for topics to explore further.

Do research. This is for the truly desperate. You’ve spent all that time staring at a blank screen, and there’s not much left before your actual or self-imposed deadline (if you have one). Treat your topic like you would a research paper in high school or college. How many for-profit prisons are there in the U.S.? Are we the only country that has them? What about the time an elephant was electrocuted? What was up with that? How many raisins are in a box of Raisin Bran? Calculate the size of a “scoop.” (Okay, that was a dumb idea, but you get the gist.)

Google writing prompts can be fun too. Simply enter your name and a verb in the search box and see what Google suggests. One that I got was “Janet has a secret daughter.” Topic: If I did have a secret daughter, what would I want her to know about me? Other prompts: Janet shoulda known better. Janet is a party pooper. Janet loves jewelry. I could write 650 words on any of those.

If you’re getting down to your deadline and nothing else has worked, there are two more solutions. One is to ask one of your blogging buddies to do a guest post. The guest doesn’t even have to write something new for the occasion – an old post from his or her blog will be new to your readers. Then later, you may be able to return the favor and write a guest post, expanding your readership.

The other last-ditch option is to re-post something you wrote when you were first starting out. Maybe you had 50 readers then and 600 now. That means that most of them won’t have seen the piece. And some of them hold up quite well, or will with just a few tweaks.

And once you’ve chased down your muse and found something to write, don’t let her get away again. Write down good titles or one-line drafts. Save the URLs of interesting news stories. Keep digging in that attic, or whatever worked for you this time. Or try a different suggestion.

If all else fails, take Hemingway’s advice: Write drunk. Edit sober.

Art Is Love. Art Is Work. Art Is Football.

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Art is love. Deep in our hearts, most of us long to be artists. Most artists, deep in their hearts, long to be some other kind of artist. I can write, but I would really like to be able to sing. Dan can sing, but he would really like to be able to draw. Jason can draw, but he would really like to be able to paint. Peggy can paint, but she would really like to be able to write. And all of us wish we could be better at the creative things we can do. When I say “creative things,” I’m not just talking about the fine arts, either. Quilting, cooking, crocheting, and woodworking can all be creative acts. It all depends on the imagination, the love, and the attention you put into it. Art is a process as much as it is a product. The process itself is valuable, even if the art never reaches professional levels. It expands the mind without drugs. It stretches your creative muscles without workout clothes. It’s built of frustration and satisfaction and courage and effort and pleasure and giving. Just like love. Art is work. Remember the old joke: “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?” “Practice!” It’s not enough to want to create art. Even singers born with perfect pitch have to practice breath control, projection, and reading music. Dan will not learn to draw unless he tries, fails, tries again, takes classes, studies other people’s drawings, starts with something simple, practices, and practices, and practices. He may never become an artist in the sense of selling his works, but he will improve. And if he doesn’t improve enough to satisfy his inner longing, he can try photography or songwriting. Art is work for your brain. And for your hands. And for making them work in sync. No one was ever born at the height of their creative powers. (Well, maybe Mozart, but I bet his compositions improved from when he was a child prodigy to his later works.) You may be born with creativity – we all are in some capacity – but you will never make anything of it unless you use it. The workers who made up the Bread and Roses movement had it right. Originally a call for both fair wages and dignified conditions for workers, the slogan has been used in poems and songs: “Hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread but give us roses.” Roses are what feed the heart. So does art. Art is necessary to our lives, a fact that has apparently been forgotten by everyone from politicians to businesspeople to some educators. Giving up on art is a sad thing. Never trying is worse. You may not be depriving the world of brilliance, but you are depriving yourself of potential joy. Art is football. Young people playing sports imagine that it will propel them to the Good Life – fame, glory, sex, and millions and millions of dollars. Art can do that too. It allows a person to aspire to gallery shows, museums, art auctions, becoming a household name, and millions and millions of dollars. Of course, that happens to only a select few people – football players and artists alike. But that’s not the point. If you truly love your art – or your sport – you do it anyway. That’s not to say there are no ways to get recognition. You can teach art to others, just as you can coach pee-wee football. You can enter your artwork in local competitions and even state fairs. You can sell it at a booth at an outdoor art fair. You can give it to friends as birthday and holiday presents. Or you can keep it to yourself, for your own enjoyment, as Emily Dickinson did. You can even combine two of your passions and do art about athletics like Leroy Neiman did. Nurture your art as you would a relationship. Throw yourself into it as you would work. Improve at it as you would at sports. Grow and your art grows with you. And as your art grows, so do you.

Owed to Songwriters

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The year 2016 has been a tough one for the music world. We have lost so many of our heroes, icons, and shining stars to death – across all styles of music.

Many of these have been exceptional singers – David Bowie, Prince, Glenn Frey, Paul Kantner – but the ones I will miss most will be the songwriters, including Merle Haggard and especially Guy Clark.

music notes backgroundSingers give to their audiences, but songwriters do that and give to other singers too. While we often say that no one can perform a song as well as the original songwriter, that isn’t always true. Songwriters’ voices – the indefinable soul that inhabits their songs – can never be duplicated, but singers with smoother or more powerful voices or more skillful instrumentality or arrangements can be technically far superior. Think Patsy Cline’s rendition of “Crazy,” which was written by Willie Nelson.

Songwriters have informed and shaped my musical tastes. Say what you will about John Denver, but his albums introduced me to phenomenal songwriters. His Aerie album alone contained songs by Buddy Holly, Kris Kristofferson, Steve Goodman, and John Prine. Other Denver albums introduced me to songwriters including Bryan Bowers, Hoyt Axton, Jerry Jeff Walker, and Tom Paxton. That’s quite a widening of the musical horizons for a young teen. Without that introduction, I would never have heard “Paradise” or “Sam Stone,” or dozens of other songs that are now living in my head and my memories. I would never have known who wrote the hits “Joy to the World” or “(God Damn) The Pusher,” either.

I noticed the songwriters and actively sought out more of their work. Perhaps I noticed the words first, being an aspiring poet myself, but later I learned how the skillful blending of lyrics and music make for a truly great song.

Songwriters tend not to get as much attention as singers. Audiences frequently don’t notice which songs their idols wrote themselves and which are “covers” of other songwriters’ works. Awards and Hall of Fame inductions for songwriters are vastly outnumbered by those for performers.

Because of the musical idiom I grew up in – country, folk, and what is now called “Americana” – the two recent deaths that have affected me most have been Merle Haggard’s and Guy Clark’s.

Haggard was well known for “Okie From Muskogee,” but he wrote much better songs than that – “Mama Tried,” “Workin’ Man Blues,” “If We Make It Through December,” and “Today I Started Loving You Again,” to name just a few.

Guy Clark was never as famous with the public as Haggard, but in songwriters’ circles, he was a hero. His songs became hits for others – often for multiple artists. “Desperados Waiting for a Train,” “L.A. Freeway,” and “The Last Gunfighter Ballad” were among his most-recorded. Perhaps surprisingly, they are all about everyday subjects – memories of a beloved relative, leaving a home, and an aging man’s delusions. Clark even wrote a song about home-grown tomatoes.

Every time I hear of another celebrity death, I fear for my remaining heroes. Many – including Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson – are in their 80s or nearly so. Billy Joe Shaver has cancelled nearly three weeks of performances for medical reasons. And, let’s face it, all have abused their bodies in various ways over the years. They can’t last forever, however much we might wish it. No matter when they go, they will be gone too soon.

 

Mysteries Change, and So Do I

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I grew up reading mysteries. I still remember a book of short mystery stories for children. One was set at a circus and involved a missing snake. After looking in baskets and anywhere a coiled snake might be, the children notice that an acrobat’s pole falls to the ground with a dull thud instead of a metallic clang. Suddenly they realize that the missing snake is stretched out full-length inside the pole! Ta-da! (I also remember that the book was missing a few pages, which made one of the stories even more mysterious,)

That of course lead to Nancy Drew, the go-to mysteries for tween girls at the time. So they were written decades before. So the characters were unbelievable stereotypes. They were mysteries and I read them anyway. And collected them relentlessly, out of order because I usually got them in used book stores.

Murder Letterpress

I got my first taste of the real thing at my grandmother’s house in Florida, when I was 11. DisneyWorld didn’t exist yet (yes, I’m old), and the attractions near Orlando were limited. There was the zoo in Kissimmee, St. Augustine, Busch Gardens, and an alligator farm. Not much else. In between road trips to the attractions, I discovered Grandma Rose’s shelf of real, grown-up murder mysteries. Agatha Christie and Rex Stout provided my introduction into the world of real mystery literature. (Recently I’ve reread a few Nero Wolfe classics like Some Buried Caesar. They still take me back.)

Over the years that followed, I came up with several categories of mystery authors – those whose books I would borrow from the library or buy used, those I would buy in paperback, and those rare, special authors whose work I would buy in hardback. Authors sometimes moved from one category to another, depending on whether the quality of the books stayed high.

Robert Parker, for example, started out as a paperback author, moved to hardback, then back to paperback when it seemed like he was only phoning them in – for example, when he spent too much time detailing what color athletic shoes and their swooshes Spenser and Hawk had on. When he branched out into other series with other lead characters, I stopped reading him altogether.

Since the advent of ebooks, I no longer buy hardbacks or paperbacks, but the categories still exist in terms of price. Sue Grafton is on my buy-immediately, read-immediately list. Sara Paretsky used to be, but I found the last two of her novels unsatisfying because of the endings – which involved silly stunts to trap the villain.

I’ve mostly given up on cozy mysteries, too. For a while I did read Diane Mott Davidson, Charlotte MacLeod, Rita Mae Brown, and a few others, but somehow I lost interest. Now I understand there is debate in the cozy mystery world over whether cat characters should talk or not. I prefer not to get involved.

I find that I am reading fewer mysteries these days, because many of them seem excessively formulaic – lead character is pursuing a serial killer who has targeted said character’s friends or relatives. Cozy mysteries have been really reaching for odd occupations for the detective character – librarians, innkeepers, golfers, crossword puzzle enthusiasts (are there really that many murderers who leave crossword clues?), and many, many cooks. It used to be interesting to get an inside peek at the workings of professions, but the thrill is gone.

I still like books in other genres that have mystery elements. One of these is the October Daye series by Seanan McGuire. Her lead character, who is part fairy, pursues quests usually involving stolen children or murdered fairies (or various other supernatural species).

Since I have cut back on reading mysteries and have been finding them less satisfactory lately, I’ve decided that what I need to do is write the kind of mystery that I want to read. I have begun to do so. I have 15,000 words already, plus a rough and fluid outline, which sometimes changes when my characters don’t do or say what I thought they would. (I’ve heard writers describe this phenomenon many times, but it’s interesting to see it happening in my own work.)

My working title is Cold as Stone. Wish me luck. Perhaps someday I will make it into someone else’s borrow, paperback, or hardback categories.

What’s Different About Blogging?

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Just as fiction and nonfiction are different, prose and poetry are different, and romance and science fiction are different, blogging is not exactly like any other form of writing.

Blog Weblog Media Online Messaging Notes Concept

For the casual or non-professional blogger, those who aren’t trying to build a platform as a subject matter expert or make money from a blog, the writing in a blog will likely not conform to any particular style of writing.

Here are some of the kinds of writing you often find in blogs.

Journals. Many blogs are used as online journals. Bloggers record observations about life; events in their day; personal feelings they wish to share with others; and assorted photographs, memes, jokes, trivia, and perhaps random thoughts. But stream-of-consciousness or confessional style journals are not likely to be appealing to large groups of readers. No one has so interesting a life that others want to follow the minutiae – unless, of course, you’re an Arctic explorer, a circus acrobat, or a pop star. And even they have dull days sometimes.

Articles. Fact-based articles on various topics – food, sex, crafts, pets, children, aging, media, politics, literature, and even swearing – can be good blog fodder. But if you’re aggregating news and facts from other sources, that’s not the same as writing your own content. And while it’s possible that an expert on a particular topic might be able to write factual articles week after week or month after month, such a blog will likely appeal to a limited number of readers in the same field.

Editorials. Opinion pieces are the meat and potatoes of many blogs. The problem is that bloggers most often want their writing to reach an audience – and not everyone’s opinions are well-thought-out, well-expressed, or even interesting. And unless you’re a “name” blogger with a wide following and a certain amount of credibility, who is going to be interested enough in your opinions to keep coming back? I mean, who really cares what I think about the Flint water crisis or where Caitlyn Jenner should be allowed to pee? Even super-opinionated blogger Jim Wright (http://www.stonekettle.com) occasionally gives himself and his readers a rest with cat pictures and woodworking info.

Funny stories. Let’s face it. Few of us are capable of being reliably, consistently funny. Humor writing is a very specific genre and craft that only a few – Erma Bombeck, Jenny Lawson (http://thebloggess.com) – ever master and that many fall flat with. Again, if you’re writing your own material rather than aggregating humorous quotations and stories from elsewhere (and you are giving proper credit to the original authors, aren’t you?), humor blogs can quickly become limited to only the readers who share your specific taste in what’s funny and how to express it comedically.

So what kind of writing is best for your blog? You’ll have to figure that out for yourself. I recommend some mix of all of the above types. But achieving balance between two or more types of writing can be difficult. How much personal revelation is too much? How many dry facts are too many? How can they be blended into a cohesive whole?

I have two blogs that I play around in. One (obviously) is this one – what I call my general-purpose blog. In it I try to post mostly funny stories and opinion pieces on some topic I have experience with or strong feelings about. Here are some examples of each: “When I Say Shoes…” (http://wp.me/p4e9wS-c8), I Blame the Cats. Always. (http://wp.me/p4e9wS-1B), The Education Argument (http://wp.me/p4e9wS-6G), Post Feminism: Back to the Future (http://wp.me/p4e9wS-4P).

My other blog, Bipolar Me (bipolarjan.wordpress.com) is topic-specific. As such, it contains a blend of journal (personal experiences), factual information, and occasionally opinions. Again, here are some of each: I May Have Miscounted My Spoons (http://wp.me/p4e9Hv-g6), More “News” About Mental Health (http://wp.me/p4e9Hv-9L), A Response to the Dalai Lama (http://wp.me/p4e9Hv-9T). Even more occasionally, I include humor – The Depression Diet (http://wp.me/p4e9Hv-db) – or poetry – Sense of Self (http://wp.me/p4e9Hv-9O).

I experiment with styles of writing in an attempt to keep my readers interested, but also to keep myself interested. In particular, I don’t want Bipolar Me to be all gloom-and-doom or perpetually “what I did today.” Et Cetera, etc. was conceived of as a blog where I could write whatever I wanted on any topic I wanted – books, cats, family, humor, rants, and to a lesser extent social issues I feel strongly about – education, feminism, etc. Bipolar Me seems to be the more popular of the two, but Et Cetera, etc. has had some unexpected surges. (I have thought about changing the blog’s name, but haven’t found anything I like better.)

At any rate, my advice to the newly blogging is this: Mix it up. It will help you find your voice, attract new readers, and keep you from burning out. Unless your blog is very topic- and tone-specific, a little variety is a good thing.

Poetry Keeps Knocking

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When I was a kid I was sure I was going to be a poet. Or a bus driver. Or an FBI agent. Or a stewardess. Some of those ambitions faded away and others were squelched by reality.

Whenever I take one of those right brain/left brain test I always come out in the middle. Half my brain is scientific and half is artistic.

Mostly, the artistic side has expressed itself over the years. As far back as grade school I remember writing poems. As I got older my poetry tended toward the free verse and the depressing. As many teenagers do, I let my angst, fueled by undiagnosed bipolar disorder, take over. I studied creative writing in high school and took poetry classes as in college.

I even came in second in a poetry contest run by the local newspaper after I graduated. My poems were printed in the paper along with an interview in which I snarked at Helen Steiner Rice and Rod McKuen. I still have some of those poems – somewhere – and I still think some of them are pretty good.

But as life went on my writing changed. The more I wrote in free verse – without rhyme or meter (which Robert Frost famously called “playing tennis without a net”), the more my poetry came to resemble prose. Eventually I gave up on poetry and simply wrote prose instead.

This natural evolution of my writing proved to be a good thing, since everyone knows no one makes any money at poetry unless you’re Helen Steiner Rice or Rod McKuen. Prose has served me well. I have written for many magazines (including Catechist and Black Belt) and for textbooks and now for blogs. For some of these I’ve even gotten paid.

Also I have occasionally made attempts at longer pieces of writing – books. I wrote a mystery novel in which I killed off my Rotten Ex-Boyfriend Who Almost Ruined My Life. I had a proposal going around for a nonfiction book about Lisa Simpson. I have not given up the ambition of writing a book. I am currently 25,000 words into a mystery that involves no one I have ever known, and a memoir which includes the person I know best.

I find, however, that my desire to write poetry has not completely disappeared. Sometimes I find myself playing around with various poetic forms, usually in my blogs. Some of them are the kind of free verse poetry I used to write, but I have learned that I need structure in my life and now it seems I need structure in my poetry too.

I started out simply with a group of haikus – not that haikus are really simple. Later I had a go at a sonnet. I would love to write a sestina but I am afraid to jump into anything that large. I would love to write a villanelle but I am afraid to jump into anything that tightly crafted. And once you’ve read “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” everything else seems – is – inferior. So I continue with my blogs and my editing and my book proposals and my novel and memoir, but poetry lurks at the back of my brain and now and then threatens to break free.

I think that’s the way of poetry. If you suppress it too long, it finds some way to knock on your brain until you answer.