Art Versus Music

Are you a visual writer or are you inspired by music?

So many writers I know blog about how they write particular manuscripts while listening to certain bands or albums. I do enjoy music, but I’m a visual person. I’m inspired by things I see, places I’ve been and either photographs or artwork. While I’m researching for a book I collect photos from newspapers or on-line and file them. These visual revolve around in my mind, and become imbued with the emotions and characters of the book.

Currently, I’m writing my Shallow Sea book, which is set in a tropical paradise so I have several computer desktops of tropical islands that I rotate to keep me in the right mood for writing balmy summer settings. (This helps as I’m sitting here wrapped in a blanket with gloves on while I type). When I work on the King Rolen’s Kin series, I use desktops of Russian winters, glimpses of sun streaming through icicles, that sort of thing. The artwork by Alexia Sinclair at the top of this post reminds me of my T’En series, beautiful, dark and sensual.

I tend to get very involved with what I’m writing. I spent a day on a series of scenes on a ship during a bad storm and by the end of the day, I was feeling sea sick. Doh!

Are you a visual writer or do you listen to music?

Artwork by Alexia Sinclair alexiasinclair.com/home.html
Posted by Rowena Cory Daniells

The best way forward may be back

You know, I've been involved in mountain rescue over the years... and so many disasters happen when bright sparks (like yours monkily) take the wrong trail (because it looks better) and then don't have the common sense - or sometimes the self-confidence, to look at the 75 degree scree-slope with the cliff at the base in the dusk, and the mist swirling in on a freezing gale, to say "Okay, I was a plonker. We're staying RIGHT HERE until morning and then we'll walk back and take the other path. You were right, Fred, Mary and the dog." No, we press on, even as the scree gets steeper and more slippery.

Occasionally it doesn't all end horribly.

Humans (me neither, and I'm only distantly related) are not great at admitting we're wrong. At least not at the time or from close up. I was re-reading SHADOW OF THE LION as homework for the latest book, and I wanted take that Dave Freer outside and give him a good kicking. Because... If I was writing that book now, I'd chop a few bits I wrote (not to mention bits the others wrote) get rid of a few subplots entirely, and write it whole lot better. There are still bits (Benito diving for Kat's grey goods, the scene at the Red Cat, the mess that Marco gets himself into marrying Angelina to pay off an imagined debt of honor etc.) that are pretty well done and memorable. At the time it seemed a good scree slope, with the place we were trying to get to not far off. Now... heh. Well THIS ROUGH MAGIC was better written anyway.

Increasingly, however I have come to suspect that whole of publishing is on a steep, steep scree. It's getting steeper, and darker and wetter ahead. I think the industry is determinedly plunging forward even as it loses parts of the party into the abyss. And, actually, I don't think it's going to get better in that direction. There are a few people (Baen Books to name one) trying other routes but mostly it seems relentlessly the same imagined path.

The big question is, well, which direction SHOULD we be going? Well, in my opinion, toward books that have real appeal to massive numbers of readers. They exit. Harry Potter et al proved it. Just what are the kind of books that would get a lot of people reading? Where did the industry go off track?

My opinion - Based on the surprising success of the re-issue of the James H Schmitz books that there is a huge appetite for good old-fashioned space opera, with clearly defined bad guys and heroes we can identify with. And yes, that does mean alien villains who are not just misunderstood, now that you mention it :-)

So let's have some feedback: what authors style/type of story from the dark ages/golden years do you think would work well now in sf/ fantasy?

Sleepy Sunday

I apologize for being a little late posting this morning, but I am recovering from the Fourth. And no, not THAT sort of recovering. The strongest thing I had to drink yesterday was a Coke. No, I'm recovering from 10 1/2 hours in a parking lot in the Texas heat selling parking just down from our community's Fourth Fest. Considering we had our first car arrive at 0930 and we were starting our fourth row on the adjoining grass field when I left last night, I'm hoping we exceeded our goal.

However, because of that, and because I think I think I sweated a good portion of my brain out yesterday, I'm going to leave you with some links to check out.

From our own Monkey, a very interesting and informative post on e-books and royalties. Be sure to read the link he includes in his post. --
http://davefreer.livejournal.com/99217.html

Here is agent Lucienne Diver's take on RWA's decision regarding e-books and advances --
http://espan-rwa.com/my-two-cents/

Courtesy of Smart Bitches comes this link for Tips for Writers choosing names for your characters. Now, in the interest of full disclosure [G], Smart Bitches does take exception to the third rule - that exotic names are for romance novels, soap operas and strippers.

Your mission, this morning, should you decide to accept it is to tell me your thoughts about e-books -- are they a valid form of publishing even in the absence of a dead tree version of the book? Any other thoughts you might have about e-books, including authors offering them a chapter at a time for donations or subscription fee.

Also, how do you choose names for your characters -- assuming they let you name them. Some of mine come complete with names and refuse to play nice until I agree they know best.

Have a great Sunday. I'm off to search for more coffee.

Girl Gang Kills Midget Wrestlers

I was very taken with Kate's post and the follow up comments. I then saw a British Newspaper headline that amused me.

The headline was: Girl Gang Kills Midget Wrestlers

How would you start a story that had this as a synopsis?

I have written a first page of a possible book - your turn next.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

The Beagles were already on the scent when I arrived at Flat 4439. I waited in the doorway, reluctant to interrupt. The single room was like a hundred thousand others in the low zone, sixty four cubic feet of space filled with domestic appliances that dropped flat, lifted to the ceiling or folded up against the walls. The bodies were tastefully arranged on their backs in the centre of the floor.

“Officer present,” Serjeant Ruff said, noticing me.

He and his fellow Beagles stiffened to attention, standing rather unsteadily on their rear legs.

I waved a hand, “As you were.”

They went back to searching and sniffing, except for Ruff who hung around waiting to give his report. I ignored him; I liked to form my own first impressions. There had been a retro fad a few years ago for midgets dressed up as gnomes and suchlike. It hadn’t lasted, they never do, but we were still stuck with the midgets. From a poster ripped off the wall, these two had made a doubtful living as novelty wrestlers, billing themselves as Mighty Mouse and Little Dynamite.

“Ruff!” I said.

“Conciliator,” he replied, stiffening to attention.

“You were about to report that the victims were killed by a girl-gang using a drug-induced orgasmic heart overload, I imagine.”

“Yes, Conciliator.”

He looked puzzled as if I had done something clever but the erect nature of the bodies told its own story - that and the crimson lipstick logo scrawled in on the door. Now all we had to work out was why PROBLARM , the Provisional Brownies Liberation Army, was killing midgets.



John Lambshead

Lone Wolves N' Critters

So what's your critiquing style? How do you milk those nuggets of wisdom about your work from the minds of other writers?

There is the ever-popular critique group.

Advantages include the ability to bitch over coffee, or for late-night varieties, dinner and few choice glasses of wine. Networking is a bonus, and in the right company can be lots of laughs. Also on the upside, there is usually no shortage of opinions. In fact many groups bloat to such a size they are in danger of becoming dysfunctional. By the time you have reached the stage where you have a chairperson with a stop watch and you start talking in abbreviated code with words like 'Ditto' and 'Anti-Ditto' its probably time to lead a revolution or form a splinter group (or both!)

One disadvantage of the critique group is that they can fall into a rut.

The first species of rut is of the safe & predicable kind, where everyone is well known and overly careful of other peoples feelings (or just downright hedging/holding back and favoring potential networking over critique). Everyone enjoys a nice coffee and perhaps may leave with an glow of satisfaction, but key problems with work go unremarked.

Another species of rut is where a skewed dynamic takes hold. Perhaps most of the writers favor certain types of writing, genres, or characters. Over time a small clique emerges that dominates the tone and direction of critique - limiting the range of feedback as other opinions are squashed, or are expected to be so out of favor they are not mentioned in the first place. Perhaps people whose work is on the 'out' of the norm will be regularly targeted - and they find themselves in vehement finger-pointing territory. This doesn't mean that the clique are wrong, sometimes you get the most useful crits from the Hostiles, but if its so demoralizing that the writer's work ends up grinding to a halt - that's time to bail out.

Other writers go the Lone Wolf. Writing mostly alone, self-editing then getting critique only from one or two other writers they know and trust.

One example that springs to mind Louise Cousak. She told me once that she just cannot do the crit group thing. For the first draft she pretends she is the best writer in the world and does it all without external input. Only after the masterpiece is finished does she fish it out. There is an echo there with Stephen King from On Writing. In the book he says, 'Write first for yourself, then for everyone else'. Another version of this is: Write the first draft with the door closed and the second draft with the door open. I think I also recall that Kim Wilkins also tends to go the lone wolf. So there are a couple of very successful Australian writers who don't favor critique groups, but produce good quality work regardless.

I guess I howled in the wilderness for a long time before I found my first critique group. Now I tend to gravitate toward groups, although I also have a few writers I will shoot material off to on the run. Now days I do find it hard to physically get to a meeting, although that's the time factor more than anything else.

What works for you? Got any traps for the unwary to share?

It was a dark and stormy night:

Thus began Paul Clifford, a novel almost no-one remembers - but that opening is one that everyone recognizes. Edward Bulwer-Lytton is spinning fast enough to power a small city after what's been made of a novel that is not really that bad when you consider that it was published in 1830, and preferences have changed a lot since then.

Of course, that's not what I'm posting about. No, I'm posting about the "winners" of the 2009 Bulwer-Lytton Awards, this year's celebration of the overblown, bad, and truly bizarre opening sentence. Slush readers take heart - no, not from the authors in the slush pile, and not while they're still breathing - Bulwer-Lytton Award winners and dishonorable mentions are intentionally bad.

The bad can be as instructive as the good, and here we have the gloriously appalling, with plunges into bathos that rival the cleavage of an EE cup, puns that would make even Dave Freer blush, and run on sentences that meander around for a while before finally getting lost, or in at least one case, disappearing up its own virtual fundamental orifice.

So, go take a look at the winners, then come back here, and add your own Bulwer-Lytton-esque offerings.

To start the fun:

The circumstances of my birth are shrouded in mystery even to me, for though I may assume I have, or had, a mother and a father, I have never known either, nor wished to, for I was abandoned outside a Copenhagen perfumery, left in a discarded crate still heavily scented with the oil it had once held, thus forever sealing my fate as the little myrrh maid of Copenhagen.

Memory and the single writer-- guest post by Doctor Tedd Roberts

*Doctor Tedd Roberts has agreed to let me do these every now and then. He would also like our readers to come up with questions. He has plans of writing a guide on the brain for writers in the future, and would like to know what our unique questions are. :) So, go ahead, comment and be unique.*


Science for the Mad Genius Writer
By Tedd Roberts


"Mrs. Smith?"

"Yes Doctor?"

"Your husband suffered a terrible head injury. He's in a coma."

"Oh, Doctor, will he be all right?"

"We'll only know once he wakes up."

…

"Ashley? It's me, Melissa!"

"Where am I? Who are you? What happened? Who am I?"

"Oh, no!"

…

It's a familiar theme, amnesia as a plot device. Overused, trite, cliché, yes; but also terribly *mis*-used.

Hi, the bloggers of the Mad Genius Club have asked me to contribute a series on the science behind science fiction/fantasy. I don't claim to be a Mad Genius, nor am I necessarily a Mad Scientist – a bit upset at times, but not truly Mad! Bwahahahaha! (I think we can safely save that label for Dr. Freer.) However, I am a writer, and I have over 70 "stories" in print, although they are all scientific articles in professional journals. My field is neuroscience, the physiology and pharmacology (mechanics and chemicals) of the brain, and I am currently employed as a faculty member at a medical school.



What? Oh, yeah. This is Ratley, an intelligent lab rat. Actually that's LabRat, they insist on the capitals. Ratley and his friends will help me with these blogs.

So, on to today's topic: SF/F clichés regarding the brain with particular emphasis on amnesia.

Amnesia is little understood by the lay public. The most common experience of amnesia is the soap-opera scene with which this column opened. But what is amnesia, and how does it *really* happen?

OK, classroom time.



What? I said, class…



OK, if you insist,*you* tell them.

[Ahem. OK, y'all, I got the stuffy Doc out of the way. As the Doc said, I'm Ratley, and I've *experienced* amnesia in the lab. Let me tell ya, it ain't no picnic. Amnesia means "without memory," and there's two typical types – retrograde amnesia, meaning a loss of memory from the past. The other kind is called anterograde amnesia and it means loss of memory "forward" into the future. I've had 'em both, and they result when a part of the brain that processes memory ain't workin'. ]

Excuse me, Ratley?



Are you going to explain what you mean by "future" memory? Shouldn't you tell them that anterograde amnesia is a lack of ability to make *new* memories?



I will, thanks.

In fact, anterograde amnesia is the most common form of amnesia, even though the retrograde form (poor Ashley, above) is better known. Imagine, trying to remember a phone number but never quite managing it; reading the same newspaper over and over again, never recalling the previous read; or never being able to remember where you'd left your keys, your car, your kids, your wife…

How can this be, how can it happen? Well, let's start by looking at how amnesia happens.

Take Ratley for instance.



Not literally, calm down, please! I'm just giving an example!

When Ratley said he had experienced amnesia, he means that in the lab, scientists use a chemical to temporarily put part of the brain to sleep, causing amnesia – which type depends on the brain area affected. In humans, amnesia usually results from damage to the brain. Oh, but not just any damage! It has to be specific type of damage and specific areas of the brain. Damage can be a traumatic head injury: Ashley's tragic soap-opera car crash, or the angsty teen's headfirst dive into an empty swimming pool. Damage to specific brain areas can also occur due to epilepsy, stroke, tumor, hemorrhage, infection (meningitis or encephalitis) or drug interactions.



Yes, Ratley, just like Ratface. See folks, Ratface did a bit too much LDS in the 60's. He's harmless – really – but not all there.

And what are those brain areas? Well, in scientist language, they are the pre-frontal and frontal cortex (for retrograde amnesia); hippocampus, medial temporal lobe and diencephalon (for anterograde amnesia). Traumatic injury, tumor and stroke can affect any of these areas; infection and hemorrhage are most likely to involve the frontal and prefrontal cortex, while epilepsy and drugs are most likely to affect the hippocampus, temporal lobe and diencephalon.



Yes, I know. Go ahead. Ratley wants to show you how to tell the brain areas apart.

[ Oh, sorry about that. Okay, humans. You've got those big hands with nice opposable thumbs. So, unhand that mouse and keyboard! Now, place your index fingers on your temples, yes, the soft areas at the side of the forehead. Feel that? It is the most direct access to your brain except from the inside. From your fingers to the center of your forehead is frontal cortex. If you draw a line between your forefingers across the top of your head – that's the prefrontal cortex. Move your fingers straight back until they are directly in front of your ears – that's the medial temporal lobe and hippocampus. Move the fingers below and behind the ears – straight in from there at the center, bottom of the brain is the brain stem, also known as the diencephalon.

[What about the other areas, the top of the head, the back, the base of the skull? You humans just *love* to make movies where the bad guy hits the hero on the top or back of the skull with the butt of a gun – he (or she) loses consciousness and wakes up in the hospital with amnesia. Silly humans. Listen to the rat, now: it's not gonna happen that way.

[Next exercise, put your thumbs directly in front of your ears and lace your other fingers over the top of your head. That's the sensory and motor areas – controlling all sense of touch, position and pain, and moving the various muscles of the body. From there to the back of the skull is visual area, responsible not only for sight, but also interpreting what you see. Run your fingers down from top, center of your head, to the very back the skull. Feel that slight dimple? That bony area right below it protects the cerebellum, responsible for coordinating all of the muscles involved in any movement. ]

Thanks, Ratley!

So, in our story brave Ashley foils the terrorist, gets cold-cocked at the base of his skull for his troubles, and wakes up with amnesia, right? Well, no. He might wake up with some coordination problems, blurred vision or possibly "agnosia" a specific type of amnesia for words or faces, but not full scale retrograde amnesia.

What about that mysterious alien parasite that "wraps itself around the cerebral cortex" and takes over its host, leaving total amnesia in its path?



No, Ratley, I know what you're going to say, but I'm *not* talking about Ratfink!

Leaving aside the fact that there is no *room* for such a parasite without sacrificing so much brain tissue that the host is clearly impaired in more than just memory, the description is not specific enough to suggest any particular type of amnesia. No, the more likely result will be pressure on the other parts of the brain causing the hapless host to stop thinking and breathing well before any amnesia could set in.

On the other hand, just about any surgery on the brain carries risk of damage to neighboring area. Anterograde amnesia is a common side effect, although retrograde amnesia is rarer. In fact, to get total retrograde amnesia requires trauma – massive infection, crushing injury to the central-to-frontal part of the skull, concussive blast injury. Anything less is unlikely to give total amnesia. Oh, sure, falling off a horse and hitting your head on a curb will likely cause a bit of amnesia – certainly for the 10 minutes or so immediately preceding the injury – but not the total "Who am I?" kind. Typically the amnesia lasts as long as the brain swelling that accompanies the concussion (about 24-48 hours) but usually only extends to memories from a few hours to a few months prior to the accident.

So, how *do* you incorporate brain damage and/or amnesia into a plot? Ratley?

[First, keep it simple. If the big dumb hero takes a glancing blow to the head, he's not gonna have total amnesia and lead a complete second life for 20 years. Keep it simple, and keep it short. Give the big dummy amnesia for the day leading up to the accident, and only lasting a few days to a week. However, you *can* leave the actual events of the accident permanently forgotten.

[Second, avoid the obvious. Instead of giving the dude full amnesia, consider an alternative.

[Doc?]

Right, Ratley. Alternatives to amnesia might be: (1) agnosia– inability to remember faces or the names of common objects, (2) aphasia - the inability to speak certain words or names (we also call this the "tip of the tongue" phenomenon), or (3) neglect – an apparent inability to consciously notice objects that occur in particular places in our field of vision.

Back to you, Ratley.

[Thanks, Doc.

[Third, remember that total retrograde amnesia is *rare*. Instead of amnesia, give your character vision, hearing or coordination problems. There's a bunchaton of other stuff that happens after head injury.

[Fourth, keep in mind the differences in those different types of amnesia: give a human anterograde amnesia and they may not remember that they had the exact same conversation 15 minutes ago, but they can still remember the name of their 10th grade crush. Likewise, retrograde amnesia still leaves the ability to make new memories.

[Ah, excuse me a sec…

[HEY RATFACE! The cheese is over THERE!

[Ah, sorry about that, maybe Doc needs to finish this while I go help Ratface.]

So, folks, Ratley's final point is to keep the perspective. Amnesia typically means loss of memory for facts. Skills such as reading, riding a bike, speaking a foreign language, complex logic puzzles – those memories are processed and stored in a different manner and not subject to the same injuries as amnesia. Just like Ratface can't remember where he left the cheese just now, he still remembers how to run mazes and get under Ratley's fur.

Finally, don't be too stuck on the rules (or clichés). Try something new, or figure out a way to let your protagonist function with just a partial injury. If you want help, don't hesitate to contact an expert –



- Or a LabRat! In fact, many scientists would be flattered to help out an author.

Until next time, be kind to your brain; for now, it's the only one you have!