And Now I Panic

I submitted a proposal for a presentation to be included in the Red River Women's Studies Conference at University of North Dakota, and I was accepted. The conference is held annually and I presented an academic paper last year, but this year the conference is accepting creative presentations so my proposal was to do a reading from my sci-fi/chick lit WIP.

Imagine how excited I was when I was accepted into the program. Yay! I get to do a reading!

Today I received the schedule of events and I am the only creative submission in the entire conference. The only one. Everything else is hoity-toity academic stuff. Suddenly I feel seriously out of place, like a black sheep, like a silly little piece of fluff amongst the academic heavy weights. A sampling of the other presentations at the conference finds such offerings as:

"Community Circles: Unveiling the Gap Between the Realities of Domestic Violence and the Paternalistic Assumptions of the Adversarial Process." (what does that even mean????)

"The Evolution of Western European Feminism and its Relation to the New Left."

"Gendered Discourses of Stability and Change: Women Communicating Wisdom."

And then you see me on the schedule as: "Excerpt from a Science Fiction Novel."

I am so outclassed it's not even funny. Not only have I never done a creative reading of my own work, but I am not an actress. How am I supposed to make these characters come to life like they are in my head and not sound like a complete moron in front of all these academic types? They probably don't even read fiction unless it's part of the "canon" and written before, say, 1950 (preferrably 1900). I can't compete with the canon.

I'm really thinking about backing out because I don't have nearly enough confidence to pull it off.

Anybody else ever found yourself in a similar situation? How did you deal? Run screaming from the room and hide in a dark corner hoping it would all just go away? Or did you face your demons and pull off a victory?

I Struggle to Understand The Success of a Certain Vampire Novel

One of the courses I'm taking for my MFA this semester is entitled "Individual Aesthetic and Process" the goal of which is to develop standards of value appropriate to the genre in which the student (me!) wishes to succeed. Because I have such a dissociative desire to write both screenplays and fiction I've decided to explore my aesthetic and process with regard to both genres.

How in the heck am I going to do that? Good question. One element of the course requirements is to explore what makes effective and significant fiction and screenwriting by examining three novels which have been adapted to film, the subsequent film, and the screenplay then write responses to each discussing story elements, themes, and structure and how these either were or were not successful in the novel form versus the film.

Basically as a student of writing I want to learn how to write well. But what writer doesn't also want to experience success? Are writing well and success mutually exclusive? I don't think so. And to explore that question, the stories I chose to look at in both novel and film form are: Twilight, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, and Whip It. These novels and screenplays were all written by women and, I think, range all along the scales of quality and success.

I wrote the paper on Twilight today, and I've gotta say that I just don't care how popular it was, how successful it was, how much money it made....I just don't like it. It's insipid, it disregards conventions (i.e., it's littered with excessive adjectives and adverbs which make the writing so much weaker than it should have been), and I'm seriously disturbed by some of the messages and themes (co-dependence, underage relationships, obsession, etcetera....).

When I read it the first time I fell for the soap-opera allure of it...like a vampire glamour it mesmerized me to just keep reading no matter how bad it was. It has a certain crack-on-the-page addictive quality to it, though I still can't identify exactly what that quality is because an objective look at it just makes me embarrassed that I fell for it.

However, on second read-through the flaws were much more evident and I actually had a hard time forcing myself to keep reading. The repetitive nature of references to Edward's astonishing beauty, strength, speed, marble-like form, cold skin, and overall perfection in general were gag-inspiring. And Bella's teen angst and utter lack of self-confidence was dispiriting.

The film was even worse.

In just a 3-page paper I couldn't attempt an explanation for the incongruous success of both the novel and the film. I'm stumped to explain it other than it must have struck a chord with its target audience (tween/teen girls who daydream of idealized true love, Prince Charming, and all the trappings thereof) and it was just the right thing at the right time. Nothing more than a quirk of fate.

So...what are your feelings about Twilight? Love it? Hate it? Don't understand it's appeal? Why do you think it was so successful?

Life in the Classroom for a Noob Teacher

As some of you may know, I'm doing my teaching practicum this semester as part of my MFA degree. I'm teaching freshman composition at the university where I got my BA.

I've had very little guidance, save some advice from a former instructor-turned-friend, and absolutely nothing else. I had to design my own course, write my own syllabus, and I'm teaching myself how to teach.

It's been an...um...interesting experience.

The first week passed in a stomach-lurching blur. I don't freak out about public speaking, in general, but it's a totally different story when you're responsible for filling an hour three times a week in front of 22 people.

But after the first couple of classes I was past the being-nervous-in-front-of-people feeling. My stomach had calmed down. The butterflies had disappeared.

However, I was still left with the difficulty of not being able to fill an hour. I was laboring under the assumption that I needed to fill the entire time with lecture. Until I began to bore myself. I simply can't talk that long. And when the students were nodding off I knew it was time to try something different.

Of course, by that time I was convinced I was a crappy teacher and I was thinking to myself, "what the hell have I gotten myself into?" I had a panicked moment of doubt when I thought my carefully laid plans of the last few years were all a pile of shit and here I am in my (grmf)-ties and I've accrued massive student loan debt and it's way too late to discover now that I made a mistake.

Now, usually, I'm not a quitter. I'm stubborn. So I let that moment of panic pass and I looked at the problem logically. I asked myself: Do you like teaching? And I answered, actually, I really do like being in the classroom. I love the university atmosphere. And I like the idea of helping other people learn how to write. So all I had to do was figure out how to manage the classroom.

I'm sure this is not a revelation to anyone who teaches, but I decided to mix it up. Only lecture for maybe 20 minutes then engage the students in some kind of activity that requires their participation.

Last Wednesday we were talking about critical thinking and how it's like investigating and that the question is the investigator's most important tool. So we played a question game (not 20 questions, though I thought about that. I'm saving it for another day). And they loved it. It was a smashing success and they understood how it applied to our discussion. Someone even said, as they were loading up to leave (after the class lasted the full hour...yay!), "that was a great class!"

I got all warm and fuzzy inside.

So what am I learning by being a teacher? That I can do it as long as I'm determined and flexible and creative.

Yeah. I can do that.

To Pen Name Or Not To Pen Name?

The subject of pen names has been explored brilliantly and in depth at various writer's blogs around the blogosphere. In fact, Rachelle Gardner has also discussed it today on her blog, so please visit her there for some great advice.

As a writer, there are several reasons you may want to use a pseudonym. You may have a job or be looking for a job and want to keep your writing and working lives separate. Imagine you work as an elementary teacher by day and write erotica or romance by night. It could be inconvenient to have your employer....or parents....google you and find out about your other life. A pen name might be in order if you just don't like your name, or it's very common and you share it with a lot of other people, or it's the same or similar to a celebrity or another author. If you're planning on writing in several genres, it may be prudent to have a pen name to keep your writing life neatly organized.

Interestingly, whether or not to use a pen name is a question that we ask each of the authors we interview on Critique This WIP and there have been some intriguing answers, so clearly there are as many opinions on the subject as there are authors.

For a combination of these reasons, I've come to the conclusion that I need a pseudonym. It's a question that each of us in my critique group, Critique This WIP, has considered recently. We've been discussing it amongst ourselves for a while now and we all pretty much came to the same conclusion. Some of us have jobs that we want to keep separate from our writing lives, some of us have common or not very "writerly" sounding names, some of us don't want our family to be affected by our writing, so we've all decided to take pen names.

The fun came for all of us in selecting pseudonyms we could feel comfortable with. Tessa was already using a pen name, so the issue was a moot point for her, but the rest of us struggled to find names that "felt" right, that we could comfortably assume and not feel like we were playing at pretend. I've selected the name Mara Nash (come follow me over there, too!), and will now begin building a web "presence" in her name.

I'm nearly finished with revisions of my first novel and will be sending it out to betas soon, then beginning the querying process, so I felt it was prudent to begin the process of assuming my pseudonym. An interesting point Rachelle made in her blog post on pen names is that writers should start the query process from the beginning using their pseudonym. Do all of your correspondence using your pen name, and identify yourself in that way. You don't need to tell the agent it's not your real name until they offer you representation. This is good information to know, and something I had no idea about before I read her blog post. So, thanks Rachelle!

I'd be interested to know your feelings about pseudonyms. Do you use one? Why or why not?

Haiku Blogfest

Today is the haiku blogfest hosted by Stephanie Thornton. The blogfest runs Sept 3rd and 4th, so be sure to visit Stephanie's site and check out the links of everyone participating!

As I've commented here before, I'm not a poet by any stretch of the imagination, but I do love haiku - they're deceptively simple yet can be so zen. And I'm not good at writing them. Like I said deceptively simple, not actually simple.

On her site Stephanie suggested that blogfest participants write haiku based on their WIP, so rather than make an attempt at a "real" haiku (i.e., seasonal references, nature-related, moras vs syllables, etc), which I'm sure I'd butcher, I wrote one about my paranormal romance WIP.


Faeries are real. What?!
Rogue fae father wants her dead.
Can soul mate save her?

If I can come up with one for my sci-fi WIP I'll add it tomorrow!

Check out the rest of the entries and enjoy the fest!

Fight, Fight, Fight Blogfest

Thanks to JC Martin at The Fighter Writer for hosting the Fight Blogfest!

This is an excerpt from my sci-fi WIP. It's right at the 1000 word limit, so it's a little long. But hope you like it!

The set-up: Jaska is a thief (it's written in first person so he's the "I" character). On his way to steal a valuable map he's shanghaied by space pirates. This fight occurs shortly after he comes onboard their ship.

******************

“Strip,” Snake commands.

“Yeah, right. I don’t think so,” I say, and a nervous laugh ripples through the crowd. I guess I just challenged the pack’s Alpha.

“You don’t really have a choice,” he says. And although it’s a seriously creepy command, he’s right. I’ve got no weapon and I can’t fight my way off the ship. But I'll be damned if I'll stand here buck naked in a crowd of pirates. I wonder when these guys last saw time in port, on solid ground, and more importantly, in a woman’s bed.

I drop my pack on the nearest bunk and shrug out of my jacket. That’s when Snake, Tiger, and Bug jump me. The crowd cheers. Once on the floor, I manage to draw my knees up to my chest, protecting my softest parts, then roll onto my side. Someone kidney-punches me from behind so I throw an elbow backwards and connect with a satisfying crunch. Whoever it is yelps in pain and his weight disappears off me. There’s a whoop from somewhere in the crowd. I guess he’s rooting for me. Somebody else stands over me trying to kick my head but I have my arms in the way and I’m wedged too close to the bunk for him to land anything. I twist around and kick out with both feet, landing a blow against his locked knee pushing it into hyperextension. He screams. The third guy comes at me, punching at my face. I reach up and grab a handful of his hair and yank his head back. With my other fist I punch him in the temple. That knocks him out cold.

In that instant I jump to my feet, crouched and ready for battle. There’s only Snake and Tiger left conscious and I know I can take them, assuming after I’m done with them the rest of the crowd doesn’t decide to finish me off. Tiger has a broken nose, blood pouring down his chin, and Snake is limping, but they’re still game. It would take more than these minor injuries to disable a couple of pirates. They stalk forward and I retreat.

“What’s with the fight, guys?” I ask.

“You have to earn your place,” Snake says.

“I never asked for a place. I don’t even want to be here.”

“You’ve gotta earn a rank.”

“This is how you rank your crew?”

“It’s as good a measure of a man as anything else,” Tiger says.

I’ve gotta give him that. Tiger lunges for me and I step aside, but he still lands a glancing blow to the belly. I grunt in response. Snake rushes in and lands a punch to my left eye that sends me spinning. Tiger's ready with another punch but I duck to the side to avoid it and see a pile of dishes on the bunk next to me. I grab the nearest utensil, a three-pronged fork, and swing at him, sinking the fork up to the hilt in his belly. He stops short and looks down at his trunk, surprised to see the fork buried there. I use that moment to knee him in the groin then, as he doubles over, grab him by the back of the head and ram his face into my knee. He falls like a sack of grain to the floor. That’s two down.

I spin to face Snake, who springs at me, much like his namesake, and I notice just in time that he’s armed with a knife. I jump back and just miss being gutted.

“Hey, I give, man. You win,” I say.

“I’m not done with you yet,” Snake says and leaps for me again. I jump back and trip over something on the floor. On hands and knees, I scramble between the bunks away from Snake. A glance to the left and I see a shovel under one of the beds. At this point I’m not surprised to see anything in here. Snake’s footsteps get closer. I reach under the bed and grab the shovel, and quickly gain my feet, then, before Snake can see what I’ve got, I turn and jam it into his gut. At close range it doesn't do much damage, but maintains some distance. He grunts, but then tosses the knife in the air and catches it by the blade. Quick as a blink he hurls it at me. My reflexes are good, especially when it comes to self-preservation. I hop sideways just enough so that the blade drills my biceps instead of my chest. Now I’m pissed. Enough is enough. I jerk the shovel up so that it catches him under the chin and crunches his jaws together, snapping his head back. His eyes roll back, he loses his balance and he falls on his ass.

I slide the knife from my arm and turn my back on Snake. I rip a strip from the cleanest sheet I can find and wrap it around my arm, then return to Snake and offer him my hand. He's groggy, rubbing his jaw and cocking his neck back and forth, checking to be sure it still works. There’s suspicion all over his face as he squints at me, but I just stand there waiting for him to take my offered hand. When he finally does I help him up.

“Are we done now?” I ask. “Do I pass your little test?”

“Yeah,” he grumbles. “You’ll do.” The crowd is dispersing. Some of the guys congratulate me for surviving, avoiding Snake’s gaze. Someone helps Bug and Tiger, who are now coming around.

Tiger is up, cradling his sore balls in his hand. “You fight like a dog,” he says, his voice boggy from his swollen nose.

I find this amusing since he was out to kill me first. I shrug at him. “If by that you mean I fight to win, then sure.” Really I was more concerned with surviving than winning, but a little bravado after the fact never hurt anyone.

**************
Now, hop on over to the Fighter Writer and check out the links to the other entries!

Fairy Tale Blogfest

The lovely Emily White over at Stepping Into Fantasy is hosting the Fairy Tale Blogfest today. When I first read the announcement for this blogfest I was totally excited. And then the days slipped by and I hadn't written anything. Here we are on the big day and I'm writing by the seat of my pants again.

What I came up with is a sci-fi mash up of Snow White and Sleeping Beauty. It's a little long, but I hope you like it!

So, without any further ado, here's my contribution to the Fairy Tale Blogfest:

**************

Rafe Charming strove always to live up to his name, and so far he'd done well for himself. In the midst of a galactic uprising he'd found plenty of work as a hero-for-hire. But this job might have been biting off more than he could chew.

"Hey, Rafe," his partner, Doc, whispered. "You still think this job was such a great idea?"

Now three floors under the ruins of an ancient palace on a planet at the fringe of the galaxy, Rafe reconsidered. A mental inventory only ramped the adrenalin another degree: one entrance, one exit, the Crone Council, an army of androids crawling the planet surface, a senator's daughter in need of rescue. All in a day's work.

"Maybe not," he admitted. His back to the damp stone wall, he inched closer to the nearby chamber, careful not to trip on rocky debris.

Keeping the wall between him and the vastness of the chamber, he slid a mirror from his pocket and edged it into the open space where the wall came to an end. What he saw inside caused a sheen of sweat to prick his hairline, a bead sliding down his temple. He swallowed hard.

Seeing his response, Doc let his head drop against the wall behind him. "Let me guess," he whispered. "Our lovely target is being held against her will in the midst of some impossible obstacle course."

"You're half right," Rafe replied.

Doc's brows rose as he considered what could possibly make their situation more complicated. Then he smacked his hand to his forehead. "Some huge, hairy, invincible creature is guarding her."

"Bingo."

"Shit. I don't know why I keep working with you."

"It's the charm. I'm irresistable," Rafe said, shooting Doc his most charismatic grin.

"Yeah, whatever," Doc grunted. "Let's get this over with. I'll take the hairy beast. As usual. You get the girl."

"As usual," Rafe finished. That was his favorite part.

They stepped into the empty space of the doorway, blasters blazing, and luck was on their side as they took the massive creature by surprise. It's eyes shot wide as the first bolts hit it, singing its fur. It bellowed rage while its blood flew, spattering the unconscious woman it was guarding. The force of the blaster shots compromised its balance and, arms flailing, it tipped backwards and toppled off the platform into the void below.

The following silence rang in Rafe's ears, but there was no time to waste. With nimble and practiced feet Doc negotiated the obstacle course, making short work of booby traps and obstructions. Rafe took up the rear, guarding against surprise flank attacks.

On the central platform, the woman lay unconscious on a stone dais, her hair an ebony puddle framing her alabaster face.

Rafe approached her, his heart tripping with anticipation. He watched her slow and steady breathing, in awe of her perfect beauty. Her lips were full and rosy and they stirred in him a desire to taste them. He amended his earlier thoughts. This was his favorite part of the job.

"Doc," he said in a reverent whisper. "The balm. Give me the balm."

Doc rolled his eyes and dug around in his pocket until he found the tube of lip balm, then placed it in Rafe's outstretched hand.

Rafe smeared it on his lips, feeling the familiar tingle as the magic took effect. It was almost gone. They'd have to go back to that creepy apothecary and get some more. He sighed. All part of the job, and well worth it if it meant kissing more women like this.

He leaned in until his lips met hers. Soft and cool and sweet, he applied more pressure - just to be sure - then savored the growing heat as the magic began to do its job. He sampled one last mouthful of those luscious lips before the heat of the magic was too much, then stood to find Doc glaring at him.

"What?" he asked. "It's my reward for a job well done."

"What a prince," Doc said. "And we're not out of the woods yet." He gestured at the dark hall from which they'd come. "We still have to get out of here."

The woman stirred and sat, rubbing her eyes. "Where am I?" She asked.

Rafe took her hand and pulled her to her feet. "C'mon, Princess, we've gotta go."

Just then, a spine-chilling cackle filled the room. Looked like their luck wasn't going to hold after all as the Council of Crones spilled from an entrance hidden in the opposite wall. As twisted and hideous as rumors promised, Rafe wasn't interested in sticking around to make their acquaintance. His job was done and it was time to go.

"Doc!" he called. "Take the girl and get back to the ship! I'll take care of these hags."

Doc didn't wait to see if Rafe changed his mind. He took the girl by the hand and sprinted out the door, retracing their steps while Rafe backed away from the crones, his blasters burning bright, serenaded by the sweet sound of screeching as each shot hit its mark.

"I take it back," he said to himself, hopped up again on an adrenalin high. "This is definitely the best part!"