Topic: Science fiction

I wrote a lot yesterday. I write a lot most days to be honest. Though I’m not often successful at this, my usual plan of attack is to spend a chunk of time in the morning writing on fiction projects, (after some sort of warm up like a blog post or a few email) before I graduate onto other projects. Often this doesn’t work: I have other commitments in the morning, I get sucked into emacs or website hacking, “the best laid plans of mice and men,” as it were.

Yesterday, something similar happened: I got up and had something to do that took up morning, and I tried to do a little bit of writing, but I fell into another project, where I wrote a lot of content, but none of it was fiction. And then, at about 8pm, I said “crap, I need to write fiction.”

So I did. And I yanked out about 500 words (which is about my current daily fiction writing goal,) and then I was done. And I felt good. One of the reasons I’m so intent upon writing fiction despite my utter lack of training, and dubious skill is that in aggregate writing fiction makes me very happy. This example demonstrates--as if we needed more examples--that while it’s important to get in the habit of writing, ritualizing the habit is probably counter productive.

When I finished doing school the last time, I thought, “yes! no more homework,” except that this writing experience (from a procedural point of view) was a lot like homework (“ugg time I should do this”). Surprisingly this isn’t such a bad thing: writing makes me happy, and truth be told I’m pretty good at doing homework.

Anyway. Enjoy your day, and write something if you’re inclined thusly.

I listened to the podcast of “After The Siege,” a novella by Cory Doctorow, the other week (I’ve been driving cross country and walking a lot, I’m going through a lot of audio.) It was really cool and I thought it would be good to post a few notes. (For those of you who want to skip right to the podcast, here’s the link, but I’d get the files straight from cory’s podcast).

The reading was done by Mary Robinette Kowal, and it was amazing. I very much enjoyed the story, but it was a bit rough for me, at least politically. The story science-fictionalizes stories from the author’s grandmother’s experiences during the Siege of Leningrad during World War II, to tell a story about contemporary American Imperialism. Politically, something about this comparison, seems a bit fraught; both in its scope, and in the way it understands American Imperialism.

I think it’s probably a sign that my politics come very close to intersecting with Cory’s that I get so riled up in response to some of his fiction. When there’s no chance that I’m going to agree with someone, the fact that I don’t agree doesn’t worry me. When I’m pretty close, it’s a more troubling concern. The story is, however, quite good, so go listen.

I posted a new story on Critical Futures today. It’s another one from the Knowing Mars novella that I wrote a year ago and that I had been posting previously. After a much too long break from posting fiction, I’ve decided that I have enough brain space to work through some projects there and bring it back to life. While I think my first six months was an unparalleled learning experience, I think a different strategy is in order.

My goal/intention is to slip into a Monday/Thursday schedule, of posting 400-600 words rather than the every work-day of 200-400 words. The word counts are mostly for my own thoughts and less of a hard guideline. It’s also helpful, because I think, that even if I run out of my backlog, which seems pretty likely to happen pretty soon. I feel like I could probably write the requisite 800-1200 words on Saturday/Sunday morning along with my non-fiction essays, no matter what my life is looking like. I’m not sure what the future will hold, or what exactly is going to happen with my fiction, but it’s going to be there.

One of my background projects, however (and I’ll write about the theory here in an essay,) is generate a few “curatorial” pages for critical futures (and I suppose for tychoish as well). Basically I want to give people an easier “in” to the stories that I post on the web. This includes more creative templates and some hand-compiled guide pages, and as websites become home to more and more information my thought is that curation is the only real solution to this, and that, in that, it’s really the next big thing for content. But that’s another thought for another time…

Check out the new Critical Futures story, “Knowing Mars, http://criticalfutures.com/2009/03/”

Thanks for reading, and do tell your friends/submit fiction if that’s your thing.

When I took a break from Critical Futures near the end of last year, I had intended to begin with the new year with renewed energy and vigor, but when the new year rolled around, I found myself somewhat lacking in vigor. So I’ve waited, and I kept waiting. And now, its the end of January, and I still haven’t restarted, and I think it’ll be good to talk for a moment about that.

A big part of this is the fact that holiday vacations (such as they are post school) are never quite as long as you ever expect them to be. So I didn’t get that massive fiction writing binge that I was expecting and hoping for. And I also didn’t get that website redesign binge that I was hoping for. Alas. So I’ve needed more time, if not to do things, then to let projects breath. So my one or two week vacation turned into a month or more.

Secondly, my “write more resolution” (such as it is) that I talked about in this post, is a practice that’s a little more than a week old at this point. that’s not a problem, but preparing content for posting when I’m not actively writing on a project very much feels draining. Also, I’m aware that my “supply” of fiction is going to run out, well. Sooner than I’ll be ready to resupply it, particularly since the novel I’m working on now, isn’t really a Critical Futures project. Well, it is, kind of.

So with that in mind, what lies in wait for Critical Futures?

Well…

Recently I’ve started working more on the ending to Station Keeping’s second “season” I’m not keeping a special eye on it, but I’m probably half way done with the second season (which is all new). That’s helped my morale a good deal. Also, I’m beginning to see some real progress on the new novel project (yay for being less stuck), which is a help. While it’s a long way off still, knowing that this is going to end up as a podcast (and that this podcast will be a part of Critical Futures) that’s been inspiring for my feelings of writerliness. Putting my “job” as a writer above my “job” as an editor/publisher was something that I really had to do in order to make it worthwhile.

So the plan? I’m going to post fiction less regularly. The pieces might be slightly longer (but probably not much). I’ll probably alternate Tuesday/Thursday weeks with Monday/Wednesday weeks. When the podcast starts, I’ll probably do a pod-cast episode and a piece of fiction a week. I’m not going to change the design of the site, much, but I think some tweaks are in order, and I need to add/update some of the static pages on the site.

If anyone has suggestions, quirky science fiction that they’d like to submit to Critical Futures, or wants to help out (with designs or the like), I’d love to hear from you.

Onward and Upward!