Let me Babyl on

Mankind’s history – particularly the really ancient stuff – fascinates me. Are Atlantis, Mu and Lemuria fact or fiction? When did our ancestors start domesticating livestock, tilling fields and forming cities?

Of those questions, researching ancient cities is probably the easiest to tackle. So now and again, I pick one that I’ve heard about and look around to see what I can find about it. This time, it’s Babylon.

Babylon was established as a small city in ancient Mesopotamia around 2300 BC. It was built on the banks of the Euphrates River and eventually, these banks were made quite steep, to contain the river’s annual floods. As Babylon grew, so did its importance and influence, until the southern portion of Mesopotamia became known as Babylonia. Its location is now inside Iraq, about 53 miles south of Baghdad.

Despite efforts to contain the river, the Euphrates eventually changed its path, and the western portion of this ancient city is now under that river. It is also difficult to find any traces of the truly ancient portions of the city because; 1) the groundwater table has risen, 2: it underwent several ‘urban renewal’ plans, 3) it was pillaged a few times by invading armies, and 4) it has been mined for building materials.

It is estimated that Babylon was the largest city in the world from about 1770-1670 BC, and again from 612-320 BC. It may have been the first city to reach a population over 200,000. The area it covered may have reached a maximum of 2,200 acres, which would be about 91 people (or more) per acre. I tried to compare that to modern cities, starting with a couple I’ve lived in, but even when I went up to New York City, my math came up with a density of only 44 people per acre. So either Babylon was almost twice as packed with people as New York City, or my math is off tonight.

Babylon is probably best remembered for the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, supposedly built by King Nebuchadnezzar (604-562 BC) to appease his home-sick wife, and which may or may not have actually existed, or might have been located in another city.

Well, that was kind of disappointing. Most of what I found was ruler’s names, dates of battles, and so on… the kind of stuff one gets from history classes, but which doesn’t tell you anything about the people. What kind of businesses existed in this metropolis? Where did they get their food? What were the houses like? For instance, did the houses have doorways similar to what we use now, or did one enter them through a trap-door in the roof, like the Pueblo Indians? These are the kind of questions I would like answered.

Sometimes, I use bits and pieces from this kind of research to create different habits or a different ‘society’ for my stories. I don’t get that kind of springboard from names and dates, I get it from the daily lives of normal people.

What about you? Do you have anything about Babylon or some other ancient city that you would like to know?

Inspiration Everywhere

Sometimes, after sitting at my desk for weeks, my ideas dry up. This year, with the World Science Fiction Convention being in Spokane WA, we decided this was the time to take an Alaskan cruise. I wanted to see a glacier calve off some icebergs (before they retreat so far they can’t be seen doing that anymore).

Not only did I see that sight, I had lots of experiences and thoughts to tuck away in my mind’s corners to possibly be used in future stories. And the same happened to John; he almost daily stated he could use a particular experience in one of his short stories that he now hoped to turn into a novel.

For instance, our first excursion was ziplining through the tree canopy of the forest surrounding Juneau. Having an on-again/off-again fear of heights, it took grim determination to try this. Thankfully, once I started zipping along each line, the gear kept me from looking down, so I only had to ‘face my fear’ on the platforms in the trees, for the most part. Now I have a little bit of a feel for what it’s like to don a harness and ride along a cable; how the wind feels, how easy it is to get ‘off-balance’ and start rotating instead of facing forward. Not to mention how wet one’s clothes can get, how slippery one’s shoes can get, or how poorly one can see the rapidly-approaching platform one is aimed for when it’s raining.

The day started misty but calm, and it was a gentle rain by the time we finished. From that, I might be able to extrapolate what the experience would be like in a heavier rain or even snow.

The tallest point we reached was 185 feet above the ground. (“I did not need to hear that,” I told our guides.) I don’t think the platforms were any more than half-way up a tree, and for the most part, there were tree limbs around us. But the course came down the side of a steep hill, and the ‘training’ line started at a platform about 1 foot off the ground and ended at one about 10 feet off the ground. The 2^nd line (the bunny slope) took us even further into the air. With some imagination, I could possibly figure out what it would be like to use a zipline between buildlings like a cat burgler, or across chasms, or from stony outcrop to stony outcrop on a mountain.

I’ve considered intelligent creatures traveling in this way, but only 10-20 feet off the ground. If they were on a steep piece of terrain, they would have to use ‘switchback’ lines or ‘tack’ their way down. I’m still working on how they would get up a hill. That might involve tree-climbing.

It was hard for me to get started with this adventure. By the time we finished, my knees were shaky and I was completely worn out. The other adventurers asked how I felt about ziplining now, did I enjoy it? I replied I wasn’t sure ‘enjoy’ was the word I would use; I would have to do it again to see if it was fun. And then, during the obligatory visit to the gift shop, I found THE t-shirt I HAD to have! It said,

I survived ziplining!

Well, I’ve spent this entire blog talking about ziplining. I thought I would quickly run through a catalog of our ‘new experiences’ from this cruise, but it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen that way. Yeah, I tend to ‘run off at the keyboard’.

So stay tuned for my further adventures! They’ll get written up and posted, mixed in with all the other stuff I find to write about here.

Christmas Eve!

Today is Christmas Eve. Or, rather, the day I post this will be Christmas Eve day. You’d think I’d write about Christmas, wouldn’t you? But I’ve already discussed holidays, several times during the life of this blog, and I don’t want to get too repetitive.

Besides, as I write this, I am nowhere near ready for that holiday; I still have gifts to purchase (not to mention wrap, NONE of them are wrapped yet), a grocery list to make, groceries to buy, and an entire house to clean. These things have been weighing on my mind since Thanksgiving, and I need a break from thinking about Christmas.

So, I’ve been reviewing some science stories I down-loaded during 2014 but never got around to incorporating into a blog, trying to figure out what to say in my next several blogs. (It’s called advanced planning, something I probably don’t do enough of.) There’s some good stuff here.

1.              The Willy Wonka elevator is not necessarily pure fiction.

2.              The Keppler telescope isn’t dead yet. In fact, they’ve fixed it... sort of.

3.              Everybody is talking about a trip to Mars, but Venus is much closer, so... Yeah, there’s plans for that!

4.              There’s a big geothermal project in western US.

5.              Lab-grown burgers.

6.              Rocks that mysteriously move by themselves when no one is looking.

7.              Roads made of solar panels.

8.              Wyoming cave has a treasure of Ice Age fossils.

9.              Cloning woolly mammoths. (Or have I already done that one?)

10.                    Robot farmers.

11.                    Blood test for suicide.

12.                    2-million-year-old pre-man, what was he like?

13.                    Ancient Caribou hunting.

14.                    Ancient lizard fish graveyard.

15.                    Ancient Chinese flying reptile.

16.                    Ancient squirrel.

17.                    Chatting with a Stone Age person.

18.                    Ancient Tsunamis.

19.                    Ichthyosaur fossil.

20.                    The first bird.

21.                    Pinocchio Rex.

22.                    The Scourge of Jurassic Europe.

23.                    Ancient footprints in UK.

24.                    6,000-year-old parasite egg.

25.                    Ancient men and their dog buddies.

26.                    Stonehenge skeleton.

27.                    Fossil eggs.

28.                    Do failed stars have planets?

29.                    Super Earth.

30.                    Orphan planets.

31.                    Twin planets.

Jeepers. That’s enough for half of next year, even if I don’t have enough info on some of them. Maybe I should keep this list and cross them off as I write that blog. After all, I wouldn’t want to repeat myself.

And that doesn’t count any subjects I come across in Archeology, Discovery and the other magazines that I read. Or any new stories I come across on the internet.

Well, my cup runneth over, I guess. The problem will be deciding which of these to write about when. Any suggestions what you’d like me to start with?

1 + 1 =

Last week, I talked about where I get ideas for my stories. I’m continuing that, because I thought I’d walk you through a ‘new’ idea, so you could get a glimpse of ‘my brain at work’.

A few days ago, Hub and I went to the movies. We don’t go often, and when we do, we tend to see 2 movies. This time, we saw “Edge of Tomorrow”, followed by “Maleficent”. Something of a mixed bag.

In “Edge of Tomorrow”, the Earth is invaded by aliens, and the Hero - a military reporter - pisses off a general, then finds himself on the front line with no training. He survives long enough to get the safety off his weapon and kill an alien that kills him. He awakens the previous morning, assigned to the front lines without training. Each time he dies, he returns to the previous day. Just as in “Ground Hog Day”, the Hero must figure out what he needs to do differently to get out of this time loop.

“Maleficent” is the tale of Sleeping Beauty told from the point of view that Maleficent was not evil, just mis-understood; portrayed as evil by humans who related the story after the fact. I have often heard that villains don’t see themselves as evil, so this re-telling did not scar my psyche too badly.

The next morning, I had (some) memories of an interesting dream that involved people, each with some super-human power. There were 2 groups, unable to agree and constantly battling. When they died, they eventually returned to life, but not necessarily on the same side as before.

I took the bones of this dream and added different bits and pieces to see what happened. Reincarnation and exceptional people. Did they remember their previous lives, that they were ‘special’? I decided they did, but not until adulthood, when flashes of memory would start coming to them. They not only might change sides in the Big Argument, whatever it was, they might not have the same power, either.

I chose a protagonist, during a life when he lived a few decades. Now, what kind of setting? Science fiction? That was too broad. Modern paranormal? No, they’d just be another group of comic book characters.

Fantasy post-apocalyptic! In a world where magic and the fey exist, cities and castles were reduced to rubble during the Great War. Generations later, the War Magic is finally beginning to dissipate from these places.

I sketched out the basic story line in half a page of 20-pt font, devoted another page to other background info, like names and special Talents, and started my rough draft. I have 2000 words done, which is not bad for 2 days of stolen moments. I don’t have an outline, because I haven’t answered some important questions. I’m stumbling around, creating background and conflict as I go, which is how I originally wrote (before I figured out what an outline was), and many others do.

And another story is started.

Like I needed another character whispering in my ear, another story to be written! I can hear my characters laughing, and my muse asking, “Who said an author’s life was orderly?”

My Ideas

“Where do you get your ideas?” is a common question asked of writers, especially fiction writers. Have I written about this before? Ehh, probably doesn’t matter, because I get them from various and sundry places.

If left to my own devices, I tend to write about women who don’t quite fit in. Sometimes it’s an entire society of women who don’t fit in with the surrounding cultures (Atlans, Tay of Tunad). At other times, it’s one woman who doesn’t fit in with those around her (Mac, Cali, Kandaranna, Tay of Tunad). They manage to make a place for themselves without losing themselves in the process.

I’ve been writing these types of stories since at least the fourth grade. Probably because I was always a shy introvert of a kid who didn’t feel like she fit in. It didn’t help that my family moved around quite a bit, always looking for grass that was a little greener. Our shortest stint in one place was 6 weeks in Brush CO when I was in the 2nd grade, followed by our longest stint, 8 years in Limon CO (except for 3 months when we tried out Cheyenne WY). You’d think after 8 years, I would have felt accepted, but... not entirely.

The other interesting fact I’ve noticed about my stories about these women is that they are rarely written from that woman’s point of view. There are various reasons I’ve given myself for this curiosity, but I’m beginning to think that, deep down inside, I realize that if the reader gets to see this character from inside her own head, it would be easier to identify with the character, and that kind of negates the ‘don’t fit in’ aspect.

Other of my stories have different sources. Maybe I read a story by somebody else, and I decide it would have been more interesting to change the characters a bit, modify the location, twist the plot... An interesting dream that I half remember might inspire me, although by the time I get something on paper, it will bear little or no resemblance to that dream. A call for anthology submissions can be interesting to consider. In that case, I take the bare bones of what they are looking for and try to twist it around and push it out of shape to come up with something other writers won’t come up with.

There are lots of places my stories come from. I just have to pause and let them come.

Picking Up the Pace

A couple days ago, I was reading the first episode of a new newsletter when the author said some things that really made me stop and think. She was speaking, at first, of a new author who had made a name for himself by publishing something like 20 books in 3 years, plus one or two more he co-wrote with someone. She went on to say he apparently writes 2,000 words an hour, 10 hours a day, 5 days a week. She compared that to the 1,000 words an hour that she writes.

I was stunned.

I'm usually happy if I manage to get 1,000 words written in a DAY.

Well, it seems pretty obvious to me that I am not applying myself hard enough to this endeavor. My days have become chopped up into 15 minute increments as I try to get housework done as well as some writing.

I have spent today (Sunday), trying to figure out how to rearrange my days to let me get more done, and what might be a reasonable goal for any given week. I go through this process once or twice a year, so this is nothing new. Should I write in the morning or early afternoon? I'm not at my best in the mornings, but errands seem to get done in the afternoons. And no matter what time slot I choose for writing, the dog will still want some kind of attention every hour.

I have chosen a goal that will make me pick up the pace, but I think I can do it. Probably not right away, because I'm fighting a sinus infection - again. In a month or, when that goal has become 'normal', I'll set the bar a little higher, make myself kick it up another notch.

But I don't see myself ever writing 10 hours a day. That writer had a tread-mill desk. I have a gym membership, which I try very hard to use 3 times a week. It provides a change of scenery as well as some exercise.

My first goal is to aim for 15,000 words a week, by working 3 hours a day, 5 days out of the week. Wish me luck!

Encouragement

Years and years (and years) ago, when I was a young girl, fascinated with the notion of writing my own stories, I received encouragement from a cousin a couple years older. He told me such things as I would need to rewrite my draft, possibly more than once. I didn't want to hear it, but he was right. I found his stories funny, silly and delightful, and I basked in the knowledge that he was willing to spare a few minutes to encourage me in my endeavors.

We recently started communicating via the internet, and he revealed he had started writing again. (Again? I did give it up after a particularly horribly comment made by my first husband, and that was the blackest two years of my life.) I don't know how long he went without writing, but I was happy to hear he was re-discovering it.

And I guess we've come full circle. Now I find myself encouraging him. Have you thought about doing this with your story? Would it make more sense if your character did this? Your rough draft doesn't have to be perfect; rewriting is part of the process, remember?

Encouragement and suggestions from other writers are why authors join writer's groups and go to critique sessions. Another example is last year's critique sessions at Worldcon in Austin. I had been shopping around a fantasy, and kept getting rejected, so what I wanted to know was, is there something wrong with this opening that I'm not seeing? The comments I received gave me some direction for my next rewrite of that opening. I was thrilled.

If a writer's group or critiquer gives you the impression your writing is crap, don't go to that group or person again. My husband and I quit one writer's group because one person in the group kept pointing out our 'mistakes' without saying anything kind or nice about our efforts. That's not encouragement, and it's not helpful.

So, way to go, cousin! I really like what you've written, even though I'm not sure I like any of your characters. Your description in that story is great, it really sets the tone. Oh, and by the way... Welcome back to writing.

Spring Cleaning

Have you ever done spring cleaning? It's not something I grew up with, but every once in a while I just have to give up, shovel out my office, organize what I'm keeping and throw away everything else.

I'm in the middle of that now. We've moved all my office stuff out of the family room into the front room these last 2 days, and now I've got boxes and boxes and boxes of stuff to sort through. When I look at those boxes, I figure it will take months for me to get them all cleaned out. It's such a depressing thought, I can't cope, and I give up.

Happily, the way my desk is currently set up, I actually sit with my back to all those boxes (which are stacked halfway to the ceiling in the corner of the room). So I don't have to look at them, in the normal scheme of things. That helps me keep my mind on an even keel.

What I'm planning to do is pull one box over at a time to the side of my desk and clean out that one box. Then I'll take a break and write a scene or fill the dishwasher before I pull out the next box. And when my shredder gets full, then I'm done cleaning out boxes for the day.

It's not the kind of spring cleaning my grandmother used to do, and I'm not doing it in the spring, but it's a deeper cleaning than I usually do. Why do you think I have so many boxes to sort through? Because my usual way of 'cleaning' is to shove things I don't want to deal with into a box, to be dealt with later. Can't do that with bills, of course, but most everything else gets shoved.

Right up until times like now, when I'm tired of them trying to shove back. And frankly, when my office space is a mess, it also seems to clutter my mind, preventing me from writing. Or getting much of anything done. I really should clean more often, to keep my mind organized and my imagination purring.

The Inner Goldilocks Planet

I've been thinking about those twin Goldilocks planets I mentioned last week. That article had more details that I found intriguing but hadn't included in last week's post. So this week, I'm going to explore that inner planet a bit more.

The article claimed the inner planet might have a climate reminiscent of Hawaii or of Washington DC in May. I have to assume they meant that would be the 'average', and most likely found in the 'temperate zone', roughly 30 to 60 degrees North and South of the Equator.

On Earth, Hawaii stretches from 18 to 28 degrees North. To move that climate to the middle of the temperate zone would be a shift of 21 degrees. What does that do to the rest of the planet's climate, compared to Earth?

So I looked up Barrow, Alaska, which is located at 71 degrees North. That town has temperatures below freezing about 8 months of the year, and during its warmest month, the temperature averages 47 degrees F. Now, if we move that kind of climate another 21 degrees North-- well, we get 92 degrees North, and planets only go up to 90 degrees North or South. So it's possible the Inner Planet would not have any permanent ice caps.

What about the equator? The temperatures Earth experiences at our equator would now be normal at 21 degrees North and South. The area of our equator is mostly tropical rainforest or ocean, with little variety in temperature (high 80s) around the year. And it rains. A lot. I tried to look up some cities approximately 21 degrees N/S, to see what kind of temperature differences occur in that 21 degree difference. Antofagasta, Chile has an average temperature of 63. (It also sits in a desert where the only 'precipitation' comes as a thick morning fog, but we'll ignore that.) That's a difference of about 25 degrees, so I extrapolate that the average equatorial temperature of the Inner planet might be around 113 degrees F. Yes, definitely warmer than us.

It was also hypothesized that this might be an ocean planet and that some type of 'flying fish' might have evolved into 'birds'. Of course, if there isn't any land, those birds would not be able to rest unless they were some type of water fowl.

None of that would keep us from colonizing, if we were at that stage. Cities, towns, even farms could be placed on floating rafts and left to drift on the currents. Or given some motors so they could move out of the way of approaching storms. There have been people here on Earth designing such structures, to be set loose on our oceans.

There's got to be a few stories in amongst all those ideas, don't you think?

If it Walks Like a Duck...

I’ve been reading magazines like Archeology and Popular Science, trying to learn The State of Science So Far. Many of the articles in these magazines are fascinating and could serve as a spring board for stories.

One article was about a group who were designing robot legs that could walk like a human. The legs don’t exactly look human; there’s a couple kevlar straps (used as muscles) in the back that - when contracted - are outside the thigh, connected to the calf by a plastic flange. But the results move much more like a human leg than other robots have managed.

I was very excited a few years back to hear about Asimo, a child-sized humanoid robot that could walk. But I was disappointed when I actually saw it in motion. Slow motion, that is. Asimo would lean to the right a bit, pick its left foot up straight for about an inch, move the left foot forward a couple inches and put it down, repeat for the other side. And at all times, the foot remained parallel to the floor. It was a strange gait, rather painful to watch.

Besides a different system of ‘muscles’, the new method of robot walking also makes use of something like a human’s subconscious. A human learns to walk, and then leaves the actual giving of instructions to a corner of the mind. We don’t have to actively think, ‘Lean, lift by bending, swing foot forward, lower, adjust balance...’ The people making this new robot gait removed such calculations from the robot main processor and gave this skill to a separate processor.

This particular robot only has legs and feet right now, but I am beginning to anticipate a real android - a robot made to look (and act?) like a human. Data of STNG, the androids in the Alien movies would be examples, although I swear I remember old tv comedies about robots paired with a human to see how well they ‘blended in’. Could that happen soon in a neighborhood near you?

I was also amused to read in this article that one problem the team had to solve was that the hard plastic of the feet’s soles could not grip the floor. They debated about other materials to use for the soles until somebody put a pair of Keds on the robot.

If it walks like a human, it deserves the right footwear, don’t you think?

Visiting Trudy’s Universes

I named this blog for my various universes where I place my stories, but I’ve seldom actually taken you – my readers – into any of those universes. So today, I thought I would at least introduce you to my universes.

A is for Atlans. My first 3 shorts published on smashwords.com are about the Atlans, and the 4^th is tangentially associated with them. The Atlans are a race of women who establish their own culture on a planet when their space-faring parents abandon them as infants. After centuries of thriving, their ‘home island erupted, sending small boats of Atlans out into the world. Separated, they land wherever they land, and shortly establish a village of their own. Each village wonders if any others survived, and eventually, when they feel their village is strong enough, individuals are sent out to see if they can find any hints of other Atlan villages.

M is for Mac. Mac is the main character of my serialized space opera (MacOnFireball.blogspot.com). The SS Fireball is a large exploration/military ship in Space Fleet. Mac is short, shapely and very desirable. She’s a heavy worlder, a heavy drinker, and quite a brawler, having the strength of an Earth elephant. I’ve tried something different in the way of point of view. Mac is the main character, but the story is told from the point of view of the crew members who surround her. Therefore, each scene is colored by the expectations and beliefs of the observer.

SE is for Space Exploration. In this universe, I try to imagine events that might happen as we Earthlings explore our own solar system in the next hundred years – or maybe two hundred, if our current rate of progress holds true. It is in this universe that my age thwarts me a bit, as all my science is old, having been learned over 40 years ago. I try to research my ideas, see if they will even hold up with modern science. Maybe, maybe not. I currently have a couple shorts done in this universe, 3 or 4 more that I’m trying to work up.

Okay, that’s 3 of my universes. There are still a lot more, but we can talk about them another time.

Stuck in Rewrite

There are several steps to writing, but one of the first steps (not necessarily THE first step) is to scratch out a rough draft. It can be great fun, to let my imaginary imagination wings take flight and show me a new world filled with new people. Occasionally, the rough draft can also be a real headache, as words simply refuse to come to describe what my mind sees, or – even worse – my mind isn’t focused and therefore doesn’t see anything.

But the fun outweighs the headache (or I wouldn’t continue writing). It’s easy to see your progress with a rough draft, because your word count goes UP. Even if you have a bad day, by the end of a week, your word count will most likely be greater than what you started the week with. You feel like you’ve accomplished something.

For me, the 2^nd draft is where I add in every piece of description, explanation, background and all the modifiers I can think of, just to make sure everything is understandable to the reader. My word count can double from rough and 2^nd drafts, so obviously, I’m doing something.

Then come the further rewrites. I generally do a 3^rd and 4^th rewrite, and then a polish. Occasionally, I do a few more rewrites. I have one story in its 9^th or 10^th rewrite, and I’m still not happy with it.

Rewrite is not as much fun as roughing, but it seldom drags badly, either. It’s during these rewrites that I check for redundancies, passive verbs, -ing verbs, adverbs and that my pronouns refer to the correct antecedents. I might lengthen or shorten sentences, rearrange paragraphs. I might delete words, phrases, sentences, or change a 6-word phrase to a 2-word phrase.

It’s harder to keep track of your progress when your word count is going down. If you try to judge your progress by the difference in word count, it might take you days to cut a thousand words. That always made me feel stuck. So I started counting the number of words in the section I rewrote that day. I probably went through a section of 1200 words or more to wind up with 1000 words by the end, but each one of those words were carefully considered, so I have done a bit of work.

As you can see, 1 rough draft needs several rewrites. Most of my time as a writer is spent re-writing. I try to balance this out by working on 3 projects at a time; 1 short story rewrite, 1 novel rewrite, and 1 rough draft. Somehow, this past week, I have found myself doing 3 re-write projects, with no time left in my day for the rough draft. I suppose it was bound to happen, but it still leaves me feeling kind of ‘stuck’. Re-writing doesn’t set my imagination completely free. But it does still use it, so I do get some pleasure from re-writing. And since my short stories generally range around 5000 words, I should soon be done with that project, and can then return to that rough I was working on.

I won’t be ‘stuck’ in re-write much longer.

Writer's Block

What should I do when I find myself unable to figure out what comes next in a story? How do other writers handle this kind of situation?

1. Some writers figure they’ve taken a wrong turn, and back up a few pages, turn the story in a different direction. 2. Others bang out their word count each day, no matter how bad it is, until some kind of answer comes to them. At that point, they may throw out everything they’ve written since the ‘block’ first occurred, but at least they’ve been working. 3. Still others shove that project into a back corner of their mind and work on something else until their subconscious figures out what went wrong.

I don’t do #2. I don’t like to sit in front of my computer without actually doing something. And sitting here banging out c**p I’m pretty sure I’ll wind up throwing away strikes me as just as big a time-waster. I have done #3 a few times. Some of those projects are still shoved into a back corner, and others have resulted in my doing #1.

But I have a step I do before I do anything else, to see if I really am stuck. I examine the current scene and situation of my characters, not from the point of view of being the author, but from the point of view of the characters involved. What got them to this point? How would they react in this situation?

I look at ‘my’ stories as tales told me by the characters. So if we get to a point that I don’t understand, perhaps I just need more information from those characters. Maybe they’ve been embarrassed to explain themselves more fully and I need to converse with them, understand what they’ve been through. In that case, I may need to make a few changes to help explain things better to the reader (shades of #1), but I can go on.

If the characters are confused and don’t have answers, then I truly have my work cut out for me. That’s when I move to #3 – put the project aside until my characters and I can figure out what’s what.

Goodness, there’s plenty of characters and stories out there for me to work on in the meantime.

SF Dreams

Every once in a while, I have a dream that I remember when I wake up. In the last couple weeks, I’ve had a couple of those dreams.

Dreams seldom make good stories, in my opinion. They are too fragmented, too repetitive, and usually lack the logic I expect from a story. But every once in a while, one of my dreams has enough of a plot that it seems like there could be a real story in there. Of course, by the time I’ve re-written it a few times and polished all the rough edges off, the final draft has little in common with the original dream. That could be said of all my stories; the final draft has little in common with the rough draft. That’s the nature of writing.

The thing is, I write fantasy. These 2 dreams I’ve had recently have been science fiction. I like science fiction. I’ve tried to write science fiction, but my science knowledge has been out-of-date, so it hasn’t worked very well. Can I do justice to these dream stories?

I’ve been looking at those dreams, analyzing them, trying to figure that out.

The first is an ‘invasion’ story, somewhat like “War of the Worlds”, “Independence Day” and “Fallen Skies”. I knew right away that the ‘ending’ of the dream would not work. But aside from that, the pacing, action level and emotional level would need to be maintained at a point that is definitely outside my comfort zone. This would be a chance to challenge myself, right?

Dream 2 takes place in the far future, when humans are exploring other star systems and establish a relationship with another race. This seems much easier; when it’s in the far future, you can almost imagine the science as if you were setting up a system of magic for a fantasy. The basic plot of the story seems very doable, but the ending just won’t come to me. I think I woke up before I got that far.

Most of my stories come from daydreams: If I have this kind of a character, and I put him/her in this kind of situation, what happens? Occasionally, I have a dream that has potential to be a story. To have 2 of those dreams/stories in such a short time … is my subconscious trying to get me to spread my wings into the sf genre?

Best Use of Time

I always run out of time before I reach the end of my daily to do list. Part of the problem is because I don’t really estimate how long it will take to do any particular chore. So if you look at my to do list, it seems like I’m supposed to spend 5 minutes on any one chore. Who can get anything done in 5 minutes?

I don’t estimate because I know from past experience that I have no idea how long it will take to get anything done. Cleaning out my mailbox? Anywhere from 10 minutes to 2 hours or more. Write a blog? It might take me half an hour just to figure out what to write about. And if I’m trying to do something that I haven’t really done before – like figure out how to record and edit a short video, or how to use a new software to create a website – that might take days, or even weeks.

So every evening, before I go to bed, I take a quick look at what’s on the agenda for the next day. If the list is more than a page long, then I try to pare it down. Can some of those items be put off for a day or two, a week? Well, eventually I’ll get to them.

Unfortunately, there are some things that I really should not put off, like feeding the family and doing a bit of housework, taking care of myself. Writing. Submitting. Marketing. I try to get a little of all of that done each day, but it isn’t easy. I just have to figure out how to best make use of my time.

Odd Earth Plants

If you want a cool type of plant to inhabit your world or universe, sometimes all you have to do is look around Earth to find some interesting possibilities to ponder. Just think about it, there are Earth plants that live floating in the seas, submerged along coasts, in marshes, bogs and swamps, in rain forests, deserts, steppes, mountains, prairies, tundra … even surrounding underwater volcano vents as well as land-based geysers and hot springs. It seems like whatever the type of climate and topography where you want plants to grow, Earth might have some plants that would give you possibilities to consider.

But besides trying to figure out if your alien lawn is going to be more like grass or moss, just a little bit of looking around at Earth plants might give you some extra thoughts to ponder. How do your alien plants scatter their babies for the next generation?

Earth plants have a variety of methods; air, land and, uh, animals. By air, we’ve all seen dandelions in their final stage, and any little breeze sends those seeds scattering over the neighbor’s lawn. By land, wild strawberries nearly took over my lawn last year, sending ‘runners’ between the grass blades to create baby plants. And plenty of berry plants rely on birds and other animals to eat their berries and then ‘deposit’ the un-digested seeds in another location.

I just read about one of those plants. The sweet mignonette can only survive in certain conditions, and obviously, if one has matured and produced berries, it has found those conditions. The soil a few feet away might not be as good a location. Mignonette berries are sweet, but its seeds – if chewed – are referred to as ‘mustard bombs’. Mice eat the berries and spit the seeds out near the base of the parent plant.

I’ve also heard of a plant that doesn’t rely on any of those unpredictable methods; it bends over and pushes its own seeds into the ground.

So, as you think about the plants on your alien world, have some fun researching some of the ‘odder’ Earth planets for useful ideas.

More Vacation Notes

Another week in Orlando. What has happened that might have any bearing on writing?

We do theme parks a lot. That’s one reason why we come to Orlando; between Walt Disney World, Universal, Sea World, Cape Canaveral to the east and Busch Gardens to the west, we can keep ourselves entertained. Another reason we come at this particular time of the year is because of Star Wars Weekends at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. On Friday, Saturday and Sunday for 4 weeks, you can get free autographs from the Star Wars guests on hand that weekend, shop in the special Star Wars store, and line up to see special stage performances by the Star Wars guests. Oh, yeah, there’s a bunch of costumed characters on hand for photo opportunities, too.

The problem is that you have to have a special fastpass to be assigned a time to get those autographs, and people start lining up for the next day’s fastpass hand-out as early as 9 PM the night before. We don’t sleep on the concrete to get our spot in that line, but we have gotten up as early as 4 AM to get into line by 5. This is fine for Hubby, who wakes up with the sun anyway. He’s an Early Bird through and through. But I’m a night owl, and getting up that early is a killer. With my bad knees, standing in line for those fastpasses is, um, a killer. I’ve taken to reading fantasy while standing in line, to distract myself from the various aches and pains.

Things to keep in mind for my characters while writing: 1) Sleep is good, 2) water bottles are good, 3) rain can be a bummer when you’re caught out in it, 4) sun block is good when it isn’t raining, 5) DISTRACTION can be a really good thing when the alternative is to find yourself focusing on discomfort.

Still more to come!

Vacation!

This week, Hubby and I flew to Orlando. Neither of us are enamored with flying, but for different reasons. I can’t stand being herded through the checkpoint, onto the plane and then off of the plane. Hubby can’t stand having to wait in the airport for a couple hours before we can get on the plane. Neither of us likes the too-small seats, lap trays that won’t actually come down flat, the inability to change position. Still, driving here takes two days each way, and sometimes we just don’t feel we can spare that much time. Since stuff from your real life is fodder for what you write, I try to remember our irritation and frustration connected with flying, and the impatience and boredom that can crop up during a long drive. On the other hand, if my traveler is NOT approaching his/her ‘golden’ years, then I can’t bog down the story by describing aches and pains that a younger person probably doesn’t have to endure.

Now, why would we come down to Orlando, especially in the summer? It’s so hot and humid! And hot! And humid!

Yeah, you’d think so, especially if you compared the relative positions of Orlando and Omaha on a map. Orlando is so much further south, it MUST be hotter! In the winter, yes, Florida is warmer than Nebraska. But I’ve seen hotter temperatures in Omaha in the summer, and surprisingly, the humidity can be just as bad in one place as the other.

I can explain the temperature. Nebraska is in the middle of the country, with nothing but miles and miles of dirt in all directions. In the summer, the sun bakes everything, and in the winter, the cold northern winds have nothing to stop them from covering everything in ice. Florida is mostly surrounded by water, which stores up heat during the summer (keeping everything on land from baking quite so badly), and slowly releases it during the winter, letting the area stay warmer than it otherwise would.

I can’t explain the humidity. The water surrounding Florida would be a quick explanation for that humidity level, but Nebraska doesn’t have large bodies of water, so how does that much humidity collect in the place? I can’t explain it, like I said.

But it brings up something else to keep in mind while I’m writing. Just because location A is miles closer to the equator than location B does not necessarily mean a great difference in the local weather.

Everything is more complicated than we think it ought to be.

This story of our May/June vacation and what I learn from it will be continued next week.

All in a Dream

Authors frequently get asked where they get all their ideas from? Some people seem to think all they do is 'dream up' their stories. No, most authors go about creating their characters and plots very methodically. For the most part, dreams are too fragmented, too illogical to be of any use. But once in a while, I have a dream that... .

When I was a kid, there were two bouts of illness that produced fever-induced dreams. Both times, the dreams consisted of hearing people roller skating on the floor above, back and forth, and occasionally someone would knock over one of mom's favorite lamps, shattering it. Auditory hallucinations, I believe, because there was no floor above, nobody was roller skating, and none of mom's lamps got broke. That particular dream does not lend itself to being converted into a story.

However, a recent bout of flu that had me sleeping 12 or more hours a day while I fought through it left me with memories of several dreams that were ... interesting. Now, please understand that even these interesting dreams will not transfer, whole cloth, into good stories, but they might provide an idea, a spark, for a good story. A piece of a dream from decades ago provided the idea for the opening scene of a story I wrote way back then. It stayed the opening scene through some rewrites, but eventually, I faced the fact that it really did not fit the culture of the spaceship that was the setting, so the scene was changed beyond recognition. Possibly even yanked and replaced, it changed so much. Still, it provided the inspiration that started the story, which I might not have ever written, without that dream's scene to get me started.

In another sense of 'dream', I was notified a couple days ago, that I placed within the top 100 of my category in the 80^th Annual Writer's Digest Contest. So, several cartwheels later, it eventually dawned on me that this gives me something to put in my query letters, in that final paragraph that's supposed to tell the editor/agent something about me and my skills. Yes, it was 86^th place in my category, but if that's good enough to be considered a win by Writer's Digest, then it's good enough for me! Now, if I can just get my computer up here on Cloud 9 with me so I can keep on writing...