The Chimney Sweep and the Steeplejack

The latest episode of Beware the Hairy Mango is sitting over on that other site, just waiting for you to listen to it! The Chimney Sweep and the Steeplejack! Oh, baby!

Horse & Sunshine

Now that my title has lured in all my druggie pals, look at my swell pictures! I love this horse. It stands near the Fort Pierce library, so I see it every month or so (The daughter and I do regular rounds of six or seven county libraries), except at Christmas when they surround it with a huge fake tree. I'm pissed that there's no plaque or sign with the artist's name or title of the work.

Our Story So Far

Holy crap! I haven't posted here in a month and a half! If anybody's still out there to read this, my apologies.

I've haven't had anything to add to The One-Thousand (that's the list of stories, not this blog) because I've been working on big projects. I wrote over 23,000 words of a new novel and then put that aside while I started a novella for The Galaxy Project.

I often write bits and pieces of a story at first and then add to it so it gets larger with subsequent drafts. Others write long and then cut. When I reached about 8,000 words on the novella, I suddenly felt like my skeleton was in place and declared the beginning of the second draft. I just topped 14,000 words yesterday and I'm now declaring the beginning of the third draft. I'm going to read the whole thing through tonight (for the first time, really) and make notes about what still needs to be added. I make notes in ALL CAPS because this is one thing that transfers from file type to file type. I also want to brainstorm a few different endings and see which I like best. I have an ending now, and although it's nice, I don't think it's going to stick with anyone after they're done reading.

You've Got To Hide Your Love Away

I'm not making any kind of juicy confession, that's just the name of the song. I was sure I posted this here before, but I can't find it. Don't look at this as one scene of a rancid film. Look at it as a music video. In that sense I think it's gorgeous. I love the look, the set, the clothing (I'd say costumes, but when this was filmed, they weren't costumes, they were clothes), the whole nine. Kudos to director Richard Lester. And it's a great song too.



http://youtu.be/jz7IjXu0DfQ

The Boy Graduates!

The Boy, also known as Ian Alexander Sanborn Smith, graduated from Treasure Coast High School tonight. Yay! Looking at his grades a couple of months back, I wasn't sure if he was going to be able to pull it off, but he did lots of make-up work in the last few weeks of school, and here we are. 

The ceremony was held in the Adams Ranch Equestrian Arena. This made me hope that all the graduates would come barreling in on horses. No frickin' dice. Speaking of barrels, the blue one in the foreground is for garbage, not rodeo clowns.

Here are the graduates in the school colors, the boys in black, girls in gold. As you can see, we were in the nosebleed seats.

Here's The Boy with me. He looks like he stepped out of a Superman film.

Here's the blurry Boy with his sister. His mother was on his right but she demanded that she not be blogged

Everything's Coming Up Stones

Which are much more dependable and durable than roses. I'm talking about friend-of-blog (sounds like something the Hulk would say. Blog Smash!) Grant Stone, who had one hell of a month and I'm here to pass along the fruits of his hard work, to your good fortune.

I already told you about his story at Strange Horizons, Young Love on the Run from the Federal Alien Administration New Mexico Division (1984) and I just told you again.

Plus, issue #2 of his awesome fanzine, b0t, came out. You can download it as well as #1 here: http://b0tzine.com/

And then after that, his steampunky story, A Ruby in Rain appeared in audio at The Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences. Listen here, you! http://www.ministryofpeculiaroccurrences.com/2011/05/17/tales-from-the-archives-six/

What's more, Grant's story, When Her Wings, is part of the Tales for Canterbury anthology to help New Zealand earthquake relief efforts along with stories by heavy hitters like Neil Gaiman, Gwyneth Jones, Jay Lake, Jeff VanderMeer and Sean Williams. But of course, you'll want it for Grant. Buy that (cheap) here: http://randomstatic.net/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1_10&products_id=51

By this point I feel like I'm writing hearts all over my notebook with Grant's name in them. But wait, there's more! Can you believe it?

On top of all that, Grant's story, Wood, has been chosen to appear in the first volume of The Year's Best Australian Fantasy and Horror! No link yet, but when there is one, you'll see it on this blog.

Shit, man, you knocked it out of the park with this month. Here's wishing you scads more like this one!

And if you guys, hadn't figured it out yet, this is a writer you'll want to follow. Say, "Hi," here: http://d1sc0r0b0t.blogspot.com/

Singed

No, that's not the past tense of sing. I'm feeling a little worn out, but not burnt out, just singed. I've got one more episode of Beware the Hairy Mango to do for MuchoMangoMayo and though it's mostly written, it's going to get finished tomorrow as I'm running on about three and a half hours sleep. I'll do it better in the morning. It's been a rough month, but I enjoyed the work. I'm pretty sure I'm taking May 31st off, then I'll jump back into writing fiction June 1st. That's going to be a weird shifting of gears.

A Tale of New Hope City

A Tale of New Hope City is the first story I ever got paid for. I sold it to Dave Felts for issue 4 of his magazine Maelstrom Speculative Fiction back in September of 1999. (Dave now runs SFReader.com, which you may enjoy) I'm re-publishing the story here because you currently can't find it anywhere else, and who knows? You might dig it. I just figured out how to do the jump thing on my posts so you don't have to scroll through the whole story to see what the post before this one was. I'll run the story behind the story in a few days. Remind me if I forget. Have fun!

A TALE OF NEW HOPE CITY

by Matthew Sanborn Smith

Dev's song rains down on me in the cold twilight of New Hope City while the roofrunners untint their optical flaps. For the first time today the City of Brass can be viewed by the naked eye without nerve damage. Dev's a friend of mine, a scanner who spends his evenings deprived of four senses at the base of one of New Hope's catch towers, smelling the molecules that float through its thirty story filters. The Citymind determines what his data indicates, prioritizes responses and alerts the proper servants. Dev sings low priorities to me, what the Aesthetic Guard passes over. I only act on vandalism and disfigurement. I'm a free-lance street-sweeper without compensation. I don't need it; I'm Latimer Vul.

MuchoMangoMayo

I can't believe I haven't talked this up over here, but I'm kind of dumb. I've got a big event happening over at my podcast, Beware the Hairy Mango called MuchoMangoMayo. Normally you're lucky to get one episode a month from me, but for MuchoMangoMayo I'm doing a new episode every single day in the month of May. If you like things that don't make sense, but not more than five minutes worth at a time, this is the show for you. Go listen!

http://bewarethehairymango.com/

Young Love on the Run from the Federal Alien Administration New Mexico Division (1984)

I'm in the middle of scheduling a new Mango post, but I have to drop that and everything else for the moment, because I just discovered that friend of mine and The One-Thousand, Grant Stone, has a new story up at Strange Horizons! Whoo! If you don't know science fiction, let me just say that Strange Horizons is, in my opinion, the best online text science fiction magazine there is. Of all my Fiction Crawler recommendations, I've chosen more stories from Strange Horizons than any other source. That's an awesome win for him.

Go read it and be entertained! http://www.strangehorizons.com/2011/20110509/younglove-f.shtml

It Was Twenty Years Ago Today

On May 8th, 1991 I sent out my first story submission to a magazine. Because I don't remember when I started the story, I mark the beginning of my writing career from that date. The story was called Lives and Times and is number 1 of The One-Thousand. It wasn't a very good story, though I don't think it was horrible. It felt, even as I wrote it, like something written in the 1950s, an eccentric scientist tests out his theories on memory on his best friend who's got Alzheimer's with some unpleasant results. I still like the science fiction idea behind it. Our scientist takes the idea of seeing your life flash before your eyes and decides all the brain's neurons must be firing at once during a moment of intense stress. He figures out a way to make it happen without the stressful event.

Besides being my first submission, the story was important to me because it was the longest thing I had ever written to that point and the first longer work I had ever finished. I sent it to Amazing Stories. It had been my dream for years to be published by Amazing Stories, the oldest science fiction mag at that time. I didn't get published by Amazing Stories, even after six more tries. In fact, an assistant editor there used to eviscerate my work. Most rejections are simple form letters. If someone takes the time to tell you how bad your story is, well, that's a fresh new circle of Hell. At least I got those rejections out of the way at the very beginning.

I just became eligible to join the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and joined a couple of weeks ago. That marks the twenty year trip rather nicely, though I would have been horrified when I started if I had known it would take so long. A lot of people could have done what I've done in eight years or even less. I had life to deal with, like everyone else, but also, I wasn't the hardest worker. The one good example I have to offer from this journey is persistence. Say whatever else you will about me, a whole hell of a lot of people would have quit before that twenty year mark, especially with the many hundreds of rejections I received.

I'd like to think I have an iron will, but anyone who knows me (and I'm one of those people) knows that the strength of my will is equal to that of an over-boiled noodle. The truth is I quit loads of times over those twenty years. And every time I jumped back in a day or a week later. I didn't really have a choice in the matter. This is what I do and I'd do it no matter what. It feels really good that some other people are now able to dig what I'm doing too.

Given what I've said, I guess I don't have any inspirational advice. I'm not going to bother saying follow your dreams or stick with it, because you're already struggling to do the thing you feel you must do. You have been for years. If it's not in you to do a thing, you only have to quit it once. If you really love it, you'll quit it a thousand times.

Forty-Two

I turn forty-two today. I mention this not for birthday wishes and gifts (although I won't turn my nose up at those things) but because I had to change my age at the top of the blog and am reminded once more of how far behind I am in my goal. As ever, I'm not worried. Once I get all my Mangoes done for MuchoMangoMayo, I'll be throwing myself back into the story writing. As I mentioned in a previous post, the writing is coming more easily than ever. I'm completely confident that I can spin out all the first drafts I need to meet my goal. I'm not so sure I can spin out all the final drafts I need, but if I thought this would be a walk in the park, I wouldn't even be interested in it, would I?

And Happy Easter, if that's your thing!

Steve Sepp, Tasty! Tasty!

My latest story, Steve Sepp, Tasty! Tasty! is up at Nature.com. Here:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v472/n7342/full/472254a.html

It's number 128 of The One-Thousand. If you live near an exceptional newsstand, you may able to score a paper version of it in the April 14th issue of Nature.

If you enjoy it, tell your friends. Or your enemies, I don't care.

Getting My Shit Together

When the wife split, I remember saying to a friend a couple of months later that I couldn't even conceive of dating again until I got my shit together. My life was just beyond my control, as it always had been. You name it, it was going badly. I figured, though, that I could get things on track given a couple of years.

More than two years later (about six months ago), I resigned myself to the fact that I would never, ever get my shit together. I wasn't any closer than I had ever been and saw no way to suddenly turn it around. I was fucked and that was life.

In the last few weeks, two ridiculously simple things have convinced me that I have finally begun to get my shit together.

Numero Uno: The kanban board. The what now? Well, the mighty and much celebrated (by me, at least. The rest of you will catch on eventually) Grant Stone told me he was doing this personal kanban board thing. I googled it, saw a bunch of post-it notes on a white board, and figured I knew what that was about. I forgot about it. Then he mentioned it again and sent me a link to a site which explained it. Just go look:

http://www.personalkanban.com/pk/personal-kanban-101/

Watch the slideshow at the bottom of that post. Then read this page:

http://www.personalkanban.com/pk/primers/building-your-first-personal-kanban/

And that's it. That's all the knowledge you need. Go get your supplies, get it going, you're golden. I even went cheap, tacking up poster boards instead of a white board. I noticed the transformation in my life within two days. A ton of psychic weight had been lifted off of me. I wrote down every little nagging job that came to me and stuck it on the wall. At a glance, everything that used to be bouncing around in my head, waiting to be forgotten until it was too late, was now up on the board. All I had to do was turn my head. It gave me an organizational tool that was easily available. Before that I had been using a to-do list in Google Docs, which is a pain in the ass to pull up if you don't have your computer on and a pain when you want to change around priorities. It just sucked. Now I'm all color-coded and shit. There are my priorities, there is what I've done, there is my entire back burner from which I can move whatever has to be moved to the front.

Awesome.

Numero Two-o: Freewriting. So that was going swell, but I was running into some writing issues. I have a lot of writing to do, like eight-hundred and sixty-seven more stories (you may have heard of this), plus thirty-one episodes of Beware the Hairy Mango for all you greedies in the month of May. I don't have time to not write. But I wasn't writing. I don't really get writer's block. Not really. What I get is writer's avoidance and I'll bet that's what most writers get when they think about writer's block. It's where you find everything and anything to do that is not writing. Hanging with the family, watching movies, going for walks. Hell, getting things done on the kanban board. And yeah, you can put your writing on the kanban board, but writer's avoidance is so powerful, it can overcome the kanban and everything else on the planet. After a few days, I was getting seriously itchy. Five days into it, I started wondering what it would take to make me get into writing again. I mean excited. I thought back to the Beats. Now those mo-fos were excited about writing. I wanted it to feel cool for me like it did for them, but I wasn't sure how. A couple more days of deep thought and it broke.

Freewriting. That was it. A silly little technique I had learned nearly twenty years ago. It was cool, it was totally Beat and, if nothing else, it would definitely get me writing again. If anyone out there doesn't know what it is, I'll explain it. But if you can get hold of a copy of one of the three holy writing books, If You Can Talk, You Can Write, then do so. Joel Saltzman lays freewriting out, baby.

Here's how it works. Figure out how long you want to write or how many pages you want to write. Sit down and start writing whatever comes into your head, as if you were just talking to someone at a party (a drunk would talk a lot more, I imagine) or just talking to yourself, but on paper or on screen. Talk about the color of the walls or how you'd rather be drinking at a real party right now or how much longer you have until you're done or the price of china for tea. You keep writing, you don't pause, until you've hit your time or page limit.

I usually give myself ten pages. Here's how it went that first day. I was tired. I DID NOT want to screw around with this stuff. I kept telling myself to drop this crap and go to sleep. I wrote all of that down. Then I got really angry and let out my frustration. I hadn't written in a week and here I was, wasting my bloody time on gibberish and clock watching. I had some real shit to write. But I made myself keep going, because I knew if I gave in to that train of thought, I wasn't really going to write good stuff, I was going to go to sleep, or screw around and write a couple of sentences and quit. And then go to sleep.

Here's what's happening at the beginning of freewriting: You're priming the pump. When you have to get an old pump going again, you have to pour water into it because it can't pump air. When you start freewriting, you're pouring words through your fingers in order to get words to keep coming through from your head. You get started and pretty soon it's like you've lubricated some old machinery. It starts working like a dream.

Here's what else you're doing: You're flushing out all of that shit that's been clogging the line for however long you've been avoiding the keyboard. You can write about all of your distractions, frustrations, problems, everything that's been weighing on your mind and once it's out, it's out, sister.

Three pages into this exercise, I found I was finally starting to loosen up, I started writing down positive things because I'd run out of stuff to complain about. My language began to get crazier and ideas started to flow. At that point I wrote about enjoying the process I was experiencing and decided that my tenth page would actually be a page of a first draft that I hadn't touched for a few weeks. And let me tell you, when I hit that page of something-I-hope-to-someday-get-published, it just flowed, man. I accidentally went over my limit. And I completely forgot that all I wanted to do at the beginning of the exercise was go to sleep. This was victory on every mental front.

I got caught up in the job and very little sleep and productivity for a few days, but then I was able to catch up and I jumped back into the writing. I decided to make the writing part of my life the priority, because I sort of have to. If there's work in the morning, I'll work first, because I'm not one of those people who can get up at three in the morning and function, but other than work, eating and bathroom breaks, the writing gets done first. Before the tasks and the fun and the family. I completely understand that this may not be possible to swing for many of you. You don't have to do it my way. I'm just telling you what's working for me.

Now that I've done it for quite a few days, I realize that I only need to freewrite for about two pages before I'm ready to hit whatever else I need to do, but I still shoot for ten pages. This means that I'm writing about 2,500 words a day. In my long history of writing, 250 words has usually been a good day. Or at least one that I'm not embarrassed about. And to be honest, there were a hell of a lot more days of zero words than of 250 words. That's why I've been writing for twenty years but am just now starting to make some progress. Even with the silly blathering, I'm getting eight pages a day of good first draft done. I've stumbled into beginning a novel that I'm pretty excited about. I just threw down another 1,500 words for this post. And I seriously look forward to writing every day.

I think I'm finally beginning to get my shit together.