pronoun problems

Finishing “Once a Goddess” reminds me of the great appeal of short story writing: instant gratification. Instant from the point of view of novel-writing, anyway; I cranked out the bulk of that story in a single evening, and it’s a rare story that requires more than three days of me sitting down and adding words to it. So I’m going to see if I can’t finish two more before the end of the year.

One is the sacrilicious story, provisionally titled “The Gospel of Nachash.” I figure I’ll save that for closer to Christmas. ^_~ I need to figure out a name for one of the characters, and then I need to figure out what happens to him; everything around that is more or less in place.

With that one on the second burner, the immediate project is “Chrysalis.” And here, gentle readers, I need your help.

See, to make the structure work, I’m pretty sure I need an additional character at the midpoint of the story. I know who that character is; what I don’t know is what to call him/her/it/them. Said entity is a character perfectly balanced between male and female — which might mean perfectly androgynous or perfectly hermaphroditic, I’m not sure which. Anyway, this being English, where we’ve jettisoned grammatical gender pretty much everywhere except our pronouns, I’m not sure which one to use.

My preferred gender-neutral default in speech is singular “they,” which has been in use for centuries and has the advantage of being a solution people actually use. But in a story situation like this, it can leave the reader thinking I mean more than one person, and generally undermines the sense of unity I want the character to have. “It” would work if I decide on androgyny, but I’m not sure I like the way that renders an individual into an object. (There’s a reason I had the witches call a doppelganger “it” instead of “she.”) Beyond that, I’m looking at a bunch of neologisms like “sie,” all of which I fear would kick the reader out of the fantasy-Mesoamerican setting and into the twenty-first century. My final option — thanks to Wikipedia — is to go the other direction and dig in the dusty corners of English past, which gives me three possibilities: “heo,” which was replaced by “she” because it started to sound too much like “he;” and “ou” and “a,” both of which were used in Middle English. (Is the latter what we see when Ophelia sings “And will ‘a not come again?”)

Or I could use the Nahuatl third-person pronoun yehwatl. Or the K’iche Mayan are. (Sorry, had to repost the poll to add those.)

Anyway. I have options; I just don’t know which one I like. So we have a poll. Check all that you like, and feel free to present your case in the comments.

(Edited again to add: okay, it looks like “yehuatl” might be shortenable to “ye” or “yehua.” If I go with that option, I will very much need to consult with someone who knows Classical Nahuatl, since the way it handles pronouns is very alien to English, and I don’t trust myself to make up the appropriate substitutions without help. But if the length of that word is keeping you from voting for it, there may be shorter alternatives.)

memery for a Sunday morning

I expected jet lag to wake me up at about 9 a.m., since I’d been sleeping until noon in Boston. Instead, I woke up at about noon. Now there is Christmas music on the stereo (since the day after Thanksgiving is when the Christmas season begins for me), and in a little while I will clean this place up so I can think about decorating it, and in the meantime I will do a meme that practically every writer on my friends list is doing. I think it originated somewhere in the vicinity of autopope, but I could be wrong.

* Age when I decided I wanted to be a writer: Certainly by 9 or so. Maybe sooner; I have a crap memory for my childhood. I remember a turning point at that age, though.
* Age when I got my hands on a typewriter and taught myself to use it: Typewriter? I was using a computer by the age of 9, and never looked back.
* Age when I wrote my first short story: This is tough because I have to decide what to count as a short story. I know I wrote something for school when I was in second grade, and other things after that which I completed at a word count that would probably qualify them. I was 18 when I first wrote something I recognized as a short story.
* Age when I wrote my first novel: mostly 18; it was completed shortly after my 19th birthday.
* Novels written between age 30 and age 39: 0. This is where I grin and say “ask me again in twelve years,” and other writers of my acquaintance throw things at me. ^_^
* Age when I first submitted a short story to a magazine: 20.
* Number of rejections prior to first story sale: Eg. Counting this up is slightly inconvenient. Call it 150 or so.
* Lifetime number of rejections: Over 700.
* Age when I sold my first short story: 23.
* Age when I wrote a saleable novel: 19. I believe that first one was saleable, even before I rewrote it; I’ve said before that completing things was the last basic skill I acquired. But if that one doesn’t count, I also finished Doppelganger that year.
* Age when I sold that novel: 24. Submissions are sloooooooow.
* Novels written since age 40: Ask me again in — <ducks>
* Total novels written: 10.
* Age now: 28.
* Age when the money coming in exceeded my statuory employment: 27. This was one of a number of factors contributing to the decision to leave graduate school. They say don’t quit your day job until [insert equation here], but when your day job is providing you with an annual income in the four-digit range, the equation changes.
* Number of books sold: 4.
* Number of short stories sold: 24.
* Number of titles in print: 3.
* Number of titles in production or pre-production: 1. Though I’m working to get myself on a schedule of more than one book a year.

Black Friday

There’s something truly grotesque about pairing Thanksgiving — the ideals of which, if not the political history, are worthwhile — with the annual nadir of American culture.

I’m serious. This is a day that makes me disgusted to call myself American. Sure, not all of us participate; most of the people I know hide indoors the day after Thanksgiving rather than face the savage, feral hordes desperate to buybuyBUY at the lowest price possible, and nevermind the cost paid in other ways. It isn’t just the people who die on Black Friday; it’s the circumstances that make those low prices possible, and the vomitous commercialism that convinces people the only way to show their love for their darlng offspring is to buy them whatever this year’s hot-ticket item is. That makes them willing to stand outside a Wal-Mart at 5 or 4 or 3 a.m. on Black Friday and join the mindless mob that will break the doors off their hinges in their rush to get inside. And then knock down a pregnant woman, trample a man to death, and ignore the emergency workers as they try to resuscitate him, because hey! Somebody else might beat you to the last XBox!

This is the ugly face of American capitalism. This is our consumer society at its absolute worst.

This happens, year after year, and we treat it like it’s normal.

along with that

Can anyone tell me how to make the Biblical Hebrew noun rwkb — transliterated in my source as “b@kowr” — into a plural? (Alternatively, tell me if Biblical Hebrew doesn’t have plurals.)

Edited to add: Okay, I suspect this word is more often transliterated as bekhor, which makes the plural either bekhorot (the form generally used when talking about the Passover slaughter) or bekhorim (if we’re talking classical Hebrew, which apparently flings around masculine and feminine plurals without much concern for the gender of the original noun). Interesting. This is what happens when it’s two a.m. the night before Thanksgiving: I wander off on impromptu lessons in Hebrew grammar.

Now I need a way to turn the feminine noun chereb into something that could pass for a man’s name.

yay redundancy!

The “Chrysalis” notes I know are scribbled on two or three small yellow sheets of notepad paper somewhere on my desk have never made it into electronic format (and therefore are not on my laptop), but it turns out enough of their content ended up in the notebook I have with me for me to at least get by. Which is to say, I know the character names.

This has led to me holing up in the guest bedroom with a handful of pocket change, trying to diagram the story’s weird structural tricks, and wishing I were in Britain because those tuppence coins sure would come in handy right now.

But I’m going to put that aside for a while and see what I think of “Once a Goddess,” now that I’ve slept on the ending and hopefully have some perspective.

first lines meme

With “Once a Goddess” finally moved from the “unfinished” folder to the “finished” one, it’s time for another roundup of story fragments.

[untitled fairy tale story]

“Two crowns says he doesn’t make it past the blackberries.”

[untitled quasi-superhero story]

They didn’t call John in until the bullets had finished flying, until everyone who was going to surrender had surrendered and everyone who was going to die had died.

“Chrysalis” [same setting as “A Mask of Flesh”]

The new ground of the milpa showed like a scar in the forest it had been torn from.

[untitled story, same setting as “Such as Dreams Are Made Of”]

By day their scales glitter in the sun, winding sinuously through the cities of the world.

“The Unquiet Grave” [ballad-based]

Fever took my love from me.

“How They Fall”

He runs as fast as he can, until his lungs feel like lava and the impact of each step jolts him to his skull, until he is blind with exhaustion and terrified hope, but still he is too late.

[untitled Driftwood story, same setting as “A Heretic by Degrees”]

Only idiots bother trying to make maps of Driftwood.

“Mad Maudlin” [ballad-based]

Peter found her slippers just inside the room.

“Ink, Like Blood” [same setting as “A Mask of Flesh”]

I’ve seen the look on your face, when your granny starts telling the old stories.

“Xie Meng Lu Goes on Pilgrimage”

Treasured wife — By now you will have heard the sorry tale of my disgrace at court.

[untitled Xochitlicacan story, same setting as “A Mask of Flesh”]

The tap of the workmen’s chisels was a distant, dreamlike thing to Tlacuilo’s ears, as if it came from another world.

[untitled Nine Lands story]

Having ink on your skin was an offense punishable by death.

[untitled Tam Lin story]

Faerie trouble never really goes away.

[untitled Driftwood story, same setting as “A Heretic by Degrees”]

Time’s one of the most untrustworthy and useless concepts in all of Driftwood.

“Even in Decline”

The boar charged along the forest floor, feet pounding out a furious beat, tusks slicing at the air.

[untitled JB story, ballad-based]

Let me tell a tale of my father’s kin, for his blood runs in me, and so to me falls this duty: to keep the knowledge, the past-thought, the shape of how it began, as my father gave it to me.

Aaaand I don’t appear to have any copies of “Prince of the Stone” here with me, so no snippet from that one.

That’s everything that has at least a bit written. Most of my titles, oddly enough, belong to stories I haven’t started; most of my started stories have no titles. Of them all, I think I’m the most motivated to play with “Chrysalis” — but the notes I have with me don’t include the character names, so that may be problematic. We’ll see. I know Konil, and I might be able to remember a few more. Or get by with placeholders.

Any preferences from the peanut gallery?

Brain!

That’s an excited cry of “brain!” — not a zombie mumble of “braaaaaains.”

The distinction is important. Those of you reading this who have written novels know whereof I speak; others may know it from similarly intensive mental endeavours. When you finish, it feels like a steamroller has come through and pasted every single potential thought into a pancake. It’s possible, sometimes, to get something done soon after, but mostly you turn into the next stage of Mr Earbrass.

Which is why it’s exciting that last night I finished a short story! And not just any short story: this is “Once a Goddess,” which probably holds the record for longest time spent sitting around refusing to turn from an idea into a proper story. There are four abortive drafts on my hard drive, not counting the one that got finished, and the earliest of them dates back to the summer of 2001 — which I know because the idea came from an article I read while indexing for Anthropological Literature.

Last night, I regrew enough brain to finish it. Yay me!

It’s nice for other reasons, too. I haven’t finished a short story since — Jesus. Just went to look at my notes, and that would be “Kingspeaker,” in March of last year. How’s that for pathetic? Sure, I’ve written three novels in the interim, and that’s not bad, but the other nice thing here is that “Once a Goddess” is secondary-world fantasy, which has been lacking in my life of late. I love writing the Onyx Court books and all, but it’s been a while since I scratched the worldbuilding itch.

Brain! It’s working again!

Maybe I’ll try finishing something else, too.

thoughts on Match Point

I seem to be constitutionally incapable of trusting Jonathan Rhys Meyers in any role he plays. I just keep seeing Steerpike. (This is especially ironic when you consider that JRM is my casting for one of the protagonists in an unpublished novel. Apparently I don’t trust Julian?)

Anyway, I want to talk about Match Point (which has him in it), but There Will Be Spoilers, so don’t read past the cut if you don’t want to know.

For the record, my opinion is that you shouldn’t worry about being spoiled, as the movie is not that great.

Here’s why.

Fringe update

  1. Peter got to be useful and showed signs of character development.
  2. And the preview for next week promises even more.
  3. Maybe even something other than a random piece of the so-called Pattern!

Dude, it’s like Christmas on Fringe.

(Though did anybody else say “saw that coming” when the thing with Walter happened?)

NOTE: I’ve kept this post spoiler-free, but the comments are unlikely to stay that way.

silver bullets

Okay, this is just fascinating.

It seems that one of Patricia Briggs’ readers has embarked upon a quest for silver bullets. I came at that series by way of the third chapter, “Lone Ranger, Go Away,” which is a reprint of a 1964 Gun World article detailing previous efforts to produce and test-fire such rounds. That part (which I found via Making Light) is funny enough, but the rest of the series is chock-full of ballistic geekery, of a sort that every werewolf-novel-writing author should read.

And not just them, either. I have no intention of writing about lycanthropes, but I learned from the introduction that three hundred years ago, silver didn’t generally tarnish like it does today. Why? Because the Industrial Revolution hadn’t yet pumped large amounts of sulfur into the atmosphere. If you left a silver object sitting on a shelf for ten years, it would still be shiny when you came back — which made it just about as magical-seeming as gold. And if you’ve come across references to silver cups or knives being used to detect poison, it’s because organic poisons often contain enough sulfur to tarnish the dishware, creating a seemingly supernatural ability to detect their presence.

Of course, if I wrote a story with a silver object that didn’t tarnish over time, readers would think I was doing it wrong. The perils of too much research . . . .

Anyway, if you’ve ever thought about writing a werewolf book, or you like reading them, check the articles out. Turns out the “silver bullet” thing is a lot more difficult than advertised — but out of such obstacles are more interesting stories made.

even more fiction

When it rains, it pours. But this time you get to listen to my fiction instead of reading it!

Yes, folks, it’s my very first story podcast. I’ve got two others on the way — Pseudopod will be doing “Shadows’ Bride,” and Beneath Ceaseless Skies has got “Kingspeaker” — but Podcastle hit the finish line first, with my exceedingly silly flash story “The Princess and the . . .”

I’ve been meaning to post about Escape Artists — the umbrella name for a trio of podcasts, dedicated to science fiction (Escape Pod), horror (Pseudopod), and fantasy (Podcastle). Of the three, I don’t generally listen to Pseudopod (since I’m not a big horror person, my sale to them notwithstanding), and my personal tastes generally mean that about half the Escape Pod stories are up my alley, but I adore Podcastle, and all three of them are very well done indeed. Ever since my trip to London last year, when traveling light meant I packed no leisure reading with me, I’ve become quite fond of being able to carry fiction around on my iPod. Short stories are perfect for sitting around in airports or on planes, since I don’t have to commit ten hours of my life to listening. If you’ve got an mp3 player and need to entertain yourself for half an hour or forty-five minutes, the Escape Artists productions are a good way to go.

This story, though, won’t eat up that much time. When I say it’s flash, I mean it; I don’t remember how many words “The Princess and the . . .” is, but the entire episode, including intro and outro, is about two minutes. You can subscribe to the podcast in the usual way, or download it from a link at the bottom of the story post over on their website. Enjoy!

(Having linked to this, now I’m afraid what kind of answers I’ll get on the comparison post . . . .)

in which I fail to compare

This is going to sound like I’m looking for flattery, but what I’m actually after is assistance.

I have never been able to muster the perspective necessary to say who I write like. It’s one of the things authors are occasionally expected to do; it positions you in the genre, in the textual conversation we’re all having, and coincidentally helps with self-promotion, pitching new projects, and a bunch of other writing-related program activities where you’re not allowed to ramble on for five minutes describing what you write. Sure, we’re all individual snowflakes, but comparisons are still possible, whether they’re straightforward or of the intersection-style “Bridget Jones’ Diary meets H.P. Lovecraft” variety.

But I can’t do it. For individual stories, occasionally — more by comparison to a genre or a specific point of inspiration — but I’ve got no perspective on the general body of my work, not in a useful way. So I turn to you, my internet friends: who do you think I write like? Why? Are you basing your comparison on plots, favorite themes, prose styles? (That last is the true black hole of my inability to reflect; again, I can say an individual story has a nineteenth-century sound to it or whatever, but I can’t begin to describe my prose in general, much less liken it to anybody else’s.)

I can think of two comparisons I’ve gotten in reviews, both of which have induced something of an “I’m not worthy!” reaction. The more comprehensible one, from my perspective, is Ursula K. LeGuin; she’s the daughter of anthropologists, and it shows. (I’ve gotten that comparison twice, for “White Shadow” and more recently “Kingspeaker” — both of which are set in the world that I created to be my anthropological playground.) When I think about my whole cultural fantasy thing, I can see where those reviewers are coming from, even if I’m a long way from having sufficient ego to liken myself to her. Less obvious to me are the Midnight Never Come reviews that compare the book to the work of Neil Gaiman. Aside from the semi-parallel to Neverwhere, I have a harder time seeing where I’m like him.

But, as I said, I have no perspective on this. So please: imagine you’ve got a friend asking for recommendations. What authors might make you say, oh, try Marie Brennan? And when your friend asks why, what would you say to them?

I’d be hard-pressed to answer those questions, myself. I’m hoping you guys can help out with that.

revisions are off

The next day Mr Earbrass is conscious but very little more.

I’ve survived another round with the Beast*.

Time to watch back episodes of House online or something.

*Being The Novel Formally Known As In Ashes Lie But Frequently Referred To As Please God I’ll Be Good Don’t Make Me Deal With Seventeenth-Century English Politics Ever Again.

stabbination!

I’m at the fun part of the learning curve right now.

Every fencing practice I go to, my brain unearths another dusty piece of technique it used to know ten years ago. After a few incidents of walking straight onto somebody’s blade because I failed to clear the line before advancing, my brain remembered beats! Yeah, those work! And then I overuse them heavily, but oh yeah, there are feints and disengages, too. Today’s revelation was particularly funny; given how much I adored binding parries in high school, you would think I’d have remembered them sooner.

Of course, I didn’t remember them until I’d been playing for a good hour and a half, at which point my wrists were no longer up to the task. But we’ll try them next time.

I can watch myself improving, mostly in terms of my ability to keep thinking. If my first attack is blocked, I try another one. Or even plan ahead, my first attack a feint to set my opponent up for the follow-through. If I’m retreating, I don’t just parry; I parry and riposte (or try to). One of these days I’ll get draw-cuts and push-cuts into the mental programming, and then I might even stand a chance in close combat!

Dear Brain: while we’re at the cuts thing, please also recall that we’re no longer in the backyard with a dowel rod; it is not only okay, but desirable, to follow through on a lunge instead of pulling up half an inch short of connecting. kthxbye.

Also, today I let myself pick up a dagger for a little while. I’ve been fighting single-sword because it allows/forces me to pay attention to what I’m doing with that blade, but man, rapier and dagger just feels right. I don’t want a buckler; I don’t want a cloak — though I’ll be happy to play with those someday — a dagger in my off hand feels like the most natural thing in the world. (My real ambition, of course, is case. But the few times I played with that in high school, I invariably got my points tangled, so we’ll stick with a short secondary for now.)

<studies arms> I look like a battered wife. But that will improve as my skill does.

question

Can someone who has a copy of Connie Willis’ Doomsday Book look up for me how many times a church bell tolled for the death of a woman? I know she goes into that system, but I can’t recall (or find on the Internet) the specifics.

Answer needed ASAP, por favor.

So true.

And it makes my academic brain glee over the way fanfiction has given us an entirely new vocabulary with which to describe the world.