Writing

Writ­ing about writing.

The game’s afoot

Posted on by Patrick

I’m not going to say too much about it yet — I’m still in the open­ing moments — but it seems that some pret­ty seri­ous lib­er­ties have been tak­en with the copy­right on a poem I had pub­lished way back in 1997. I found out about it by acci­dent, from a rel­a­tive in Chi­na, and ini­tial­ly assumed that it was part of the intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty pira­cy that Chi­na is, fair­ly or unfair­ly, known for.

Nope. Turns out the copy­right infringe­ment hap­pened in my own province. In the edu­ca­tion­al sys­tem, no less.

So now I’m look­ing deep­er, and try­ing to fig­ure out what my next set of steps should be.

#

As for tonight, I’m writ­ing, and then I’ll be run­ning, and prob­a­bly writ­ing a bit more lat­er. I need to find out about late 17th cen­tu­ry embalm­ing prac­tices — did they use cam­phor, for instance? — and funer­al rites. Any suggestions?

Everything that Never Happened

Posted on by Patrick

…is a go. I fin­ished the high-lev­el out­line of the nov­el last night. I print­ed the out­line this morn­ing — 18 pages — and at lunch hour today I’m going to start into writ­ing the actu­al first draft. Even after two months of out­lin­ing, I’m still real­ly excit­ed about this project, which is a good sign.

Here are the two choic­es for the epigraph:

Inne ye Ocean yre is an Iland,
On ye Iland yre is a Stone,
Inne ye Stone, a Seed,
Inne ye Seed, the Death of us Alle.
— From the Ruther­ford Codex, large­ly con­sid­ered to be a fake

or

For what is a man prof­it­ed, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?
— Matthew 16:26

Any pref­er­ences out there in Read­er Land?

Most nov­el updates will prob­a­bly hap­pen on the ETNH site: http://patrickjohanneson.com/everything/ .

Touring the Nonsuch

Posted on by Patrick

Nonsuch from starboard stern

My cur­rent WiP, Every­thing that Nev­er Hap­pened, is set main­ly aboard a small 17th-cen­tu­ry sail­ing ves­sel, a square-rigged ketch named the Man­dalay. It’s not a coin­ci­dence that it’s a square-rigged ketch, just like the his­tor­i­cal Non­such; ever since the first time I vis­it­ed the Non­such gallery in the Man­i­to­ba Muse­um, I’ve been fas­ci­nat­ed by the ship. I’m not a nau­ti­cal type; I’ve spent my entire life on the prairies, and have seen ocean a total of three times. But some­thing about the ship has always stuck in my mind, and I find myself con­stant­ly return­ing to it.

Maybe it’s just the name. I’m a suck­er for a good name.

Tiller

Any­ways, some­time in Feb­ru­ary it occurred to me that, to real­ly under­stand the Man­dalay and her crew, I might be wise to learn more about the Non­such. I sent an email to some­one at the Man­i­to­ba Muse­um, ask­ing for any infor­ma­tion they could give me, and also ask­ing about tours. I received some infor­ma­tion in the mail, a rec­om­men­da­tion that I check out a book by Laird Rankin, who’s some­thing of an expert on the Non­such, and an offer of a tour. To trim a long sto­ry to a short one, I went on a tour of the ship on Mon­day. Since the muse­um was closed, it was a quite pri­vate tour.

I spent three hours on and around the ship, ask­ing ques­tions of Robert, the muse­um’s res­i­dent Non­such expert. I learned a lot, and I took a lot of pic­tures. Some aspects of my sto­ry are great­ly clar­i­fied for me now. Some of the things Robert told me will find their way quite direct­ly into the novel.

And now I’ll get back to writ­ing it…

All my Non­such photos

Tesseracts 14

Posted on by Patrick

So yeah. Tesser­acts is an annu­al Cana­di­an anthol­o­gy of SF and fantasy.

This year, my short sto­ry “Heat Death, or, Answer­ing the Ourobouros Ques­tion” will be in it.

To say I’m excit­ed is to some­what under­state the case.

Edit—com­ments from the edi­tors: “[One edi­tor] wrote down ‘fun­ny, live­ly, like­able.’ [The oth­er] was even more enthusiastic!”

Tonight’s fiction

Posted on by Patrick

So in the midst of set­ting up a judo tour­na­ment, I took time to go to a writ­ers’ group meeting.

At the last meet­ing, two weeks ago, we gave each oth­er sto­ry prompts. Mine was: “A romance between a worm and a giraffe”. I was all, Thanks.

So here’s what I end­ed up with:

Sor­ry? I did­n’t hear you.
.…

Well, I heard that you said some­thing, but not what you said.

.…

Your voice is a lit­tle soft, that’s all I’m saying.

.…

Fine.

Can you hear me now?

Yes, much bet­ter. Where are you?

You can’t feel me?

No. Well, not right now. You know.

I’m in your ear, just inside the out­er ear. Lis­ten, you said yes­ter­day that we need to talk. What’s up, babe?

Well…

Spill it. Spit it out.

All right. Lis­ten, you know, we’ve been, well, we’ve been…together for a long time now, and I’m just, well, I’m just won­der­ing where you see this going. You know?

Eight days is a “long time”?

Don’t dodge the ques­tion. My mother–

Yeah, I thought she might’ve–

Don’t let’s start. Can we start over?

Sure. We need to talk?

Yes. Where are we going, hon?

Well, I’m enjoy­ing myself, I thought you were enjoy­ing your­self too…

I am, I am. Oh believe me, I am.

Why do you need to put labels on things, then? Are we lovers? Are we goin’ to the chapel, gonna get mar­ried? Why can’t two grown crea­tures just, you know, enjoy themselves?

Well…

Babe, if you need to ask the ques­tion, do you want the answer? Think on that one.

That does­n’t even make any sense.

Exact­ly. Noo­dle on that one for a while.

What­ev­er, lis­ten, I just told my moth­er I’d ask. Because she’s got this need to know. You know?

Are you happy?

I… Yes. Yes I am, love.

Then the hell with your moth­er’s nos­ing. You and me, babe, we’re all we need.

You’re right. You know what? Screw her. Screw her med­dling ways!

That’s the spir­it, babe. Any­thing else?

Well…

Thought that might not be all. What now? Your dad wants to know if I fol­low football?

No. This one’s from me. I kind of, well… I want to know… With worms, it’s so hard to tell sometimes…

What? Tell what? Know what?

Well, are you… Are you male or female?

Hmmm. Tough ques­tion, I kind of got both goin’ on, you know? Worms, like you say. Hard to define. Hard to pin down.

I know. But when you think about your­self, you know, do you think of your­self as male, or female?

What’s it mat­ter? This is your dad ask­ing, isn’t it?

No, no. I just… I just want to know if I’m… well. I want to know if I’m gay or straight.

Oh baby. You and your labels.

For next meet­ing, in anoth­er fort­night, I’m sup­posed to have a com­plet­ed out­line of my WiP, the nov­el Once I was you.

Next time: » Shiai!

Writing group meeting

Posted on by Patrick

So tonight I went to the sec­ond Group Voice meet­ing. Group Voice is a local writ­ers’ group, new­ly-formed. Last meet­ing, two weeks ago, we pret­ty much just intro­duced ourselves.

This time we all brought some­thing to read to the group — I brought the first cou­ple sec­tions of my cur­rent WiP, Once I was you — and we went around the room, each read­ing, and receiv­ing com­ments. It was quite a diverse group — we had a sto­ry from the POV of a fly, three short poems, a slice of fic­tion­al­ized auto­bi­og­ra­phy, some high fan­ta­sy, my SF bit, a humourous piece about what is sure­ly the best beard evar, and a bit of zom­bie lit (though he chose to call the vil­lains “were­wolves”, main­ly because the first-per­son pro­tag­o­nist felt that “zom­bies are over­done lately”).

I was impressed. There are some very good writ­ers in this town.

At the end of the meet­ing, we all took a piece of paper and wrote down a sto­ry prompt. I wrote Time-trav­el­ling Nazi sol­diers see the results of WWII. Then we all put our prompts into a buck­et, and drew out ran­dom ones. For the next meet­ing, in two weeks’ time, I have to write a sto­ry based on the fol­low­ing prompt:

Romance between a worm and a giraffe.

Can’t wait.

#

On a slight­ly more seri­ous note: This has real­ly got­ten me inter­est­ed in my project again. Once I was you will like­ly be a nov­el-length project; I have a lit­tle shy of 14,000 words writ­ten so far. I’m try­ing to come up with a thumb­nail of the sto­ry that does­n’t sound insane. So far I have: A wom­an’s ghost from the present day gets involved in a war, in 750,000,000 AD, against the enti­ties that made our Uni­verse, and are now done with it.

That’s not the whole sto­ry, of course. Most of the terms in there need a foot­note that sim­ply says “Sort of”. She’s sort of a ghost. It’s kind of a war. The con­flict is more or less against the Mak­ers. It’s more or less set in 750,000,000 AD. And so forth.

Inter­est­ed? I hope so, because once this post is done, I’ll be writ­ing more in the sto­ry. If you want to see a snip­pet, let me know. You know how to reach me.

(If you don’t — if you’re new here — feel free to leave a com­ment. That’s one way to reach me.)

Next time: Some pho­tos — hope­ful­ly not of knee-deep snow.

The movie deal (now with picture!)

Posted on by Patrick

Contract

So a friend of mine took a degree in film, and has made some short films. The oth­er day he said, “Hey, I’d love to do a short film based on Res­ur­rec­tion Radio. How much would you want for film rights?”

I said, “Let me think on it.”

Today I gave him a fig­ure, and he agreed.

And yes, he’s got a deal with Stephen King, and yes, I’m mak­ing more than King — by a con­sid­er­able mar­gin — but no, it’s not going to pay off the mortgage.

(Hint: The deal he’s got with King is on a dol­lar baby story.)