Writing

Writ­ing about writing.

Writing Retreat 2021, day 4

Posted on by Patrick
Close-up: meteor burning up in the sky

On Wednes­day, I:

  • Rewrote a scene in “The Slow Apocalypse”
  • Got lunch to go from the local cof­feeshop with my friend Tim, who’s on his way home from camp­ing at Wasagaming
  • Con­tin­ued out­lin­ing for “Praise the Torch”
  • Went for a bike ride (it was pret­ty windy, but at least it was at my back on the way back to the cabin)
  • Drove to a side road off Moun­tain Road and watched for Perseids

I saw about six or eight mete­ors with the naked eye, and caught a few small ones and one longer one with my cam­era. I was on the side road in the dark for about an hour. Maybe I was too ear­ly for the 40–60/hour that the web­sites claimed you’d see on the peak night of the mete­or shower.

  • Long shot of a meteor burning up in the sky
  • Star Trails
Long shot of a meteor burning up in the skyStar Trails

Series: Writing Retreat 2021

The entire series: Writ­ing Retreat 2021, Day Zero; Writ­ing Retreat, Day One; Writ­ing Retreat, day 2; Writ­ing Retreat 2021, day 3; Writ­ing Retreat 2021, day 4; Writ­ing Retreat 2021, day 5; Writ­ing Retreat 2021, day 6.

Writing Retreat 2021, day 3

Posted on by Patrick
The Milky Way at Spruces in Riding Mountain National Park

Tues­day, I:

  • Wrote more in the out­line for “Praise the Torch”
  • Went for a bike ride (it was cool when I start­ed, but warmed up as the sun came out)
  • Read about a dozen chap­ters in William Gib­son’s Zero His­to­ry—it’s been a long time since I read it, so it’s pret­ty much like read­ing it again for the first time
  • Reworked a chap­ter in “The Slow Apoc­a­lypse” and made minor changes in a few oth­er places
  • Watched some Fire­fly
  • Met up with my friend Tim (who was camp­ing at Wasagam­ing) at Spruces for some very dark sky pho­tos (it’s been a long time since I saw the Milky Way so promi­nent to the naked eye)

I saw a cou­ple of mete­ors at Spruces, includ­ing one large, slow one that unfor­tu­nate­ly was­n’t where my cam­era was aimed.

  • Star trails at Spruces in Riding Mountain National Park
  • The Milky Way at Spruces in Riding Mountain National Park
  • The Milky Way at Spruces in Riding Mountain National Park
  • The Milky Way at Spruces in Riding Mountain National Park

Series: Writing Retreat 2021

The entire series: Writ­ing Retreat 2021, Day Zero; Writ­ing Retreat, Day One; Writ­ing Retreat, day 2; Writ­ing Retreat 2021, day 3; Writ­ing Retreat 2021, day 4; Writ­ing Retreat 2021, day 5; Writ­ing Retreat 2021, day 6.

Writing Retreat, day 2

Posted on by Patrick
A water drop glistening on a telephone wire during a rainfall

I woke up think­ing I heard hail. It turned out to be only rain—at times heavy rain—but almost every cab­in around here has a met­al roof, which ampli­fies that kind of thing.

No bike ride and no kayak trip. I wise­ly for­got to pack a rain­coat for my retreat here, so that was great plan­ning on my part.

  • More devel­op­ment on the “Praise the Torch When ‘Tis Burned” outline—the sto­ry is firm­ing up in my mind, at least, and that’s a good feeling
  • Rewrote the bulk of a scene between the POV wiz­ard and his lawyer wife, sip­pin’ Welsh whiskey in a restau­rant called Swansea, in “The Slow Apocalypse”
  • Watched a cou­ple episodes of Fire­fly
  • Tried to get some pho­tos of the rain; the only one I liked is above (it’s been a while since I saw water bead­ing on a tele­phone line)

Some of the thun­der was pret­ty exciting—shake-the-cabin exciting—but I could­n’t get a good angle to set up and try to get some light­ning pho­tos. Oh well, can’t win every time.

Series: Writing Retreat 2021

The entire series: Writ­ing Retreat 2021, Day Zero; Writ­ing Retreat, Day One; Writ­ing Retreat, day 2; Writ­ing Retreat 2021, day 3; Writ­ing Retreat 2021, day 4; Writ­ing Retreat 2021, day 5; Writ­ing Retreat 2021, day 6.

Writing Retreat, Day One

Posted on by Patrick
The Milky Way above the road and trees

In my first full day at the cab­in, I:

  • Worked on the out­line for “Praise the Torch When ‘Tis Burned” (aka the “ghosts in a derelict star­ship” story)
  • Went for a bike ride, snapped a few pho­tos (one of which I liked—the “On Reflec­tion” below)
  • Stopped in at the store for a cou­ple of gro­ceries that I forgot
  • Decid­ed, on see­ing how many peo­ple in the store were maskless—including at least one employee—that I’m going to make do with what I’ve got for as long as I can
  • Went for a dri­ve to check out a pos­si­ble pho­to site dis­cov­ered by my friend Tim
  • Met up with Tim in Sandy Lake for a phys­i­cal­ly-dis­tanced chin-wag on the sidewalk
  • Worked some more on the “Torch” outline
  • Real­ized at about 10:15 pm that 
    1. I did­n’t have enough fuel to get me to the pho­to site I’d checked out ear­li­er and back, and 
    2. all the gas sta­tions in my vicin­i­ty were closed
  • Watched an episode of Fire­fly
  • Checked the sky just before midnight—nice and dark and clear—then looked up “Dark Sky Sites Near Me”
  • Decid­ed to check out a fair­ly close site, about fif­teen min­utes’ dri­ve from the cabin
  • Got the head­er pho­to (and a cou­ple others)
  • Returned to the cab­in at 1:30am and dropped into bed.
  • Trees reflected in the Little Saskatchewan River
    On Reflec­tion (Minnedosa)
  • The Milky Way above the road and trees
Milky Way (unprocessed photo)The Milky Way above the road and trees
The Galaxy, before and after image processing

Series: Writing Retreat 2021

The entire series: Writ­ing Retreat 2021, Day Zero; Writ­ing Retreat, Day One; Writ­ing Retreat, day 2; Writ­ing Retreat 2021, day 3; Writ­ing Retreat 2021, day 4; Writ­ing Retreat 2021, day 5; Writ­ing Retreat 2021, day 6.

Writing Retreat 2021, Day Zero

Posted on by Patrick
Star Trails in the haze

It’s that time of year again: the 2021 edi­tion of my writ­ing retreat has begun. I booked my time at the cab­in to coin­cide with the new moon, to make for some bet­ter astropho­tog­ra­phy oppor­tu­ni­ties, and then found out lat­er that, coin­ci­den­tal­ly, I’d also be up here for the peak of the Per­seid mete­or show­er.

Con­tin­ue read­ing “Writ­ing Retreat 2021, Day Zero” →

Series: Writing Retreat 2021

The entire series: Writ­ing Retreat 2021, Day Zero; Writ­ing Retreat, Day One; Writ­ing Retreat, day 2; Writ­ing Retreat 2021, day 3; Writ­ing Retreat 2021, day 4; Writ­ing Retreat 2021, day 5; Writ­ing Retreat 2021, day 6.

A positive note

Posted on by Patrick
fountain pen on notepad

A bunch of rejec­tions cropped up in my email in the last week or so. I know it’s part of the job (the game? the process?), but it’s not all that much fun.

As I was gear­ing up to re-sub­mit the pieces in ques­tion, though, I got a cheery lit­tle mes­sage from a friend and fel­low author, which made me feel bet­ter about the whole thing.

Meant to say I quite enjoyed your sto­ry “The Smoke” and I hope you find a good place­ment for it. Did­n’t have much else to add, I like the nar­ra­tor and the end­ing. […] Great job!

So, thanks for that, Chadwick.

Cur­rent­ly “The Smoke” is in the mid­dle of edit­ing, but I assure you I’ll be send­ing it back to him when it’s ready for the next round. If you’d like to read it too—it’s a viking/Iceland–inspired ghost sto­ry… in space!—do let me know.

Publications in 2021

Posted on by Patrick
Image: scattered maps and old atlases

Out now on the fin­er Inter­nets every­where: my (very) short sto­ry “The Atlas”, which fea­tures an atlas, a bot­tle of absinthe, and a hunt­ing knife, pub­lished in Vol­ume 2 of Cloud Lake Lit­er­ary.

Forth­com­ing in Octo­ber 2021: Alter­nate Plains (avail­able for pre-order now!), fea­tur­ing my sto­ry “Sum­mer­time in the Void”, which is one answer to the ques­tion “What if the Sin­gu­lar­i­ty did­n’t want you?” (Can­ny Can­Con types might won­der if I lift­ed the title from an I Moth­er Earth song. The answer is “Absolute­ly.”)

(It’s been a long time since I had two pub­li­ca­tions in the same cal­en­dar year. I think the last time was ’04, when On Spec pub­lished “Res­ur­rec­tion Radio” and I won the Man­i­to­ba Short Fic­tion con­test with “A Map to the End of the World”.)

Publication day!

Posted on by Patrick
Image: scattered maps and old atlases

Today is the release date for Cloud Lake Lit­er­ary, Vol­ume 2, which con­tains my very short sto­ry “The Atlas”, which fea­tures an atlas with at least one extra coun­try, a bot­tle of absinthe, and a hunt­ing knife.

I just checked my stats on The Sub­mis­sions Grinder, and this one sold to the 18th mar­ket I sub­mit­ted it to. 17 mar­kets said, gen­tly or blunt­ly, “Thanks but no” before this one found a home.

I guess the les­son is, Keep try­ing. Some­one out there wants your story.

Writ­ers: If you’re not using The Sub­mis­sions Grinder, you owe it to your­self to at least look into it. It’s a mar­ket list for fic­tion and poet­ry, and it’s a sub­mis­sions track­er, and it’s free. It’ll let you import your data from Duotrope (if you were using Duotrope before, it’s kind of like a less-pol­ished Duotrope).

Cloud Lake Vol­ume 2 is avail­able for pur­chase from Cloud Lake’s site. For $10.00 $7.50 (Cana­di­an), you get fic­tion, non-fic­tion, chil­dren’s sto­ries, poet­ry, and art from 16 Cana­di­an cre­ative types.

Check it out!

Head­er image by Andrew Neel on Unsplash.

Strunk + White

Posted on by Patrick
fountain pen on notepad

I had a dream the oth­er night. I was vis­it­ing a friend—I don’t recall who, but it might have been one of the Craigs I know—and, left alone in a room, I was look­ing over the friend’s bookcase.

I found on there a copy of The Ele­ments of Style, col­lo­qui­al­ly known as “Strunk + White” after the authors. In the real world it’s a thin book, not much more impos­ing than a pam­phlet; I’ve read novel­las that are longer. But in the dream it was a trade paper­back, prob­a­bly 400 pages long, and I pulled it off the shelf. I used to have a copy, in the dream, and I thought maybe I’d lent it to this friend.

But if it was my copy, I had­n’t put my name in the front, which I usu­al­ly do when I lend out a book. So I hes­i­tat­ed, con­tem­plat­ed tak­ing it any­way, then decid­ed not to risk it. I put it back on the shelf.

I don’t remem­ber the rest of the dream.

When I searched the Inter­net for “Strunk and White”, I found this arti­cle from Mignon Fog­a­r­ty, aka Gram­mar Girl, in which she lays out one rea­son why she does­n’t much care for The Ele­ments of Style. (TL;DR: it’s a style guide that every­one treats like it’s a gram­mar book. In oth­er words, it’s a set of sug­ges­tions that peo­ple instead treat like laws.)