Halloween Stories

Happy Halloween!

My neighbors went all out this year, with an amazing combination of visual and auditory special effects. Children were crying as their parents dragged them to the front door, which is the sign of a spooky job well-done. 

Our decorations were a bit more modest, although I got several compliments on my growing collection of Star Trek pumpkins. Last year I carved Spock, and this year I added Uhura. Since these are intricate and take a bit of time to carve, I use the hollow craft pumpkins that you buy at your local craft store. The patterns are from pinkraygun. 

Spock and Uhura greet Trick-or-Treaters from my windowsill

One of the aspects I love most about Halloween is how central stories are to celebrating this holiday. Every part of celebrating Halloween has a story element present. When you decorate your front porch, decide which scary movies to watch, and choose your costume, you're forming the narrative of your Halloween. Even if you choose a costume that is one of the basic Halloween concepts, like a witch, how you portray being a witch is going to be different from how anyone else does it. I met five or so little girls tonight who were dressed as witches, and each of them had a different witchy story conveyed by their outfit. You could begin to guess a little bit about the person underneath the pointy hat by whether it was covered in iridescent cobwebs or was a simple black that highlighted dramatic makeup. 

You might have heard of All Hallow's Read, a new tradition of giving scary books to people on Halloween. As Neil Gaiman explains, this isn't to replace trick-or-treating or costuming or any other Halloween activities. In addition to all of those fun traditions, you give a scary book to someone. This year I am going to give The Walking Dead comic book to my younger brother. He's been enjoying the television series adaptation, and it seems like a good opportunity to rekindle his interest in comic books and, hopefully, reading for pleasure.

And for you, reader, I want to share a collection of Ray Bradbury stories. These are from a DVD set I bought when I was in Alaska. I watched the first two discs in October of last year, when I was jobless and aimless. Bradbury's stories helped put some of the wonder back into every day life. 

The Ray Bradbury Theater has stand alone stories, all written by Bradbury. Some of my favorite episodes are "The Playground" (starring William Shatner), "The Crowd", and "The Screaming Woman" (starring a very young Drew Barrymore). You can find whole episodes on YouTube, or buy the box set rather cheaply online ($10). 

Here's the opening sequence:

"Well then, right now, what shall it be? Out of all this, what do I choose to make a story?"

What was your Halloween story like this year?

Strange Southern Thing: Unclaimed Baggage

Whenever I reveal my Southern heritage to people, they usually do one of three things:

1. Start singing "Sweet Home Alabama"
2. Ask me to speak in a Southern accent
3. Ask me to tell them odd stories of the South

I've never had a Southern accent. I'm not sure why. Most of the Southerners I know who don't have accents are usually ones who read a lot when they were kids. Maybe having all of those words go straight from page to mindspace set up a kind of accent-barrier. The best I can do at a Southern accent are an occasional "might could" and every now and then, and when I'm speaking to Southern strangers, a "ya'll."

Since doing a Southern accent is off the list, I'd like to share some beautiful, awesome Southern strangeness - places and people and objects that are uniquely Dixie.

Earlier this week I went with my family to the Unclaimed Baggage store in Scottsboro, Alabama. When you lose your luggage while traveling, your stuff comes here. It's kind of like a thrift store, only it is full of items that people didn't want to give away. So instead of tatty sweaters and broken toys, you get expensive jackets and eReaders. And then you also get a few treasures, things that were never meant to be lost.

Like Hoggle, from the movie Labyrinth.

I visited Hoggle for the first time many years ago. His face was damaged. It looked like the skin had rotted away around his nose and mouth. An entire cheek was missing. He was encased behind thick glass, the small frame of his body looking empty and withered. But he was Hoggle, Sarah's friend in the Labyrinth, who gave her the poisoned apple, then repented and helped her storm Goblin City.

Since then Hoggle has been repaired. But I rather liked the old, tattered Hoggle better. I mean, that's kind of who his character was, anyways. Someone who has lost even the tiniest chance of friendship with others. A person who is hollowed out, decaying within, meets a stranger and decides to fight for her.

Riding in Cars with Authors

Every Friday night at Clarion West there is a party. These parties take place at the homes of local supporters of the workshop - wonderful, kind people who welcome students and local writers alike into their homes.

At these parties we were encouraged not to clump together with our classmates. There were strict penalties for clumping. Sometimes grapes rained from the sky to break us up. But it can be hard to break out of the comforting group of classmates and wander off to talk to an author you've been reading since childhood, or an author you've only just heard of, whose talk to the class on craft issues was so insightful and helpful that you took ten pages of notes.

The parties took place away from the sorority house where we lived and workshopped during the week. In order to get to these parties, we would depend on either Sarah's bus-savvy, Alberto's wonderful kindness, or we would ride with volunteers.

Many of the volunteers that drove us to the Friday night parties were writers. Some were Clarion West alumni, who gave us cheerful advice on how to survive. Some were writers we'd read and heard of long before coming to Seattle. Some were both.

Around Week 4 or Week 5, Vylar Kaftan came up to visit Seattle, and volunteered to drive some of us to the Friday night party. I signed up to ride in her car, along with my classmate Alisa.

Riding in the car with Vylar, Alisa and I got to talk to her one on one about Clarion West, about writing, about being an author in general. It was fantastic. I would have been too terrified to approach her at a party, but on the way to the party we had a great conversation.

I'm thinking of this because I recently read two awesome articles by Vylar posted on the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) Facebook feed. The most recent one is "Submission Statistics and Revision Habits."

This post is so immensely helpful to me right now. When you come out of a workshop like Clarion West, you have these first drafts of stories that need revision. But you might also have tons of ideas for new stories, and new ways of telling stories. I feel torn between wanting to revise my Clarion West stories and wanting to start new stories. My Clarion West  stories feel the closest I've ever been to writing stories that I love, and I feel like they're just a few paces away from being stories that other people would like to read, too. But I'm afraid I'm getting mired in re-working these stories too much, because it keeps me from writing new stories using the tools I've learned.

Vylar makes a wonderful point in her post about revision:

The amount of time it would take to bring an old story up to your current standards is usually better spent writing a new story. 

She goes on to point out that she is not advocating that writers avoid revising their work. But that once you start sending a story out for submission, that you keep it going until you either sell it or decide to trunk it.

 L. Timmel Duchamp, our Week Five instructor, told us how important it is to the writer to submit your stories. To send them out so you can begin writing new ones.

It's good for you on a deeper level than being efficient and good for your writing. It energizes you and makes you feel like you are part of the writing world, even if the story doesn't sell.

So I'm setting a goal for myself to revise my stories and submit them, but to also start writing new stories. Very soon.

I've heard people say that most people who want to write don't publish not because they aren't talented, or have interesting stories to tell. It's because they give up. Somewhere on the road they decide to take a step off of the pavement and do something else.

For me, submitting my stories is like signing-up to ride with an author I'd like to talk to, but am timid to approach otherwise.

It's another step forward.

Subtext and Star Trek

My boyfriend and I are on a quest to watch every episode, in order, of Star Trek: The Next Generation. We have recently finished Season One.

It's interesting to see the genesis of the characters, to see actors figuring out which gestures and tones to use. Riker doesn't have a beard, and has a fantastic layer of ADD, wanting always to Do Something. Mr. Data is sweetly annoying, and even the computer interrupts him to say, "enough."

There's one character, however, who I have little patience for, and view her presence as not only completely unnecessary, but also as detrimental to the storytelling:

Deanna Troi.


"I'm sensing hostility from this blog post."

Let's take, for example, the first season episode "We'll Always have Paris."

Picard is practicing his fencing with a partner when a strange time phenomenon occurs.

Random Lieutenant: "Interesting move sir. But what technique was that?"
Picard: "The technique of a desperate man."

<Strange time blur of their swords saluting>

Random Lieutenant: "Interesting move sir. But what technique was that?"
Picard: "The technique of a desperate man."

Picard confers with Riker via comlink, who says that they have experienced a similar phenomenon on the bridge. Picard runs up to the bridge in his fencing outfit, grabbing his towel and bringing it with him.

They receive an Emergency Transmission from Dr. Paul Manheim, asking for immediate assistance. The Enterprise lays in a course for Pegos Minor and heads off at Warp 8.

After we return from the beginning credits, Mr. Data gives Riker an infodump on Manheim. Picard supplements it, mentioning that Manheim was teaching physics at the university when Picard was in Paris.

As Picard relates this, he twirl-slaps the towel against his legs. This is really weird for Picard. Usually he is very calm and collected, even during the most dangerous assignment. Any viewer is going to pick up on the physical cues, and is going to appreciate the heightened tension from this character action.

Picard abruptly announces that he must change his clothes, and leaves a few acting commands before heading back to the fencing room.

But Deanna Troi can't let it pass without comment. This is the whole reason she's there. Her title is Counselor, but her storytelling purpose is to spell out the subtext of the characters' actions so that everyone, Absolutely Everyone, will be completely sure of what is happening.
She power walks to catch up with Picard before he steps on to the turbolift, and confronts him, saying that he acted very agitated at the news of Manheim, and that it is her duty to remind him that strong emotions can effect judgement.

Picard asks Troi to advise him.

"There are a few hours until we arrive. Perhaps you should use this time to analyze your feelings and put them into perspective."

Not only has she erased the tension and excitement that Picard's interesting actions set-up, but she's also given Picard advice which he was almost certainly going to employ using his own good judgement. He's heading back to the fencing room to change his clothes and shower. Everything's taken care of for the moment on the bridge. Why wouldn't he take a moment to reflect on the emotions bothering him? If Deanna Troi had not been in this scene, it would have moved more concisely and with greater tension.

There's a tricky balance between clarity and subtext. Your readers need to know what is happening, but they also want to be able to discover pieces of the narratives for themselves. The importance of clarity was one of my first lessons learned at Clarion West. It is, perhaps, the single most important aspect of a story. If you don't have clarity, then it is hard for others to even know how to help you fix your story.

But subtext mouthpieces are almost unbearable to me in fiction. I would rather be totally lost in a story than to have another character explain to me what is happening. That is one of my killswitches. Voiced subtext? Let's see what other books I want to read instead.

In order to have clarity in stories, it might be useful to have a Deanna Troi around in an early draft, to make sure a writer knows what the story is trying to say.

And then the writer can delete her in the next draft, long before showing the story to anyone.

I hope Deanna Troi's character grows stronger in the next season, and that she can help add to the tension of the Enterprise's adventures. But the other characters are charging ahead, becoming real people, while Troi is stuck as a scribble in the margins, a writer's Note to the Self. 

After Clarion West: Evasion

In the years before going to Clarion West, I would find the blogs written by soon to be Clarionites, and would follow them with devotion. Most bloggers would begin talking about their excitement over being accepted to the workshop, then maybe a few posts from the workshop describing their conversations with famous authors, and finally one post after the workshop saying, "I'm home, I'll blog about Clarion later." {Christopher Reynaga who attended Clarion West in 2008, has an awesome description of this on his blog.} But that later usually doesn't come about, and I was always curious and frustrated by this drop off in blog updates about Clarion. I wanted to know everything about the workshop so I could prepare for going there someday, if I were lucky enough to attend.

Neile Graham described leaving Clarion West to us as "raw", and that's how I felt my last morning at the sorority house. Some people had already left. Others were packing. When my ride to the airport arrived, things happened so quickly. I went out to say hi to the volunteer who would take me to the airport, and suddenly my classmates were around me, bringing out my luggage and helping me load it into the trunk.

How do you leave Clarion West? You don't. You kind of get taken away from it.

If you're lucky you'll have someone like Cassie to help you keep it together with secret tricks about stiff upper lips, Jei and Alex there to hug you and say you'll see them again, Mark to come out of the house at the last minute and wrap you in a bear hug. And you might have Maria saying she'll write to you, and Jack saying he'll see you again. And just when you think you've seen everyone for the last time, there will be Cassie and Jei leaning out of an upstairs window, waving to you, making you laugh, and pushing you into tears after all when you thought you'd make it to the airport without crying.

So not writing about Clarion West after you've come back to your other life is a kind of shield, or maybe just a good guard against writing overly emotional blog posts (I have trespassed, alas, and must pay the price). Going back to life post-Clarion is hard. So hard. But it is worthwhile, because you carry your friendships, and your knowledge, and your new stories with you.

There is a poem by Rilke that wraps in and out of the feelings I have for my Clarion West classmates. The last Friday night party I spent time talking with Jeremy, about going back, and about how we were just beginning to really know each other. There's this immense feeling of loss, of almost having.

You the beloved
lost in advance, you the never-arrived,
I don't know what songs you like most.
No longer, when the future crests toward the present,
do I try to discern you. All the great
images in me - the landscape experienced far off,
cities and towers and bridges and un-
suspected turns in the path
and the forcefulness of those lands
once intertwined with gods:
all mount up in me to signify
you, who forever eludes.
Ah, you are the gardens!
With such hope I
watched them! An open window
in the country house -, and you almost
stepped out pensively to meet me. I found streets, -
you had just walked down them,
and sometimes in the merchants' shops the mirrors
were still reeling from you and gave back with a start
my too-sudden image. - Who knows if the same
bird did not ring through both of us
yesterday, alone, at evening?

         ~ from Uncollected Poems, by Rainer Maria Rilke

At graduation we were given decoder rings that flash a blue light. I thought at first they were meant to guide us through our writing, to help us translate the mysteries and skills of craft into our own stories.

But the night I arrived home in Alabama after Clarion West, I discovered the real purpose of the decoder ring. I twisted the silver metal until the blue light flashed, hoping it would somehow take us all back to Seattle, back to the workshop and to each other. I stood in front of the mirror in my clothes that smelled of stale airlines, my pigtails I had brushed into place in the bathroom of the sorority house, and hoped that somehow the stories we had been writing would bend reality, and make this strange thing come true. But there was, of course, Of Course, only the blue blinking light.

So real life went on. I took a shower, I changed into clothes different from the ones I had worn the last six weeks. I plugged in my computer and sat at my old desk.

And there they were. Some traveling, some still in Seattle, some already home. All hearing echoes of each others' voices, seeing friendly faces in strangers'. Spread out across the hemispheres, but still and always together.