In Sputnik’s Orbit

Next week, I join the rest of the 2013 Writers of the Future winners in Hollywood for a week long writing workshop and gala. I’m getting excited! But before I head out, join me in rounding out the dozen with second quarter winner, K. C. Norton.

Stuart: Welcome aboard. Tell me something surprising about yourself.

K.C.: I like to scuba dive. Apparently this surprises people – I guess they assume that when I’m not working, I’m curled up in a hole to write, which is true roughly 51 weeks out of the year. Open water diving is the closest I’m likely to get to space travel, and almost as alien.

Stuart: No, there aren’t many other activities where you get to hover upside down. What got you into writing?

K.C.: Reading, definitely! I read the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings when I was really young, and then fell in love with the world of Harry Potter. I loved exploring imaginary worlds. I spent a lot of time by myself as a kid, and my family didn’t have a TV, so I spent a lot of time telling myself stories. Writing was a natural progression from there.

 Stuart: I imagine so. And how’ve you evolved since?

K.C.: Well, I started writing stories with plots. I wrote my first stories when I was ten, and thank goodness most of them have vanished into the aether, but I have a few things that have stuck around in various files and binders. A lot of my early work was based on things I’d enjoyed reading. For example, I read ElfQuest, and then wrote a story about elves who ride dragons – not original, but a little different. The more I write, the weirder my stories get, and hopefully they’re more original now! That said, I do write a lot of retellings of older tales… my WOTF story, for example.

 Stuart: Are you a pantser or a plotter?

 K.C.: I cannot plot to save my life. I have to have a draft out before I go back to make it coherent. When I plot, everything sounds awful and wooden. When I just fly by the seat of my pants, I find myself including weird details that end up being important later. Occasionally I’ll have a whole story come into my head at once, but I don’t know all the details. Other times I’ll write a few pages and wait months and months until the story comes together. When people ask me about “process,” I cannot tell a lie – I don’t have one. I would like to have one. Plotting sounds very convenient. I envy people that can plot consciously in advance.

Stuart: Describe your writer’s cave.

K.C.: I mostly write in my bed. I have a writing desk set up in my living room, with a super comfy chair, but my dog complains when she can’t snuggle me, and when I lie in bed or sit on my oddly small couch she can squeeze herself in beside me. Otherwise she goes batty.

Stuart: Do you have any unusual talents or hobbies?

K.C.: Like, do I play the nose harp? Alas, no. I do occasionally fire breathe. And I studied archaeology in school. I can tell you more than you probably want to know about Greek and Egyptian mythology or random architectural features. Other than that, my hobbies are reasonably normal.

Stuart: Star Trek or Star Wars?

K.C.: Must I pick one? I love Star Wars, but in my heart there are only three movies, and there will only ever be three movies. (Han Solo was my first love.) And TNG is pretty good, but I’m a die-hard TOS girl. I do not acknowledge any captain more recent than Picard. My apologies to George Takei on this subject.

Stuart: Oh I don’t know. I thought Captain Janeway was pretty impressive. If you had a superpower, what would it be?

K.C.: Flying. No doubt about it. I would fly all the time.

Stuart: Everyone says flying, but no one considers the bugs in the teeth. 😉 Do you ever dream about writing?

K.C.: I dream about stories that I later write down. I don’t dream about the act of writing – when I dream about work, I dream that customers are in my apartment and I have to serve them drinks. I think I’d prefer to dream about writing.

Stuart: Ha ha. I remember when I was a kid, I worked at a burger joint. I used to have nightmares about all the beeping timers. What was your favorite toy, growing up?

K.C.: Oooh… well, I had a Gizmo doll, from Gremlins. I tortured that poor stuffed monster. That’s a close tie with my Littlest Petshop menagerie. I think I had every cat available. Come to think of it, I think I still have them. I would spread them out all over the living room and talk to myself for hours.

Stuart: So sweet! If you adopted a wardrobe tag, what would it be?

K.C.: I would probably wear a monocle. Or a dapper hat.

Stuart: I like the idea of a monocle, or maybe a nez perce. Do you have a quote that inspires or amuses you?

K.C.: I love Neil Gaiman. His books are crazy awesome, his comics are sweet, his screenplays are outrageous, and his reading of Dr. Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham is Oscar-worthy. It really changed how I read the book. But the best advice he ever gave me (and the rest of the world) was: “Cat exploded? Make good art.” It’s funny, but then on days when your cat actually does explode, and you don’t know what to do with yourself because your life is a wreck… well, now I knew where to go from there.

Stuart: Thanks, K.C. See you next week!

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 Learn more about K.C. at www.facebook.com/greekpunk

As the Writers of the Future workshop draws near, Californian and 1st quarter winner, Terry Madden drops in on our interview series.

Stuart: Welcome, Terry, and once again, congratulations! To start of, what’s something that those who know you might find surprising?
Terry: I teach high school chemistry, and most of my students are surprised that I have Metallica listed on my Pandora channels right next to Anuna. I would say my taste in music crosses all kinds of lines.
Stuart: Eclectic is good. I lean toward Louis Armstrong, but I stick to acoustic when I’m writing. How about you? How’d you get started?
Terry: When I quit my job as a research tech in a genetics lab to stay home with my two small children, I had characters talking and acting out scenes in my head. My sister-in-law was into writing and had taken some workshops. She encouraged me to start writing scenes as they came to me and worry about figuring out the story later. I had never even read a book on writing, so I just started stringing things together. After ten years and a few writing workshops and conferences, I had a historical novel set in 12th century Ireland. Of course, as a first novel, it was a training ground and remains in a box in the basement.
Stuart: How’ve you evolved since?
Terry: I like this question a lot. I feel that writing is a means of exploring your own soul, at least, that’s how it’s felt for me. I started writing historical fiction because it was what I was reading at the time; it was what interested me (and still does.) But as you grow as a writer, new experiences and insights open new inroads into who you are and what your place in the world might be. A writing instructor encouraged me to try my hand at screenwriting, which I did and placed very well in some script competitions. I optioned a script to producer, Michael Phillips, who did “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”, “Taxi Driver”, “The Sting.” I learned immeasurable skills from story meetings with him and his junior producers, but the story never got off the ground because I had not yet found the key to it. Now that story, in a very different incarnation, will be in volume 30 of the Writers of the Future Anthology.
Stuart: Suuweet!
Terry: However, at the turn of the century (it’s kind of fun to say that), I had some challenges in my personal life which included the death of my brother and my house burning down.
Stuart: Oh no!
Terry: All of my writing (including the backup disks which sat next to the computer) burned. Whatever I had in hard copy in the basement survived, which was one piece–my first novel. I gave up writing and went back to work teaching; it was a redefining time for me. I didn’t write for 13 years until one of my students started pestering me about a story idea he and I had cooked up in a discussion during an astronomy class. I started sketching an outline, and ultimately writing a fantasy novel, Three Wells of the Sea, which should be coming out this summer.
Stuart: Awesome! Well better late than never, right?
Terry: Were those 13 years wasted? I would like to say no, because without the relationships and experiences I had during those years, I wouldn’t be writing the things I’m writing now.
Stuart: Sure. Some things you just can’t plan. Which leads me to my next question. Are you a pantser or plotter?
Terry: I would have to say pantser, though I try desperately to impose some kind of order to my notes and outlines. I agree with Stephen King who said, “I distrust plot for two reasons: first, because our lives are largely plotless, even when you add in all our reasonable precautions and careful planning; and second, because I believe plotting and the spontaneity of real creation aren’t compatible…” Excessive plotting can kill the realism and the growth of characters; it can come off as mechanistic rather than organic. Some people handle that very well. Just not me.
Stuart: I agree, but a writer also has to produce, right?
Terry: That’s not to say I don’t sketch my acts and turning points. I have used three act structure for so long, it enables me to impose over-arching goals. Since I am now primarily a novelist, I set the turning points as targets and allow characters to find a way to get there. I’ve always been in awe of people who color code their scenes and create intense time lines with every story beat incorporated. I just can’t do it. I have a vague idea of where I want my characters to be at the end of a story, but I don’t really know until I get them there.
Stuart: That sounds about right. So where do you do your writing?
Terry: I write in a spare bedroom on a big oak desk that looks out over a beautiful valley. It can be distracting because there’s always something to watch out there. My desk is about 8 inches deep in notes in the form of notebooks, receipts, scraps of paper and random newspaper clippings. It’s a pile. Like my brain.
Stuart: Ha ha. Star Trek or Star Wars?
Terry: I would have to say Battlestar Galactica and Firefly. Sorry. Star Trek and Star Wars are about equal on my Scifi meter.
Stuart: I agree. If you had a superpower, what would it be?
Terry: Whatever it is, flying would have to be involved. I think transforming into a badass dragon would work for me.
Stuart: Good answer. Do you dream about writing?
Terry: The idea for my winning story for Writers of the Future came to me in that fog just before you fall sound asleep. Dreams often give me some deeper understanding of my work, and great imagery.
Stuart: When you were a kid, what was your favorite toy?
Terry: Breyer horses and matchbox cars, often interacting in vast melodramas. I used to build roads and little stick houses and the matchbox cars would drive all over.
Stuart: Jordie had his visor, Sherlock his deerstalker. If you adopted a wardrobe tag, what would it be?
Terry: I think I would want a leather vest with wings on the back like Darrel in The Walking Dead.
Stuart: Ha ha! Did you bring along a favorite quotation?
Terry: Jimmy Dugan (Tom Hanks’ character) in “A League of their Own” says, “It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great.”
Stuart: Truer words, never spoken. Well thanks Terry. See you in LA!

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Learn more about Terry at www.threewellsofthesea.com

This week, a hearty welcome to fellow Writers of the Future winner, Shauna O’Meara.

Stuart: Thanks for dropping by, Shauna, and congratulations! Introduce yourself. What can you tell us that might surprise your friends?

Shauna: I come from country Australia. I adore spiders, insects (especially native bees), molluscs and plants and, in another life, might have been an entomologist or botanist. I also have a longstanding fascination with parasitic diseases, though strictly-speaking, my friends do know about this since most of them have been subjected to my specimen jars of ‘worms’.

I’m worried about the deteriorating condition of the natural environment and am concerned about some of the futures that might emerge from climate change, human overpopulation, resource shortages, genetic patenting, economic crises, world bee decline and technologies like genetic engineering (especially of infectious diseases and crops), coal-seam gas mining, bionic implants, internet dominance and virtual reality. As such – if only to get my own head around the big questions – these are the territories I tend to explore in my writing.

Stuart: Wow. That’s a lot to think about. Is that what got you into writing?

Shauna: I have always been into ‘story’ and ‘politics’ and why characters act and interact in the complex ways they do, from my earliest memories of the ‘adult’ story lines present in “Astro Boy” (1980s), “The Animals of Farthing Wood” and the “Animated Adventures of Batman”, but the book that really captivated me and made me want to create worlds of my own was Richard Adam’s: “Watership Down.” The way he presented his rabbits as creatures that could be depicted as having personalities and a ‘culture’, whilst still being essentially rabbits and not just rabbit-shaped humans, made me want to emulate his skill with my own characters.

Stuart: Very astute. And how have you evolved since?

Shauna: I hang out, online and in-person, with a super-generous group of speculative fiction writers (several of whom are past Writers of the Future winners and several of whom have even managed to make a living out of this passion called writing) and have been getting my work critiqued by them for a while now. Their feedback has helped me improve in the show-don’t-tell department and to choose my descriptions more precisely and succinctly so as to avoid great swathes of descriptive waffle and exposition. They have also helped me better understand how to achieve suspension of disbelief and characters whose motives and decisions make sense.

I have also become broader in my reading and, consequently, more daring in my writing and the topics I tackle. I have discovered that, while I always thought I would write fantasy, having read mostly fantasy in my formative years, it’s been near-future science fiction and imagined-future politics and the societal and ethical dilemmas thrown up by technology, population and climate change that I am finding most interesting to both read and write about.

Stuart: I agree. Reading outside your genre is important. As is standing ideas on end. My first novel started from the thought “What if global warming was saving us from something worse–the next ice age?” And I fooled around with that idea for far too long to mold it into a story. How about you. Are you a pantser or plotter?

Shauna: I am a plotter when it comes to character and spend a lot of time working out exactly ‘who’ each character is from the outset so that I know in advance the kinds of things they will do and say in any given situation.

Stuart: That’s very interesting. I’m just the opposite. My characters mostly pop up fully formed. I just know them. But I have to plot out the world I’m going to send them through.

Shauna: I am also a plotter when it comes to world-building and the rules of the world – because I feel you need to know what the limits and challenges of your world are first and where a good story might occur in the midst of all that world-building before you can then plunge your characters head-first into it.

I try to plan the major plot-points my characters are heading for (a brief outline), but then I usually leave the stuff in the middle up to a bit of pantsing. I need some pantsing to make me excited about ‘what happens next’ and keep me writing.

Stuart: I understand. Where’s your writer’s cave?

Shauna: I currently rent a fully self-contained bedsit, not much bigger than a hotel room, with a circular wooden table covered in chipped blue paint for my laptop, an alcove for my TV and another alcove for my scanner, camera and graphic design stuff. It’s close-living, but homely, with great views over the Brindabellas (our local mountain range) and a flourishing herb garden by the front door that perfumes the house when it rains.

Stuart: Sounds nice. For readers in the US who might not know, a bedsit is a rented private room or suite with shared kitchen, bath, etc. It’s a sensible, economical way to sublet a pre-existing structure, but is less popular in the states where we’re all “rugged individualist” about everything. I like the idea. Writerly recluse I may be, but we American’s don’t have enough community these days. Do you have any unusual talents or hobbies, Shauna?

Shauna: I would have said drawing, but you said ‘unusual,’ so I’m going to say that I can warble like an Australian Magpie – to the point I’ve even had birds call back to me. I’ve won wine before with that trick.

Stuart: Sweet! I’ll nag you to do that when we’re walking down Hollywood Boulevard. You can be the magpire. Tina Gower can drop by with her monkey call. Star Trek or Star Wars?

Shauna: Farscape and Planetes.

Stuart: Good answer! Farscape I know. Planetes, I had to look up. I’ll have to find that for my daughters. They adore Manga and K-pop. If you had a superpower, what would it be?

Shauna: Aww…just one?

Stuart: Yes. Sorry. I don’t make the rules. Well, yes, I guess I did actually ;-).

Shauna: Travelling long distances sometimes bugs me because it feels like I am wasting valuable time ‘getting there’ – so the ability to teleport would be high on the list. I would also like to be able to go completely without sleep so I could put that unproductive third of my life to good use creating.

Stuart: Life is too short for dawdling. I’d like to have that on a suction cup projectile I can fire at other cars while driving. Do you dream about writing?

Shauna: While I’m awake, all my dreams are about writing, but when I actually dream, I have crazy adventures I can seldom remember in the morning, interspersed with those horrible dreams you get about being back at uni and confronted by an exam paper you can’t quite make out, but that you know for sure you haven’t studied for.

Stuart: Yes well, in my case, I call that last category “memories.” Moving on… When you were a kid, what was your favorite toy?

Shauna: A collection of My Little Ponies, who I used to recast as the various rabbits from Watership Down (don’t ask … My-Little-Ponyrabbit fan-fiction is complicated).

Stuart: Yeah, toys used to be more open-ended (and they should be). But even growing up, we never used anything the way it was intended, and our lives were richer for it. I’d have strapped bottle rockets to the ponies and my then astro-ponies, but your thing’s good too.

Shauna: Being a pub-kid, I also, at one time, had full access to an original 1980s Donkey Kong game table, making it, by default, mine. My dad used to take bets that no-one could beat me on the machine. I’m still waiting for my cut…

Stuart: Neat. I remember those. When I was little, there used to be Mrs. Pack-man tables at the pizza places. It was terrific because anyone could learn the game in a second and groups could play together while waiting for the food. If you adopted a unique wardrobe tag, what would it be?

Shauna: Being Australian, probably an Akubra (the rabbit-felt hat in my photo) and a caped, oilskin Driza-Bone greatcoat with lots of brass buttons.

Stuart: Nothing beats the classics! And capes are definitely cool. Would you like to share a quote?

Shauna: I have always lived by the Confucian saying, “Choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life.” It has long governed the way I think about work and ambition and what I want to do with my life. I love what I do now for work, but I think that, if I can achieve my next goal – to make enough from writing and art that they can become my full-time pursuits – I will finally have achieved the very essence of that quote.

Stuart: Very wise indeed. Well thanks Shauna . It’s been a pleasure, and I can’t wait to see your wardrobe in person at the workshop in LA.

Shauna: I am really looking forward to meeting you and all the other winners of Writers and Illustrators of the Future, as well as all the writing mentors and teachers and staff at WotF and Galaxy Press. I am hoping to learn a lot and have some fun and make some great new friends.

Cheers

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You can check out Shauna on the web at theshaunacorner.wordpress.com and on Facebook and Flickr.