Sara King

Okay, so I’m not a total failure at all types of word games.  We (12 slightly intoxicated Odyssey writers) played 2 different word games last night.  The first, Apples to Apples, I have tried in the past and failed miserably.  Same result here, except with a roomful of writers, the effect was magnified oh, say, a few million fold. 

The second, In A Pickle, was a game in which you reason your way along a chain of nouns so that each card that is played afterwards must be able to encompass the card preceeding it (and only the card preceeding it).  For instance, if you were to start with Rock, you could put a rock in a Bucket, a bucket in a Car, a car in a Garage, a garage in a House, and a house in a Bedroom (dollhouse in child’s bedroom), a bedroom in an Anthill (queen’s chambers), an anthill in a Terrarium, a terrarium in a Box…  You get the picture.  Maybe this is my lawyer side coming out, but I managed to argue my way through all of them (except for President in a Sandwich, which I think they were just being silly for not accepting.  Hasn’t anyone heard of roast beef??) 

Sooo, yeah.  I like that game

In other news, I got a really cool rejection from ChiZine that went like this:

“Dear Sarah King:
I very much regret to tell you that ChiZine will pass on “The Mariner’s Lure”. The work was much discussed and greatly admired among the editorial staff, but in the end the work didn’t make it through the final winnowing process. This was a very near miss, I’m afraid. We do ask that you please send us you future work.

Best,

Michael Marano”

And then he added a P.S. email:

“Dear Sara King:

I forgot to recommend that you send “Lure”, with my endorsement, to Gordon Van Gelder at Fantasy and Science Fiction.

Best,

MM”

HOT DAMN!! 

Plus, it just so happened that on that very same afternoon, I had just gotten a 16-person roundtable critique on the same exact story (The Mariner’s Lure) by the good folks at Odyssey, the general consensus of whom was that the story had no plot.  Thinking this was a little fortuitous (and a little weird) I then proceeded to ask Michael if he would like to read a rewrite based on the Odyssey critiques.  Here is his response:

“Dear Sarah King:
On principle, I wouldn’t say no to looking at a rewrite of “Lure”, assuming of course that the submission is routed to me and not the other 3 editors. But a. I’d much rather see a new work from you and b. ChiZine is about to  shift gears and do its annual short story contest, so it would be months before we could take a look at it during which you could be submitting it elsewhere (assuming you don’t enter the rewrite for the contest).

I’m curious… how exactly does this story _not_ have a plot?

Best,

Michael Marano”

So I got to flex my atrophied plotting muscle and explain how The Mariner’s Lure had no causal chain.  He hasn’t responded yet, so either I dazzled him with brilliance or I baffled him with bullshit.  I’m tending to think that it was the latter.  God I hate plot.

Speaking of plot, this weekend I am going to plot out a new causal chain for Gnat Hunter.  Hell, maybe I’ll scrap the whole damn story and start over.  Writers of the Future ends the quarter on the 30th of this month.  It’s friggin’ awesome that Baen’s Universe snapped up Sheet-Charmer and Planetside, but with both of them shortlisted, I have no kickass stories to blow the people at WotF away, and I sure as hell don’t want to ruin my line (which means I must get another semifinalist this quarter or I’ll have to go cry away my shame in a corner somewhere).  DAMN.  Now I’ve gotta spend my weekend at Odyssey scrambling to get that story finished so I can send it out on Monday.  Yarg.

I was really looking forward to that extra sleep.

-Sara King

www.kingfiction.com

I used to think that plotting out a story was for sissy-la-la fools who didn’t have a grasp on true creativity.  I used to laugh at those poor sots who wrote down the events of their stories in forty pages of loving detail using highlighters and bullet points before ever putting a word to Word.  I used to snicker behind my hand and fancy myself above all that.

Then Jeanne Cavelos (the Director of Odyssey) told me my stories had no plot.

Further, she told me that my goal at this workshop should be to learn how to use highlighters and bullet-points to create a cohesive plan before I start randomly throwing things on paper.

I snickered behind my hand and thought something to the effect of, “You want a plot??  I’ll show you a plot.”

And then I tried to plot.

And tried.

And tried again.  7 times I started stories, 7 times I threw them out.  I was stunned.  How could I, Sara King, not get this?

A week later, I was no longer laughing.  When I finally had to turn in my plotting assignment, I felt like a kid caught filling in the homework answers from the back of her Algebra textbook because she’d stayed up late to party the day before, and then hoping the teacher didn’t notice.

The teacher noticed.

My story was a total cop-out.  There was no plot.  It was set in Alaska so I didn’t have to think about scene.  The ending was basically where I had decided I was too tired to continue and therefore had one character shoot the protagonist in the head. 

From the way she was looking at me throughout the critique session, Jeanne was not pleased.  Afterwards, when we met for our private session, guess what my task was?  You guessed it.  Plot a story.

So, yeah.  Back to Square One.

-Sara King

www.kingfiction.com

I had a really awesome dream last night.  Basically, I’m working on the yard outside my grandma’s house and I hear some racket inside.  No one is SUPPOSED to be inside the house, so I go to investigate.  It’s a little kid stealing Cheerios.  When I confront him, he said he died in 1976 and he was told to come guide me because I’m going along the wrong path.

Damn I’m gullible.  (I just realized that if a little kid had told me that in real life, when I caught him in my Grandma’s house, stealing Cheerios, I probably would have believed him.)

So I have this Zen moment with this kid while we’re peacefully walking along the edge of a lake, discussing Life, when I notice the kid is giving the lake wary glances over his shoulder.  I ask him, “What are you seeing?” or something stupid like that.  He gives me a wary glance, like, “You can’t handle the truth,” then nods at the lake to make me look again.

I immediately get a close-up of a drowning woman and her full-throated scream blasts me out of bed.

Apparently, the ghost saw ghosts.

Anyway, I thought it was cool.

Another thing I think is cool is all the sleep I’ve gotten recently.  A full eight hours of it.  Damn, I bet that won’t last.  (I started a couple stories over the weekend, but my interest petered out on both of them, so I’m envisioning another marathon writing spree the night before I’m supposed to turn in my next assignement.) 

Yay for procrastination!!

-Sara King

www.kingfiction.com

I should be writing, but instead I am going to give whoever hacked my thundress accounts and changed my passwords a piece of my mind:

You are human slime encased in the filthy miasma of a perverted conscience.

I got my email addresses back, and if anyone got spammed, I deeply apologize.  (I don’t THINK anyone was spammed, but if you were, I prostrate myself before you and beg forgiveness for this lapse.) 

So…yeah.  Back to writing.  I spent 2.5 hours this morning that I SHOULD have been writing re-hacking my accounts and cussing a blue streak (I woke up my apartment-mates with repeated applications of the word “Fuck.”).  And all this during the middle of Odyssey, when my ass is already dragging a greasy smear across the floor.  You’d think that hackers would have more consideration for my needs.  Gah.

-Sara King

www.kingfiction.com

Hours of sleep.  Spent most of the night reading the critiques that I had been given yesterday.  Session went over surprisingly well, and I was shocked that most people liked the ending (which I felt I had tossed on there as an afterthought because I was tired…)  Also, there was generally a lot more reading into symbolism and theme than I had ever imagined putting into the story.  People gave it a lot more gravity than I had given it whilst writing it.  (Maybe that’s because I was so exhausted while writing it that my subconscious was allowed to take free rein.)  I’ll edit it this weekend and send it to the mailing list if I get a spare moment to breathe.

-Sara King

www.kingfiction.com

Hours of sleep.  Math is fun!! 

Getting my 2800 word short story critiqued today.  I wrote it in 5 sleep-deprived hours and had no time to edit, so it’s not nearly as good as what I want it to be.  Pretty much stream-of-consciousness, now that I look at it.  i can find at least a dozen ways my fellow students will rip me a new one.  O joy.

Let the games begin.

-Sara King

www.kingfiction.com