Taos Toolbox workshop

This summer, I attended the Taos Toolbox workshop, a 2-week SF/F writing workshop in Angel Fire, New Mexico, run by Walter Jon Williams and Nancy Kress.

It was a good but tough two weeks, very busy in a beautiful location. There were 18 of us and we each got to submit two pieces--a 10k piece the first week, and a 5k piece the second. So, naturally, we spent most of our days in workshop, responding to our peers' work, and then evenings mostly reading work for the next day.

Walter and Nancy were compassionate, funny, interesting, and exacting. They didn't pussyfoot around or pat us on the back often, but they made sure we knew when we'd succeeded. I appreciated their senses of humor and their focus on problem-solving when our writing didn't meet the mark.

We also had guest speakers throughout our time there, who came to speak about different areas of expertise and the writing life. While we were all looking forward to George R. R. Martin and I really enjoyed meeting him, the most helpful guest speaker for me was E.M. Tippetts, an indie-publishing guru with lots of practical strategies for launching a book or series as a self-published author. Her talk was so practical, so jam-packed with information, and I came away inspired to try self-publishing someday.

Taos is also billed as a graduate workshop but I’m not sure I’d agree. I'd compare it more to technical or professional school. The workshop is more geared towards commercial writers and making your work sellable, than it is about honing a creative aesthetic. To that end, we learned a lot of very practical writerly advice, some of it truisms or plot formulas that writers have likely heard before. But what really helped was being forced to put it into practice via critiques and writing exercises. Honestly, I wish there'd been a little more writing exercises or structured time for writing, but I do feel like I've developed a more judicious eye for my own work and the work of others. The two weeks felt like learning to write from muscle memory. It was almost as if our instructors said, "Oh, you think you know this writing truism? Then do it, over and over." At the end of two weeks, I came away with specific writing maxims much more ingrained in my process than before.

The aspect that sets Taos apart from the two other big summer workshops (Clarion and Odyssey) is that it's much more novel focused. Most people in our group were workshopping the beginnings of novels, and I took the first segment of Jurassic Unicorn. While we got line edits on what we submitted, we also had a lot of chances to talk larger plot, and I even got to sit down with Walter and get his feedback on my plot revisions at the end of the two weeks. I came away feeling much stronger about the shape of the Jurassic Unicorn plot.

Things I learned:

I learned about letting your readers know what to expect from your work right away.

I learned about plotting.

I learned about making an ending as strong as a beginning.

I learned about active, atmospheric description.

I learned about the ups and downs of the publishing world, and strategies to adapt to a changing market.

I learned to be tougher in my criticisms of others, and more exacting in what I demand from myself. After Taos, I can look back at stories I thought were finished and already I can see where they drag, are bloated, are convoluted.

And I learned that the tough thing about criticism is separating taste from technique. Technique, you can change. You can improve. But if your vision doesn’t match someone else’s taste, there’s not much you can do except shrug and say “well, you’re not my audience." 

This was what happened to me, with Jurassic Unicorn--it was not to several people's taste, which kinda crushed me while I was there. But I've bounced back from that now and am focused on changing the things about my technique that I can, while staying true to my original vision for the book. 

Hands down the best part of Taos was making friends in the SF/F world. I'm so excited that I connected with folks there, people that I will be able to share work with and learn from for a long time. 

WriteFest Exercise 3: Fan Fiction

For this exercise, Cassie asked us to pick a minor character or villain from a story we are familiar with, and write a scene from their point of view.

I chose Terry Pratchett's Death of Rats.

**

The Death of Rats picked his way through the spilled corn on the floor of the granary. In some shadowed, spiderwebbed corner of his mind, he remembered corn, remembered the feel of the kernels as he sheared through them with his teeth, the sweet dribble of juice that spilled down his throat as he chewed. But Death of Rats had not eaten corn in lo these many eons. He was here on other business.

Hanging from the rafters of the granary amid dusty beams of sunlight, a cage spun slowly. Three rats were inside, scurrying around. He heard their squeaks of fright, a scuffle of aggression. He examined the round structure, wondering how he’d get up there. The stuccoed walls were criss-crossed with wooden scaffolding. He slung his scythe over his shoulder, narrowed his eyes until only two slits of otherworldly blue showed beneath his hood, and began his climb. SQUEAK, he called up to the rats above, letting them know he was on his way. They lay silent and still on the floor of the cage.

At first, climbing the scaffolding was enjoyable. He was able to stretch his long legs and arms in ways that his job didn’t usually require of him. A lot of standing around, it was, interspersed with moments of riding his pale white rat-sized horse. It was rare that he got to be active. It was rare that he got to scurry.

He was scurrying now, though, leaping from beam to beam in an effort to make it to cage before the rats inside expired. Probably poison, he thought. It’s usually poison. He could hear their labored breathing slowing. If he didn’t make it there in time, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to guide them into the Rat Waiting room. Rats often had the mistaken impression that he was in charge of deciding whether they went into Rat Heaven, or Rat Hell. SQUEAK, he reassured them. Those decisions were made farther up the chain. He was only the guide.

This scurrying was taking too long, so he decided to make use of one of his privileges as the Death of Rats and leaped out into space. He did not fall, though, but instead ascended quickly in a column of blue light until he hung just outside the door to the cage. SQUEAK? he asked, knocking gently on the wire. He liked to be polite.

**

WriteFest Writing Exercise 2: Non-Human Characters

For this exercise, Cassie let us pull 4 random characteristics that real animals have on Earth, and then combine them to create a new character. And it had to be sentient. My four characteristics were:

1) Has antenna

2) Mother can birth one litter of babies with multiple fathers

3) Gills to breathe in water

4) Can see clearly in the dark

So welcome to the "cave-creepers."

**

Margarine huddles on the side of the subterranean lake, her antenna twitching incoherently as she expels streams of goo into the water from her mouth. Around her, seven male cave creepers flutter, their antenna brushing hers and each others. They radiate excitement and concern. As this is the first time they have witnessed birth, they worry about her health. Should she be this pale, her skin this dry? As they have all just become fathers, they are jubilant and relieved. Our children, the movements of their antenna all but shout, our children are healthy, and alive!

Silhouetted against the soft glow of the lake, twenty-two newborn cave creepers flit in the water. Their bodies are soft, slick, translucent. To the fathers, these babies look so vulnerable, so exposed. But they stretch their wings and fluff their neck-ruffs of fur in pride anyways, bragging to each other through flicks and swishes of antenna: See how fast that one swims? She will be a hunter, for sure. And the thickness of his hind legs? He will certainly win his year’s race to the surface.

Margarine, her wide eyes bleary with exhaustion, gazes blankly at her children. Her lovers settle around her, gently herd her up the rocky bank to the nest they have prepared. Here she will rest, here she will be fed and pampered through her recovery, while the seven fathers take turns watching their young ones grow and develop in the water. When the baby cave creepers have developed lungs and the thin membrane of their wings begins to stretch from wrist to side, they will crawl from the lake and it will be Margarine’s job to teach them all she knows. But for now, it’s the squish of fat grubs and the crunch of tender minnows that she looks forward to. A month or more of nothing, she manages to communicate. How delightful!

**

WriteFest Writing Exercise 1: Setting

Last week, I went to Houston to the WriteFest conference and took a 4-day workshop on speculative fiction with Cassandra R. Clarke. Houston was great--good food, great art--and the workshop itself was a wonderful experience. Cassie's discussions of writing were down-to-earth and inspiring, and she did a great job of fostering a community within our little group. And WriteSpace Houston is full of smart, fun, supportive writers ... I now want to start something like this in Oxford.

Anyways, here's my first writing exercise, based on Cassie's prompt about setting: Think of a place you either liked or hated from your childhood. Describe it, being careful to include some of the emotions you associate with this place.

**

I’ve run away from my mom in J.C. Penney’s again and I’m hiding in one of those circular racks of clothes, crouching down in the middle. I turn around, glancing out the slivers of space between the baggy shirts and polyester pants. People mill around outside my hiding place; a woman drags her son, red-faced and screaming, by the arm. A man stops to consider a tie, flips it over to glance at the price, walks away.

I am safe. Hidden. Quiet as the eye of a hurricane amid the bustle of the shoppers and the hum of the smooth jazz. Even when a middle-aged woman comes to thumb through the clothing, pulling out a hideous printed dress and holding it against her, she doesn’t notice my pale face shining in the gloom. If she did, she might shriek, or laugh—it’s happened before. But not this time. I press against the side of the metal frame, letting my head sink back into the clothing until it covers everything but the tip of my nose, the way I like to pretend I’m drowning in the tub.

I can see my mom over in the corner; she hasn’t noticed I’m gone yet. She will, though; when she does, my pleasure will be diminished by a spark of anxiety and guilt, pressing up from under my skin until the only recourse is to duck between the hangers and reveal myself to her, hugging her legs tightly and smiling up at her so she’ll forgive me and still buy me an Orange Julius later. But for now, I am a tiny god huddling in a dark circle, watching the world go by, gleeful in my invisibility.
**