Serifs

A student wrote me, saying, "Voice has never really been explained to me, although it is something that is really difficult to explain."

I wrote back: 

I don’t think most teachers know what they are talking about when we say “voice” either.

Here’s what I think is going on with voice much of the time: most student write in the same voice. It’s a dry, academic sounding thing that emphasizes linking verbs (am, is, are, was, were, be, being and been), passive voice (”The poem is told with skill”), and a slightly elevated vocabulary where the writers use words and transitions they would never use if they were speaking.  Voiceless writing also specializes in underdevelopment, undersupport and generalities.

The easiest way I know to develop voice, other than listening to your writing out loud, and then changing the wooden sounding stuff, is to use action verbs instead of linking verbs. Action verbs force you to make a choice. Instead of “The day was nice,” you have to write about something happening that makes the day nice, like “The breeze rustled through the corn stalks.” Linking verbs are all about not making choices, while action verbs are about identifying or inventing what was happening.

Since the act of choosing creates individuality, action verbs help to bring your voice to the front. You choose different details than the next person. You make individual choices, and that helps to bring out your voice.

That's the simple explanation or at least a good place to start.  Other components of voice comes from rhythm (not just length, but also an attention to the bounce of the words off the tongue, just like poetry), sound effects (assonance, consonance, alliteration, rhyme and near rhyme), figurative language (mostly similes and metaphors, but everything else too).

It seems to me that an extraordinary amount of what we call "voice" comes out of the details.  The more vague the writer is, the more voice also seems to fade.

You can't go too far wrong, though, by looking at how you choose verbs.

I just had a disk/document failure and lost the entire manuscript.

Oh, FUCK.

I have a saved doc, but all it has is little rectangles in a row, no text. WTF.

::update::

Well, aparently it's gone. Eaten. Vanished. Toast. The "save document as" I was instructed to do apparently overwrote the original. I've tried every "forced repair" unseelie and I could come up with (poor guy happened to pop up in IM), and it's a no go. Irreperable damage.

So. Fortunately I'd sent out the entire document on Thursday, so all I lost was today's work, about 500 words, which I can recreate. Sorta. But not exactly. And I also did back edits and things, which are now totally gone, even from my memory. One was a continuity error which I suddenly realized was there, and OF COURSE I DON'T RECALL WHAT I DID TO FIX IT, and the other major one was the insertion of a paragraph from my outtakes (I KNOW, WRITE DON'T EDIT). So...fuck me. I know what I have to do. And I was going to go to the theater tonight. I might just anyway.

DAMMIT.

Random blurbs that float in my head and keep me from doing my work proper today...

I have developed a peculiar writing habit lately. It's shuffling a deck of cards. It started because I wanted to remind myself of the feeling of shuffling cards. One of my protags learned to shuffle for the first time. Things develop in the story along some card metaphors and then even games like whist and King's Gambit I found myself looking up lately. I pulled out the aces from the deck, refreshing myself as to their actual designs.

While looking for reference on the Ace of Hearts, I found more interesting information on the highly decorated Ace of Spades which I found curious and intriguing. I left the Ace of Spades on the bottom of my deck. And ever since then, while writing scenes that no longer have anything to do with cards, I keep reshuffling my deck of cards between lines when I'm stuck. And I have this obsessive compulsive desire to leave the Ace of Spades on the bottom. I've only lost it once so far.

It's also given me a curious idea for an art series.

In other funny news, my boss at my part-time day job asked me to go into a very old storage unit for the company and start digging through to find some documents of vital importance. I get down there with Ben, who is an ex-porter and a second-degree black belt (now you see why I'm marrying him eh?) and we pull up the sliding door on the unit and it's like I'm an archaeologist all over again. Behind thick ropes of debris-scattered cobwebs dangling from the storage unit door, it's all mystery boxes and ancient tech ware. No one has breathed the air in this room for probably a decade. The entirety is covered in cobwebs and dust so thick the words of the boxes are mostly unreadable and the pathways once disturbed will destroy the tender work of countless spiders. This is normal in California outdoor storage -- we live in a desert and sometimes you forget that until you leave something outside for a season.

It's an Epic Personal Assistant Moment. Suddenly I'm flashing back to my more questionable tomb crawls as an anth grad in college. Indiana Jones's voice in my head, 'Storage... Why'd it have to be storage?' Meanwhile Ben's got the heebeejeebees and is all, 'No Fiona wait!' but I'm diving in with my feet as a broom, stepping away all the cobwebs and peering into the dark recesses of the crypt. 'Think we'll find the Mummy in here?'

Ahh ... good times, good times ...

Also for the record, probably the funniest line to date between Ben and I:

Fiona: [insert random flippant evil comment here doing dishes]
Ben: You're not allowed to write villains anymore.

My review for dr. Horrible part III is up at firefox.org.  The link is here.

Wow, this looks like a very interesting new pro-rate market:

Beneath Ceaseless Skies (Submission Guidelines)

And, this market could be just be the place for my own fantasy! I write pretty much what they call "literary adventure fantasy," so this could be up my alley. Yay! :-)

Now I just need to see if I have any suitable stories that are unsold and available -- probably not -- been too busy with trying to stay alive and make money to write. *sigh*

That art hobby can be a time and money sink, William. I get e-mailings every week from Cheap Joe's Art Stuff and Daniel Smith, making my fingers twitch.

Continuing yesterday's cliffhanger . . . I didn't have to help drive people to the airport (three hours or more on the road) because both Tom DeHaven and John Beckman had volunteered their cars and time. But the car they were following, Rob's pick-up, started sounding funny, as if the clutch were partway in -- which is not an amusing sound when you have an automatic transmission. He had to pull over, and called Tom on the cell and asked him to wait by the side of the road. He caught up with them, but most of the people were out of the car watering the plants, so they played hopscotch for a while. He finally found an auto supply place where he could buy a case of transmission fluid and the proper hex wrenches to fix it -- of course the one day he left his tool case at home. When they finally pulled into the airport, their plane was ten minutes from taking off. Too late to check luggage, but (I guess thanks to it being a small airport) they were allowed to tag everything as carry-on and jump aboard.

So everyone did get away, but just barely.

Anyway, I made a big pot of spaghetti and meat sauce. For some reason we had a huge surplus of limes, and John found a bottle of vodka in the freezer, so we had nice fresh gimlets as appetizers. Rain started and we chatted the night away. Lightning and thunder for the first time in three weeks. Serious storm alert on the radio, but nothing violent happened. Just a deep soaking, which will please the parched farmers.

Three writers and one artist have this island to themselves, at least until Monday. I'll go off to the airport and probably meet the new crew as I escape for civilization myself. Mixed feelings -- it will be great to get home, but I sure have loved the woods and the double working days.

Joe

The Rhysling Award winners have been announced. Check SFPAnet for details. In the meantime, congratulations to fibitz and yuki_onna!

Everyone say hi to Jenna Rhodes, aka Emily Drake, aka . . . well, I'll let her list them all. *grin* Jenna is the latest invite in my Author Introduction series and she's here to talk about her latest book, The Dark Ferryman, as well as talk about herself and writing. So without further ado, heeeeeeeeeeeeeeere's Jenna!

"Hi, and thanks to Joshua for inviting me into his journal. Excuse me while I take a moment to swipe a crackled finish vase that seems to be just sitting here forlornly…

I juggle seven or eight pen names, and my license plate says I’m a PRO WRTR. More often it is mistaken for PRO WRESTLER and I’ve been asked if I know Hulk Hogan or (insert your favorite wrestler here). I’ve been known as Emily Drake, Elizabeth Forrest, Anne Knight, Charles Ingrid and R.A.V. Salsitz. Different names for different marketing audiences. I’ve been autographing and paneling as Jenna Rhodes this last year.





Today is somewhere around the middle of July. I use calendars for the pretty pictures and watches not at all unless I’m sitting on a panel or giving a lecture in which case I must pay attention to the passage of time. Otherwise, I try to ignore it. Unless you count the little post-it notes attached to my monitor which exhort me 15 pages a day or 7 and 5 and 5 (which is my new mantra except that post-it note dried up and fell off somewhere which means either my deadline is forfeit or I have to find a better way to attach my goals to my work machines). I’m currently working as Jenna Rhodes. Book two of The Elven Ways was released in June and has gotten some really nice comments from readers who also loved book one. I think Josh is inserting a link here to The Four Forges [Amazon, Mysterious Galaxy] and The Dark Ferryman [Amazon, Mysterious Galaxy]. So, my post-it notes refer to my current deadline for book three, as yet untitled, and some back works I need to also have in progress. I love writing and only wish I could make a living from it. Fifty + published novels from where I started, I still can’t depend on any income, good reviews and great covers aside. That’s neither here nor there, though, as right now my business is to craft a thumping good tale and answer some of the plot questions that have been hanging and hint at intriguing and shocking developments for book four. I think I’m up to it, as long as I have fun.

The more I write, the more I think of to write. I keep my hard disk full of intriguing two and three liners for possible ideas down the line which may or may not get developed. One or two I will simply have to write on spec because the characters are nagging me. I probably ought to turn up the music louder to drown them out, but past experience has shown me it probably won’t work. If characters begging to be heard aren’t enough, there are titles which spring up as though ejected from some universal toaster. I caught one last night as if it were a cannon-fired eggo: The Late, Great Wizard. Now I know there’s a YA I’m going to have to write in the next six months and hope my intrepid agent can sell it.

So, to paraphrase, dying is easy . . . writing is hard. But it’s the only way to go."

( Jenna Rhode's Other Books (including the pseudonyms) )

This took me SO LONG to make on movie maker I am surprised I didn't throw my laptop out the window...and between you, me, and my cup of cold tea, I'm not very good with computers so spending hours on tutorials trying to prevent it hanging and crashing every time I opened it was not fun.

 So I've been upgraded to Sony Vegas. I may have to marry it.

 ( Have a look-see... )

Here's a good sign:

We're sitting in my recliner, watching "Escape From New York" on cable and everytime there's a commercial, the baby gets fussy.

What can I say?

1. (+) I must add my passionate testimonial to the cacophany of Whedon love: Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. See it, know it, adore it. Go for the Neil Patrick Harris and stay for the Nathan Fillion. The three episodes will be free online through tomorrow. Don't miss out! Don't blame me if you skip it and regret it later!

2. (-) I have some sort of illness. My joints have been aching on and off for the last couple of months, and I'm fatigued a lot, plus other things that go yadda yadda yadda. I saw my doctor yesterday, and the possibilities include:

Lyme Disease

Aftermath of parvovirus

Hypothyroidism

(Probably not) rheumatoid arthritis

All of the above are treatable, at least... Results of blood tests should be ready by Thursday.

3. (+/-) David Tennant drives me wild with glee, but he wasn't featured heavily enough on Doctor Who last night.

4. (-) Stargate: Atlantis was boring last night.

5. (+) My subconscious mind has recently sent up suggestions for a few of my stories that need revision, so I have plans! And notes to keep me from forgetting them!

Yeah, yeah, I know.

I'm so busy with Dragoncon schedule stuff that I don't know what to do...so in my off time I spam places with dragon eggs.

( wasn't going to take another one )

14theditch and I headed off for a late lunch after the reading I mentioned in my previous post, and along the way we bumped into ellen_datlow, who joined us for drinks and conversation. We spent an hour or so catching up on the stuff of life.



The geography of the hotel restaurant proved that it's impossible to navigate a convention without bouncing off your friends. For example, when we were seated, Jim Kelly and John Kessel were at the next table, so we of course had to kibitz with them for awhile, but by the time we were done eating, Mark Budz and Marina Fitch had taken their place at that table, setting off more kibitzing. And then, as we were leaving, I noticed that Richard and Carol Parks were behind us (you can see them in the background in the photo above), and so I paused to chat there. And then I saw the Locus gang at a large table plotting to take over the world, so I of course had to stop there as well.

I almost didn't make it out of the restaurant!
( Click here if you're up for reading about the rest of my day. )
I partied for about an hour after that—saw Eric Solstein again after far too long, chatted with newlyweds Robert and Gwen Killheffer (so fresh from the altar that they still had that new car smell), talked to jamietr about his first Readercon, and spoke briefly to dozens of other friends—but gave up near midnight, since I actually wanted to be awake to attend lizhand's reading at 10:00 a.m. Saturday morning.

Please don't miss Avram Grumer's "The 'aye' in God’s mote," over at Making Light, or its 90 comments, most of which are extremely readworthy. It starts with....


"I’ve been thinking about the paradox of the stone. You know, Could God make a rock so big he couldn’t lift it?"

... and the URL is:
http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/010435.html#010435 .

Friday started off slow. I spent the morning working in my room, and so didn't get out to attend any official programming until Patrick O'Leary's 11:30 a.m. reading. Patrick always give good reading. At the World Fantasy Convention in Saratoga Springs last year, he read a piece which will appear in Pete Crowther's upcoming anthology I Think Therefore I Am, and if Patrick's moving story is any indication, it will be a great book. This time, he read a story titled "The Little Guy," which inexplicably has yet to find a market. The sad, funny tale tells the true story of why the Decider-in-Chief's IQ seems to have fallen year after year after year, and stars Dick Cheney and an alien who speaks with an Irish brogue. He also read a few poems, including one about the woman he was destined to marry, which luckily for him turns out to be the same woman as the woman he is about to marry.

Immediately after that reading, I headed off for my noon kaffeeklatsch. I shared a table with Mary Robinette Kowal, someone whom over the years I'd managed never to meet before. (See, Karen, I don't know everyone.) Over the course of an hour together, we talked (along with others who came to listen, urge on, and cajole) of the first female archaeologist, of her puppeteering background, and many other topics. And though Mary did not demonstrate those puppetry skills for us, she did perform the magic trick she learned during her brief career as a singing waitress fairy in a Christmas show aboard a cruise ship. That's a picture of us below, snapped before our event began and I learned how interesting she was.



As soon as the kaffeeklatsch was over, I rushed to a reading given by Jeffrey Ford, one of my favorite writers, and luckily one of my favorite readers as well. He orates with a booming voice and a wry tone, and he's always entertaining. In his half-hour slot, he read his surreal story "The Dream of Reason," which will be forthcoming in an Ellen Datlow anthology the name of which he couldn't recall. I'm glad he's so popular that the titles of his outlets blur together.

I'll relate more of yesterday's busy doings a little later, as soon as I've gotten a little more work done, but to keep you busy in the meantime, here are further photos from the con.

http://www.cartoonlabs.com/comics/index.php?date=2008-07-19&show=sinfest

Sinfest
Tatsuya Ishida