Books I Read: Kindred

Title: Kindred
Author: Octavia E. Butler
Genre: Science Fiction
First Published: 1979
Content Rating: R for beatings, whippings, and attempted rape

Dana, an African-American writer from the 20th century, is transported to pre-Civil War Maryland to save the life of a white boy named Rufus -- the son of a slave owner and Dana's ancestor. As Rufus grows older, Dana is called back again and again. Each time, her stay is longer and more dangerous. She refuses to be treated as a slave, but she has no rights and no help -- quiet submission is often less painful than the whip. But as Rufus grows meaner and more possessive, Dana must decide if slavery is worth her life, or his.

This is a dark book, but really powerful. It's an amazing look at slavery through the eyes of a woman born free in 1979 California. Dana is forced to decide what she really believes about slavery and herself. There are many times when she thinks she would do anything rather than be enslaved, whipped, or even raped, but when it comes down to it, the choices are much harder to make in reality. Rufus is an interesting character too. Alternately generous and vicious -- totally racist but less so than many others of his time -- it was difficult to hate him even when he did terrible things.

There's one scene in particular I want to share with you. Dana (the narrator) is talking with a mute named Carrie, another slave. Dana feels guilty for saving Rufus after all the terrible things he does to her and other people. Carrie reminds her that if Rufus died, things would be much worse; all the slaves might be sold off, families would be separated.

Carrie stood looking down at the crib as though she had read my thought.

"I was beginning to feel like a traitor," I said. "Guilty for saving him. Now . . . I don't know what to feel. Somehow, I always seem to forgive him for what he does to me. I can't hate him the way I should until I see him doing things to other people." I shook my head. "I guess I can see why there are those here who think I'm more white than black."

Carrie made quick waving-aside gestures, her expression annoyed. She came over to me and wiped one side of my face with her fingers--wiped hard. I drew back, and she held her fingers in front of me, showed me both sides. But for once, I didn't understand.

Frustrated, she took me by the hand and led me out to where her husband Nigel was chopping firewood. There, before him, she repeated the face-rubbing gesture, and he nodded.

"She means it doesn't come off, Dana," he said quietly. "The black. She means the devil with people who say you're anything but what you are."

I hugged her and got away from her quickly so that she wouldn't see that I was close to tears.

---

Content ratings based on what I think a movie might be rated, if the things shown in the book were shown in the movie. Ratings are very subjective, and I don't always remember/notice things. If you're unsure whether the book is right for you, do some research so you can make your own decision.

That Thing Where I Draw: We Do Hard Things

A few months ago, I wrote a post about how I don't like the word "talent". It's a post about how I learned that I shouldn't quit something just because I'm not good at it right away, or because it's too hard. Natalie told me she had framed the saying "We Do Hard Things". I loved the idea: we don't quit when something gets hard -- hard things are what we do!

I wanted a picture like that in my house, but I didn't want just the words. It was five months before I figured out what I did want:

"We shouldn't be here at all, if we'd known more about it before we started. But I suppose it's often that way. The brave things in the old tales and songs, Mr. Frodo... I used to think that they were things the wonderful folk of the stories went out and looked for... But that's not the way of it with the tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in the mind. Folk seem to have been just landed in them, usually...

"But I expect they had lots of chances, like us, of turning back, only they didn't. And if they had, we shouldn't know, because they'd have been forgotten."

It's Not You, Wilhelm. It's Me.

I remember the first time we met, Wilhelm. It was in this HyperCard game back in the 80's. You were the sound that played when I did something stupid and died. This sound.

Back then, I liked you for who you were -- I had no idea you were famous. To me, you were just "that scream I assigned as my computer's shutdown sound."

Then one day I was watching Star Wars. A stormtrooper got shot, and I heard you as he fell down a shaft. When I asked you about it, you told me everything. "I'm an old joke," you said. "They call me the Wilhelm Scream." You mentioned some old movies you were in -- the kind I'd have seen on MST3K -- before George Lucas found you. "And you know how GEORGE is about inside jokes."

It was kind of awesome. You were a big deal, and I was in on it. I'd be watching a movie with my friends and be all like, "Hey, I know that scream! That's the sound from when the bad guy died in Temple of Doom." My friends thought I was cool.*

* You have to know my friends.


That was twenty years ago. Now...

See, it's not your fault, Wilhelm. You haven't changed a bit in 58 years. It's me. I just... Sometimes I want to watch a movie in peace, yeah? Without you opening your mouth. I know, I know. It's your job. But it's like. Every. Single. Movie. You scream in Fifth Element, Pirates of the Caribbean, Tears of the Sun, Kingdom of Heaven, Sin City, all three Lord of the Rings movies...

I can understand some of them, I guess -- Indiana Jones, Avatar, Tropic Thunder. But New Moon? Anchorman? The Pacifier? You were even in an episode of Mythbusters for crying out loud!

And it's not just my movies; you're in all my kids' movies too. Even when I'm not watching, I hear you in Kung Fu Panda, Cars, even Up and Bolt. Heck, my daughters were watching Prince Caspian the other day IN THAI, and I heard you from the other room!

So, it's too much. You were cool and all, 20 years ago. But I think it's time we saw other people, or movies, or... If you could just not be in movies at all anymore. Ever. That would be great. Maybe we could talk then.

In another 20 years.

The Board Game Post

A long time ago, I said I'd do a post on board games. Unfortunately (for you, I guess) I could talk about board games for weeks without even trying. I LOVE board games. There's so much I could cover, I hardly know where to start. Consider this a broad overview for the uninitiated (with hopefully-helpful recommendations for fellow board game geeks). If you think Monopoly or Milton Bradley are representative of board games, this post is for you.

We'll start with the basics. Two board games you need to know: Ticket to Ride and Settlers of Catan.

Ticket to Ride is our gateway game. We teach it to our friends before introducing the harder stuff. You play as competing railroad tycoons claiming railway routes between large cities (American cities, but there's versions for Europe, Germany, and Scandinavia), earning more points for longer routes and connecting distant cities. Gameplay is a constant tension between purchasing routes (before someone else does) or grabbing more cards (so you can purchase said routes). You can learn this game in 5 minutes and still be playing 5 years later (we are).

Settlers is a bit more complicated, but even more addictive. Players compete to settle an unexplored land. They must collect and trade their resources in order to build roads, settlements, and cities before someone else does. With a board that changes every game and multiple expansions, this one hasn't gotten old since we learned it 12 years ago.

But oh my gosh, guys. That's just a cubic meter of ice on the tip of the tip of the iceberg.

Carcassonne. Claim cities, roads, and fields. Bigger cities (etc.) means bigger points. The gameplay is simple (draw a tile, place a tile). The real trick is figuring out how to encourage other players to complete your cities with their tiles.

Agricola. Plow fields, raise animals, renovate your home, all while making sure your family stays fed. Way more fun and complicated than it sounds. A simpler game ("simple" here is a relative term) with similar gameplay is Puerto Rico, wherein you build a colony and plantations in the New World.

Wait, what about pirates? Plunder the islands and blow each other to smithereens in Pirate's Cove (what the heck is a smithereen?). Or bust out of prison in the simple-but-fun Cartagena, which somehow took Candy Land's game mechanics and made them interesting.

Like the party game Mafia? Try Bang! Kill the sheriff (if you're an outlaw) or the outlaws (if you're the sheriff) or everybody (if you're a renegade). But make sure you know who you're shooting at before you pull the trigger; they might be on your side.

Yahtzee fans might enjoy To Court the King. Roll the right dice combinations to attract members of the royal court. Each court member gives you new dice and abilities to help you attract more important nobles, until one of you manages to court the king himself.

Think that's it? We're still WAY above the waterline here. There's like ten games in our cabinet I haven't even mentioned, a bunch more I've played or heard about, and that's not even counting cooperative games!

I should stop before I lose more readers than I have already... But wait! I haven't told you about new versions of Risk yet. Or Lost Cities! Or Citadels! Or Formula De!! Or --

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Books I Read: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Title: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter 7)
Author: J.K. Rowling
Genre: YA Fantasy
Published: 2007
Content Rating: PG-13 for violence

It's the 7th book in one of the most famous fantasy series of our time. I can't talk about it without spoiling it (not that it matters), but who cares? If you've read the first six, you're going to read it.* And if you haven't, you'll read the other six first and have a pretty good idea of what happens in this installment.

All I can say is this: despite the ponderous camping chapters, the sometimes-awkward writing (that I would never have noticed before trying to be an author myself), and the occasional magical rule-bending for the sake of the plot... at the end I was moved, I was sad, and I didn't want to say goodbye.

Yeah, for all its flaws, the whole series is well worth reading. Happy to talk more in the comments (assuming I'm around; baby coming and all that).

 * Or really, you've already read it. I'm certain I'm the last Harry Potter fan to get to this installment.

---

Content ratings based on what I think a movie might be rated, if the things shown in the book were shown in the movie. Ratings are very subjective, and I don't always remember/notice things. If you're unsure whether the book is right for you, do some research so you can make your own decision.

Air Pirates Postmortem: What Went Right

On Wednesday, I talked about how I could improve my process. If you read only that post, you might think I get down on myself a lot. I do, but not in that post. The truth is I like my process a lot, and there were a lot of things that went right with Air Pirates. Here are some that stuck out to me.

1) FINDING MY VOICE
Air Pirates was originally a story about Sam (big surprise there), and Hagai was just the reader's guide into the world. I always knew Sam's voice, but writing from Hagai's POV was more difficult for me. Until one day Cindy finished reading chapter 4 and said, "I like Hagai. He's really funny."

Funny? I wrote something funny? I had no idea. I didn't even know that was possible. Humor was one of those things I figured I'd never be able to write. Like romance or contemporary fiction. After Cindy told me, suddenly I could see it for myself. Hagai really was funny.

Then I screwed it all up in chapter 6 by trying too hard, but that's beside the point. The point is, when Cindy said that, I realized I had a voice. I mean, I always had a voice, but now I knew what it was. I could see it, refine it, and most of all take pride in it.

2) WROTE THE QUERY EARLY
Somewhere around chapter 8, I realized I was unclear on the focus of the story. So I spent some time writing and refining my query letter. This was the best decision I could have made for three reasons:

1. It gave me months to refine the query in small doses, rather than trying to perfect it all at once while fighting the urge to "Send it right now and see what happens!"
2. It forced me to figure out what the story was really about and consequently kept me from getting off-track while I was drafting.
3. Because I'd written less than half the novel at that point, writing the query was easier; I didn't try to force superfluous details into the query because I didn't know any details!

3) DEDICATED WRITING TIME
So, my wife is awesome. One of the myriad ways in which she is awesome is that she gives me 2 hours a day, most days, to disappear and write. Not only does it help keep me free from distraction, but it motivates me. It feels like I'm leaving for my job, and I know if I waste my two hours, I can't make it up later.


4) BETA READERS WHO KNOW THE BUSINESS BETTER THAN I DO
All my beta readers were awesome. I used at least 95% of everyone's comments, and Air Pirates is much better for it.

But a few of my beta readers had that extra level of skill and experience I didn't. They were harsher critics than I even knew how to be. They not only stretched this novel, but they stretched me as a writer.

Until a year and a half ago, I knew hardly any writers. The best thing that has come out of this blog has been my relationship with many of you: writers on the same path, many of whom know more than I do. I'd still be doing this without you guys, but I couldn't do it nearly as well or as well-encouraged. Beta or not, you are all awesome.

Air Pirates Postmortem: What Could've Been Better

In my previous jobs, I was trained to treat even a creative process as something to be examined and refined, so as to repeat successes and minimize failures. In my writing process, that takes the form of statistics and post-mortems -- to learn as much as possible about my own process, to make it better, and (by putting it up here) to maybe edify other writers as well. If this stuff bores you, don't worry. Next week I'm going to talk about board games (whee!).

Today I'm going to look at what could have been done better (on the assumption that I can actually change these things in the future; in the business we call this "wishful thinking"). But first, an overview of the process:

STAGE	TIME (months)	TIME (hours)	WORD COUNT	DESCRIPTION
Thinking	4 years	n/a	0	Ideas that came to me while I was writing Travelers.
First Draft	19 months	n/a	100,000	I talked about this part of the process here.
1st Edit	2 months	95 hours	94,000	My own edit and plot fixes before anyone else saw it.
1st Beta	3 months			14 beta readers. 4.6 critiques returned from 6 people (some critiqued only part of it). Meanwhile I wrote "Pawn's Gambit" and outlined The Cunning.
2nd Edit	1.8 months	79 hours	86,000	Based on critiques from the betas.
2nd Beta	1.5 months			2 beta readers; while I worked on the query, synopsis, and wrote the beginning of The Cunning.
3rd Edit	1.5 months	58 hours	91,000	Based on critiques of 2nd Beta. Added about 200 words per chapter (mostly description).

That's sort of a broad view. For one thing, each edit consisted of me going over the draft like 3-6 times looking at different things. Now to identify what went wrong.

1) TOO MANY BETAS
I think this is the most obvious flaw from the table above: 14 betas, 4.6 critiques.

Okay, first of all, please know that I'm not judging any of my betas. None of them. Beta reading a whole novel is a LOT of work, and many of my betas were non-writer friends and family who maybe didn't know that. But -- and this is important -- just the fact that they offered made me feel really, really good. It showed me a special level of support, and I'm grateful for everyone who asked to help.

That said, a lot of this is outside of my control. For one thing, sometimes beta readers DO stop reading partway through and then tell the author why. One of my most important and valued betas did exactly that, and Air Pirates is way, way better for her input. My most important changes were directly due to that partial critique, so: The purpose of beta readers is not to catch every typo and misplaced comma, but to get you thinking about your manuscript in a different way. That can be done even if they don't finish it.

But what about the folks who didn't give me any feedback? As much as I love them (and I do), I can't fix something if nobody tells me what's broken. I think the fact that I announced an open beta may have had something to do with it; my betas knew there were lots of other betas. It's a psychology thing: people are more likely to fulfill commitments if they know they are the only ones responsible for them. So in the future, I will ask about 2 people per beta phase, and I will ask them directly. It's far from a guarantee, but it's fixing what is in my control to fix.

2) SLOW FIRST DRAFT
I try really hard not to stress about how fast or slow I write. Really, really hard. At the same time, I'm thinking about doing this long term, and finishing a novel every 2 to 2.5 years just doesn't seem like a maintainable speed for a career, you know?

So what can I do about it? Not stress about it, first of all. I know from experience that speed at anything is gained with practice. I trust that I will get faster as I get better. Also I know that towards the end of the draft I was pushing out over 10,000 words per month, which is a lot better if I can maintain it.

So my goal here, in addition to not stressing, is to focus on self-discipline and daily, weekly, or monthly word count goals. They don't have to be huge, but they should stretch me a little. Or at least keep me from getting distracted.

3) LAZY ABOUT FIXING PROBLEMS I WAS AWARE OF
If you think something might be a problem with your manuscript, chances are good someone else will too. That means if you're aware of a problem, you should fix it before someone else sees it, rather than hoping nobody will notice.

I did this with description, among other things, and both readers in the 2nd beta phase called me on it. Repeatedly. I knew I was lazy with descriptions, but I was more interested in getting the manuscript out then in sitting down and thinking, "What IS in this room? What DOES that rug look like?" (and so on). It's a problem I could've fixed on my own, but I didn't.

Why is that a problem? Because if I had fixed it, those two beta readers could've spent their time identifying problems I WASN'T aware of, instead of telling me things I already knew. Beta reading is really hard. If the novel you're critiquing is full of plot holes and annoying characters, you're not going to notice all the little things that are wrong with it too. On the other hand, if the novel is near-perfect, you're going to get really nit-picky, catching things you would otherwise have glazed right by.

Put simply: beta readers can't catch everything. If you remove problems you're aware of before they read your work, they'll thank you by catching things you didn't know about.

You still with me? That's amazing. I would've quit reading right around when I started pretending I knew anything about psychology.*


* That's not true. I would've stopped reading at the table because I'd still be looking at it. Statistics ENTHRALL me.