Kameron Hurley

One For the Road

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Random Word Generator

When you need just the right word… that doesn’t actually exist.

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Plotting Failure

Plot should really be a very simple thing.

Something bad happens to someone.

Then things get worse.

I’m pretty good at heaping on trouble, I’m just not sure that in the end, any of it makes any sense. Being a sort of “sit down and see what happens” writer, the whole process of discovery thing when I’m writing a book is great. The horrific result of writing this way, however, is that I spend years rewriting in order to figure out how the plot sticks together.

Character, setting, dialogue: I started out being pretty strong at character, worked real hard at setting, worked my ass off at dialogue, and now I feel competent at all of this. What has continued to elude me is… plot.

Not even “something bad happens. Then things get worse.” Oh yes, THINGS GET WORSE. But why? How do I tie all that together and make it resonate?

I just sat down and revised an old story of mine from Clarion, the template character for the one I’m currently writing several books about, and I managed to tie up some of the themes so that when you get to the end you go, “Oh.” (Well, *I* went “oh.” It has yet to be seen if anyone else will). It’s taken me seven years to make this story something more than a “so what?” story.

And that, at core, is I think what my problem is: when I’m not careful, I can write a lot of “so what?” stories. That’s all well and good if you’re content to go running around a wacky world with fucked up, wacky (often violent) people, but it’s not usually until halfway through the story that I either find my point, or… I don’t, and I have to trash the story. Then, once you actually find your point (if you do at all), you have to go back and make sure you set all that up at the beginning. If I’m *really* cool I can write forward by constantly looking back at the beginning of the story and trusting that everything I need for the end was totally frontloaded at the beginning by my really kewl subconscious.

Right now, that’s sort of how I’m swinging things, but I want to be really good at plot, the nuts and bolts kind, not just the bordering-on-didactic kind. I want all the world’s political pieces to come together. I want everybody running on their little plot highways to smack into each other and make the reader go “Oh! Of course!”

Basically, I want to be BRILLIANT.

So I suppose that’s nothing new.

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Worst. Fight Scene. Ever

Come now, who didn’t LOVE this show?

I think Kirk should have just taken his mask off and screamed, “AHA!!!”

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I Felt Terrible….

… when I was sick. But I could wear such cute clothes!

Indeed, I am well aware of the fucked-uppedness of that.

“What kept me sane throughout the diet, and stopped me from tipping over the edge and wanting to keep the new skinny self I’d worked so hard to achieve, was the realisation that my life was no better, or more successful, or colourful, when I was thin than before.”

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The Secret Lives of Secretaries

Yesterday, Nell and I discovered that someone has been stealing the handsoap bottles in the kitchen and in the coffee bar behind our reception desk at work (yes, we have a coffee bar behind the reception desk). Now we’re missing a huge jug of Jergens lotion.

We have no idea who’s doing this, or why they need that much handsoap. Or that much lotion.

In any case, it’s not like it’s a big deal. The head guy in the office upstairs made $238 million last year.

It might sound really exciting to have a plasma TV in the reception area you’re working in, but believe me, 24 hours of CNN is really mind-numbing when the day’s biggest stories are who gets to bury Anna Nicole Smith and Is Britney’s Haircut Prelude to a Stint in Rehab? (the answer is yes, apparently). These are the sorts of things no reasonable human being really needs to know. And yet.

I figure if things get real dull we can always spice it up by ordering condoms for the bathrooms and renting out the conference rooms by the hour.

We’ll need to order more lotion.

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Gendered Writing

Surprise! If you write from a male POV, you must be a male writer, and if you write from a female POV, you must be a female writer.

All hail the gender genie!

I think this would have been more amusing if I didn’t peg the whole insert male POV scene followed by “try again” and then insert female POV scene. That was way too predictable.

(via making light)

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Call Me Crazy…

… but when I was a kid, I didn’t think, “Golly gee, I want to be a professional Executive Assistant!”

And yet, these people exist.

Granted, in downtown Chicago they’re making six figures. But really, who would have thunk it?

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There are Few Things More Annoying…

… than a 52 number right after you’ve brushed your teeth.

Dammit.

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Man, I Hope I Get That Interview…

… or I’m going to need to get a weekend gig at Starbucks.

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