Jennifer Pelland talks about blogs, writing and fanfic.
Jennifer Pelland's writing has appeared in Strange Horizons,Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, Abyss & Apex, and more. Her story "The Call" will appear soon in issue 2 of Fictitious Force, She can be found on the web at http://www.jenniferpelland.com.
Q: What is the Speculative Literature Foundation Mentorship Program and how are you liking it so far? What do you think is the best advice you've handed out so far on there?
JP: It's a program that matches up five new writers with one mentor for several months of online discussion on the craft and business of writing. I think things are going reasonably well. My group's pretty quiet, but when I poke them, they reassure me that my lectures have been helpful. And the program's benefited me as well. First off, it's incredibly flattering to have reached a point where people think my advice is helpful, so it's been a tremendous ego-boost. But secondly, it's been a great refresher course for me. Every time I prepare a lecture, I'm forced to think about basic craft issues and figure out how to distill them into a coherent pile of words. A lot of these are issues that I haven't explicitly thought about for a long time, so I'm essentially teaching them to myself all over again. For example, the lecture I just did on world-building basics has helped me immensely with the story I'm currently writing.
As for the best advice I've given, I'd probably say it was the lecture on how to build a career, where among other things, I advised them to be professional. I've seen too many writers shoot themselves in the foot by not treating editors and fellow writers professionally. Okay, yes, the writing world is full of notorious assholes, but most of them only became assholes after they'd established themselves. You have to treat people who can help your career with respect if you want them to reciprocate. Being rude rarely endears you to an editor or an agent.
Q: You also work with radio theater. Does that ever inform your sf writing, or vice versa? Where's the overlap?
JP: I'm not sure that they've ever informed each other or overlapped. They're just different modes of expression that let me exercise different creative drives. Writing is much more cerebral, and involves a great deal of thought and planning and all that tough stuff, whereas radio theater is all about the simple act of hamming it up in front of a microphone. Sure, you need to rehearse, but you don't need to learn your lines, you don't have blocking to memorize, and if it's not a live show, you get multiple tries to get it right. And if it is a live show, you get immediate feedback, which writing sure as hell doesn't provide.
There is a real chance they might overlap in the future, though, as I may someday write a script for the Post-Meridian Radio Players. I just need to get a good script idea, which is a different beast than a good story idea. It'll be interesting to see if I can tell an effectively creepy story solely through dialogue and some Foley effects.
Q: How do you go about creating titles? What's the best title you ever came up with?
JP: It's a crapshoot for me. Sometimes titles plop fully-formed in my lap, and sometimes I agonize over them and eventually settle for something that leaves me vaguely unsatisfied but is good enough for government work. Many are straightforward descriptions of the plot ("Clone Barbecue," "Snow Day," and "The Burning Bush" leap to mind), others are a little more oblique ("Flood," "Immortal Sin"). I'm pretty sure my best title is "For the Plague Thereof Was Exceeding Great," which I lifted from the book of Revelation. It's a future AIDS story that involves an apocalypse cult, and I flipped through the King James version of Revelation until I found a quote that seemed to fit. I suspect I'll never top that one. Biblical quotes are hard to beat.
Q: Along the same lines, what's your writing process like? When do you find time to write and what rituals or routines do you use to get yourself ready to go?
JP: I'm fairly erratic. When I'm in the grip of a story, then I'm usually able to find an hour or so each night to pound away at it. But once I get stuck, I'm very good at procrastinating for days, maybe weeks, until I guilt myself back into it. I like writing and revising, but I hate *starting* to write or revise. I think part of the problem is that my brain only wants to do so much hard work at a time. I have a full-time day job, a spouse, cats, a family, and some volunteer work that all keep me busy, so if something's gonna give, it's gonna be writing.
But when I get to it, I tend to write about a thousand words at a sitting. I'm capable of writing up to three thousand words a day if I'm not working, but I can't afford another stint on severance any time soon. I'm not sure I have a ritual, per se. I just sit down at the computer, check email, maybe play a game or two of Solitare, then tell myself I'm being stupid and open up my story file. When it comes time to revise, I print the story out, mark it up with pencil, then set it aside for a day or two before jumping back in. There's a lot of procrastination in that process as well. I find revising a lot harder than writing, so I work harder to put it off.
As for finding the time, I can generally carve an hour out of my evening routine without any problems, especially since we have a TiVo. That lovely fast-forward button shaves about 15-20 minutes off of every hour of network television, so even on days like this Wednesday where I have a three hour block of geeky happiness ("Bones," "Lost," and "Invasion"), I can do it in just two. Weekends, if I'm not overburdened with errands or other commitments, I can get two to three hours of writing in a day, although I rarely do so for sanity's sake. Drive is good, but so is relaxation. I'd hate to burn out on something that's supposed to be fun. After all, the vast majority of what I write is on spec. Doing something on spec should be fun.
Q: So many of your recent stories seem to have been sold to "A" magazines (Alien Skin, Apex Online, Abyss & Apex, Andromeda Spaceways) : why do you think this is? What A market do you intend to crack next?
JP: I'm gunning for Asimov's, but you probably saw that answer coming. I'll accept Analog, too. I'm not picky.
As for the profusion of "A" markets, I couldn't tell you why. Maybe editors are deliberately picking titles that are high in the alphabet to grab eyes earlier in the shelf/list skimming process.
Q: What do you use your blog for? Do you ever worry about it distracting from fiction writing?
JP: Writing in it isn't distracting, but reading my friends' entries can be, especially if they've been chatty. But I actually find that writing my entries is very helpful, because it makes me publicly accountable for my output. If I blog about wanting to sit down and write, and I don't actually do it, then the 200 people who read my journal will know that I flaked out. It's also great to have a place to bitch about the business end of writing. When I get a rejection, I post about it, and the other writers who read my blog grumble with me. It reminds me that there are other people going through exactly the same shit as I am, and they all keep slogging on, so I should too.
Q: If you were writing in someone else's universe, which one would you want it to be?
JP: Well, I did spend a good deal of time writing fanfic before switching to writing my own stuff, so I've been there and done that. So far, the only literary universe that's inspired me to want to write in it is Lyda Morehouse's. I love her Archangel Protocol series, which has sadly gone out of print, and with her permission, I wrote a naughty piece of Michael/Morningstar fanfic. It's a universe that I'd love to revisit...but I'm more interested in keeping on writing my own stuff for now. I'd love to someday get to the point in my career where people are writing fanfic in *my* universes. Then I'll know that I've really arrived.
