Musings of no special import

"The Susurration Within" ebook at Amazon and at thewinkstore.com

2011-12-01T10:46:00.002+05:30

It's a measure of my disconnect with fiction writing admin stuff that I didn't realize that my story, The Susurration Within, which was accepted quite a while back has been published by DC Books and is available as an ebook for some months now...

*** as an Amazon single

*** and as a "Winklet" in India at thewinkstore.com

Maybe I should try to do a few more submissions. I've submitted only three stories this year....

"Song Hungers" at NewMyths.com

2011-06-04T16:56:00.005+05:30

My story, Song Hungers, is up in Issue 15 of NewMyths.

It can be read here.

An author interview is also available, click here.

"Dream girl" up in Nature

2011-02-19T21:51:00.005+05:30

My flash-length hard SF story, Dream girl, has been published by Nature in their Feb 17, 2011 issue, as part of the 'Futures' column.

Back to writing, sort of...

2011-01-31T15:05:00.006+05:30

Just completed a marathon bunch of blogs on my other blog (31 days 31 blogs), totally more than 51,000 words, so yes, I do remember how to write.

What's more, life is sort of back under control. I even critted a novel for someone as part of one of my crit groups, and I was, like, what about my own novel drafts, huh?

And I admitted to myself I'm missing writing fiction, and so...

...spent the last few hours dusting my mind and my shelf to sync back to writing. There's this kitty of stories I can polish and bung into the submission rounds. And there is my ideas diary, to which I've just added another bunch of ideas, mainly based on neuroscience (which fascinates me). Subbed off something to a crit group, too.

So yes, I've added back writing to the crazy mix that is life, and it feels good :)

Of years ending and beginning...

2010-12-31T10:57:00.002+05:30

Okay, so it's been a while again. I'm so glad no one reads this blog, so it doesn't matter that I haven't posted on it :-)

The year is ending, and since I didn't set targets this year, I'm perfectly fine doing a consolidation because everything I did is bonus compared to an expectation level of zero, right?

First, the speculative fiction writing stats of the year:

New stories written: 10
Stories submitted (some are submissions of the same story to different markets): 33
Stories accepted: 5 (2 in pro, 1 in semi-pro, 2 in token) (3 accepted on first sub, 1 on second, 1 on sixth submission)
Stories published: 4
Current stories out: 2
Other milestones: Met the SFWA pro requirement and joined up.

I have not made any submissions to markets since August end, as I used September to write some fresh stories, and I just didn't have the energy to polish up stories for market-fit shine and sparkle.

Around end of September 2010, due to some challenges on the personal situation front, I sat down to examine my approach and decided that I was splitting myself into more parts than Voldemort would have dared to do. I was often thrashing between tasks and managing none. It was time to decide on a focus given that my time availability was rather poor.

In my writing kitty, I noticed, lie over 30 stories for which I had a good set of user comments to process; putting up more stories for crit just to gather yet more comments made no sense till I processed the existing stories and either polished or trunked them, or decided "why" I needed more comments on them. In my ideas file lay over two dozen unwritten story-germs...

Fact is, my "productivity" and "creativity" are both low while writing speculative stories, and that my returns-on-investment in writing fiction are low because I haven't worked enough on (1) freeing my mind for the "creativity" front and (2)internalizing craft elements for the "productivity" front, such as sentence structures and selection for editing. I realized that I needed to step back in my writing and work on these.

A major direction of my life is working for caregivers of dementia patients, and in this area, my return-on-investment for time spent is relatively better. At least, I get a sense of connection and a sense of helping someone, even if it is just one or two persons.

Around September 2010 therefore, I started work on a comprehensive online resource for caregivers for dementia patients, in the process learning more about websites and even drawing, in addition to meeting more people and stuff like that. I made more progress on this front than I had expected, but less than what I had hoped. The site, Notes for Dementia Caregivers, involved a lot of writing, too. And I made some cartoons for it, using free software packages like GIMP and Paint.net...

Now a new year is dawning. Like last year, I am not setting any targets. I do have directions, but these are more on my "state of mind" than on countable achievements.

But there is one commitment that I made last year and hope to meet this year, too. That is, every day of January, I will be making one blog entry in my other blog, swapnawrites. I'm not going to sacrifice my first-born for it, but I will try...

And maybe I'll post more often to this blog, but that is not a commitment :-)

"The Unbeing of One-Leela" is available online

2010-08-09T19:27:00.003+05:30

My story, The Unbeing of Once-Leela, part of Sybil's Garage 7, is now available free online.

Here's the link.

"Where it Ends" up at Strange Horizons

2010-08-03T08:07:00.004+05:30

My India-based story, "Where it Ends", is up at Strange Horizons.

Here's the link.

Strange Horizons is an SFWA pro market, and a venue where many of my favorite authors get published regularly. Great stories, too. This is one of the first speculative markets I saw, and one of the reasons I started thinking I should try to write speculative fiction; I had not thought back then that I would ever manage to get published here.

Further, this is my third SFWA pro sale, and hence a landmark for me.

"What Lies Dormant" published in Warrior Wisewoman 3

2010-08-01T17:11:00.012+05:30

My story, What Lies Dormant, is part of Norilana Book's anthology, Warrior Wisewoman 3. The website for the anthology is here.

The Warrior Wisewoman series are an annual anthology series of science fiction featuring powerful and remarkable women.

The review of issue 3 at Publisher's Weekly says: "The overall vibe is thought-provoking without being preachy, and easily accessible for even casual, apolitical readers." It even mentions my story as "Swapna Kishore's introspective "What Lies Dormant" looks at an India of the future" :-)

You can buy the anthology at Amazon and B&N; the links are available here.

Perhaps this is Kushi's Story is up at Fantasy

2010-07-26T20:11:00.004+05:30

Just a quick update to say my story, Perhaps this is Kushi's Story, is up at Fantasy magazine.

Fantasy Magazine is a great venue with excellent stories and articles. I've always enjoyed reading the stories they publish. I'm in superb company again, and I'm thrilled.

"The Unbeing of Once-Leela" published in Sybil's Garage #7

2010-07-22T16:19:00.005+05:30

My story, The Unbeing of Once-Leela, is part of Sybil's Garage 7, where it shares the TOC with some weird and interesting stuff. The issue can be bought at Amazon and B&N, and there is also an e-pub version (all details at the Sybil's Garage 7 page).

So, what have I been up to these (omigod!) eight months since the last blog post? Mostly thrashing in an unfocused way between stuff that had to be done, stuff I wanted to do but was not getting time for, and stuff that fell somewhere in between. There were just too many things I was trying to balance while hoping to retain my sanity.

I've been writing whenever I can, of course. A lot of that writing has gone into updating my website, which now has a number of pages on dementia and caregiving, including the usually not available perspective, the viewpoint of an Indian caregiver of a dementia patient.

And yes, I've been doing speculative fiction, too, but nowhere near as often as I want to. Writing fiction is fun at times, and not at others, and never easy (nowhere as easy as reading it is). But I do have a few more stories out there, and hopefully I'll have more updates to post.

Meanwhile, I must go pamper my muse with (what else) dark chocolate, because my kitty of stories-ready-to-send-out is almost empty, partly because of some acceptances, and partly because I realized that some of the stories I was sending out were not good enough. A few stories still in the circuit are getting me personal rejects from pro and semi-pro markets, but getting a dozen "encouraging" rejects is still not a sale :(

Writing, but not through NaNoWriMo

2009-11-26T09:59:00.003+05:30

In a rather painful decision I took a few days ago, I decided to drop out of this year's NaNoWriMo.

I had not been able to prepare mentally for NaNoWriMo before November, and though I had some exciting YA ideas, I had not done any research. That, by itself, was no deterrent; in the past years I have successfully completed the 50K thrice, and two of these three times was with no prior work. And what's more, I am reasonably satisfied with what I did on all those three occasions. But this year was different. I started one story; it morphed beyond recognition. I continued, and it morphed again. Alongside this, life threw challenges that were just too tough.

And so, rather than ending the month with 50K of an unusable ever-shifting story, I decided to drop out and re-focus on short stories. I have managed drafting a few short stories since then, and polished a few more, and this activity is easier to fit into my current life situation.

My mother's been unwell for two months now. The unfortunate part this time is that she is just not responding to medication. The last few weeks have seen a number of emergency home visits by doctors and nurses, causing me to crystallize my personal priorities. Spending time holding her hand and talking to her is very important to me, given that she still responds to emotions. Introspecting and understanding the nature of life and happiness is important. Working to support the cause of dementia awareness and caregiver community support is important.

And writing is important..but writing a novel is not.

On the plus side as far as my writing goes, I have bumped up my submissions to eight. I also managed a few first drafts, and subbed three stories to various crit groups. A few of the subs are currently in round 2 and I have my fingers crossed about them.

On the not-so-plus side, one submission earlier accepted by Arkham Tales reverted to me because the zine closed...sigh! I promptly subbed off the story to another zine, but frankly, this is not quite the way I want to bump up my submission stats.

November's almost there

2009-10-31T12:02:00.003+05:30

When November is around the corner, can madness be far behind?

So here I am, with no plot, no muse, no dark chocolate, but determined to participate in NaNoWriMo. I've done it thrice before, won all times (at the cost of my sanity, and lots of chocolates), and I can tell you it's addictive.

See ya there, folks!

More English than the English

2009-10-30T12:46:00.003+05:30

Here are some factoids:

"Today 350 million people speak English in India and another 300 million in China, with more children learning English in Chinese schools than in British schools. And in continents and countries where there are varied languages and dialects, often the people speak with each other in English - their shared language." (quote from here.)

And

"with about 308 million people, the United States is the third or fourth largest country by total area, and the third largest by land area and population." (from the wikipedia article here.)

So yes, India had more people speaking English than the U S of A.

Another tidbit:

The stats say it all. In mid-2007, the International Herald Tribune stated that "English is spoken in some form by three times as many nonnative speakers as native speakers." (from here)

English was the first language I learned. It is the language I use to think, read, and speak. It gets rather tiring to have people (not from India) act surprised that I know it, or tell me that their way of using English is the correct way, because for me, it is only my 'second language'. Nah! Every country has its variations in usage--and I think India has enough in terms of numbers to define its own brand of the language. We're a majority, guys :-)

My fantasy story at Expanded Horizons

2009-10-08T09:34:00.002+05:30

My story, A Texture Beyond Dreams, has been published at Expanded Horizons. Read it here.

As with a few other recent sales, this started as flash, then grew. Maybe I should check out some other flash stories that haven't quite worked, and see what the real story lying beneath them was.

Accepting, not-accepting

2009-09-22T12:59:00.002+05:30

I thought it was the age of "accepting" yourself, warts, blubber, dark circles, and all.

And yet, some people are also recommending "conditional parenting" (see this NYT article). I'm confused; are they suggesting that parents should not do unto their kids as they should do unto themselves? And do the authors of books who want love used as a reward/ punishment for children also reward/ punish themselves the same way?

The transience of forced education

2009-08-23T11:40:00.004+05:30

Two months ago, I was blissfully ignorant about the real meaning of a word I had occasionally read in the newspapers...a word that sounded like chicken something or the other...

In the beginning of July, the attendant who helps me look after my mother rushed home because her grandfather passed away. She was expected to return in four days, after the final ceremony was over. I readjusted my life into 24 x 7 caregiving, rescheduled stuff, and went into a wait-for-her-return mode. She did not return on the expected date--she had fever. Another day, two days, three. Finally, she contacted me and informed me she had chikungunya.

The human mind is a marvelous tool, infinitely capable of refocusing and adjusting. A flurry of activity followed at my end. Surfing, calling up people, reading available books. Within two hours, I could have written a comprehensive article on chikungunya :-) In the days that followed, every newspaper I opened seemed to carry a paragraph on the disease--funny, I had never noticed those paragraphs before. I believe it's called synchronity.

She was released from the hospital after a week, and supposed to return in another. Just as I was about to celebrate, she called again. More fever. More education for me on diseases that could affect rural areas, and speculations on what had gone wrong this time. Luckily for my overloaded brain, she recovered in a day. She returned after four weeks of absence, and I am amazed to note I have forgotten most of what I read about all those diseases.

And now, there is another emergency (her father) and she has gone off to her village again, and here I am, hoping desperately that she will return in three days as she expects to. I am not quite in the mood for more education.

My hard SF flash fiction published in Nature

2009-07-23T12:52:00.005+05:30

My story, 'The Problem of Junior', has been published by Nature in their July 23, 2009 issue, as part of the 'Futures' column.

I am in really good company for this credit (see link for others who have had stories published here) I am obviously pretty thrilled about.

My space opera story at Ray Gun Revival

2009-06-28T08:16:00.003+05:30

Got a story, "Alone at Ax-1", up at Ray Gun Revival as part of their Issue 53. This story is a space opera of a somewhat contemplative sort (or so I peg it in my mind). It started as a 500 words story with a twist, got some near-accepts (which is a way of saying, I got rejects) before I realized that the story I wanted to write was a more detailed, longer one. So I rewrote it, again and again, and here it is, finally--much longer, and bigger in scope.

Click here for the RGR site, and here for the PDF file with the story, in case you are interested.

Story up at Ideomancer

2009-06-02T11:41:00.003+05:30

My story, 'Home on the Ganges', is up at Ideomancer, part of their June 2009 issue.

Here's the link.

Why I should be writing, not blogging

2009-05-12T21:17:00.002+05:30

Because time is precious,because to be a writer, one must write...

And because I read this blog that reminds me that the part of life we live is really small.

And because I have got yet another rejection (encouraging one, but still, a rejection) and I looked at my submission spread sheet and it calls for action.

Everything is material

2009-05-03T10:09:00.004+05:30

One would think that after ten years of caregiving I would be used to getting pulled into 24 x 7 caregiving at a ten minute notice. But no...

I have an attendant to help with my mother's caregiving, which means caregiving occupies around half my time. But ever so often (too often) the current incumbent quits the job or has an emergency of her own. Usually this happens with zero notice, when I am planning my weekly outing or am totally tired because I overstretched myself with something else, and when hubby is out for work.

Whatever, I am never emotionally ready for the 'full immersion' :-)

So, this May Day was mayday for me (the distress call one), with the attendant getting an emergency call and off to her village immediately. And here I am, trying to soak in this situation in a way writers are supposed to: use it as material.

So maybe I should write a story on claustrophobia, or on flight and freedom, or an escape through virtual reality. Or I could write a story on memory loss and dementia. Just write, and retain my sanity.

Which reminds me, one of the best speculative stories I have read around dementia is "Presence", by Maureen F McHugh. Yes, that's what I will do--read the story again, and a few more. I can always chalk it down to studying craft, and other such respectable, productive activities.

Pottering around again

2009-05-01T09:29:00.000+05:30

I've been an avid reader of the Harry Potter books for years now, and an avid re-reader, and re-re-reader...you get the point.

And I've been totally immersed in the words, and when the movies came out, and Snape looked and behaved exactly the way I had imagined, I felt validated.

But, at times, while reading the books, I had a few doubts...disloyal, niggling doubts...like, isn't that a bit convenient? Or, isn't he making too many mistakes or being too stubborn/ foolhardy/ short-sighted given his Chosen One role? And in the last book, a masterpiece of weaving together all the previous books and adding new ones, and wrapping them all neatly, I thought for a moment (but only a moment): isn't everything depending to much on luck? And why him, couldn't anyone have done that?

So, anyway, the books were so engrossing I set aside such disloyalty and just treated myself to a great time.

Now, along comes this on the web: a 80,000 words comprehensive critique, and I have to admit that except for a few, I've had a lot of these doubts myself. The lesson for me when I re-read the series? How did JKR keep me enchanted despite these?

Creativity on the tap

2009-04-27T07:43:00.009+05:30

I first heard of 24 hour writing contests some years ago, and took part a few times. (Even got an honorable mention once, though the story has since been trunked and lies unused, unpolished, unsold) In those days I was much into flash fiction.

Since then, I have moved to longer short fiction, that is, fiction that dares to go above 500 or even 1000 words. My story lengths now are typically above 2000, sometimes going right up to 6000 (then I struggle to get them down). So I had stopped thinking about these contests.

But last month, I decided to use a contest to just give my muse some variety. So yesterday, I took part in another of the 24-hour contests, my idea being to just have some fun (in a masochist way). Well, it was fun, and maybe I should do it oftener. It gives me practice of saying no to my editor-mind, and I think my muse gets a chance to feel pampered

Of course, if I want more fun, I should try twitter-fiction which is now getting to be a genre of its own. What! Not able to write a complete story in 140 characters? What sort of writer are you?

India ink

2009-04-24T09:30:00.007+05:30

I cast my vote yesterday. It took barely half-an-hour from the time I set out to when I returned, my finger marked with the ink that proves I voted.

Funny how good it seems. My vote is rather a small proportion of the overall statistics, because around 200 million people were eligible to vote in yesterday's phase of the election. Yet it makes me feel I have done my part in the process.

After all, we reach those large numbers one vote at a time.

The magic of alphabets

2009-03-22T09:31:00.007+05:30

I'm still stuck at home, unable to get out for even a walk, and I've been, like, what's the point. I've been trying to write a story and giving up.

Then, I picked up an anthology, and flipped it open at random. and I landed at a story that had wowed me 6 years ago. Opening that page, finding that story again, felt like a synchronity. It charged me up, and I'm going to try writing as part of the momentum it gave me.

Here it is, the story that is more poetry than prose, luckily available free online at Ideomancer: Tim Pratt's Annabella's Alphabet. It was also interesting to read that he took three years to sell the story, shows how strangely markets operate. But then, even Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness was rejected (see the rejection letter she has kindly made available at her website).

Happy playing with alphabets and words!

so I got stuck in the house, and so I dreamed

2009-03-13T22:02:00.004+05:30

Something happened which meant I could not move out of my home for a few days, and my to-do was already overflowing, both with things I had to do, and with things I wanted to do. So sure enough, I put aside the list and surfed around aimlessly for a few minutes and then did something I had not planned to do at all.

Here's the report of what I did:

I took the 43 Things Personality Quiz and found out I'm a

Spiritual Self-Improving Self-Knower

Now, that sounds a bit esoteric, but also boring, and next time I take that test, I might just fudge around a bit. Meanwhile, I created an account there and started bunging "things" I wanted to do. Problem was, they expect you to report progress. That sort of puts paid to dreaming, eh? Last thing I want to do is be accountable for daydreaming.

Just got in

2009-03-11T17:54:00.003+05:30

Hi folks

I've just taken this blog. This is my first unplanned entry, the first of many more such entries, I hope.

I am Swapna Kishore, from Bangalore, India, and I already have a personal website and another blog mainly on dementia and caregiving in India. It felt funny to bung in small tidbits and news in that blog, so I decided to take another blog: this one.

This is where I will post any one-liners, small anecdotes and observations, and more frequent updates. I am busy learning how to write speculative fiction, and end up reading a lot of fiction (that's the fun of writing) and also craft articles. This is where I may post comments on what I've found/ read, or share my joys and sorrows with writing and story submissions.

Or perhaps a recipe or a joke...

As the title implies, none of the stuff here is intended to be organized, serious, or of world-shaking import. Just quick, honest, and hopefully fun.

Cheers

Swapna