The Literary Landscape

...The physical one, I mean!

I was browsing through photos on Facebook earlier today, and stumbled across those from a trip I took to visit a friend who lived in Indianapolis a few years ago.  As we were driving around the city so I could see the adorable and awe-inspiring brick buildings, the kind of behemoths we don't have here in California because they would crumble like Jenga towers in an earthquake, my friend casually points to a particularly large one across the street and mentions it had significance to possibly my biggest literary influence ever.  Of course, I made her pull over so I could get photos through the car windows.  After putting them down, of course.  Blurry glass photos would have been a travesty.

Yes, ladies and gentleman, that is where Kurt Vonnegut went to high school!  OK, I don't know if he particularly liked high school, but it's still a big part of one's life.  O high school, did you know what greatness would come of ye?

(P.S. You might not guess Vonnegut is one of my big influences if you look at my writing, because we have very different styles and outlooks, but he was the one who made me realize the power of words and want to be a writer.  And I guess we've both got a war-is-tragic-but-human-nature-makes-it-inevitable sort of book, but SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE must be loads better than mine and is still one of my two favorites books of all time.  OF ALL TIME.)

A lot of the big literary cities offer tours of locations relevant to famous writers.  London has Dickens tours, and Shakespeare tours, and probably more tours than I can think of, and I imagine the situation is much the same for Paris or New York or any other big cosmopolitan locales.  But I would love to do a full-scale Vonnegut tour, even if Indiana isn't as glamorous as any of those places.  (Although I'm sure there are many tours I'd love to do any of those places, too!)

What about you?  What would be your literary dream tour?

Academia has thrown my writing brain off.

And I am back from my mini-hiatus.  In two weeks, I wrote 120 pages that will make up the bulk (easily >90%) of my culminating portfolio for my MLIS, which is both a lot faster than my normal writing pace and a lot of heady academic writing.  Following that, I was exhausted for several days...or I might have had a slight concussion.  I actually did hit my head...

But getting that portion of my portfolio done has removed a huge devil from my back, and I can now return my attention to other matters.  One of those matters, of course, is my novel!  It's been a strange transition back to "fun" writing, and a bit of a tough one in that I had recently moved onto a new plotline, with new characters and setting.  I hadn't quite gotten the feel of it yet, the voice and the way the new MC thinks, so trying to come back has led to some messes.  I've already rewritten the introduction to this plot thread several times, and think I've gotten it to something workable, but it's freaking me out a bit as introductions are usually one of my strong points.

I'm in a battle between showing and telling and trying not to be cliché.  In the outline, it seemed fine to have this portion of the story begins with a girl in cryogenic sleep waking up during a spaceship crash.  Of course, when I start writing, I realize my intro is somebody waking up.  So I debate whether I should start the story a little later when the rest of the crew comes out of sleepytime, but if I do that, I have to tell the audience what the MC has been doing during that interlude (which is important for their quest as a whole), and if I show her doing it instead, that delays the waking of the crew and the start of the rest of the action...

Ehh, I've gone in circles, and I think I've come up with a workable compromise with a bit more action, but right now I'm glad the other plotline gets the first chapter of the book.  I'm still a bit concerned I might end up telling the audience too much, but it's probably best to push through and fix things in revisions.

Nothing like getting back in the game with a feeling of incompetence!  I think I'll always be wondering why my first drafts aren't perfect.  Some scientist should invent a device for that.

Also, Literary Orange is in two months!  Two months from this day!  I had better finish my reading for that.  I'm making good progress, though, and enjoying the books.  If you're in southern California and/or you like Samantha Henderson or Nathan Long, you should come out!

How have you all been doing?  How's your writing lately?

Constructed languages are fun! Except when they distract you from your reading experience

So!  Constructed languages!  In theory, I love them.  One of my undergraduate majors was in linguistics, so I've got a soft spot for languages with all their crazy syntax and weird phonetic patterns and cooky cases.  The idea of creating a language seems like a fun challenge and a great intellectual exercise to which I could devote way too much time.  And in fact, I've recently been tempted to create one.  The minor plotline of my current WIP novel (see a post or two ago) involves a first contact scenario in which the alien does not speak a word of English.  The chance to create his language, one that might operate under wildly different rules than anything on Earth, is tempting.

But though I did map out the ways his species communicates (which aren't all verbal) and did create a few words in his tongue, I decided against it just for the book.  The alien does work with a linguist who voices many of her analyses of the language, and it's entirely possible I may map it more as a fun extra someday, but for the most part, I decided not to give the alien extended dialogue in his native language on the page.

I just don't think it works as well in textual media as in TV or film.

When I'm watching Star Wars or Game of Thrones, I love listening to the characters speaking in made-up languages.   A well-crafted created language reveals a lot about the characters who speak it, by using tones and sounds that call to mind analogous cultures (although this can sometimes devolve into stereotyping), having an abundance of words for something important to their culture, or lacking a term for something they've never encountered or don't value.  These things all work together to create a "sound image" of the characters, giving them an air of authenticity as a real people.  However, this works better in film for one of two reasons:  either the dialogue is subtitled, so you know what they're saying and the created language just reinforces that sound image, or it's not subtitled, in which case you're usually put in the role of a POV character from outside that culture, and you don't understand because that character doesn't understand.

In books, I don't find that works as well.  Long lines of dialogue in a tongue that makes no sense to the reader without a lot of study and, usually, knowledge only the author has, strike me as silly.  If a translation is provided, what is the point of writing out the made-up words?  It would be simpler to note that the character said the line in the made-up language.  And if no translation is provided, I'll usually just gloss over the line, figuring that since neither the character nor I understand, it's not worth paying attention to the structure and form.  Of course, one could argue that including the created language allows the writer to show rather than tell, but I just find it distracting.  And given my educational background, a little annoying if the created language is just gobbledygook created without any care that can't be made to operate as a language by any conception.

On the other hand, some authors do a lot of work and create beautiful tongues that make sense and reveal a lot about the characters, and I do not want to malign their work.  This can be distracting as well, though; I'm often tempted to sit down and parse out the language rather than continue with the story!

In general, then, it leads me to think that it's better to keep the created languages to a minimum within the actual text.  Perhaps a few lines of dialogue once in a while between a character who speaks the created language and one who is trying to learn it.  Certainly there is room for words that are key to the plot, or are somewhat untranslatable concepts.  We do that with real languages all the time--and nobody gets upset over words like geisha in English texts, because translating that exact concept into English would require a lot more words and be more unwieldy.  But I'd vote for refraining from long passages in a made-up tongue, because readers will either skip over it or forget about the rest of the story while trying to figure it out.  A nice grammar of the language would certainly make for a great extra feature, though, especially given the multitude of fans across many franchises who have dedicated themselves to learning these brilliant thought exercises.

I'd love to hear your opinions, though.  Do any of you just love reading created tongues in novels?  Go ahead, let me have it!




(P.S. On a side note, I am in my final semester of grad school and have decided to try to get the bulkiest portion of my portfolio done in the next two weeks, at the exclusion of many other things.  It's not due until April, but I have a lot of stuff coming up in the spring, and having this done will lower my long-term stress level and let me enjoy working on my novel, prepping for Literary Orange, taking the eventual new-job-search plunge, and everything else.  I wouldn't go so far as to say I'm taking a hiatus, but I may be a little scarcer around the Interwebs than usual.)

I know SOPA's over, but I'm still thinking through the siller consequences

So!  All the SOPA and PIPA stuff has died down, to everyone's relief, although now ACTA furor is in the air.  I'm sure I agree with most Internet users in seeing these pieces of legislation as incredibly dangerous, both in my capacity as an almost-author and an almost-librarian.  My mind goes strange places in trying to visualize the outcomes of these events, though:  in addition to penalties for file sharers, I wonder about fans who do produce creative works based on copyrighted materials, and whether eventually the government will bother to target them, too.

I do enjoy looking at pretty fanart, but I've never been much of a fanfiction reader (and never a writer).  In theory, though, I don't mind it as long as nobody is making money from it.  If people were to write fanfic of my work someday, I wouldn't read any of it (so I could keep it from influencing my own ideas, especially if I were writing a series, and prevent any allegations that I stole an idea from someone writing a story based on my own ideas!), but I wouldn't mind its existence.  Some professional authors got their start writing fanfic, and I'm generally of the attitude that anything that promotes reading and writing and literacy is good.

It's been a while since I've seen fanfic wank floating around the Internet, so I don't know why my mind went there, but I think it'd be a bit silly if laws went into effect that allowed the prosecution of fans expressing themselves in innocuous ways (save for perhaps to some writers' egos).

Perhaps it's because, like I said, I like fanart.  If these kinds of creators were scared of jail, we'd never get that Chewbacca on a squirrel vs. Nazis picture I posted an entry or two ago.  And that would be a shame.

Ehh, next time I'll write about something more concrete, or at least useful to the present.  Perhaps constructed languages, since those have also been on my mind and I've got a background in linguistics.   In the meantime, I start my final semester of grad school tomorrow, so please pray for my sanity.  Whoosh~

Stop SOPA and PIPA

As an aspiring writer, librarian, American citizen, and human being, I'm concerned.

If nothing else, do this, or pretty soon you won't be able to do much of anything.
https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/

Wheels within wheels and stories within stories

I love the story within a story format, but using it in my current WIP has caused me to reevaluate it more than I expected.  Perhaps it's because the characters and plot in my supposed-to-be-short internal story kept threatening to expand and burst and become their own novel, making me think the relationship between the internal story and the larger, framing story.  If those two stories aren't connected, putting them in one novel seems pointless.  They need to work in tandem to create a larger, better picture for the reader.

Of course, there are many ways they can do that.  In Patrick Rothfuss' THE NAME OF THE WIND, the internal story is the main portion of the book, and transpires as a first-person flashback within a larger, third-person frame.  (The flashback seems a popular form of encompassing dual storylines, as does the use of many POV characters in epic fantasy, now that I think about it.)  In VORTEX, the conclusion of Robert Charles Wilson's SPIN saga, there are two parallel storylines happening billions of years apart, and it isn't until near the end of the book that you find out how the two are connected.  Writers have to be very careful with this, though, as it can frustrate the reader to switch back and forth between seemingly unrelated storylines, especially if they like one more than the other.  Wilson is a masterful writer and the last ten percent of that book, which brought the storylines together and showed not only how they were connected to each other, but to everything earlier in the trilogy, was moving and powerful.  In the hands of someone less skilled, though, that payoff isn't guaranteed, and one storyline could conclude seeming pointless or even annoying.

Relevance is the cause of my hesitancy at the moment.  As much as I like my internal story, the longer I wrote it the more I questioned whether it was truly necessary for the narrative as a whole.  This might just be first draft doubts, but I'm questioning whether the information I planned to bring to light through the internal story, the world-building and set-up, is vital for understanding the main narrative.  And it's probably good to question.  I'll either strengthen that storyline and use it to set up later events in the main story (though it's not a strict flashback, per se), strengthen and draw parallels between characters, and build up the themes of memory that are already making themselves known in the outline, or I'll realize it doesn't enhance the main storyline enough and cut it.  Of course, I could then build it into its own novel, or use it as a tie-in novella, or something; in the worst case, it's a story I like that will help strengthen my writing skills.  But I'm going to try to make it work!

What do you guys think of multiple storylines or stories within stories?  Read any unique, interesting, or memorable examples recently?

Let's make 2012 awesome

Ahh, I am back! Actually, I've been back for about a week, but somehow blogging has slipped my mind! I took a break over the holidays and formed some bad habits, I guess. Nevertheless, it was a relaxing and much-needed excursion, and I hope you all got to take a break and have some fun, too.

I wasn't lazy in every regard, though! My current WIP novel has a story-within-a-story structure, because I love those, and I've been working consistently on the inner story for the last few weeks. As should be expected of me, it's turning out longer than I'd anticipated. I'm about 3/5 of the way through my outline and already passed my estimated word count for the whole thing! But I think it's because the second fifth needed to be more complex than I'd projected, and thus took more time to tell properly. Even now I can feel the story threatening to turn into its own novel, but I quite like it, even in first draft form. I'll just need to figure out a way to tighten it up while enhancing the characters, their relationships, and the plot revelations that come out as a result. Then once that's done, I have to start on the main storyline. Eesh.

Looking forward, it's going to be a busy year for me! Let's see, coming up I have my last semester of grad school, which will start in a few weeks and end in May. Pretty soon I should start keeping an eye open for job listings. I've got Literary Orange in April, so I need to read my panelists' latest books for that. My best friend is getting married in August and I'll have to fit in maid of honor duties there (which I'm excited about, though!). And on top of that and writing, I want to submit some short stories for publication and start querying agents this year!

All written out, it doesn't look that bad. I'm looking forward to it. And to prepare for this year to be awesome, I will share this masterpiece with you: My admiration of the person who drew, yes, Chewbacca riding a freaking squirrel into action against some Nazis knows no bounds.

Happy belated New Year! What do you hope to get done during this turn around the sun?

"Worst books ever" posts kind of make me sad

Huffington Post has a short slideshow of teens Tweeting under the #worstbookever hashtag.   Awww.  Makes me a little sad to see them throwing shade at some of my favorite books, but I do remember being frustrated by a few during my own high school career.  Mostly it was due to disliking the voice or theme or finding the plot resolution unsatisfying; occasionally I just didn't like the characters or the author's views.  I still can't really stand Hemingway given how misogynistic I found his works.  I think I was the only person in my class who liked SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE, and in fact it's still one of my favorite books. 

"Worst books ever" posts make me a bit sad, although I realize that in most of these cases, it's just students venting.  Venting's a healthy thing.  We all need to do it sometimes.  I know I do, though I usually keep it private.  But reading these reminds me that sometimes I really miss English and language arts classes, because I did get to read a lot of interesting stuff that I might never have exposed myself to otherwise.  What are your thoughts?

A few life musings, and some writing progress

Hark!  I was a bit undecided about what to post today, but since many people's posting seems to be winding down as the holidays approaches, I figured I'd just do a little personal update.

I finished my semester up about a week ago, and though I only have one left and will need to plan for it in January, I am allowing my mind to not think about school at all now.  It has been, as I hoped and expected, extremely refreshing.  I have managed to make some decent progress in the novel-that-was-taking-forever-to-start as my creative energies have returned, much to my delight.  Don't get me wrong; I've still had some false starts and parts of it feel very drafty.  But it's quite a change that I've been able to stare at a computer monitor and relax enough to write instead of wanting to stab my eyeballs with pointy things.

It's funny in light of the fact that so much business elsewhere slows down in December.  My school is done for the year, the school where I work just finished its own quarter, and everywhere people are prepping for vacations.  I feel I must be crazy to start a new novel, but I find this time of the year invigorating and think I'll be more productive than I have in a while.

I'm taking the next week off, taking my sister to Disneyland since she's home from India this year!, and then driving up north to see my parents from the 20th through probably the New Year (or close to it).  It leaves me with an odd feeling that this might be my last blog post of the year, with how busy I'll be up there.  All my computer time may be reserved for writing, and even that can be difficult to squeeze in sometimes between obligations and celebrations!  But I'm sure I'll squeeze out a post or two as the inspiration strikes.

Also, I will be traveling with the cat.  In a carrier.  For eight hours.  I am not sure how this will go.

I am excited, though!  And hope my strange, alien-filled tale will continue to flourish.  There's a story-within-the-story, and I'm writing that first, but as I am wont to do, am wordier than is acceptable and getting very into the characters.  I fear this will try to become its own novel.  No!

2012 is going to bring a lot of events.  Aside from finishing up grad school, I'll be working on the novel, probably trying to get some short stories written and published and/or get an agent, eventually searching for a new job (as a librarian for reals this time), maybe traveling, playing maid of honor in the best friend's wedding, and who knows what else.  Ack!  No, I expect it to be fine for the most part.  I hope, for the sake of my sanity.  This past semester was stressful enough.  Let's look forward with optimism, yes?

Alright, I'll wrap up this short ramble of a blog post and devote myself to thinking of better, and more universally applicable, topics for next time.  Happy Holidays and God bless you all!  Let me know if you're going to do anything fun, interesting, or unusual.

Playlists post

I'm late with my blog post this week because I've been suffering a bad cold the last few days that has knocked me on my butt and kept me from accomplishing much of...well, anything. So, since my brain and sinuses are fighting me and I always think it's fun when I see other blogs do this, I thought I'd do a playlists post!

I'm not the type of writer who can listen to music when I write (at least not music with lyrics). I like having noise around me, but if there are words, I'll focus too much on them to write my own. Even if those words are in a language I don't know! But I do have mental playlists that help me with inspiration and planning.

Of course, none of you have ever read these books because I'm not published (yet), but oh well.

The first book
The first book I wrote with any seriousness centered on the relationship between a genetically-modified human weapon (who had X-Men-style powers, if we're being honest) and a pacifist revolutionary/war orphan who befriends him after he escapes his facility. It was inspired a lot by Lostprophets and my favorite band ever, Blindside, especially the following songs:







The second and third books
These were both trunk novels that didn't have a mental playlist. Correlation...or causation?


The fourth book
I like to say the fourth book is Trinity Blood meets The Road. A disillusioned mercenary escorts a sick nun to a group of scientists in a world afflicted with a disease that basically turns them into demons or Reavers. Lots of grappling with the beast within for both characters. I listened to a lot of symphonic metal as inspiration, especially E Nomine's "Wolfen (Das Tir in Mir)", which pretty much means "Wolves (The Animal in Me)".


Also of great import were songs like "Mysteria", "Deine Welt", and, since I mentioned Trinity Blood, the theme from that, Buck-Tick's "Dress".

The fifth book
i.e. the barely-in-progress one. This one doesn't have a soundtrack yet, so I'm hoping there is no correlation between lack of that and quality! I think one will come to me as I get more into it, though.


The sixth book
Funny enough, I already have a few mental songs for the book I plan to write next, which is the "What if they were robots?" one I laughed about a post or two back. I don't really watch much anime anymore, but Fullmetal Alchemist is one of my favorite stories ever. I was watching the Brotherhood series and remembered this song from the first series:


And then this song started playing automatically, and some of the imagery starting around 4:50 really struck me:

(No idea what the song is about, though.)

Wow, this post makes it seem like I listen a lot more J-pop than I actually do! I know very little about it, to be honest, but some of it's pretty cool.

Do you create mental playlists for your writing? What are some of the songs you use?

Ideas from weird places

Over most of the holiday weekend, and the week before, and probably for another day or two still, I've been busting my hump working on final projects for grad school. Though most of my projects aren't due for another 1.5-2 weeks, I am ready to be done! As interesting as my classes are, this has been the most stressful semester I've had so far and it has impacted every area of my life in more ways than I had anticipated. (Including my writing...but I did get a lot of revision done this semester...) Once I've got those final projects out of the way, I will be able to devote much more attention to drafting things as well as relaxing and sewing and enjoying the holidays...

Already the stress is starting to lift a bit. I had been perturbed by the relative slowness with which new ideas were coming to me, but in the middle of my massive study-cramming last weekend, a peculiar one struck me out of nowhere: BUT WHAT IF THEY WERE ROBOTS?

Go ahead. Laugh. I did. And after I said "pffft", I kept coming back to the thought. What if they weren't robots per se, but it was some sort of weird post-Singularity thing? Maybe one that went terribly wrong? And the ideas kept flowing from there.

I always go on about seeing China Miéville at Comic-Con in 2010, and how he urged the audience not to dismiss their ideas, no matter how weird. And one of my favorite quotes from C.S. Lewis is, "Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it."

So I decided not to worry and just go with it. This idea isn't for the current book still only in the beginning stages, but the one after it--and let me tell you, it is a relief to have an idea that's going to be churning and spinning and swirling around in the back of my brain, waiting to be written when I finish this one, because this one refused to move past the vague idea stage for a LONG time.

And I've decided it's going to be awesome, even if robots/cyborgs/androids have been done before. The current book will have aliens but I still hope it will be awesome, too. It's funny; I always knew that any story I wrote would be SF, but never thought I'd write vampires, aliens, or robots. A few years ago I wrote a SF book with vampires (which needs some major work, though, to be honest) and now I'm writing aliens (well, one alien, and a bunch of humans) and next I'll be writing kinda-robots.

Let your ideas fly, even if they're weird or possibly clichéd.

What about you? Had any weird ideas? Had any at weird times or in weird places?

Using spreadsheets to map out your subplots

So that Gary Corby spreadsheet idea I've mentioned several times on this blog? I decided to try it with the latest outline I've been working on. This is the result thus far (since the outline isn't quite finished yet):

I've blurred out the particulars of my chart, and made a few modifications to suit my own purposes. In this particular story, the cast is a medium-sized group that is stuck on an uninhabited alien planet, so they are pretty much together the whole time. This left me without a need to track where characters made appearances. Being more worried about tracking subplots and character arcs, I put a short description of each major scene along the top and of the subplot/arc on the left side. Some of those scenes will be broken up into smaller ones, of course, but for the purpose of tracking character and plot developments, they work fine this large.

I marked the introduction of a subplot with a red I, just so it would stand out, and used a slightly darker C to mark each arc's conclusion. Anytime that arc is developed in the middle of the novel is marked with a black X. Some of the subplots have their own divisions; for example, the subplot where the cast tries to determine whether they are really alone is divided into two, to show when they find evidence of habitation and when they find evidence against habitation. These are the cells marked in gray.

It's very useful! The areas shaded yellow are where I noticed there was little development of a plotline between its introduction and conclusion. For these, I will go back through my outline and try to figure out key places to work them in in as graceful a fashion as possible. The ones in pink are cases where I know the conclusion but have not yet figured out how or where to work the beginning and development into the story. I can be thankful that these are very small (one concerns the relationship between two characters, which is bound to develop anyway due to the tight-knittedness of the group, and the other concerns the appearance of a certain creature).

So that's it--a very useful tool for creating a visual map of your story. For plotters like myself, this is very useful in the planning stage, but for pantsers, I can imagine it being very useful as one revises.

Have any of you tried something similar to keep track of your story? Interested in trying something like this?

On library research for your writing

Continuing with the library theme this week, I thought I'd write a little something about library research!

Maybe you're researching travel to other worlds. Or Sweden's politico-religious culture in the fifteenth century. (Yup, I've researched both for novels.) Whether you write science fiction, historicals, or another genre, you'll probably need to research during your career.

Most people aren't too intimidated about finding physical materials in the library, if only because staff can help when the building is open. But reduced hours are making it a challenge for some to visit during those hours. So what's a writer to do?

Online Databases
Electronic resources are often available to patrons at any time, from any location. Check out your library's website and look for a place to sign in. Entering your library card number or other identifying information will verify you as a library patron and get you access to articles from popular or academic journals, newspapers, and ebooks. If you're still unsure whether your local library allows off-site browsing, give them a call!

But how do I find stuff?

The biggest challenge is figuring out which terms to search. No matter how well-designed a database is, it's not a mind-reader, so it's important to try to think in terms of classification. Typing in "what happened in Sweden in the 1400s?" won't retrieve many results unless an article happens to use most or all of the same words. Instead, act like you're searching an index and pull out the key concepts.

Search Library of Congress Subject Headings

These are key phrases created by the Library of Congress to classify and describe information. If you can find the correct heading for your topic, you should find just about everything available on it. There's a good guide on the subject here (although it's a bit old), but you can also just play around to find the right heading. Or, when in doubt, ask a librarian!

The nice thing about LCSH is that you can append subtopics for more granular information. So when thinking about fifteenth century Swedish history, I might start off with the broadest topic I can think of (Sweden), then add History. I search for "Sweden -- History" (note the -- formatting). I'm not sure what date range to use, but in my catalog, I see there is an entry for "Sweden -- History -- 1397-1523", which fits!

Next I think about traveling to other planets. How might someone classify that? I try "Interstellar travel" and that works, but so does "Space travel", which redirects me to "Interplanetary voyages" and "Space flight". There are thousands of subject headings, so it might well take a few tries to find the right one. But once you get the hang of it, finding information becomes so much easier!

Some databases use their own subject headings, too. These can be just as useful, especially if there is a thesaurus feature to look them up. If you find a document you like, take a look at how it's categorized. Those terms could help you find more information on the same subject.

Public Universities

What if you'd still rather use print sources, or want access to academic information that your public library doesn't have? Investigate the policies of local public university libraries. Many of them will allow walk-in users, since they're funded by tax money (although you won't get borrowing privileges). Even better, they might be open longer than the public system, especially around midterms or finals.

Google and Wikipedia

Don't let anyone lie. Librarians use both these sites to look up basic information like names and dates. They're fine when used properly. Just gauge what sort of information you need before using. If you want authoritative information from an expert on a topic, I'd recommend the library, but if you just want to make sure historical figure X was born in 1610, Google away.

This turned into a long one, and I still feel like I've given only the most basic information about online searching! Questions? Future topics in this vein you'd like to see? Fire away.

Guest post on Rachelle Gardner's blog today!

Hey! Rachelle Gardner, literary agent extraordinaire, asked me to write a guest post on her blog about the economic impact of libraries and whether they are good for authors. And guess what? I totally did!

For anybody hopping over here from her post, welcome!

On being well-versed, and also a plug for Literary Orange

The LO part might be last in the title, but I'll pimp it out first in this post. Since the official website for next year's Literary Orange is up, I guess I can announce this: I'm going to be moderating again! I'll be doing the "Cosmic Destinies" fantasy panel, which is scheduled to include Samantha Henderson and Nathan Long. If you like books and live in (or will be in) southern California next April 14th, you should stop by!

Now to being well-versed:
I was conversing with a friend last night on the topic of science fiction and fantasy and how difficult it is to keep up with everything in that genre. It's got a rich history and its output seems to be growing everyday, and a number of authors are very prolific. I read quite a lot, and I used to be able to read even more when I could take the bus to work and didn't have to deal with grad school und so weiter, but even so, I feel like my knowledge is scattered. I've read almost everything by a few authors, bits and pieces of a larger number of authors, but most I know only by name and reputation. Every once in a while I'll overestimate my reading prowess...

I've read this much! I'm awesome!

...only for somebody else really into the genre to start discoursing at length about some author I've barely heard of and hadn't esteemed all that crucial to knowledge of the genre, and then I'll realize how little my hope of reading even a majority of the literature out there is. And the fact that I read in other genres, too, reduces further my chances of catching up!

Oh. The library's a bit bigger than I thought.
What do you mean there's more than one room?

I'm now convinced that anyone who claims to be super well-versed in science fiction and/or fantasy literature is one of the following:

1. overconfident of the proportion of it they've read
2. ill-informed of the scope of literature out there
3. confined to one particular sub-genre
4. blessed with a life and job that lets them read 24/7 (and even then I doubt their claims)
5. lying

Or maybe I'm just delusional in my interpretation of some people's claims or the feasibility of reading enough of these particular genres to be considered well-versed. Perhaps my definition of well-versed is simply too strict. I just know that I've read quite a lot, but still have much more to read!

What say you? How much do you think you have to have read to be considered well-versed, and are you there yet? How much do you read?