yearofwritingchallenge - j.r. dawson

Readercon Schedule!

7/10/2018

I have been MIA because I've been working on like five different projects, but to make up for my blog absence, HERE IS A PICTURE OF THE PUPPY WE JUST ADOPTED AND HIS NAME IS PADFOOT.

Onto the Readercon schedule!

I have never been to Readercon before. So this will be a new experience.

Not listed are the things like Meet the Prose (which I'll be at, come get your quotes!) and other mingly things. Please say hi if you see me!

This is where I will be:

FRIDAY:
On Dislike: Between Meh and Rage
Salon 5
Writing Panel
Fri 3:00 PM Duration: 01:00

Futures That Feel like Home
Blue Hills
Writing Panel
Fri 4:00 PM Duration: 01:00

Group Reading: Stonecoast MFA
Salon A
Writing Reading
Fri 6:00 PM Duration: 01:00
I will probably be reading from my new novella.

Reading: J.R. Dawson
Salon B
Writing Reading
Fri 9:00 PM Duration: 00:30
I will probably be reading Legendary Legend

SATURDAY:
Rethinking the Dangerous Victim
Salon C
Writing Panel
Sat 8:00 PM Duration: 01:00

Living in Material Worlds, Part 2: What Do Clothes Convey?
Salon C
Writing Panel
Sat 9:00 PM Duration: 01:00

SUNDAY:
Kaffeeklatsch
Seven Masts
Writing
Sun 1:00 PM Duration: 01:00

Thoughts on "I Set my Ship to the Brightest Star"

11/7/2017

I’ve been trying to do a “Thoughts on” for every story that gets published. I am behind because by doing “Brightest Star,” I’ve skipped over “Woman on the Rock,” and my “Thoughts on” for “Marley and Marley” will be published on the F&SF blog. But here is “I Set my Ship to the Brightest Star,” now available on NonBinary Review. I will warn you, these thoughts do give spoilers, so maybe listen or read the story first and then come back here.

This one was a painful and terrifying story to write. I started writing it years and years ago. First, it was a flash fantasy. Then it was a war story. When I heard the call for Hans Christian Andersen stories at NBR, I thought maybe that’s the home needed for this story: HCA’s world of the Snow Queen.

The thing that always stuck out to me about this story was the friendship and love between Kai and Gerda, and how for an emo-tastic sassafrass like HCA, this was a very hopeful story of good conquering the darkest and coldest of evils. The Snow Queen isn’t necessarily a bad person, she’s just the epitome of depression and loss.

And my story, about two lovers who had once been each other’s everything and now were strangers ... it seemed to fit perfectly. Not in a good way for the characters, but in a good way for the story.

The question I posed was: What if this heroic adventure had been for someone who Gerda perceived as her soul mate, but dangerously was nothing of the kind.

But I don’t think it’s the antithesis to HCA’s story of hope. I think our protagonist could have lived a fine life if she defined her goals in a different way. Giving our lives to those who don’t want them is maybe not the greatest of plans. Gerda could have lived out a fine life with a nice girl and made something of herself, maybe open up a candy shop somewhere on a rebel moon, who knows?

We don’t have to be alone. We don’t have to have closure for everyone who says goodbye. We don’t have to live in the past, but we can instead look to the future. Isn’t that what science fiction is all about?

TO READ OR LISTEN TO THIS STORY, CLICK HERE.

Hopepunk and Me

11/6/2017

Stickers on my laptop are super appropriate to my Zuko-deep soul.

So I am definitely getting to the point if I don’t write a blog, it starts to look silly.

My friend introduced me to a new word a month or so ago. Hopepunk. At first I was like, “Great, another punk genre.” But then I started reading about it. And I realized it’s what my new full-length manuscript is.

Hopepunk. The aesthetic of hope.

For a writer who spent so much time both feet in the pool of Steampunk, the idea of hope seemed arbitrary. While Steampunk has some hope to it, it’s more about the inevitability of our hubris and how we hold onto humanity after our great follies, et cetera, et cetera.

Hopepunk is something new and different. It means you put that optimism right out front and center, and you strive for it.

“You wrote hopepunk,” my friend said, about this new book. “You wrote it, and I don’t know how you wrote it in 2017.”

My 2017 has been something else. From pneumonia to political terror to personal tragedy, it’s been a hell of a ride. But like one of my characters says, “What’s being angry gonna do? If I’m anything but angry, then I can keep pushing toward something. I can make this into something.”

And honestly, I think Hopepunk is what I’ve always written. “Marley and Marley” dropped this week, and even when things suck and are super dark … well, you just have to read it. I don’t want to spoil it.

I don’t know how any of this is going to end. I just know I have to keep going. I have to keep trying to believe that at some point, things are going to get better.

(Note: The adorable Hopepunk logo was made by "ariaste" and you can buy their merch on redbubble by clicking here . For more information about the Hopepunk movement, which I believe ariaste started (?) click here . )

UPDATE AND NOTE: Alexandra Rowland is the inventor of the word Hopepunk. She has a new book coming out from Saga Press this year.

I'm a Gryffindor. Deal.

6/25/2017

Pictured: A Gryffindor, lost in thought as he contemplates his own awesomeness.

Yes. I am a Gryffindor.

I bring this up on the twentieth anniversary of Harry Potter, because mostly Facebook asked me what my house was, and I said Gryffindor.

Always. Gryffindor.

"Oh, so you're the chosen one," everyone who isn''t Gryffindor (in other words, everyone) says.

"So you have Main Character syndrome."

"Yeah. Everyone and their dog is Gryffindor."

Not true.

Everyone is everything but a Gryffindor, because they don't want to be the fantasy equivalent of a man bun.

Ravenclaws are smart and intellectual. Slytherins are badass and on the edge. Hufflepuffs are about 90 percent of the fandom, because let's face it, Harry Potter people are amazing and sweet and are very good finders.

"Everyone is a Gryffindor," everyone says, putting on their not-Gryffindor scarves.

At school, I tried to put together a Hogwarts festival. We couldn't do it. Because there were forty something Ravenclaws and me and some other kid in the Gryffindor house and all the professors refused to be our Head of House. The Hufflepuff Head of House had already designed presents for all the Hufflepuffles. Gryffindors? We were an army of two. And there was no mathematical way we were going to win the house cup.

That is to say, it was canceled on account of no Gryffindors.

I'm pretty sure there were more Gryffindors back in the day. It was cool back then. Be like the trio. But then everyone realized there were other houses and other stories and they expanded their horizons. That's fine.

But I'm a Gryffindor.

I've always been a Gryffindor.

"Are you sure though?" People will say. "What did Pottermore say?"

They all said Gryffindor.

"But you don't really know thought right?" they say. "I think you're more Hufflepuff."

My entire sense of self was thrown out of whack when at the age of fourteen, I was wrongly diagnosed as a Slytherin at Harry Potter camp.

Nope.

I'm brave to a fault. I work hard and help others and yes I like recognition for it but I do it for a moral compass, not to be a hero, and that can be misconstrued sometimes. Sometimes I fall short. Sometimes I can't see past the end of my nose. Sometimes I get wrapped up in whatever is happening in the center of the story I don't see the really cool stuff happening everywhere else. I jump into the middle of the mosh and I suffocate. That's okay.

I'm also the first person who will be there when you are crushed with life changing news. I will fight to the death next to your side, even if it's just some stupid puppy love broken heart or your puppy has pissed all over your rug or you have to face something worse, like your own personal dementors.

I know who I am. And that's a strong thing to know.

Happy twenty years, Harry Potter.

Roar.

Thoughts on "Nozizwe and Almahdi"

6/17/2017

The next story has hit the stratosphere.

This one, I don't want to say a lot about, because I am seeing that everyone is finding their own little things in it, and I don't want to be that writer who's like, "No no this is what I meant!" or "Well, this is what I saw," and then ruin the reader's reading of it. Or something.

I actually wrote this one for a class assignment for Science Fiction Fairy Tales at The Brainery (Link here, go check it out!). The prompt was the science of love and the story of Cupid and Psyche.

Amore e Psiche (1707–09) by Giuseppe Crespi

As I started thinking of how to combine these two ideas, I kept having this averse reaction to the idea of science making soul mates. The lack of agency in the articles that covered thirty minutes of staring at each other in order to program the brain to empathize/fall in love, and also the erasure of choice for Psyche in the myth both ran against my grain. Of course you can trick your brain into loving someone. But for a character who is intelligent, strong-willed, and wanting something deeper than a trick ... would it work then?

And I realized, while deciding what exactly this story was going to be, that I was so defensive and offended because of something weird that had happened to me.

In 2010, I saw a photograph of a man in a vest, thick curly hair, and big green blue eyes that held galaxies in them. I had no idea what his name was, where he came from, what flavor of cereal he ate growing up, none of it. But I said to my brother, "So I think I saw my soul mate today."

And when I met that man, and I hugged that man, it was like I'd been waiting my whole life to find him again. Whatever the hell that means.

After we were married, he told me he felt that weird feeling, too.

There's something deeper to all this love stuff. Love shouldn't be stressful or forced or forced upon or a scientific formula. It's something I can't explain. It's something I'm not sure an article or a myth can explain.

But we can try. I mean, that's one reason why we write about it, study it, remember it through lore.

Divya poses a very good question at the end of the recording. It's gotten me thinking in a whole new way about this story. And through her question, I realize, as it's now in the world and considered a finished product, I'm only starting to understand this one.

To read or listen "Nozizwe and Almahdi" on Escape Pod, click here.

"My Dad Knows You!" - A Really Exciting Announcement

6/1/2017

No, I am not in this issue. But ...

So I've definitely already made this announcement in real life. But I haven't officially told my blog and the website what's going on.

Tonight, I watched Hasan Minhaj's Netflix special. Toward the end, he talks about his callbacks for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. When he finally landed the gig, he wanted to say, "Jon ... this is the one thing I've gotten that my dad knows."

What comes out is, "Jon. My dad knows you!"

I lost it. I laughed and laughed. Because this is exactly the thought I had when I got the acceptance email from Charlie Finlay at Fantasy and Science Fiction.

My dad has never read a word of what I've written. I've published a book. I've been in an anthology. I've gotten enough sales where I'm now Active SFWA. Even back when I lived in Chicago and wrote plays, he never came and saw them. And I guess that's a good thing, because my mom got mad at my portrayal of a dad character in my junior year project.

But Dad knows what F&SF is.

When I quit my dayjob to be a writer, he worried. He told me, "Can't you at least sub for the district?" And I said, "No. I'm cutting this off completely."

But when I got this sale. My dream sale. The one I'd been working for ... he took me out to eat. He said, "They sell that in real bookstores!" He said, "That's where Dark Tower was." He said, "When I was a kid, I had F&SF all over my room. It got me through my childhood."

There are still miles to go. There are a million things I haven't done. But Charlie ... my dad knows you.

Also, go watch Hasan Minhaj's special, "Homecoming King", now playing on Netflix. It's amazing, heartbreaking, and this world does not deserve him.

Recap: Estes Park Writing Retreat 2017, or ... WE GOT THROUGH THE CANYON IN TIME!

5/11/2017

Since 2000-whatever, we've been heading to the mountains, Kaitlin and Jeff and me, to write a bunch of cool stuff. The little town of Estes Park is where I first read The Hobbit (I know, it was late in life). It's where I finished the last scene of my book. It's where I came up with some ideas for some cool short stories. It's home.

So this year, when I knew we would return to the mountains, and since our writing family had grown, I thought it would be cool to make the retreat bigger.

So we invited a few people to join us. Five of us drove out/flew out/waited for the rest of us to drive out or fly out, and we met up in a beautiful cabin.

The way you get to Estes is through one of two canyons or through RMNP. We saw the snow was going to start at noon, so we rushed through phone calls, grocery shopping, lunch, and was halfway through the canyon when the storm hit. We rolled up in a flurry of white. But as soon as we got into the cabin, it felt like home.

I kept swearing to Emlyn, who hadn't seen the mountains before, that there were indeed mountains all around, we just couldn't see them! So the first couple of days were sharing stories, writing new stuff, bringing prompts and inspiration to the table, and falling asleep to the smooth tones of Nick Molle. On the third day, Emlyn looked outside and said, "Oh! Mountain!"

We went downtown to some great adventures. We went to the bookstore for Independent Bookstore Day. We went to the haunted Stanley Hotel! We saw ghosts and we saw elk and we saw the tops of tall peaks. It was all very magical indeed.

Through all the writing and climbing and reading, the thing I took away is friendship. I know that sounds super ridiculous and gross, but for real. We had so much fun in these places and doing these things because we were there together. Curling around the fire and talking about the deconstruction of Steven Universe's plot arc, Zuko's redemption, and how perfect Gravity Falls paid off ... this is our life, guys. We're writers. We're nerdy writers and there is nothing more we want to do than sit around and talk about writing. Thank you for coming to the mountains. Thank you for creating and sharing and staying up late.

I'll see you next year.

Thoughts on "The Legendary Legend of the Darkly's Slayer"

5/9/2017

How can you not read something with a pink bear on it?

I meant to publish this a month ago, as I was recovering from pneumonia. Then I got in a car wreck (not my fault) and was recovering from that. So here we are, with the blog entry that has been sitting on the side lines for way too long.

As the stories get released, I want to do a close-up "how I did the thing" on each one of them. I don't want to say too much, because I think that if I start blabbing my mouth about every single thing I did, then all of a sudden it's not the readers' story anymore, you can't make it your own. But here we are with a recap of "Legendary Legend".

This story is weird. And I love it. At some point along the 2014 timeline, I realized that when I wrote funny stuff, people read it and enjoyed it. So I wrote "Darkly".

I was in between two weird gigs on a day where I was too far from my apartment to go home, so I walked into a Hot Topic and I picked up a Clearance Darth Vader notebook and I walked to Panera and wrote a scene with a girl and a boy. It was a very specific scene in the story that I'm not going to talk about because spoilers (and intrigue!), but this scene ended up being the crux of the whole story.

When I got home, I typed out the most ridiculous parody I could think of. I threw everything I could at it. I made all the jokes I thought would be funny. You know, all the things you laugh at and you don't think anyone else will laugh?

Somehow, other people laughed. And I'm glad they laughed!

Personally, "Legendary Legend" has taught me that sometimes the weird things we think are ridiculous, other people will like. So whatever that story is, that you think is too weird? Do the thing. Try it out. Write from your heart.

Also, and this is more of a personal vendetta, my sixth grade teacher? Here's my bird to you. Because you turned the whole class against my leg injury, and here I am seventeen years later with a beat up leg and a story about a girl with a beat up leg. And I like her. And really, isn't that why we're all writers? To tell our sixth grade teachers they were horrible people?

To read the story:
ISSUE SIX OF MOTHERSHIP ZETA (CLICK HERE)

That one time I wrote fanfiction.

4/11/2017

(by saveri)

It was 2003. Order of the Phoenix had dropped and I was not a fan how it ended. So I told my brothers I was going to write them a story we could read every night.

Eventually, it was less about reading it to my brothers and more about me finishing a gigantic project. I wanted to see if I could do it. I did it.

This all might sound really juvenile, but it was my first foray into noveling, and tracking characters, and working towards plots, and pacing, and all of the things you have to do as an actual writer. And it worked well as a training ground, because a lot of that plot was already in place by Rowling, the characters already existed. My world-building was cut in half because there was the HP Lexicon available in 2003. It took me a year to write Forever Alive, and I came out of it with a way better understanding of how I work, how my writing works, and how to craft a big epic story.

The other thing that came out of it was an audience. I learned how to take criticism. I learned how to work with a dramaturg. I learned how to listen to some comments and let the other comments go. And weirdly enough, I learned how to deal with fan mail. Because yeah, Forever Alive did gather a following. I still get things in the inbox about it, usually every other day. Some of it is great. Like "This really helped me in a bad situation" or "I really hope you're writing professionally now" or "Thank you for this story." And some other ones are creepy, like "Please marry me." And others are weird, like, "Actually, James has five hundred eyebrow hairs, not four hundred and ninety nine."

And the fun thing about it is ... it's low stakes. It was a fanfiction about the Marauders. It meant so much to me to write it, and it's meant a lot to others, but it's not my career. It's not my own world creation. If they don't like the way Remus is treated, welp, that's Rowling's circus, not mine. It was just special enough to keep me invested, and it was just removed enough to not make it personal. I knew it was never going to be for real published. So it was fine. Whatever happened with it was great.

And a lot happened with it. A couple of awards. It spread to a wide audience. Translations. Facebook buttons. Fanart. It was great.

It got me into college, this story. It showed my advisors I could write something long form and keep people invested. That was cool. And there was one kid in my college class who made fun of me for it. But the thing is ... fanfiction has taught a lot of great contemporary writers how to write.

So go out. Write your Supernatural Harry Potter Twilight Percy Jackson Wind in the Willows one shot. Do a crossover between Full House and Fullmetal Alchemist. Play in others' sandboxes in a safe space. And then go out into the world.

Oh, and if you want to read my old high school fanfiction from 2003, here's the link:

Forever Alive by Mordred

Pneumonia.

3/12/2017

Tobias, my trusty hound, ready to spend a sick night with me. (And yes, he is named after an Animorph)

So let's talk about where I've been for the last two months.

Here's a tip: If your mom is sick, don't go to her birthday party. I know, she'll be mad, but guess what, you won't lose out on two months of your life.

I did that thing. And halfway through Disney, I felt like I may die.

A week later, I was bedridden with a fever and chills.

Four days later, I had bronchitis.

Six days later, I had pneumonia.

Now it is mid-March, and I finally had a day where I could be out of bed. Yesterday was the first day I could really edit something. Today, I actually hit my deadlines.

I am not one to stop working because I'm sick, which turns out, makes you sicker. My first pro-rate story launched on Mothership Zeta, and I couldn't even promote it because as soon as I started writing the blog entry, I started coughing up a lung. I tried to hit page 50 on my WIP, and no luck there either. Everything was a failure. Weeks went by with my critique group asking me if I'd hit my goals, and me weeping, "Nooooo, why do I suuuuck?"

"Well," someone finally said, "because you were sick with a thing that literally kills people."

But people work through worse things than pneumonia. And I am never one to let myself be lazy.

But tonight? I made my deadline. That's what is important. I wrote today. I will write tomorrow. And I got better.

I'm not exactly sure what I learned from this experience except that steroids do give you headaches (Dr. Liar) and sometimes there are circumstances you can't just grit your teeth through. I am grateful I can go outside again. I am grateful it cleared up. I am grateful I can string words together somewhat coherently again. I am grateful I hit that deadline.

Now onwards and upwards, Tobias! We fly!