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I know she used to post in here a bit. Her story is now up at 'Strange Horizons'. I just read it and it is very good. Congrats MR, if you see this!
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Hey! Thanks. I still lurk, but I rarely post anymore because I've been travelling a lot lately.
If you are curious about the writer's process, I posted the original version of Portrait of Ari on my website. It began as a scene in my first novel which I scrapped because it had irredeemable plot problems. So if you go read the original scene, I should warn you that I was in high school when I wrote this, and at the time my protagonist was a space alien who was a shapeshifting giant winged-cat person.
I was young. But there were parts that I liked a lot and so I recrafted this scene.
[This message has been edited by MaryRobinette (edited February 03, 2006).]
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I read the story. It's a very good piece of work, Mary. I can see why you placed as a semifinalist in the last quarter of the WOTF contest. This story was a pleasure to read, and I'll be looking for future pieces of your work.
Thanks for the link, Crotalus. It's always nice to have good stories pointed out.
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Mary, you were reviewed at Tangent Online, but I'm not sure the reviewer got the story (or else I didn't get it myself, which is always a possibility).
quote:as reality flickers back and forth between two possible outcomes
Is it just me, or were the italics merely his own memories? That's what I got from the story...
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This was the first story by Mrs. Kowal that I read, and I knew instantly that she was a talent to watch. I tried to tell OSC late last summer that I had discovered her, but he wasn't having any of it. He wanted all the credit for himself, just because she had gone to BootCamp (at my suggestion!)(well, I guess other people suggested it too).
Happy late birthday, by the way, Mrs. Kowal. (Anyone up for starting a new thread, "Mrs. Kowal has a birthday"?)
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I initially had a little trouble with the deja vu scenes, but after the first, it worked. Well written, and a good read, but the lack of explanation to the reader why she couldn't tell him left me feeling cheated.
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If she had overtly explained it, it would have destroyed the nuances of the story. Much like pinning a butterfly to a corkboard.
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I agree, Oliver. Actually, I think Mary is very good in general about leaving the right amount of information to the imagination. I struggle with that, so I appreciate people who can do it well.
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Maybe it was the part about 'reassignment' that threw me off. Reassigned from what? A secret CIA position? I thought that added enough doubt to the alien references. *shrug*
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Aw... you guys are so sweet. I can explain all the backstory, if you want. Not that I think you should need it to understand the story, but since this originated as a scene in a novel there is a fair amount of backstory that doesn't hit the page.
This is actually kind of fun, since it's a published story, I don't have to worry about making changes. (Yay!) It's also a way to differentiate this thread from the Hatrack Writers in Print area. So if you are curious about process, I'm happy to babble on about it.
[This message has been edited by MaryRobinette (edited February 13, 2006).]
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I'll echo crotalus here: I would loove to have the backstory BTW, sorry if I gush too much, but it was (and still is) one of the best stories I read in SH these past months (this week's story is just too plain weird for my tastes).
Posts: 1075 | Registered: Sep 2004
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Well, the short form is that Ari is an alien anthropologist assigned to study Terran colleges. So if Tom knows, then it blows multiple levels of her assignment.
The long form--and this is from the flawed novel--is that 6000 years ago another form of aliens came to Earth and took a sampling of humans. They were set on a new planet (far, far away) and modified. Humans were left as a control group. The super-aliens left after about a thousand years.
About fifty years ago, Ari's race rediscovered Earth and has been studying it preparing to make contact. They are fascinated by Earth because of the mythologies and multiple cultures. Ari's homeworld has only one culture and their entire history is recorded so they had no need for creation myths.
The fatal flaw in the novel was that one of the modifications turned Ari's people into shapeshifting winged cat-people. I could pull that out of a lot of the story but I couldn't get around a major plot point which absolutely required the giant cat aspect.
But wait--it gets worse. I was in high school when I started writing the first draft of the novel and my main character, who was not Ari, was based on, brace yourself, one of my D&D characters.
I know.
This version came about because Phobos entertainment was publishing an anthology of short stories. I didn't have a short story and decided to edit the novel down to short story length. It is unclear to me now why that seemed like a good idea. That's still not the version that went on to Strange Horizons.
Later, after I had done a lot of reading and a bunch more writing, I did another revision of the story and that's what I started sending around to markets.
Now, I'd just write a new story and try to get it right the first time. Structurally speaking, of course. I still have to edit and tweak when things are written, but structure is easier to handle since OSC's bootcamp.
[This message has been edited by MaryRobinette (edited February 17, 2006).]
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One of the things that just amazes me about Mary is how much her stories can change from the first draft to the final. Mine tend to get stuck on the original concept, for better or (more likely) for worse.
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Me too. Once I write the last word, I have a terrible time changing anything substantive. I can tighten dialogue and description, insert details about surroundings, and monkey with the little things. But once the story is out of my head and on the monitor, it just feels complete, no matter how flawed it may be. Any suggestions on breaking out of that, Mary?
Posts: 491 | Registered: Oct 2004
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I've mentioned the scrap file before, I think. It's hard to throw words out, right? But the beauty of the computer is that I don't have to throw them away, I can put them in a file, just in case I'm wrong about the change I need to make. I also use a file numbering system that I picked up from Christine. The first draft of the story is title.1, then if I make a big change it's title.2. Minor changes are title2.1.
It's easier to make changes if I'm not thinking about throwing things away. In fact, I've got some stories that I've returned to a previous version.
So what I'll do is pick the point where the story changes and delete all the words that follow. Then I'm no longer dealing with a complete, flawed story. I'm dealing with an incomplete story that works up to the point where I've written. If I've made the choice to make a change then chances are that I've got an idea about what needs to happen to fix that flaw. Cakewalk, right? Blank page and a clear idea.
Here's my dentist analogy. When you've got a cavity, does the dentist try to repair your tooth with the decaying enamel? Uh-uh, he drills it out so that only healthy tooth is left and then makes the repair.
In Portrait of Ari I have one line left of the original.
For Cerbo en Vitro ujo, the story I just sold to Apex (issue 6!), I've got 8 pages of scraps for a 22-page story. (manuscript format)
As far as how to make the decision to change a story...that's harder to explain process. Sometimes a crit makes me recognize a problem area. Sometimes it's because I can feel the story going wrong as it gets harder to write. Sometimes it's just because I get another idea that seems like it would be fun to try. Or I realize that I can screw with my protagonist and make their life more miserable than I had originally planned.
Regardless, my answer is to toss the words on the page and start fresh.
[This message has been edited by MaryRobinette (edited February 17, 2006).]