For those who observe & celebrate...

Photo found at Souvlaki for the Soul

Χρόνια Πολλά! Happy Easter! Happy Passover!

And for those who don't: a New Yorker cartoon.

Resurrection

Click image to link to my Twitter page.

Audience

As I approach my 300th post, a few thoughts about blogging are rattling around in my head on the subject of readership. I imagine that most writer-bloggers ponder these at some point, and now it's my turn. Who, exactly, is my audience? Are the people who read my blog actually going to be interested in my novel once it is published? Are the people who buy my book once it is published actually going to want to read my blog as well? Does it matter?

With non-fiction, it's a more obvious connection. Those authors have special and specific knowledge about a particular subject that can be the basis of their readership across a variety of platforms. Someone who writes about science can also blog and tweet about science, and the same demographic applies. It's all non-fiction.

But the non-fiction "voice" of an author is not the same as the fiction "voice" of a novel's narrator. Sure, a writer of comic novels may want to cultivate a comic tone in her blog, and a writer of middle-grade books will probably want to keep his blog PG-rated so that there is some overlap between the stories and the writer's online presence. But ultimately, the things I want to talk about may not have any appeal to my future readers, and vice versa. (Jody Hedlund covered these issues quite nicely in a blog post she wrote earlier this year.)

If I write about my path to publication, I'll naturally be attracting mostly other writers. Now, other fiction writers should obviously also be fiction readers*, but who knows if they read the kind of fiction I write. Will the fiction posts get lost in the shuffle of "regular" blog posts, making it too hard to find for the readers who do want it? Might putting my fiction on my blog (as I did here and here and sort of here) actually be confusing and unwanted for my regular blog readership? Because as much as I want people to read (and eventually buy) my fiction, I like blogging. I hope that my posts on the craft of writing have been genuinely helpful to people. I hope that people can save time when looking for their first agent because of resources I've provided.

I've decided that one blog cannot be all things to all people. So I've created a second, fiction-only blog. People who want to read my short stories can go there. People who want to hear my personal, struggling-writer's voice can stay here. I hope a lot of you fall into both categories, but it's cool if you don't.

Readers, WHAT DO YOU WANT MORE OF IN THIS BLOG? What have been your favorite posts so far? Tell me a little bit more about yourselves, so I know who my audience really is.

*If you're one of those people who thinks you can write a novel without reading extensively... you're wrong. Go watch So You Want To Write a Novel and then for the love of all that is holy go get a library card and start doing your homework.

Can't blog. Sailing.

The Devil's Parrot (preview)

The devil woke up one morning and found that her hellhound had been replaced by a parrot.

Today's image comes to you courtesy of the talented Natalie Whipple. About a year ago, I won Natalie's "Dark and Stormy" contest, in which we were challenged to break one of the supposed rules of writing and start a story with the weather. I recommend following that link to see the Honorable Mention and 2nd & 3rd place prize winners, but here's my winning entry for your convenience:

A poet once wondered if the world would end in fire or ice. He spoke of desire and hate.

If I could meet that poet, I would tell him that the world can end far less dramatically. It can end under a perfect blue sky and fluffy white clouds, unmarred by excessive heat or cold. It can end with indifference, with a man who woke up on such a fine day as this and said that he no longer wanted to be married. Who looked at me with empty eyes and shrugged when I asked why. Who had so little interest remaining that he packed only a few changes of clothes, leaving behind books, music, photos, computer files, furniture, money.

In an effort to provoke either love or anger, I grabbed Ninja, said I was keeping the dog. The man who was everything to me eyed the small black dachshund, who had indeed been his pet first, and said that was fine. Then he closed the door gently behind himself.

I wanted for it to pour rain, for the sky to turn shades of black and gray, for thunder to rage, for lightning to strike—him or me, it didn't matter. But the sweet breeze kept blowing, the clouds drifted, the sun shone. It hurt even more knowing that the weather was indifferent as well.

I had a choice of prizes, so I delayed cashing in my winnings for quite a while until I knew which one I wanted, ultimately choosing to receive one of Natalie's awesome full-color anime-style drawings based on a short story of mine called The Devil's Parrot. (And yes, that's the first line of the story as the caption under the drawing.) Natalie apologized for her own delays in getting this sketch to me, but I think it was well worth the wait. The story itself is currently on submission to various lit magazines, and I'll let you all know as soon as it finds a home.

Free Fiction (no fooling)

COMPATIBILITY

On their first date, he explained that he wrote "advancers" for the local newspaper. When any person of note passed away, readers expected full profiles online within minutes; newspapers, then, were in the business of preparing such obituaries in advance. He estimated his office had 500 on file -- politicians and celebrities, the most famous, the oldest and most infirm, and of course those most likely to die from drugs or alcohol.

He saw it everywhere now. He made a game of it, thinking up the obits for fellow diners, the pre-deceased. Following a long illness. Survived by. The highlights of education and career.

He shrugged, embarrassed by his morbidity. Occupational hazard, he said.

But she laughed. She worked in a psychiatrist's office, transcribing the doctor's oral notes and maintaining the medical files. She would never breach confidentiality, of course, but she knew the patients on sight: name, number, neuroses. She played a different version of the same game. Who was addicted to what. Who was the cheater, who was the cheated. What would push someone over the edge.

He smiled. She took his hand. They decided to stay for coffee and dessert.

Naturally, when he started drinking and she let the relationship die, neither one of them saw it coming.

Compatibility by Carrie Kei Heim Binas is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Binge Thinking

I've never liked multi-tasking. I much prefer to focus on a single job, get it done, and then move on to the next project. Now this obviously isn't a practical way to function most of the time. When I was an attorney, I never had just one client or conveniently had assignments that were due one after another with plenty of space to work in between. And if I don't try to work on dinner at least a little bit before my day's work is done and Serious Girl and I come home from her after-school classes at 5:45pm... well, then there's nothing to eat. So I have to multi-task sometimes. Okay, a lot. But I don't have to like it. And it's not how I work best.

I mentioned in an earlier post that I am a binge listener: I don't listen to full "soundtracks" when writing, instead I'll listen to a single song on repeat for hours and hours. It turns out that this narrow-focused mentality creeps into my behavior everywhere. When I'm writing well, I'll do nothing else for a month. But also when I blog, I just blog. When I was on Twitter, I did just that. I have to recognize my limitations.

I've been off the grid for a while now. It's working for me. I'm glad I got online and met so many cool writers, learned from people who had queried and submitted before me, and got so much support. But I can't be on social networks and write at my full capacity. Others can. Not me.

So for now, I'm writing. Just writing. But the blog isn't going dark. The blog is called Heim Binas FICTION, after all... I'm going to start posting some of my short fiction. At least a story a month, maybe more. That way, my blog will be working for my obsessive nature, not against it. And maybe y'all will actually like my stories. I'd really like it if more people were reading what I'm writing. So until the publication gods smile on me... I'll be posting here.

And here's the song I'm currently listening to on endless repeat: So What by Space Mtn.

I'm not dead yet!

I was going to link to the original Monty Python movie clip ("I'm not dead yet, I feel fine!") but then discovered that SPAMALOT had an entire "not dead yet" musical number. Enjoy!

I would like to apologize to my readers for simply disappearing for over a month. But sometimes the in-real-life issues just have to take priority.

Here's what's going on:

I've closed my Twitter account for now. Maybe I'll come back, but it was a time suck I just couldn't handle. Twitter's like a cocktail party -- if something funny happens, you really have to have been there at that moment because everything moves so fast that there's no real way to explain it or participate in the joke after the fact. Which means I felt a need to be online at all times so I wouldn't miss those awesome moments. Also, if you're feeling down, and you go to a cocktail party looking for your friends, and they're not there or they're all talking with other people, that's super-depressing, right? The same thing can happen on Twitter. Sometimes it's a delightfully social experience, and sometimes it's oddly isolating. I need to free myself from all of that right now.

At the end of last year I did another round of edits on my first novel. I'm never sure how much of this kind of thing I should put online in the public eye, but let's just say that these edits were guided by the advice of an industry professional and her assistant. These women are super awesome and even if this doesn't end up leading to representation, I'm incredibly grateful for the time and energy they have given me. LADIES, YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE. YOU ROCK AND I HAVEN'T FORGOTTEN YOU.

I'm submitting my short stories to various literary magazines. No new publication credits yet, but I got a personal rejection with a request to submit again from a very prestigious magazine that's basically my "dream market." Squee! Now I just have to write another piece that suits their submission guidelines. Dang.

I'm still doing the show notes for Mur Lafferty's I Should Be Writing podcast. I even called in to the show with a question of my own (see Feedback Episode #180).

Special thanks to my internet friends who've checked in on me during my mysterious internet absence: Patty Blount, Harley May, The Rejectionist, and Maine Character.

I hope to once again start blogging on a semi-regular basis, but my family life and fiction writing have to come first. I'm still trying to figure out the right balance. Once again, I hope you'll hang in there with me.

Writers' Heaven

A writer died and was given the option of going to heaven or hell.

She decided to check out each place first. As the writer descended into the fiery pits, she saw row upon row of writers chained to their desks in a steaming sweatshop. As they worked, they were repeatedly whipped with thorny lashes.

"Oh my," said the writer. "Let me see heaven now."

A few moments later, as she ascended into heaven, she saw rows of writers, chained to their desks in a steaming sweatshop. As they worked, they, too, were whipped with thorny lashes.

"Wait a minute," said the writer. "This is just as bad as hell!"

"Oh no, it's not," replied an unseen voice. "Here, your work gets published."

Missing the Point (censoring Huck Finn)

Image found at Better Book Titles

Twitter has been abuzz with discussion -- the question often posed is, "What do you think of the new edited/censored/cleansed edition of Huckleberry Finn?" (For those not already in the know, in the new edition, published by NewSouth, the n-word apparently has been completely replaced with the word "slave.") And the runner-up question in my crowd of writers and lovers of literature has been, "What they hell were they thinking?!"

Publishers Weekly was kind enough to post a snippet from the new introduction to the new edition that tries to answer the latter:

The n-word possessed, then as now, demeaning implications more vile than almost any insult that can be applied to other racial groups. There is no equivalent slur in the English language. As a result, with every passing decade this affront appears to gain rather than lose its impact. Even at the level of college and graduate school, students are capable of resenting textual encounters with this racial appellative. In the 1870s and 1880s, of course, Twain scarcely had to concern himself about the feelings of African American or Native American readers. These population groups were too occupied with trying, in the one case, to recover from the degradation of slavery and the institution of Jim Crow segregation policies, and, in the other case, to survive the onslaught of settlers and buffalo-hunters who had decimated their ways of life, than to bother about objectionable vocabulary choices in two popular books.

Now, much has been said about the value (or lack thereof) of this new edition, more eloquently than I can manage right about now. And I've posted briefly about the new Huck Finn on Twitter ("Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself." --Potter Stewart).

I think that language matters, and so I think that replacing the n-word with "slave" devalues the purpose of Twain's whole book. If Huck has Jim stay low in the boat because people can tell he's a slave from a great distance... well, no. These words have fundamentally different meanings. A slave is an unpaid laborer. A black man labeled with the n-word is a disrespected and devalued human. Our knowledge of this distinction, along with our knowledge of Twain as an author, the time when he wrote the book (1876-1883), and the time he was writing about (somewhere between 1835-1845), serves to educate us (as does all good literature, dammit).

Additionally, I think we shouldn't shy away from uncomfortable questions of context: why it's okay (or not) for Mark Twain to write the n-word, why it's okay (or not) for Denzel Washington to say "my nigga" in his role as the bad cop in Training Day, and why I still can't bring myself to spell the word out in its entirety, even as part of a discussion about censorship.

But, again, I'm drifting into territory well-covered by others. Here's the thought I haven't seen articulated yet...

The editors of the book explain that the oppressed blacks of that time were too busy surviving and fighting "to bother about objectionable vocabulary choices in two popular books."*

Well, fine. It's 2011. So, what oppression remains? What should we still be focusing on fighting? Is it Mark Twain? Is it the language in the "popular book" Huck Finn (which, I didn't think I needed to remind anyone, is largely about a boy trying to free a slave, about freedom in the broader sense, and about characters trying to come to their own moral conclusions in the face of contrary societal values)?

Or is it the fact that books about minority characters are still getting covers with white faces? Is it that fact that, out of all the Young Adult and Middle Grade books published in 2010, apparently only about 50 (FIFTY!) were written by black authors? Only 16 by Latino authors? Should the well-educated students of today be "resenting textual encounters"? Or should they be resenting the paucity of minority texts on their library and bookstore shelves? In their classrooms?

Do we care about cleaning up the language in our books, or do we care about cleaning up the injustices in the entire publishing industry? Forget fixing the past. What are we doing about the present?

Image found HERE.

We need to get our fucking priorities straight.

* The new edition pairs Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn in one volume.

I have no knowledge of what censoring may have been applied to Tom Sawyer here.

Winner of Playing For Keeps

Thank you so much to those who entered my raffle/contest... thank you for entering in the first place, and then thank you again for your generosity. Really. You all rock.

I will be writing to each of you to find out where you each want your good-luck origami crane to be sent -- you may also pick out a preferred color and if you want the crane to have a small string for hanging.

And, in a new development, the winner will be getting a SIGNED copy of PFK! This will slightly delay shipping, since I'll be having the book sent to Mur first, and then she'll ship it forward from there, but I think we can all agree that this is a delay for a very good purpose.

So, congratulations to ADAM LOYAL! (Dude. Great name.) The random number generator has smiled upon you, and I will email you shortly to confirm your delivery preferences (and, who you want the book signed to!).

Even if you didn't enter, I still say you should get your butt over to Hub Magazine to listen to Mur's novella, Marco and the Red Granny: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7. I mean, come on, the story has a sweet little old lady who's the winner of a deadly, bloody, lunar reality show. Do you like this photo?

'Cause she ain't got nothin' on the Red Granny. Yeah. Go listen to the story. You'll be glad you did.

LAST DAY to enter my raffle. New prizes!

Yes, I called it a contest when I first posted about it, but since I'm asking for donations (IN ANY AMOUNT) as a requirement to enter, I guess it's more like a raffle.

So. Have you listened to The Best Story You're Not Listening To yet? Why the hell not? I mean, honestly, what is wrong with you people? Mur Lafferty is a podcasting goddess, the editor of Escape Pod, and she's giving her kick-ass fiction away for FREE -- AGAIN -- and you can't download her latest novella for your iPod? I... I don't think I want to know you anymore.

But seriously.

I'm adding a new prize to my raffle/contest. ANYONE who donates ANY AMOUNT for Mur's awesome novella Marco and The Red Granny will not only be entered to win a hard copy of her superhero novel, Playing For Keeps, but will also receive a hand-folded origami crane in the mail, crafted by yours truly.

The donation requirement can be fulfilled by donating on Hub Magazine's website (they are the original publishers of the audio novella), OR by going to Mur's page to donate, OR by buying an e-version of the novella on Amazon or Smashwords. Then send me a copy of your purchase/donations receipt to carriekei [at] gmail [dot] com. Also send an address if you want your origami crane. (And if you like, I can string the crane for you so it can hang as a holiday ornament.)

your crane may vary

The crane is a symbol of peace, happiness, and eternal youth. Start your new year off right. Donate ANY AMOUNT to an amazing writer who gives so much away, and get a little peace & happiness in return (I make no promises about the youth). Plus get a chance to win a great book. Plus you should be listening to this novella for free even if you don't donate, because it's awesome.

Whaddya say?

Happy New Year!

Snowflake: a high-resolution image.

Actual snowflake, magnified 162x -- image found at Cosmic Log

I resolve to look at ordinary objects with new eyes.

I resolve to see the beauty in the everyday.

I resolve to pay attention to detail.

I resolve to respect the fragility of the world around me.

The best story you're not listening to. (And a CONTEST. Or is it a raffle?)

Mur Lafferty's Marco and the Red Granny is an utter delight. Imagine a world where aliens have revolutionized art by combining the senses, such that wearing a certain suit can make you taste strawberries, or sipping a certain drink can put an entire Sherlock Holmes story into your head. Imagine a frustrated writer-artist who finally gets his chance to go to the moon and produce his art under an alien patronage. Imagine that his only friend is a little old lady who is the winner of a deadly reality television show.

Get the free audio podcast through Hub Magazine's iTunes feed (it's 7 episodes, but episode 4 is in there twice due to technical issues), or directly from the Hub website: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7. Read the story for free at Mur's website, or buy the Kindle version, or buy it on Smashwords.

So here's the contest/raffle: the audio version is running on a donation system, and there's also a donations button on Mur's website. If you send me your receipt for a donation IN ANY AMOUNT to Hub Magazine for Mur's story, or to Mur's own website for the story (you may also get free goodies for donating to her directly, depending on the amount), or if you send me a receipt showing you purchased an electronic version of the story, I will enter you in my contest to win a copy of Mur's superhero novel, Playing For Keeps, which is also awesome. I know the holidays are upon us, and y'all are busy, so I'll keep the contest open until Monday, January 3rd, midnight EST. After that, I pick a name at random, and someone gets a book.

I've written before about the Total Awesome that is Mur, especially her I Should Be Writing podcast (for which I am the show notes writer), but I don't know that I've talked about her fiction before. I should have. She has a number of podcast novels, plus at least one of her novels was given away for free as a PDF as part of her podcast feed... she writes great stuff and gives it away for free, y'all.

Go listen to a great story. Then send the author some cash for her talent and hard work, IN ANY AMOUNT, and you might get another great story, for free. You can email those receipts to carriekei [at] gmail [dot] com.

Prodigy vs. Genius

I'll explain this image in a minute.

Okay, everyone. The time has come for me to make a shameful admission: I was a child prodigy.

Most notably, I was able to read at the age of two. This is not an exaggeration. My parents weren't sure if I was really reading or if I had just memorized all my books, so for my second birthday my mom bought me a copy of Go, Dog. Go!, a book I had never seen before, and I read it on the spot. I grew up hearing versions of this story over and over again: how my mom apologized to a preschool admissions director that I read "painfully slowly" only to be told that most kids my age TALKED "painfully slowly." How I stunned elevator passengers at age 3 by pointing out the No Smoking sign and telling everyone that it said "No smoking under plenty of law."

As a result of this impressive start, it was assumed that school would be easy for me. I was raised with the philosophy that anything less than an A was unacceptable because that would obviously mean I wasn't really trying... because I was SMART. This seems like a recipe for achievement, but it really wasn't. In the gifted elementary school program, sure. But once I got into my crazy-advanced magnet high school where I personally knew 16 kids who got perfect math scores on their SATs, "really trying" was not always good enough. And it hurt to have to "really try" next to other kids who didn't have to try at all, because calculus (for example) came so easily to them. That was supposed to be me.

So, when things got too hard, sometimes I'd stop trying entirely. After all, better to say you didn't really try than to say you tried your best and still failed. To try my best and still fail would mean I wasn't SMART. And being SMART was more important that working hard.

What a total crock.

Listen, all of this was subconscious, okay? My parents would never in a million years have said that I shouldn't work hard to achieve my goals... but at the same time it was kind of assumed that I would find my goals pretty quickly and have some kind of head start on the work because I was gifted.

Look at the world around you right now. Do you hear people talking about how hard that sports celebrity guy trains, or do you hear about how he's so naturally gifted? Do you hear them talking about the pianist who spends hours at the keyboard, or do you hear about the wunderkind who's amazing despite having "no formal training at all!"

Yeah.

Sharon Stone once said it took her ten years of paying her dues to become an overnight sensation. I think Jim Carrey said something similar. People notice the breakout, and gloss over the failures. Even stories that seem to discuss past failures and hard work often end up glorifying the moment when things became easy. Would J.K. Rowling's personal story be as exciting if she had been a mid-lister for several years before Harry Potter? No. Her years of living in a car and working her butt off while single parenting have been reframed as, "She was secretly gifted all along, and just needed to be discovered." (Note that Rowling herself does not pitch her story this way. She talks very openly and eloquently about her failures and hard work.)

Here's what people forget:

...there's a stark difference between prodigy and genius.

Prodigies can very quickly learn what other people have already figured out; geniuses discover that which no one has ever previously discovered. Prodigies learn; geniuses do. The vast majority of child prodigies don't become adult geniuses.

-- An Abundance of Katherines, by John Green

I was a prodigy. So. Freaking. What.

I'm 37, and my peers? By now, they have also figured out how to read. I'm probably still at an advantage for standardized testing, but again... so freaking what? That doesn't mean I'm immune to office politics, or nationwide economic factors, or fear of failure. In fact, it probably makes my fear of failure worse than average, because failure doesn't feel like a single event, it feels like a reflection on my entire person.

What a crock.

FAIL AGAIN. FAIL BETTER.

I caught myself a couple days ago telling my daughter how smart she is. I stopped myself. I told her how proud I was of her for working so hard, for practicing, for being resilient, for trying again.

Write. Revise. Revise again. Fail better.

Submit. Be rejected. Submit again. Fail better.

I don't know what 2011 holds for me. But I know I'm going to try to do things that are hard. Things that are SUPPOSED to be hard. And maybe, somewhere along the way, I'll start being smart enough that it won't scare me anymore.