Author: Nancy E. Shaffer

NANCY E. SHAFFER has been an experimental psychologist (M.A., Cognitive Psychology, Rice University), a philosopher (Ph.D., History and Philosophy of Science, University of California, Davis), and software developer. She taught history and philosophy of science at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec and the University of Nebraska Omaha. Her philosophical work has appeared in the journal Philosophy of Science and her pop-culture philosophy website, All Things Philosophical on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel: the Series. Dis/inhbition is her first novel. She currently resides in Tempe, Arizona.

Eye of the Daemon

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 9 Comments

Latest book: “Eye of the Daemon” by Camille Bacon-Smith

OK, this book was totally cheating, as I’ve not only read it before, it’s been sitting on my shelf for years now. But I was having interlibrary loan issues, and needed something to read in the interim. Plus, a lot of this “book-a-thon 2007” is about exploring themes in fantasy novels that interest me, and revisiting a book I’ve already read for its themes fits that bill.

And how.

Suffice it to say, this book really pushes my buttons.

I’ve been thinking a lot about “story kinks” as the term is understood in the fanfic community–why we are drawn to the particular stories we are, whether as writers or readers. “Kink” here is understood in a broader sense than merely sexual, any story element that draws you in with such an inexorable power that you find yourself writing or reading stories with that element over and over whether you realize it or not. Among my many “kinks”–(1) parent/child relationships, particularly when the two finally meet after the child is an (near) adult, (2) aliens-among-us, (3) the experience of being part-human, part-alien (where by “alien” I don’t necessarily mean extra-terrestrial, but anything not commonly associated with the natural inhabitants of Earth we see in our daily lives), (4) supernatural families, especially special gifts/experiences being passed down through the generations, (5) a young person only discovering belatedly that they are half-alien or of some sort of supernatural origin, which finally makes sense of the weird/bad experiences they’ve had in their lives, (6) strong women characters who are not merely bit-parts or recurring (may be less of a kink than a prerequisite), (7) characters of invitation, (8) stories of the supernatural that take place in the real world, (9) secret identities/secret sub-cultures, (10) ordinary people becoming champions/messiahs, which may or may not include destiny/prophecy/previous foreknowledge of this as an element.

how any of this is related to ‘Eye of the Daemon’-spoilers

Writing update

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 9 Comments

May 20th? When did it become May 20th? I sort-of, kind-of finished the first draft of TD 208 on Friday, with a word count of 17,101. I’m waffling because, in going back to start the next draft, I realize I cut a lot of corners, especially towards the beginning of the episode. First drafts are, for me, like outlines are for other writers. It’s where I decide or, really, “discover” what the episode is going to be about. I have to do that with actual text/prose, not just the jotted notes of an outline, because there’s something about writing the *actual episode itself* with the dialogue and blocking and characters acting and interacting that enables me to get clear on what I’m supposed to write about.

Of course, I have a general idea what the plot is going to be before hand, but any given detail I might have in mind can fall apart for a variety of technical or artistic reasons when I start trying to fit all the pieces in place. This one has been a bitch to fit together. vague spoiler

Reading progress notes

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 18 Comments

Latest book: “The Time Traveler’s Wife” by Audrey Niffenegger

[gratuitous girly moment]

*sob* *sniff* *it’s so romantic!!1!*
[/gratuitous girly moment]

I actually got this book done faster than books half its size I’ve been reading because it was so engaging. Despite the title, this book is equally about both the time traveler and his wife and their relationship which starts, from her perspective, when she was six, and from his, when he was 28. I’m not sure what I expected when I ordered this on interlibrary loan; it was just a title on my list of book recs. I think I had images of a stiff, slightly eccentric scientific HG Wells-type and his patient, loyal Amy Catherine. But Henry and Clare are normal, contemporary people (Henry is in fact my age, punk rock tastes included), and Henry’s time-traveling isn’t by choice, it’s due to a genetic condition. He involuntarily jumps to other places and times significant to his life and the life of his close family and friends whenever he is under a lot of stress and has lots of touching moments and dangerous encounters in his travels (made worse by the fact that only his body shifts in time, not his clothes or any personal items).

Despite the time-traveling element, then, the book is not really a science fiction story so much as an exploration of the relationship and lives of two contemporary people.

spoilers

Writing process stuff

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 2 Comments

In trying not to overwrite, I’m finally learning why I do overwrite. One reason, which I already knew is, outlines can only get you so far. The truth is, I hate outlines, and would never use them in the first draft of an original story. But I need them in a fanfic WIP just to keep myself organized. And yet, I can outline until the cows come home, but when I start to write, I will always think of ten things I need to have in the story but didn’t think of during the outline. So the story starts to expand beyond what I initially imagined it would

(Naturally, there will likewise be five things in the outline that just aren’t going to work, but they usually aren’t cut, they’re replaced with something else which serves the function they were going to serve in the story)

And then, of course, when I do start writing, I hate a lot of what comes out initially. It’s just not what I had in mind, but I can’t get what needs to be there down on the page. So I have to keep writing and writing and discarding and saving in a “maybe” file all sorts of stuff before the words start to come out right.

But in the end, overwriting (writing 20,000 words when the story’s supposed to be 14,000) isn’t about all the junk I have to write first and discard to get to the good stuff. In the end, the reason the 20,000 is a problem is that I’m past the junk and writing Good Stuff, and it’s 20,000 words of good stuff (or OK stuff, or decent stuff), and 6,000 of it has got to go (for tightness’ sake, for consistency’s sake).

No TD 208 word count this morning, I’m in flux–half-text, half-outline, none of it absolutely certain to end up in the final draft. People who start with a zero word count and just keep adding to it until they’re done befuddle the hell out of me.

Reading progress notes

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 11 Comments

My plan to do more reading more regularly this year is not going as prolifically as I’d hoped, for a lot of reasons. But at least I’m still doing it.

Latest book: “Neverwhere,” by Neil Gaiman

Which I swear I’ve read before. It’s been sitting on my already-read shelves for years, and if you’d asked me what it was about, I’d have told you it was about an ordinary Londoner who one day falls through a rabbit hole and ends up in this semi-magical underground London. Which is, indeed, what it’s about.

And, in fact, the only reason I decided to read it “again”* is it closely fits the genre and themes of the books I’ve been concentrating on this year, and in such a prototypical way that I would often refer to “Neverwhere” as an example of “the sort of book I want to read–and write” in my LJ posts and comments. Richard Mayhew is an ordinary human “character of invitation” who stumbles upon a hidden supernatural world on our contemporary Earth and ends up being a champion of that underworld in a supernatural struggle of good and evil.

(* I also decided to read it again because when I finished my previous book, I was on my way to Arizona and didn’t have time to wait for the inter-library loan to send me a different book from my reading list.)

But after about the first chapter, the specific events started losing that familiarity of having been read before. Which makes me suspect I read the first chapter of this book at some point in the past, and then something happened in my life and I put it down and forgot about it. It’s not the sort of book I would have stopped reading because I didn’t like the book (as was the case with “American Gods.”) I do like the book. Did.

So Gaiman really is English, is he? Because I was sitting reading this thinking, “pretty good grasp of British humor for an American.”

“A Wizard of Earthsea”, Ursula Le Guin
“Proven Guilty”, Jim Butcher
“Dreamchild”, Hilary Hemingway and Jeffry P. Lindsay
“Guilty Pleasures”, Laurell K. Hamilton
“The War for the Oaks,” Emma Bull
“Shifter,” by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens
“Neverwhere,” by Neil Gaiman

An experiment

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 5 Comments

OK, to prevent the disastrous consequences of over-writing that vex me so often (these consequences being hours and days spent shaving thousands of words off a story after spending hours and days going to the trouble of adding those words in the first place), I am going to keep a running word count of TD 208.

I will try not to write more than a thousand words over 15,000.

Today’s count so far: 734 words.

Back in SF

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 10 Comments

Good trip to AZ. Very enjoyable/productive in many ways.

For some reason, this time coming back home on the airport van, I got thrown in with people heading downtown instead of the usual folks from the outer Richmond and Sunset districts. So I got to see the more romantic side of SF–Grace Cathedral, Chinatown, etc. And I’m thinking to myself (not for the first time), “I’d love to write a novel and *set it* in San Francisco.” Once you don’t live in a place anymore, it gets its mystery back.