Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai

Category Archives: Writing


by Leave a comment

The Toilet Story, or beware the tales you tell

My friend Hell (no, not his real name but yes, they really call him like that) is a fine writer and an excellent editor, and he is the sort that harbours very few (if any) romantic illusions about this writing business. Stealing a page from Quentin Tarantino, he often talks about “The Toilet Story”.

If you remember the movie Reservoir Dogs, one of the characters is an undercover cop, and he tells how he worked on creating his character before he started his job. The character-creation process involved inventing a story – in his case about a scary ten minutes in a public toilet – as part of his cover.

Well, pretend you’re Don Rickles… and tell a joke, all right?
The things you gotta remember are the details. The details sell your story.
This particular story takes place in a men’s room.
You gotta know all the details–whether they got paper towels or a blower to dry your hands. You gotta know if the stalls ain’t got no doors or not. You gotta know if they got liquid soap or that pink, granulated shit… they used in high school.

My friend Hell says writers are like that – just like undercover cops, they all have a Toilet Story they tell when somebody asks them how they started, how they broke through, what’s their life like, where they get their ideas.
It’s not the truth, because those that ask the question do not want the truth – they don’t want the painful fingers and the frustration, the rejection slips and the fear, the overdue bills and the instant noodles.
They want romance – and so the writers, being adept at weaving lies for fun and profit, give them just that.
A bit of romance, a bit of mystique, maybe a self-deprecating joke because underdog stories are fun, as long as they are romantic.
Writers build their own legend, and they have their well-rehearsed scripts, that fit the readers’ expectations.
The Toilet Story.

Continue reading →


by Leave a comment

What a way to relax: 5000 words in one afternoon

I am currently working on a couple of big projects that are taking up a lot of time and energy, and I am doing all I can to keep my weekends free to recharge my batteries. One of the two jobs is causing me a lot of stress and anxiety – something that had never happened before, not this hard. So finding the time to relax is essential.

On the other hand, there is an open call I received at the end of last year that I really like, and I really would love to be part of the connected project. All I need is a 5000-words story, a swashbuckling romance with a twist.
And anyway I always said I find writing relaxing – especially if I am writing for my own, and not for my clients.

Continue reading →


by 2 Comments

Too many interests

I was talking with a few friends about two job-related issues: to wit specialization and home-working.
Two things that do not have much in common but one thing – the marketplace hereabouts seems to have got them wrong, and a lot of the people I know (writers, translators, web designers, computer programmers, artists) are suffering for this.

Working from home is not considered “real work” here in my country – I live in a place where you get hired to do a translation, you get paid by the page, and the boss wants you therein his office, sitting at the desk, so that he can see you while you translate.
And yet, a lot of jobs could be done from home, with flexible hours, a lower environmental impact, better life quality for the worker, and more economically profitable for both the company and the employee.
But what if the guy works at night, or wearing a pyjama?

Generated by IJG JPEG Library

And of course, there is the question of specialization – because true, companies post ads looking for people with a master’s degree in engineering, three world-languages and no less than two programming languages, and a solid experience. But if your CV does not show total dedication to a single job, topic, method or tool, you’ll receive the bored smile and “you’ve done a lot of things in your work history…”

And of course both trends converge in my current situation – as a writer and translator I work from home, and being a writer I find myself covering topics as different as lost civilizations, regional folklore, cooking, history of Central Asia , tarot reading in a single day’s work (except from the pauses I take to fix my PC, and the courses I follow). Oh, and roleplaying games.

Writers tend by the nature of what they do to be jack of all trades, and work weird schedules in strange hours.
This is absolute anathema for the current corporate mindset, and if you happen to deal with corporate people, you’ll be looked like a pariah.

Not only I do not do “real work”, but I wast my time on too many interests instead of focusing on a single topic.
But what can I say?
Specialization is for insects.


by 2 Comments

Being silly is not enough

I was being silly, and I was discussing with some friends the wird crackpot theories of one of those guys they call “Pyramidiots” – you know, the sort that “I don’t know how or why to build a pyramid, so the aliens built the pyramids.”
Which, incidentally, it’s a perfect premise for fiction, but utter crap when presented as factual. And the author we were discussing in particular claims that the pyramids were built by Neanderthals.
Yeah.
They were built by Neanderthals before they developed speech.

And so we were talking and being silly, a friend said

they’d need to be great mimes to coordinate the works

and I replied

Yeah, they were led by Marcel Lescaux

And now I know I have to write a story about Marcel Lescaux, the Greatest Mime of the Neolithic.

Because that’s how ideas are born, and it goes to prove that anything, but really anything can be fodder for fiction.
Being silly might not be enough, but it certainly Helps.


by Leave a comment

The coldest days of the year

We are keeping warm and fighting with a number of technical issues hereabouts, as the coldest days of the year keep us indoors.
And not just us.

The perks of living in the country: the cold causes mice to seek refuge indoor, and as every year we had to deal with these small home invaders. This year though it’s been different – the beasties are more cunning (and avoid our baited traps) and are showing a penchant for eating through plastic bottles (thus flooding our sink with dish detergent) and more importantly, on cables.
We’ve been experiencing LAN problems, and half of the kitchen appliances are damaged.

And the crazy thing is, of course, that I am thinking this is a good premise for a short horror story – forget Lovecraft’s The Rats in the Walls and Kuttner’s The Graveyard Rats, here come the Short-Circuit Rats.
Or something.

Anyway, the struggle goes on.
I’ll let you know how it goes.


by 1 Comment

A new deck for the collection

Marie Anne Adelaide Lenormand was a very popular fortune teller during the Napoleonic era, that became (in)famous when she became the card reader and confidante of Josephine, Napoleon Bonaparte’s wife. She was also arrested for espionage – and for witchcraft, but it was hard to make the accusation stick in post-Illuminist France. When she died she left a fortune to her only heir – that being a devout Catholic burned all of her stuff, and wanted nothing to do with her, but kept the money.
Better known as Mlle Lenormand, Marie also created her own tarot deck – and I received a packet this morning containing a new Lenormand Tarot deck for my collection.

And the Lenormand Tarot is particularly interesting if you want to use the cards for writing experiments.

Continue reading →


by 2 Comments

Plots, Nefarious or Otherwise

Sitting here wrapped in blankets, drinking hot tea and popping aspirins to try and get back on track after two days spent on the road and in the cold, I find that there is little I can do but plot future stories.

I sent a detailed pitch to my Italian publisher, but I’ve yet to hear back from them, and I have here two open calls that would be madness to miss – so I sit, and drink tea, and plot.
This is the phase in which I do not write, but rather I pile ideas upon ideas, and let them simmer.

Continue reading →