I've been trying to figure out whether the lure of other stories (ie. stories by me that aren't Cost of Silver) is a distraction or a relief. I used to work on two or three stories at a time, working on one file until I ran dry or wrote myself into a corner, then saving it and pulling out another. This year it's been pretty much working on Cost of Silver, then mucking about uselessly on the internet, too tired to produce anything useful like a blog post or another story.
I wonder sometimes whether I'd have more energy for writing if I wrote other things, or whether I'd just be wasting the energy that I do have. Theoretically, if I needed a break / change, I could just work on another scene or the other storyline of CoS, which is what Scrivener allows me to do easily. So why is it so hard to buckle down and do that?
Oh, those other stories. So enticing in their open-endedness, their possibilities of plot and plot twists. Those characters I don't know yet, who might do anything. Those settings I would need to research, and research a little more. Mmmm.
Then there's my stack of unread books by other people. But let's not talk about that. I have to go and write some more now.
Showing posts with label revising. Show all posts
Showing posts with label revising. Show all posts
Sunday, June 16, 2013
Monday, April 22, 2013
still working on that
Packed up some more too-large clothes for the charity box, and again failed to rejoice at it. Several items I had bought new--not going to do that again.
Contrary to my previous habit, I've been turning on the light and looking at myself in the full-length mirror every morning, trying to pin that image down as the actual me, and not a stranger or alien shape-shifter.
It occurred to me that getting some clothes that fit might reconcile me, so I spent a couple of weekends hitting the thriftshops, especially Community Thrift, which has terrific $1 racks plus random sales (once, everything green in the store was half-price--not green tags, anything coloured green). That was fun. I bought myself a few books as well as skinny tops and hoodies that weren't my usual style. Because if a shirt is only a dollar, why not try out a different look? I particularly liked the black hoodie with a heart composed of tiny laughing skulls. Maybe I should have picked up the pink-and-white skull-pattern pyjamas too, but I prefer nightshirts to pyjamas.
One trip netted me a dozen items for $21, another one was eight tops and two pairs of trousers for $30. I was fairly satisfied until I realised that I was engaging in Retail Therapy and buying into the whole consumption will make you happy thing. Okay, it's pretty low-end consumption, and I could make a case for it being environmentally innocuous consumption, but still. Retail therapy is avoidance of addressing the real issues. Or of figuring out what the real issues are.
a) That I'm still struggling with revisions of Cost of Silver
b) That I'm doing fitness/weightloss wrong or I would be happy
c) That I'm having vitamin/iron-related depression again
d) All of the above
e) That our culture is so weird about women's bodies that there is no way to win.
On the positive side, I should note that I do enjoy working out with weights. It's not a team sport, so there's nobody to hate me for letting the team down. It's just me and the machines or the free weights, and I can set my own pace and schedule. I like having stronger arms and core muscles, and I'm getting used to those non-fatted calves.
I don't even mind the shower room, where lean and smooth-skinned young women rush through on their way to or from the pool. I figure I serve a useful purpose as a sort of Memento Mori to them, a reminder that work out and wax as you will, to this favour will you come.
It goes with the skull hoodie, I figure.
Contrary to my previous habit, I've been turning on the light and looking at myself in the full-length mirror every morning, trying to pin that image down as the actual me, and not a stranger or alien shape-shifter.
It occurred to me that getting some clothes that fit might reconcile me, so I spent a couple of weekends hitting the thriftshops, especially Community Thrift, which has terrific $1 racks plus random sales (once, everything green in the store was half-price--not green tags, anything coloured green). That was fun. I bought myself a few books as well as skinny tops and hoodies that weren't my usual style. Because if a shirt is only a dollar, why not try out a different look? I particularly liked the black hoodie with a heart composed of tiny laughing skulls. Maybe I should have picked up the pink-and-white skull-pattern pyjamas too, but I prefer nightshirts to pyjamas.
One trip netted me a dozen items for $21, another one was eight tops and two pairs of trousers for $30. I was fairly satisfied until I realised that I was engaging in Retail Therapy and buying into the whole consumption will make you happy thing. Okay, it's pretty low-end consumption, and I could make a case for it being environmentally innocuous consumption, but still. Retail therapy is avoidance of addressing the real issues. Or of figuring out what the real issues are.
a) That I'm still struggling with revisions of Cost of Silver
b) That I'm doing fitness/weightloss wrong or I would be happy
c) That I'm having vitamin/iron-related depression again
d) All of the above
e) That our culture is so weird about women's bodies that there is no way to win.
On the positive side, I should note that I do enjoy working out with weights. It's not a team sport, so there's nobody to hate me for letting the team down. It's just me and the machines or the free weights, and I can set my own pace and schedule. I like having stronger arms and core muscles, and I'm getting used to those non-fatted calves.
I don't even mind the shower room, where lean and smooth-skinned young women rush through on their way to or from the pool. I figure I serve a useful purpose as a sort of Memento Mori to them, a reminder that work out and wax as you will, to this favour will you come.
It goes with the skull hoodie, I figure.
Monday, April 8, 2013
pruning again
The pear tree is in blossom outside my window. The blossoms come before the leaves. Last weekend I was two steps up on the small stepladder, trying to clip the watershoots on the Transparent tree before they bloomed. I put some of the clippings in vases (well, in pitchers, we have no vases) for the contrast between the smooth cupped petals and the rough twisted twigs. Finally hacked back the lilac beside the house, and took some cuttings to watch the tight green leaves open on narrow elegant stems.
If only revising were as clean to do. I trim out characters and scenes in the modern-day storyline, with a vague hope that I may use them elsewhere--drop them into other storylines and see them open up--but then must continue through that scene and the next, making sure no trace remains to jar the reader. More like uprooting blackberries or holly, that send shoots underground to pop up annoyingly in a space you thought was clear. Or, I suppose, more like weeding than pruning, done on your knees, laboriously with eyes to the ground.
What I need to learn is how to keep background characters in the background. I want more than the principal characters to be visible, because I dislike stories where no one seems to be in the room or the building than the two main characters (I keep wondering what passersby or the cleaners or the busboy think of their conversation or their goings-on.) I want passersby or cleaners or busboys, or the guy in the next cubicle, so the story feels more real, or more thoroughly imagined.
But when I write background characters, they move into the middle ground, where they draw too much attention. I don't know whether it's the dread 'hey, I'd rather read about this guy than your boring protagonist', but it's something I need to work on, as I engage in the selective erasing of characters.
If only revising were as clean to do. I trim out characters and scenes in the modern-day storyline, with a vague hope that I may use them elsewhere--drop them into other storylines and see them open up--but then must continue through that scene and the next, making sure no trace remains to jar the reader. More like uprooting blackberries or holly, that send shoots underground to pop up annoyingly in a space you thought was clear. Or, I suppose, more like weeding than pruning, done on your knees, laboriously with eyes to the ground.
What I need to learn is how to keep background characters in the background. I want more than the principal characters to be visible, because I dislike stories where no one seems to be in the room or the building than the two main characters (I keep wondering what passersby or the cleaners or the busboy think of their conversation or their goings-on.) I want passersby or cleaners or busboys, or the guy in the next cubicle, so the story feels more real, or more thoroughly imagined.
But when I write background characters, they move into the middle ground, where they draw too much attention. I don't know whether it's the dread 'hey, I'd rather read about this guy than your boring protagonist', but it's something I need to work on, as I engage in the selective erasing of characters.
Saturday, March 17, 2012
writery stuff
Celebrate UVic Authors!
which apparently includes me, with my little Lulu.com book and 4 stories in e-zines. Huh. I may have mentioned, around the time of the United Way booksale, that the university bookstore asked for a copy of said book for their UVic authors display, and after me saying dubiously 'You know it's self-published, right?' and them saying yes they did so what, I got hold of a copy (back from a friend) and dropped it off.
For which I was paid 2 months later, so hey.
Then March 8, as part of IdeaFest 2012, was Celebrate UVic Authors Reception & Reading. Wait, I'll borrow the text from the UVic website:
This event is held during IdeaFest 2012, when UVic celebrates all that is creative and inventive in every corner of campus.
UVic authors who will read from their work:
John Borrows, Drawing Out Law: a Spirit’s GuideCarla Funk, ApologeticRobert Budd, Voices of British ColumbiaPeter Stephenson, Zombie Factory
Thursday March 8, 2012
7:00 - 9:00 p.m.
University Club
I thought I'd go, it being free, and me kindly reminded of it by Paula Johanson, who had 3 nonfiction titles on the program bibliography. So I left our Thursday night open-house early, and drove up to the uni, where I had to pay 2.25 for parking (this may be a legit declareable expense).
In previous years the event has been held at the Bookstore, but since that building is being renovated, it was in the more lounge-like venue of the University Club, formerly the Faculty Club. The room was cedar-panelled, with high ceilings and lots of glass at the far end where the readers were, a piece of First Nations art hovering reflected in the gable window above them. In front of them were ranks of wide armchairs, wood and leather and nubbly upholstery.
Trays of little cakes and sliced fruit, a punchbowl set out on two tables against one wall, and a bar at the near end, where the books were set up on counters and stands. Massive stone fireplace across from the refreshment tables.
Because of eating dinner, I missed the first two readings, so I didn't look around then, but found an empty seat and started paying attention. After a brief intro to the Voices project, the author didn't read himself, but played two recordings of archival material, which I liked for letting the subjects speak for themselves.
Zombie Factory was also a collection of testimonies, the two chosen being from a refugee camp, one from a survivor and one from an aid worker, both young men speaking of the same events how the inmates formed gangs or substitute family groups, and how one who hadn't found a group had died suddenly in his sleep. Not an easy or comfortable reading to hear.
After some questions, a chance to buy the books and get them signed. Me being broke, I snagged some nibblies and punch, and had a look at the books lined up around the corner of the room. There was mine, but I didn't take a photo of it, though I thought it did look fairly decent among the rest. Paula introduced me to some of the faculty and grad students present, and I knew most of the librarians & staff.
I was curious whether the Writing Dept had loosened up on its staunch litfic-only position, since I'd been processing orders for graphic novels on their book fund (them, French, and Spanish). The answer was 'maybe a little', and at least not as rigid as SFU. I've also ordered a self-published book on mountaineering for them, and another on travel (from lulu, actually) but they don't want to buy f/sf, even by Canadian authors, and they don't want to buy books on writing and selling commercially (without the aid of govt grants).
I had allowed myself a quiet little fantasy of dropping the phrase 'well, when I was talking to my agent' into a conversation with someone from Writing, but fortunately the opportunity did not come up, so I went the evening without being obnoxious and generally enjoyed it.
Speaking of my agent, I had the phone conversation with her to make sure we were 'on the same page' (argh) about where Cost of Silver should be going. The issues identified were:
1) Strengthening the transition from Tom/Griffin being out purely to save his own skin/soul to his being willing to fight with the villagers against the enclosures and draining. Clarify that this is a haven (even though he may not at first recognise the concept) and his identification with the group where he has found acceptance, to the extent that he will risk himself for it as well as for a specific person like Nan.
2) Lay the groundwork for the romantic arc, making it plausible that despite the adolescent lust Griffin feels for Alice Dewe and their having shared one fight against a revenaunt, the understanding and experience he has in common with Nan make her the one he loves. So, build the way Alice is creeped out by him, and strengthen the shift from Nan being almost motherly to her seeing him as a man when he comes back from the war.
3) Make each sequence as compelling as the first (Tom's flight to Holdfast's escape). Um, sure, I'll work on that.
We also talked about choosing pov characters enough to suggest sweep, but not so many as to lose reader attention. Present day storyline is Joy and Rob, and historic is Griffin, Nan, Alice and Redfearn. Charles and Cromwell don't count because they're so public it's more like omni than another character--there's a relief.
Since Redfearn has advanced himself from being a tertiary character to nearly challenging Matthew Hopkins for plot impact, we talked about making him rounded, and sympathetic as well as ruthless. I figure making him a pov character helps with that. She recommended Charlie Stross's take on a killer in Rule 34, "Charlie's so bad!"
Then we chatted about books a bit, with a recommendation of Leah Bobet's Above, just about to come out. I was surprised to hear that Tor's fairy tale series from a few years back, with the gorgeous Tom Canty covers, hadn't been that much of a success. They were popular among the people I hang out with, but I suppose that doesn't necessarily translate to popular commercial success.
I was hesitant (note to the Internet at large: hesitant, or even reluctant, not reticent; please look reticent up before using it next time!) to give an ETA for this draft, given that every deadline I've given myself on this story has had its butt kicked. But I went for 2 months to get the modern-day storyline filled in at 50k, and another 2 months to trim out and fill in the historic storyline, keeping it within 150k.
I so hope I'm not lying. It's twice as much time as Nanowrimo, I say cheerfully. My conscience mutters 'you have never won Nanowrimo', and I tell it to shut up.
A little bouncy-happy addendum: she figures that once Cost of Silver sells, Willow Knot will go as well.
which apparently includes me, with my little Lulu.com book and 4 stories in e-zines. Huh. I may have mentioned, around the time of the United Way booksale, that the university bookstore asked for a copy of said book for their UVic authors display, and after me saying dubiously 'You know it's self-published, right?' and them saying yes they did so what, I got hold of a copy (back from a friend) and dropped it off.
For which I was paid 2 months later, so hey.
Then March 8, as part of IdeaFest 2012, was Celebrate UVic Authors Reception & Reading. Wait, I'll borrow the text from the UVic website:
Celebrate UVic Authors - Reception and Reading
Dr. Reeta Tremblay, Vice-President Academic and Provost, the University of Victoria Libraries and the University of Victoria Bookstore invite UVic staff, students, faculty, alumni and members of the community to a Reception and Reading to celebrate and honour UVic Authors who published works in 2010.This event is held during IdeaFest 2012, when UVic celebrates all that is creative and inventive in every corner of campus.
UVic authors who will read from their work:
John Borrows, Drawing Out Law: a Spirit’s GuideCarla Funk, ApologeticRobert Budd, Voices of British ColumbiaPeter Stephenson, Zombie Factory
Thursday March 8, 2012
7:00 - 9:00 p.m.
University Club
I thought I'd go, it being free, and me kindly reminded of it by Paula Johanson, who had 3 nonfiction titles on the program bibliography. So I left our Thursday night open-house early, and drove up to the uni, where I had to pay 2.25 for parking (this may be a legit declareable expense).
In previous years the event has been held at the Bookstore, but since that building is being renovated, it was in the more lounge-like venue of the University Club, formerly the Faculty Club. The room was cedar-panelled, with high ceilings and lots of glass at the far end where the readers were, a piece of First Nations art hovering reflected in the gable window above them. In front of them were ranks of wide armchairs, wood and leather and nubbly upholstery.
Trays of little cakes and sliced fruit, a punchbowl set out on two tables against one wall, and a bar at the near end, where the books were set up on counters and stands. Massive stone fireplace across from the refreshment tables.
Because of eating dinner, I missed the first two readings, so I didn't look around then, but found an empty seat and started paying attention. After a brief intro to the Voices project, the author didn't read himself, but played two recordings of archival material, which I liked for letting the subjects speak for themselves.
Zombie Factory was also a collection of testimonies, the two chosen being from a refugee camp, one from a survivor and one from an aid worker, both young men speaking of the same events how the inmates formed gangs or substitute family groups, and how one who hadn't found a group had died suddenly in his sleep. Not an easy or comfortable reading to hear.
After some questions, a chance to buy the books and get them signed. Me being broke, I snagged some nibblies and punch, and had a look at the books lined up around the corner of the room. There was mine, but I didn't take a photo of it, though I thought it did look fairly decent among the rest. Paula introduced me to some of the faculty and grad students present, and I knew most of the librarians & staff.
I was curious whether the Writing Dept had loosened up on its staunch litfic-only position, since I'd been processing orders for graphic novels on their book fund (them, French, and Spanish). The answer was 'maybe a little', and at least not as rigid as SFU. I've also ordered a self-published book on mountaineering for them, and another on travel (from lulu, actually) but they don't want to buy f/sf, even by Canadian authors, and they don't want to buy books on writing and selling commercially (without the aid of govt grants).
I had allowed myself a quiet little fantasy of dropping the phrase 'well, when I was talking to my agent' into a conversation with someone from Writing, but fortunately the opportunity did not come up, so I went the evening without being obnoxious and generally enjoyed it.
Speaking of my agent, I had the phone conversation with her to make sure we were 'on the same page' (argh) about where Cost of Silver should be going. The issues identified were:
1) Strengthening the transition from Tom/Griffin being out purely to save his own skin/soul to his being willing to fight with the villagers against the enclosures and draining. Clarify that this is a haven (even though he may not at first recognise the concept) and his identification with the group where he has found acceptance, to the extent that he will risk himself for it as well as for a specific person like Nan.
2) Lay the groundwork for the romantic arc, making it plausible that despite the adolescent lust Griffin feels for Alice Dewe and their having shared one fight against a revenaunt, the understanding and experience he has in common with Nan make her the one he loves. So, build the way Alice is creeped out by him, and strengthen the shift from Nan being almost motherly to her seeing him as a man when he comes back from the war.
3) Make each sequence as compelling as the first (Tom's flight to Holdfast's escape). Um, sure, I'll work on that.
We also talked about choosing pov characters enough to suggest sweep, but not so many as to lose reader attention. Present day storyline is Joy and Rob, and historic is Griffin, Nan, Alice and Redfearn. Charles and Cromwell don't count because they're so public it's more like omni than another character--there's a relief.
Since Redfearn has advanced himself from being a tertiary character to nearly challenging Matthew Hopkins for plot impact, we talked about making him rounded, and sympathetic as well as ruthless. I figure making him a pov character helps with that. She recommended Charlie Stross's take on a killer in Rule 34, "Charlie's so bad!"
Then we chatted about books a bit, with a recommendation of Leah Bobet's Above, just about to come out. I was surprised to hear that Tor's fairy tale series from a few years back, with the gorgeous Tom Canty covers, hadn't been that much of a success. They were popular among the people I hang out with, but I suppose that doesn't necessarily translate to popular commercial success.
I was hesitant (note to the Internet at large: hesitant, or even reluctant, not reticent; please look reticent up before using it next time!) to give an ETA for this draft, given that every deadline I've given myself on this story has had its butt kicked. But I went for 2 months to get the modern-day storyline filled in at 50k, and another 2 months to trim out and fill in the historic storyline, keeping it within 150k.
I so hope I'm not lying. It's twice as much time as Nanowrimo, I say cheerfully. My conscience mutters 'you have never won Nanowrimo', and I tell it to shut up.
A little bouncy-happy addendum: she figures that once Cost of Silver sells, Willow Knot will go as well.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
writing? oh yeah, writing.
No pics yet, because they're on a camera card and I'll have to do it through my EEE which has a card slot. Instead, a return to the ostensible topic of this blog: my fabulous writing career.
Ahem.
Okay, my writing. There.
You'll recall that before leaving for Pennsic I was in a mad rush to cut free and mail off the first 'half' of The Cost of Silver for my agent's opinion on how I should proceed. In that narrow window between my return from Pennsylvania and my departure for Fort Rodd Hill, she emailed her assessment (yes, she is speedy like a speeding thing), having read the mss while on holiday with her family.
While containing phrases like 'spooky and compelling', 'carries absolute historical authenticity', 'raced through it', the gist was that the narrative was headed in the wrong direction and that my research was showing. (what a surprise, right?)
I imagine her reading and reading, with a sinking feeling getting stronger and stronger, and her wondering how to break it to me gently.
Well, I emailed back, and we had a bit of discussion, and I'll be working up a revised--severely revised--synopsis for her after Labour Day. I think I can keep the storyline I care about, of the commoners and fenfolk and their fight for their land and livelihood, by tying it more securely into the revenant story. Which means building up characters and plot for the courtiers, royalty, and fen-drainers, so that they appear on-stage, not just referred to by the commoners. With the revenants being in various ways supporters of the enclosures, because enclosing land for the gentry means driving commoners off, creating a dispossessed, powerless population that's easy prey, in place of tight little villages where everyone knows everyone else.
Maybe the revenants have fond memories of the abolition of the monasteries, too? Some number of them must have been around at the time.
This also means more scenes with revenants, because there's bound to be conflict among them, with some liking the idea of influencing the powerful mortals, and others thinking it dangerously rash and risking discovery.
She's suggested working in a modern-day plotline, with perhaps a Cambridge researcher discovering papers that lead back to the 1600s story. I talked this over with the others at Fort Rodd Hill, and what sparked from it I quite like, involving Wicken Fen (the last untouched fenland in East Anglia) and the discovery of a 'bog body' which perhaps ain't as dead as all that.
So, I am quite excited, not least by her suggestion that 'you have it in you to write a big commercial historical fantasy novel' that could be sold to a mainstream editor. After I had curled up in a corner and twitched for a while, then wandered around the house muttering 'but, but,' that is!
I'd pretty much pinned my future as 'quirky midlist author with small cult following', but the point of having an agent is for advice and guidance, right? So I shall work on reassessing. Then on massive revising.
But first! The 3-Day Novel Contest this weekend. I even have an idea for it, at last. An artists' colony on Saltspring Island, populated by retired gods and heroes, stirred up by the arrival of a young girl who was recently the incarnation of a goddess and has issues therefrom.
Ahem.
Okay, my writing. There.
You'll recall that before leaving for Pennsic I was in a mad rush to cut free and mail off the first 'half' of The Cost of Silver for my agent's opinion on how I should proceed. In that narrow window between my return from Pennsylvania and my departure for Fort Rodd Hill, she emailed her assessment (yes, she is speedy like a speeding thing), having read the mss while on holiday with her family.
While containing phrases like 'spooky and compelling', 'carries absolute historical authenticity', 'raced through it', the gist was that the narrative was headed in the wrong direction and that my research was showing. (what a surprise, right?)
I imagine her reading and reading, with a sinking feeling getting stronger and stronger, and her wondering how to break it to me gently.
Well, I emailed back, and we had a bit of discussion, and I'll be working up a revised--severely revised--synopsis for her after Labour Day. I think I can keep the storyline I care about, of the commoners and fenfolk and their fight for their land and livelihood, by tying it more securely into the revenant story. Which means building up characters and plot for the courtiers, royalty, and fen-drainers, so that they appear on-stage, not just referred to by the commoners. With the revenants being in various ways supporters of the enclosures, because enclosing land for the gentry means driving commoners off, creating a dispossessed, powerless population that's easy prey, in place of tight little villages where everyone knows everyone else.
Maybe the revenants have fond memories of the abolition of the monasteries, too? Some number of them must have been around at the time.
This also means more scenes with revenants, because there's bound to be conflict among them, with some liking the idea of influencing the powerful mortals, and others thinking it dangerously rash and risking discovery.
She's suggested working in a modern-day plotline, with perhaps a Cambridge researcher discovering papers that lead back to the 1600s story. I talked this over with the others at Fort Rodd Hill, and what sparked from it I quite like, involving Wicken Fen (the last untouched fenland in East Anglia) and the discovery of a 'bog body' which perhaps ain't as dead as all that.
So, I am quite excited, not least by her suggestion that 'you have it in you to write a big commercial historical fantasy novel' that could be sold to a mainstream editor. After I had curled up in a corner and twitched for a while, then wandered around the house muttering 'but, but,' that is!
I'd pretty much pinned my future as 'quirky midlist author with small cult following', but the point of having an agent is for advice and guidance, right? So I shall work on reassessing. Then on massive revising.
But first! The 3-Day Novel Contest this weekend. I even have an idea for it, at last. An artists' colony on Saltspring Island, populated by retired gods and heroes, stirred up by the arrival of a young girl who was recently the incarnation of a goddess and has issues therefrom.
Monday, May 16, 2011
writerly fussing
Thing I learned recently.
Battles are like forests, in the struggle to establish and describe the same bloody things all the time (trees and explosions) without either continually repeating oneself or, alternatively, looking as if one has shaken the thesaurus out over the scenery.
The historical Battle of Newburn was fought and lost between dawn and afternoon. It took me three bloody days to finish writing one character's experiences in it. Gaaah. Anyway, done! Then the retreat after it, which dropped said character into a nest of Northumbrian witches, to improve his education. (Wherein the writer is beset by doubts that this expansion is unbalancing the novel...)
I swear, action scenes are the hardest for me, like wading through molasses. Dialogue? Dead easy. Description, I'm not crazy about, but it can be knocked off in under three sentences usually. Openings of stories, no big deal. Action? A constant struggle.
In other news, I've hit the stage in this work where I become convinced that I've lost the voice, and that everything I'm adding is written in an utterly flat and modern style that will jar the hypothetical reader entirely out of the story.
Fortunately, because I know I'll think this (it happens with every 3-day novel), I can pretty much disregard my misgivings and struggle on.
In still other news, my left shoulder decided to act up for a couple of days, twinging and whingeing in just the same way it did before I was diagnosed with arthritis. So I gave in and took a couple of Naproxen, the NSAIDs my doctor told me to stop taking, and hey, they worked.
The flare-up may have been because I'd been taking the lower dose of methotrexate for some months (8 pills instead of 10 on Happy Methotrexate Day). Hopefully it doesn't mean I need to change or adjust the meds, because I've been pretty happy with the lack of side-effects so far.
You receive this post because it has been so long since I posted, and now you see that it is because I have nothing to offer but angst.
Right. Back to the saltmines.
Battles are like forests, in the struggle to establish and describe the same bloody things all the time (trees and explosions) without either continually repeating oneself or, alternatively, looking as if one has shaken the thesaurus out over the scenery.
The historical Battle of Newburn was fought and lost between dawn and afternoon. It took me three bloody days to finish writing one character's experiences in it. Gaaah. Anyway, done! Then the retreat after it, which dropped said character into a nest of Northumbrian witches, to improve his education. (Wherein the writer is beset by doubts that this expansion is unbalancing the novel...)
I swear, action scenes are the hardest for me, like wading through molasses. Dialogue? Dead easy. Description, I'm not crazy about, but it can be knocked off in under three sentences usually. Openings of stories, no big deal. Action? A constant struggle.
In other news, I've hit the stage in this work where I become convinced that I've lost the voice, and that everything I'm adding is written in an utterly flat and modern style that will jar the hypothetical reader entirely out of the story.
Fortunately, because I know I'll think this (it happens with every 3-day novel), I can pretty much disregard my misgivings and struggle on.
In still other news, my left shoulder decided to act up for a couple of days, twinging and whingeing in just the same way it did before I was diagnosed with arthritis. So I gave in and took a couple of Naproxen, the NSAIDs my doctor told me to stop taking, and hey, they worked.
The flare-up may have been because I'd been taking the lower dose of methotrexate for some months (8 pills instead of 10 on Happy Methotrexate Day). Hopefully it doesn't mean I need to change or adjust the meds, because I've been pretty happy with the lack of side-effects so far.
You receive this post because it has been so long since I posted, and now you see that it is because I have nothing to offer but angst.
Right. Back to the saltmines.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
If you were wondering
The answer is no. Many words, many well-researched words were added to The Cost of Silver, but no, this draft is not finished.
It's looking like 10-15k still to go. And I am still having qualms about the ending. Do endings need some vaguely redemptive aspect? Or is bloody unrepentant revenge enough of a closure?
I feel as if I should insert one of those cheesy 'Under Construction' gifs here.
It's looking like 10-15k still to go. And I am still having qualms about the ending. Do endings need some vaguely redemptive aspect? Or is bloody unrepentant revenge enough of a closure?
I feel as if I should insert one of those cheesy 'Under Construction' gifs here.
Monday, April 4, 2011
The ABM is fired
I've been writing. That is, I have been in the depths of my own brain, with occasional excursions to the Bishops' Wars and to the Fenland Riots, and to the Witch Panic. This is not actually a comfortable or relaxing tour, but it is full of incident.
I can sort of see the end of this book, if I stand on my tiptoes and squint. I'm hoping to have all the holes filled in within a couple of weeks.
So every now and then I stick my head out to see what's up with teh intarwebz, which almost always results in my staying up too late reading FandomWank or something similar. Is it my imagination, or has there been a marked increase in Authors (and Publishers) Behaving Badly over the past few months?
I mean, just on OTF (Other than Fandom) Wank, there's been (the ironically named) Chivalry Bookshelf ripping off its authors; Decadent Publishing getting over-excited over some nasty sockpuppet reviews; First One Publishing wanting $150 to take all your rights; and most recently the J Howett meltdown over a mixed review.
More fun threads on Absolute Write, in the forums, but if I look for them I'll be up all night.
Responding to a negative review is such a poor idea that it's called the Author's Big Mistake, or ABM. (Paul Fussell is credited with inventing the term) Back in the day when print was all, authors and reviewers would carry on feuds slowly, over weeks, through the book review sections and letter columns of newspapers. It was made even more fun by the likelihood that reviewers and authors were likely colleagues, published by the same presses and reviewing in the same newspapers and journals. So an angry author might have the chance for sweet revenge by reviewing his enemy's book (and being paid for the review, too).
Yeah, the fact that everyone knew it was a bad idea didn't stop highly-educated, literate and eloquent people from doing it. Some very classy invective was produced this way--but again, if I look for it I'll be up all night.
Wait, Jane Smith's brill blog How Publishing Really Works has a terrif rundown on the classics here.
The internet has made it possible not only to carry on such a feud without any timelag (and without, alas, most of the eloquence, as eloquence takes time) but for everyone and his dog-that-no-one-knows-you-are-on-the-internet to weigh in and mock and share.
I like snark (I sometime explain that we are an ESL family: the first language is sarcasm) and I'm willing to watch a trainwreck happen in realtime. But the scope of the possible wreckage is more than a little scary.
On the one hand, it's possible to have an ongoing intelligent and thoughtful conversation between writer and reviewer, online.
On the other hand, it's possible for things to explode before one party even realises the fuse has been lit.
I wonder what I'll do when/if I get my first negative review? Hopefully I'll have as much class as the author of Pregnesia does here. Or at least the good sense to bitch privately and offline.
Now, back to the fens!
I can sort of see the end of this book, if I stand on my tiptoes and squint. I'm hoping to have all the holes filled in within a couple of weeks.
So every now and then I stick my head out to see what's up with teh intarwebz, which almost always results in my staying up too late reading FandomWank or something similar. Is it my imagination, or has there been a marked increase in Authors (and Publishers) Behaving Badly over the past few months?
I mean, just on OTF (Other than Fandom) Wank, there's been (the ironically named) Chivalry Bookshelf ripping off its authors; Decadent Publishing getting over-excited over some nasty sockpuppet reviews; First One Publishing wanting $150 to take all your rights; and most recently the J Howett meltdown over a mixed review.
More fun threads on Absolute Write, in the forums, but if I look for them I'll be up all night.
Responding to a negative review is such a poor idea that it's called the Author's Big Mistake, or ABM. (Paul Fussell is credited with inventing the term) Back in the day when print was all, authors and reviewers would carry on feuds slowly, over weeks, through the book review sections and letter columns of newspapers. It was made even more fun by the likelihood that reviewers and authors were likely colleagues, published by the same presses and reviewing in the same newspapers and journals. So an angry author might have the chance for sweet revenge by reviewing his enemy's book (and being paid for the review, too).
Yeah, the fact that everyone knew it was a bad idea didn't stop highly-educated, literate and eloquent people from doing it. Some very classy invective was produced this way--but again, if I look for it I'll be up all night.
Wait, Jane Smith's brill blog How Publishing Really Works has a terrif rundown on the classics here.
The internet has made it possible not only to carry on such a feud without any timelag (and without, alas, most of the eloquence, as eloquence takes time) but for everyone and his dog-that-no-one-knows-you-are-on-the-internet to weigh in and mock and share.
I like snark (I sometime explain that we are an ESL family: the first language is sarcasm) and I'm willing to watch a trainwreck happen in realtime. But the scope of the possible wreckage is more than a little scary.
On the one hand, it's possible to have an ongoing intelligent and thoughtful conversation between writer and reviewer, online.
On the other hand, it's possible for things to explode before one party even realises the fuse has been lit.
I wonder what I'll do when/if I get my first negative review? Hopefully I'll have as much class as the author of Pregnesia does here. Or at least the good sense to bitch privately and offline.
Now, back to the fens!
Saturday, January 1, 2011
another new year
Which I can't say in sparkly shortbread, alas.
One of my Christmas presents from Mark was a membership in LibraryThing, which I fear will not enhance my writing productivity. Already I have discovered the joy of adding a book that no one else has, alternating with the joy of seeing who else has the same books. This with only 50 or 6o of my books added, and no adult fiction yet.
A shared Christmas present was a 2d-hand rowing machine, plonked now in front of the television. Mark is up to 40 minutes at a time, I'm at 20, and using it to catch up with the videos and dvds that I've bought over the last few years and haven't gotten around to watching. I'm favouring HK movies with subtitles, so I don't have to bump the volume up to hear them over the machine.
Much happy Christmas baking still remains, including rolled shortbread, pressed shortbread, iced cut-out cookies, chocolate shortbread, cheese shortbread, spicy cheese cookies, honey cookies, oatmeal shortbread, butter tarts, candied grapefruit peel, sugared walnuts, melting moments, bar shortbread, domino cookies, toffee candy (it was meant to be fudge), gingerbread snowflake cookies, one piece of birthday cake, gingerbread cake, butter pecan cookies and coconut macaroons. So if it were to snow for real and we were to be trapped at home, we wouldn't starve.
But now it is the New Year, and time to get seriously serious about finishing the revisions on Cost of Silver. This means writing more scenes relating to the draining of the fens, the English Civil War, and the witch hunts. There may have been cheerful things happening in the latter 1600s, but I'm not sure any of them will appear in the book. Angsty angstiness is the tone of the era, with occasional gallows humour.
Also: writing down actual comments for Anne's excellent slice-of-lowlife novel The Sleepy Teepee. And thoughts on possible markets.
One of my Christmas presents from Mark was a membership in LibraryThing, which I fear will not enhance my writing productivity. Already I have discovered the joy of adding a book that no one else has, alternating with the joy of seeing who else has the same books. This with only 50 or 6o of my books added, and no adult fiction yet.
A shared Christmas present was a 2d-hand rowing machine, plonked now in front of the television. Mark is up to 40 minutes at a time, I'm at 20, and using it to catch up with the videos and dvds that I've bought over the last few years and haven't gotten around to watching. I'm favouring HK movies with subtitles, so I don't have to bump the volume up to hear them over the machine.
Much happy Christmas baking still remains, including rolled shortbread, pressed shortbread, iced cut-out cookies, chocolate shortbread, cheese shortbread, spicy cheese cookies, honey cookies, oatmeal shortbread, butter tarts, candied grapefruit peel, sugared walnuts, melting moments, bar shortbread, domino cookies, toffee candy (it was meant to be fudge), gingerbread snowflake cookies, one piece of birthday cake, gingerbread cake, butter pecan cookies and coconut macaroons. So if it were to snow for real and we were to be trapped at home, we wouldn't starve.
But now it is the New Year, and time to get seriously serious about finishing the revisions on Cost of Silver. This means writing more scenes relating to the draining of the fens, the English Civil War, and the witch hunts. There may have been cheerful things happening in the latter 1600s, but I'm not sure any of them will appear in the book. Angsty angstiness is the tone of the era, with occasional gallows humour.
Also: writing down actual comments for Anne's excellent slice-of-lowlife novel The Sleepy Teepee. And thoughts on possible markets.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
i r srs riter
The big news first. Word back from my agent that the last set of revisions makes The Willow Knot good to go, and she will be showing the ms. to editors in September (the publishing industry shuts down through August.
She asked me to provide the following:
1) a revised synopsis to be used in her pitch letter
2) a 1-2 paragraph biography, mentioning my short story credits
3) a list of books similar to Willow Knot, also for the pitch letter
4) list of my next projects, for possible multi-book deal
Rewriting my synopsis was the hardest part, unexpectedly. A lot had changed, not only the order of events in the story, but the addition of scenes and characters, fleshing out the love story (heh, heh) and giving Alard more space, Asafia's storyline being brought forward, and so on. After a week I decided to take what I had down and send it off with a note that I was willing to rework it further.
The bio was easy, after writing similar ones for submissions and author notes.
The list of books like mine. That had me clutching my head and groaning, in full flush of that great Canadian sentiment, who do you think you are? where the Central Committee for Due Modesty would knock at my door politely before coming in and smacking me around for getting above myself. I cast myself on the mercy of my beta readers, both the Furtive Scribblers and my VP-mates, and finally came up with a list. Which is, as was pointed out to me, not me saying I write as well as any of those on the list, but that I wrote like them. (relieved sigh, Central Committee drives past my house but doesn't stop)
The next books. It happened that I had been enlivening a moderately dull meeting by making notes to myself and arranging my next stories in the order I thought might make sense. This presupposed, perhaps, more writing time than I could really expect, but who knows?
The Willow Knot - sorta historic fantasy, retelling of 'Brother and Sister' (Grimm 11)
The Cost of Silver - dark historic fantasy, alt-ECW period with vampires and witchhunters
Skinned - sorta historic fantasy in WK's world, mashup of 'Bearskin' with 'Snow White & Rose Red'
The Fate of the Dead - historic fantasy, alt-Georgian, ghosts invading England
Interspersed with three YAs using the Aerial Mail Express world, each with a different protagonist and different peril: sky-pirates, the gold rush, the fur trade. Pretty sketchy yet, but would make a good break.
Next bit of good news is that "Bluebeard Contented" has been accepted - by the first market I sent it to, Cabinet des Fees, which seemed the perfect place for an odd little Perrault-ish retelling. Much woohoo! that they agreed.
Acceptable? Oh yeah!
Two rejections, to keep things balanced.
She asked me to provide the following:
1) a revised synopsis to be used in her pitch letter
2) a 1-2 paragraph biography, mentioning my short story credits
3) a list of books similar to Willow Knot, also for the pitch letter
4) list of my next projects, for possible multi-book deal
Rewriting my synopsis was the hardest part, unexpectedly. A lot had changed, not only the order of events in the story, but the addition of scenes and characters, fleshing out the love story (heh, heh) and giving Alard more space, Asafia's storyline being brought forward, and so on. After a week I decided to take what I had down and send it off with a note that I was willing to rework it further.
The bio was easy, after writing similar ones for submissions and author notes.
The list of books like mine. That had me clutching my head and groaning, in full flush of that great Canadian sentiment, who do you think you are? where the Central Committee for Due Modesty would knock at my door politely before coming in and smacking me around for getting above myself. I cast myself on the mercy of my beta readers, both the Furtive Scribblers and my VP-mates, and finally came up with a list. Which is, as was pointed out to me, not me saying I write as well as any of those on the list, but that I wrote like them. (relieved sigh, Central Committee drives past my house but doesn't stop)
The next books. It happened that I had been enlivening a moderately dull meeting by making notes to myself and arranging my next stories in the order I thought might make sense. This presupposed, perhaps, more writing time than I could really expect, but who knows?
The Willow Knot - sorta historic fantasy, retelling of 'Brother and Sister' (Grimm 11)
The Cost of Silver - dark historic fantasy, alt-ECW period with vampires and witchhunters
Skinned - sorta historic fantasy in WK's world, mashup of 'Bearskin' with 'Snow White & Rose Red'
The Fate of the Dead - historic fantasy, alt-Georgian, ghosts invading England
Interspersed with three YAs using the Aerial Mail Express world, each with a different protagonist and different peril: sky-pirates, the gold rush, the fur trade. Pretty sketchy yet, but would make a good break.
Next bit of good news is that "Bluebeard Contented" has been accepted - by the first market I sent it to, Cabinet des Fees, which seemed the perfect place for an odd little Perrault-ish retelling. Much woohoo! that they agreed.
We would like to accept "Bluebeard Contented*" for publication in our January 2011 issue. It is too good to pass up, but it doesn't really fit in with our forthcoming September issue. If this is acceptable, please let me know and I will issue your contract.
Acceptable? Oh yeah!
Two rejections, to keep things balanced.
Thank you for submitting "Climbing Boys" to ABYSS & APEX. It was well received here, but after some thought we have decided not to accept it for publication.
I hope you'll consider us again, and I wish you the best success in placing this story elsewhere.
and another for "Gods-Meat" from Beneath Ceaseless Skies, with Scott continuing to give excellent feedback, which is a great plus for submitting there.
Thanks very much for sending this to me. I'm sorry that it's not quite right for me. I liked the stormy vibe in the opening, but I couldn't get a feel on what general sort of world it was, Weird West or something more traditional fantasy. More importantly, I also couldn't get a feel there for the narrator's character. His early internal monologue gave a great voice to the bleakness of this place and normal existence there, but I didn't feel as much of himself coming through in that as I was hoping, his own attitude or hopes or fears or drive, what was pushing him as a person forward and what might be pushing the story forward too. I appreciate your interest in the magazine. I enjoyed reading your work again, so I hope you will feel free to send more.
Monday, June 21, 2010
speak then to me
Sort of bouncing off Zoe's post here, on the horrors of realising you've been writing down the wrong track, and having to scrap those hard-won words.
Yesterday I took a break from pruning out more superfluities from the first 200 pages of Willow Knot, and went to thin out apples in the backyard. I searched the branches for clusters of three or more, for apples with scars or tobacco-juice frass (from codling moths, I think). I hate to take off healthy apples, but I pushed myself to imagine how heavy the branches would be if they all matured, and how the old limbs or thin shoots might crack and snap off with the weight. And that the remaining apples would be larger for being better fed.
After a half-hour of thinning, I began to feel that this was way, way, too allegorical. Or perhaps too symmetrical with what I was doing at the computer, locating 'pritty riting that does nothing' and snipping it out. Yeah, I thought, this is kind of heavy-handed, isn't it? Is there nothing for me but pruning out false starts?
But today, reading Zoe's post, I began to think thinning wasn't the right metaphor. I was taking out apples-t0-be, that might be healthy or not, to spare the branches from imagined strain. The pruning of the manuscript was done after blossom and fruiting, when I could see quite well the worm at the root, the cracking branch. I wasn't sacrificing potential on the altar of caution. (A month's worth of metaphors in this post alone!)
This further clued me in to what had been muddling me up with writing the novel-length Chimps. I've been trying to write it so as to save myself later revisions. I've been trying to avoid the byways and sidetracks, to guess which fruit will grow to be wormy or rotten or overburden the branch.
And for me, writing doesn't work that way.
Parenthetically, I do edit as I go, in the sense of cleaning up my prose, correcting spelling, smoothing sentences, changing repetitive or rhyming words, moving paragraph breaks around. Line-editing, not structural editing.
But for the first writing, the only way I can find out whether I've started down a dead end or the high road is to follow it and see what happens. If I'd tried, during Willow Knot's first draft, to stick to what deserved to be in a final draft, there would be neither willow nor knot. It was following Myl's stray thoughts, learning my way around her life, that brought Nobble into the story.
So I must remember to be sparing in the writing, and ruthless in the revision. And remember there is nothing wrong with climbing into the story and following the plot and characters around to see what happens. At least for me, since making generalisations about a creative process is a mug's game.
If you can look into the seeds of time,
And say which grain will grow and which will not,
Speak then to me, who neither beg nor fear
Your favours nor your hate.
(Banquo's speech to the three witches, from Macbeth, the play that taught me never to trust a prophecy.)
Yesterday I took a break from pruning out more superfluities from the first 200 pages of Willow Knot, and went to thin out apples in the backyard. I searched the branches for clusters of three or more, for apples with scars or tobacco-juice frass (from codling moths, I think). I hate to take off healthy apples, but I pushed myself to imagine how heavy the branches would be if they all matured, and how the old limbs or thin shoots might crack and snap off with the weight. And that the remaining apples would be larger for being better fed.
After a half-hour of thinning, I began to feel that this was way, way, too allegorical. Or perhaps too symmetrical with what I was doing at the computer, locating 'pritty riting that does nothing' and snipping it out. Yeah, I thought, this is kind of heavy-handed, isn't it? Is there nothing for me but pruning out false starts?
But today, reading Zoe's post, I began to think thinning wasn't the right metaphor. I was taking out apples-t0-be, that might be healthy or not, to spare the branches from imagined strain. The pruning of the manuscript was done after blossom and fruiting, when I could see quite well the worm at the root, the cracking branch. I wasn't sacrificing potential on the altar of caution. (A month's worth of metaphors in this post alone!)
This further clued me in to what had been muddling me up with writing the novel-length Chimps. I've been trying to write it so as to save myself later revisions. I've been trying to avoid the byways and sidetracks, to guess which fruit will grow to be wormy or rotten or overburden the branch.
And for me, writing doesn't work that way.
Parenthetically, I do edit as I go, in the sense of cleaning up my prose, correcting spelling, smoothing sentences, changing repetitive or rhyming words, moving paragraph breaks around. Line-editing, not structural editing.
But for the first writing, the only way I can find out whether I've started down a dead end or the high road is to follow it and see what happens. If I'd tried, during Willow Knot's first draft, to stick to what deserved to be in a final draft, there would be neither willow nor knot. It was following Myl's stray thoughts, learning my way around her life, that brought Nobble into the story.
So I must remember to be sparing in the writing, and ruthless in the revision. And remember there is nothing wrong with climbing into the story and following the plot and characters around to see what happens. At least for me, since making generalisations about a creative process is a mug's game.
If you can look into the seeds of time,
And say which grain will grow and which will not,
Speak then to me, who neither beg nor fear
Your favours nor your hate.
(Banquo's speech to the three witches, from Macbeth, the play that taught me never to trust a prophecy.)
Friday, June 18, 2010
farewell, my lovelies
Removed in revision:
In an untended lambing pen a ewe with twin lambs skitted away from them. Myl trapped her against the hurdles, their charm of stay-not-stray, stay-not-stray buzzing into her ear.
Thick oily wool swallowed Myl's shoulder and half her face. One-eyed she watched the pale stream of milk swirl into the wooden bowl she'd slipped into the basket while cook and housekeeper stared each other down.
Tyl drank a bowlful, then carried it refilled over the hurdle while she kept the ewe pinned. They found shade under a scanty bush nibbled branchless to a sheep's height, and soaked scraps of bread in the second bowlful. The ewe bleated angrily until her lambs, drawn by the smell of her warm milk, forgot their startlement and nosed under her. Stay-not-stray, murmured the drowsy wattle weave.
"Less hasty, brother," Myl warned. "We shan't see more bread till the Dear Lord knows when. This must last us."
"'Twill turn stale," Tyl mumbled through a mouthful. "Like a block of wood by morning."
"Then we'll soak it, in water if needs be." She wrapped the loaf in its napkin. "D'you think I don't long for a full belly? Someday we'll have all we've lacked, but not today. Today we must be wise."
He grimaced. "Aye. With full bellies on so hot a day, we'd soon be sleeping. They'd take us like conies."
He put his head down and licked out the bowl. Myl wiped it with a hank of grass, cast an eye to the sun to find their direction, and pulled him to his feet. She didn't say what she thought: that it wasn't in full sun they were most like to be taken, but in the night. Nursery tales, she insisted to the coward thoughts. Shadows to fright a stupid child.
Shadows don't come of themselves, said the stories. There's something casts them. Myl walked faster, leaving the voices behind.
In an untended lambing pen a ewe with twin lambs skitted away from them. Myl trapped her against the hurdles, their charm of stay-not-stray, stay-not-stray buzzing into her ear.
Thick oily wool swallowed Myl's shoulder and half her face. One-eyed she watched the pale stream of milk swirl into the wooden bowl she'd slipped into the basket while cook and housekeeper stared each other down.
Tyl drank a bowlful, then carried it refilled over the hurdle while she kept the ewe pinned. They found shade under a scanty bush nibbled branchless to a sheep's height, and soaked scraps of bread in the second bowlful. The ewe bleated angrily until her lambs, drawn by the smell of her warm milk, forgot their startlement and nosed under her. Stay-not-stray, murmured the drowsy wattle weave.
"Less hasty, brother," Myl warned. "We shan't see more bread till the Dear Lord knows when. This must last us."
"'Twill turn stale," Tyl mumbled through a mouthful. "Like a block of wood by morning."
"Then we'll soak it, in water if needs be." She wrapped the loaf in its napkin. "D'you think I don't long for a full belly? Someday we'll have all we've lacked, but not today. Today we must be wise."
He grimaced. "Aye. With full bellies on so hot a day, we'd soon be sleeping. They'd take us like conies."
He put his head down and licked out the bowl. Myl wiped it with a hank of grass, cast an eye to the sun to find their direction, and pulled him to his feet. She didn't say what she thought: that it wasn't in full sun they were most like to be taken, but in the night. Nursery tales, she insisted to the coward thoughts. Shadows to fright a stupid child.
Shadows don't come of themselves, said the stories. There's something casts them. Myl walked faster, leaving the voices behind.
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Rain, steam and speed
Last weekend: The Victoria Steam Expo.
This was a smaller affair than was hoped, with a horrible flu of some sort taking a number of Seattle guests out of action, and preventing the arrival of the Robot Squid. There were some rather good costumes, naturally, including a steam-driven robotic arm, which we didn't get pics of, and a winged girl, whom we did. I made an attempt at a costume, by digging up the Baron Samedi costume I made for Chris some few Halloweens back (minus the 4 ft tall skull-headed walking stick, because Mark and I biked down to the Empress) and borrowing Mark's vintage welding goggles. (but I must now reference Kate Beaton's 'Brunel is tired of these time-travelling assholes')
Cherie Priest was the guest of honour, and did a Q&A on the Saturday and a reading (from Dreadnought) on the Sunday. After the Q&A she signed books for the quickly-forming line, and after that Mark and I took her up on the 'ask me questions and I will talk' invitatio
n. This ended up on the Verandah of the Empress (because the Bengal Lounge will not let you in if you are wearing a hat. T-shirts are okay, top-hats and turbans not. Hm.) for a couple of hours of writing etc. chat, including the 'seven-year overnight success' story, the 'utterly fortuitous rediscovery by a publisher' story, the 'never go with a micropress' story, the 'my early years of B&E and explorations of deserted buildings' stories. I would've felt guilty for snaffling the GoH, but fortunately Heather was one of the volunteers and chaperoned as well as contributing some great stories of her own to the mix.See? I am working on the the schmoozing. But I'm only going to do it if it's fun. Which it definitely was, and you can add Cherie Priest to the list (headed by Mary Robinette Kowal) of 'people you should buy a drink/snack for and provide keywords to for hours of entertainment'.
Didn't get a picture of 'me with GoH', but I'm still too Canadian to be other than embarrassed by that suggestion anyways.
Displays & vendors were way out of my pocketbook's range, but I have to mention the Really Awesome Clockwork Trilobite by Randie Feil.On Sunday there was a talk on Steampunk Archetypes which put me off rather. While I was amused by the theological hairsplitting between steampunk, clockpunk and dieselpunk (apparently you can adapt Victorian/Edwardian fashion as much as you like, but if your imaginary power source is diesel rather than steam or phlogiston, you'd better not call yourself steampunk, hombre), the narrowness of the permissable cultural influences was making me twitch. According to the speaker, the only 'pure' locales were London and the American West. Oh, and parts of the British Empire, if you were an Explorer or Engineer (ie white?).
Um. Yeah.
When questions were permitted I asked if France & Europe were acceptable locales, given that Jules Verne (not from London) was surely one of the founding fathers of Victorian sf? Which point was rather missed in the reply, which was that Verne, yeah, Verne was very important.
Given that K.W. Jeter, Cherie Priest, and Jay Lake (those just off the top of my head) all write stories that deal with the underside of industrial and colonial expansion and have multicultural characters, I hadn't expected this unexamined narrowness--maybe it's more an aspect of the costuming side? The speaker seemed much happier once she got onto weapons-modding.
This weekend: rain and clouds and cold. I've had a fire going most of the day and have moved my laptop into the kitchen for warmth & solace. Working on Cost of Silver with breaks to read Witchfinders: a 17th century English tragedy, by Malcolm Gaskill (narrative nonfic about Hopkins & Stearne). This is not cheerful reading, though engrossing. Gaskill fictionalises a good deal, guessing at motives and background, but as long as one keeps that in mind, I don't think it's a problem.
The thing that's hanging me up with research is trying to get a picture of how the witch fever tied in with the Civil War that was going on at the same time. Not psychologically, because I get that the uncertainty and disruption and privations of war would be a proper breeding ground for fears of intangible malicious influence. But physically, how the witch finders travelled through an England scattered with armed camps that would take passing strangers to be spies, and just how people carried on their lives. I probably need to get Antonia Fraser's The Weaker Vessel: women's lot in 17th century England out again, for that side.
Anyway, I will try not to blather on with historical witchcraft neepery, like how the suckling of familiars is such a particularly English concept, and how the concept of a contract or covenant with the Devil may have developed from the Puritan 'covenant of grace' to become a standard part of witchcraft lore. But I can't resist this anecdote--
Matthew Hopkins asked Elizabeth Clarke in what form the devil had come to her. Clarke retorted: 'A tall, proper, black haired gentleman, a properer man than your selfe.' Asked by Stearne with whom she would rather share a bed, she had no doubt: the devil.
My own particular bedevilment recently is the temptation to (brace yourself for teh stoopid) make a book trailer for Cost of Silver, a book that I haven't even finished yet, to compound the idiocy.
But, but, I have IMovie! I have photographs I took in Suffolk! I have jpgs of copyright-free woodcuts! And my cat runs away from vacuums, so she's no help!
I'm trying instead to channel this impulse for good by working further on the (provisional title) Chimps on a Blimp novel, which is at least writing, not messing around. Also it is steampunk, so I should be all inspired after the Expo. Also I have inspirational music, specifically Navigator by the Pogues, and Rain, Steam and Speed by The Men They Couldn't Hang. So really there is nothing to stop me. Right?
Next weekend: panicked speed as I start on the last (please!) revisions of Willow Knot. Somewhere in the cross-border mail is a packet of the first 200 pages of the mss. marked for trimming and tightening.
I promised I'd have the revisions finished within a month of receiving the pages, so I expect June to be a somewhat distracted month in the run-up to Fort Rodd Hill and our Living History week.
Especially since June includes a trip to the Known World Heraldic Symposium (and a visit to Seattle, yay!)
Sunday, March 14, 2010
recollected in coziness
I'm sitting in the kitchen, with the woodstove huffing and crackling to itself, with peanut butter cookies and cheese scones on the counter and a cup of tea beside me. Outside it's raining gently, but not quite dark enough for me to draw the curtains. I can see the tight little clumps of blossom on the plum tree still, and the leaves coming out on the roses.
The kitchen curtains are newish. The winter was cold enough that I scoured through the thrift shops for something I could stand looking at (though, as Mark said, any curtain becomes invisible after a month anyways), and came up with nice slubby linen with a powdering of fat stars for the wide window, and two long tan corduroy pieces for the tall window. Then I stencilled fleur-de-lys in dark red over the tan, to make it less boring. So now I can shut the outside away if I want.
This week I've been sleeping in until 6 or 7 a.m., and reading, not writing. I'll post some book reviews in the next day or so, but I thought first I'd ramble a bit about revisions, since that's what I've been immersed in when not engaged in salaried labour, for the last couple of months.
So, yeah, revision. Willow Knot completed came out at almost 130k wordcount, and after getting my beta readers' feedback I hacked it down to 105k, which was at the high end for what I understood agents would look at for a first novel (90k is preferable).
What I took out in that pruning was:
introspection. Any time a character thought something over and those thoughts resulted in action or decision, I cut the thoughts and demonstrated them through the action.
incident that contributed to atmosphere rather than plot, or that began a plot thread that was later cut.
description of anything already established, even if the writing was pretty.
Then, after 30 form rejections or silences, I got an agent. Woohoo! (I still don't quite believe this.) Phone call and email and a list of further revisions, with the perk that I could bring the wordcount up to 125k or so.
A note, here. Agents often ask for revision. I understood this, because I tend to binge-research, and I'd researched agents, and the process of querying, and what's involved in being represented by an agent. But I've run into enough beginner writers who are astonished and somewhat distressed by the idea that an agent, while loving one's work, doesn't think it is perfect as it stands, that I feel I should emphasise this point.
So. Agents may ask you to revise your novel. My agent (a little quiver every time I type those words, still) began as an editor, so she knows what she's doing when she suggests revisions.
First lot of revisions: tighten up the time in the woods, and spread the more eventful events more evenly through those years; build up Myl's knowledge of plants and the hardships & hunger of the forest; make Myl's adjustment to the court more gradual and show her finding her way; simplify the political situation within and without the kingdom.
The wordcount went up to about 120k, and I shipped it off.
Thing I was sorry to lose: the establishing of a House of Commons.
Thing I was happy to add: a masque! and more of the bear.
Not unexpectedly, there was more to come. Second lot of revisions: tighten up the time in the woods, this time by wordcount more than events; build up Myl's ear for charms & magic; add brief episodes of Midame's doings in the first half of the story; establish the elves so as to raise the question of whether Errigenie is elf-touched; intensify the tension between the two kingdoms & bring them to the brink of war; tie the conspiracies together; clarify Alard's scepticism and give him more time for character development in the last part of the story.
The wordcount went up to about 122k, and I shipped it off.
Kind of funny things: the suggestion that I add scenes from Midame's pov, and the suggestion that Nomency and Lusantia be downgraded from kingdoms to duchies or counties. Both of these were things that I had considered in the first writing, but had held back on.
It was suggested that I cut the black thing. This is where I balked, and instead have tried to tie the black thing more closely to Midame and to the marsh events. I may still have to cut it, but I feel it has a job to do, particularly in being what breaks Myl's hope in the forest and inclines her to accept Alard's offer of return.
General thoughts about revision.
Writing is like painting. Add more words, cover up mistakes, fill in layer after layer to create an illusion of 3-dimensionality. Really it's all paint and flat, but add light and shadow and you will deceive the eye.
Revising is like carving. Take away what obscures the form. Start with chisels and mallets, finish with sandpaper. It can't be done in one go, the way the writing can. I have to go back the next day, and back again, each time finding more (though less at a time) of what obscures the form, and removing that piece, that layer, that corner.
Another metaphor altogether: what my agent showed me, and what I found for myself once I started looking, is that I have all the pieces for a strong scene, all the lego blocks for the pirate ship or space shuttle, but I haven't put them together. For example, Alard is carrying his unconscious friend through the forest, evading the conspirators who want to kill him and, unknowingly, the bear (more bear!). Did his injured friend rouse and rave? Did the conspirators pass nearby? Did the bear? Here's where I scuff my feet and look at the ground. Um, no. No, it didn't occur to me to do anything with those pieces, like snap them together into a more intriguing shape. Not until this most recent revision.
Naturally, I can look at someone else's writing and see where they missed an opportunity to build suspense or excitement. That's easy. It is to be hoped that I can now look at my own and do the same. At least in the second draft.
Closing with a brief arthritis report. The right elbow is annoying, and the left foot (the ball thereof). Both thumbs are a bit twingey if I stretch them out, but that may be due to using the belt sander to rough out the puppet heads last week (in case you wondered where that carving metaphor came from). Overall pretty good.
The kitchen curtains are newish. The winter was cold enough that I scoured through the thrift shops for something I could stand looking at (though, as Mark said, any curtain becomes invisible after a month anyways), and came up with nice slubby linen with a powdering of fat stars for the wide window, and two long tan corduroy pieces for the tall window. Then I stencilled fleur-de-lys in dark red over the tan, to make it less boring. So now I can shut the outside away if I want.
This week I've been sleeping in until 6 or 7 a.m., and reading, not writing. I'll post some book reviews in the next day or so, but I thought first I'd ramble a bit about revisions, since that's what I've been immersed in when not engaged in salaried labour, for the last couple of months.
So, yeah, revision. Willow Knot completed came out at almost 130k wordcount, and after getting my beta readers' feedback I hacked it down to 105k, which was at the high end for what I understood agents would look at for a first novel (90k is preferable).
What I took out in that pruning was:
introspection. Any time a character thought something over and those thoughts resulted in action or decision, I cut the thoughts and demonstrated them through the action.
incident that contributed to atmosphere rather than plot, or that began a plot thread that was later cut.
description of anything already established, even if the writing was pretty.
Then, after 30 form rejections or silences, I got an agent. Woohoo! (I still don't quite believe this.) Phone call and email and a list of further revisions, with the perk that I could bring the wordcount up to 125k or so.
A note, here. Agents often ask for revision. I understood this, because I tend to binge-research, and I'd researched agents, and the process of querying, and what's involved in being represented by an agent. But I've run into enough beginner writers who are astonished and somewhat distressed by the idea that an agent, while loving one's work, doesn't think it is perfect as it stands, that I feel I should emphasise this point.
So. Agents may ask you to revise your novel. My agent (a little quiver every time I type those words, still) began as an editor, so she knows what she's doing when she suggests revisions.
First lot of revisions: tighten up the time in the woods, and spread the more eventful events more evenly through those years; build up Myl's knowledge of plants and the hardships & hunger of the forest; make Myl's adjustment to the court more gradual and show her finding her way; simplify the political situation within and without the kingdom.
The wordcount went up to about 120k, and I shipped it off.
Thing I was sorry to lose: the establishing of a House of Commons.
Thing I was happy to add: a masque! and more of the bear.
Not unexpectedly, there was more to come. Second lot of revisions: tighten up the time in the woods, this time by wordcount more than events; build up Myl's ear for charms & magic; add brief episodes of Midame's doings in the first half of the story; establish the elves so as to raise the question of whether Errigenie is elf-touched; intensify the tension between the two kingdoms & bring them to the brink of war; tie the conspiracies together; clarify Alard's scepticism and give him more time for character development in the last part of the story.
The wordcount went up to about 122k, and I shipped it off.
Kind of funny things: the suggestion that I add scenes from Midame's pov, and the suggestion that Nomency and Lusantia be downgraded from kingdoms to duchies or counties. Both of these were things that I had considered in the first writing, but had held back on.
It was suggested that I cut the black thing. This is where I balked, and instead have tried to tie the black thing more closely to Midame and to the marsh events. I may still have to cut it, but I feel it has a job to do, particularly in being what breaks Myl's hope in the forest and inclines her to accept Alard's offer of return.
General thoughts about revision.
Writing is like painting. Add more words, cover up mistakes, fill in layer after layer to create an illusion of 3-dimensionality. Really it's all paint and flat, but add light and shadow and you will deceive the eye.
Revising is like carving. Take away what obscures the form. Start with chisels and mallets, finish with sandpaper. It can't be done in one go, the way the writing can. I have to go back the next day, and back again, each time finding more (though less at a time) of what obscures the form, and removing that piece, that layer, that corner.
Another metaphor altogether: what my agent showed me, and what I found for myself once I started looking, is that I have all the pieces for a strong scene, all the lego blocks for the pirate ship or space shuttle, but I haven't put them together. For example, Alard is carrying his unconscious friend through the forest, evading the conspirators who want to kill him and, unknowingly, the bear (more bear!). Did his injured friend rouse and rave? Did the conspirators pass nearby? Did the bear? Here's where I scuff my feet and look at the ground. Um, no. No, it didn't occur to me to do anything with those pieces, like snap them together into a more intriguing shape. Not until this most recent revision.
Naturally, I can look at someone else's writing and see where they missed an opportunity to build suspense or excitement. That's easy. It is to be hoped that I can now look at my own and do the same. At least in the second draft.
Closing with a brief arthritis report. The right elbow is annoying, and the left foot (the ball thereof). Both thumbs are a bit twingey if I stretch them out, but that may be due to using the belt sander to rough out the puppet heads last week (in case you wondered where that carving metaphor came from). Overall pretty good.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
This privacy thing, it's complicated.
It's also an industry, which I hadn't really considered, previously. I've been making lots of notes and collecting handouts, so that I can make a proper report when I get back. But I won't go into detail here, because this is a (mostly) writing blog, and my work-life is peripheral to it.
One point of intersection--the keynote address was by Dr. Ian Kerr, who referred extensively to both Isaac Asimov and Cory Doctorow. He had a slide for Asimov, but I don't recall one for Cory. He did have a pic of 'robots and doughnuts', which his wife claims are all he thinks about. His talk was on Robot Law, and the system of permissions created by our use of electronic IDs and key-cards, etc.
Anyway, I had my little six-degrees moment, thinking 'Cory Doctorow critiqued my manuscript!'
Yesterday there was a reception on the 34th floor, for the creator of PrivacyScan, a journal for privacy professionals (see, I had no idea) who was semi-retiring (ie will still be writing articles & advising, but no longer editing). I spent part of the time 'networking' or at least chatting, and part staring out over the city views.
Another day of talks to come, as I write, but by the time I post it will be over.
At the end of the short passageway to the elevators, there's a wall-size mirror, with the words Sunny, Cloudy, Rain, on one edge. Today the word Rain is lit white. This makes me feel as if I'm in a 1960s European sf film, like Alphaville or The Tenth Victim.
October is turning into a hotelling month. First was VCon, staying at the Marriott because Mark was selling in the Dealers' Room. Then the PIPA conference at the Hyatt (but staying at the Sheraton). Next I'll be at Tir Righ A&S (note to self: email and offer to judge, right quick), hotelling again because it's past camping season. Finishing off with World Fantasy in San Jose.
That's like 2 year's worth of hotel-time for me, in a month (and yes, I should get over my thing about hotels & taxis, I am not a starving student anymore). And a spread of themes from fan to pro, from modern to past to future, from mundane to fantastic. It may be more striking to me because I'm still blinking my way out from under the rock of revision.
I didn't foresee how much revision would eat my brain. Even when I wasn't actively revising, or even (as far as I could tell) thinking about revision, I had difficulty remembering things like appointments, lists, order in which to accomplish tasks. I could do whatever was in front of me, but in a very focussed way, not noticing the time it took. When I was done, or hungry or thirsty enough to break concentration, I'd feel a bit lost.
One hopes the next go-round will be less intense. I'd like to do Nanowrimo this year, and make a better showing than last year, which was abysmal for me. Possibly because I had an extensive outline, so this year I'm going to wing it with just a concept. I love my concept, so I will be all weepy if I don't get to play with it--it's been kicking around for a couple of years, but I've started my background reading, so maybe....
See, several years ago I got interested in the Gothic Revival, which features in Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen, where the young heroine is a great reader of 'horrid novels' and imagines herself and her acquaintances to be entangled in a Gothick plot rather than a novel of manners. My interest was more likely sparked by Varney the Vampire and 'Monk' Lewis, but I can't remember for certain. So I set out to read as many (reprints mostly) of the Gothic classics and 'Northanger Novels' as UVic's library held, which turned out to be rather a lot. I'll stick the list in if I have time.
Fortunately, at the time I had a high tolerance for florid prose and stories-within-stories, since a proper Gothic heroine never meets another character without having to learn that character's tragic and plot-development-related life story. She rarely ventures into a haunted chamber or dank underground cell without finding a tattered scroll or sheaf of papers stained with tears or blood and relating someone else's T&PDRLS, which she must read by the light of a single flickering taper in her own haunted chamber. The layering doesn't quite reach Thousand and One Nights level, but it can be difficult to keep track of how far one is from the main storyline. In my 20s I had patience with this sort of structure. I'm grumpier now, so it will be interesting to see if things have changed.
I haven't read nearly a many equivalent novels of manners (if that's the right term) so I should try to even it out. Most of Jane Austen, one Fanny Burney, a Charlotte Smith that teetered between Gothic & manners (can't remember the name - her first novel though), oh and a little Richardson--Pamela of course and an excerpted Sir Charles Grandison (the original Gary Stu).
Anyway, I plan to indulge myself soundly in epistolary unlikeliness. But until then, I'm sorting out The Cost of Silver into Scrivener, and figuring out what keywords & notes are appropriate for each scene. It was awfully hard to leave the Mac at home, but I wouldn't have had the time and concentration to get any further with it.
One point of intersection--the keynote address was by Dr. Ian Kerr, who referred extensively to both Isaac Asimov and Cory Doctorow. He had a slide for Asimov, but I don't recall one for Cory. He did have a pic of 'robots and doughnuts', which his wife claims are all he thinks about. His talk was on Robot Law, and the system of permissions created by our use of electronic IDs and key-cards, etc.
Anyway, I had my little six-degrees moment, thinking 'Cory Doctorow critiqued my manuscript!'
Yesterday there was a reception on the 34th floor, for the creator of PrivacyScan, a journal for privacy professionals (see, I had no idea) who was semi-retiring (ie will still be writing articles & advising, but no longer editing). I spent part of the time 'networking' or at least chatting, and part staring out over the city views.
Another day of talks to come, as I write, but by the time I post it will be over.
At the end of the short passageway to the elevators, there's a wall-size mirror, with the words Sunny, Cloudy, Rain, on one edge. Today the word Rain is lit white. This makes me feel as if I'm in a 1960s European sf film, like Alphaville or The Tenth Victim.
October is turning into a hotelling month. First was VCon, staying at the Marriott because Mark was selling in the Dealers' Room. Then the PIPA conference at the Hyatt (but staying at the Sheraton). Next I'll be at Tir Righ A&S (note to self: email and offer to judge, right quick), hotelling again because it's past camping season. Finishing off with World Fantasy in San Jose.
That's like 2 year's worth of hotel-time for me, in a month (and yes, I should get over my thing about hotels & taxis, I am not a starving student anymore). And a spread of themes from fan to pro, from modern to past to future, from mundane to fantastic. It may be more striking to me because I'm still blinking my way out from under the rock of revision.
I didn't foresee how much revision would eat my brain. Even when I wasn't actively revising, or even (as far as I could tell) thinking about revision, I had difficulty remembering things like appointments, lists, order in which to accomplish tasks. I could do whatever was in front of me, but in a very focussed way, not noticing the time it took. When I was done, or hungry or thirsty enough to break concentration, I'd feel a bit lost.
One hopes the next go-round will be less intense. I'd like to do Nanowrimo this year, and make a better showing than last year, which was abysmal for me. Possibly because I had an extensive outline, so this year I'm going to wing it with just a concept. I love my concept, so I will be all weepy if I don't get to play with it--it's been kicking around for a couple of years, but I've started my background reading, so maybe....
See, several years ago I got interested in the Gothic Revival, which features in Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen, where the young heroine is a great reader of 'horrid novels' and imagines herself and her acquaintances to be entangled in a Gothick plot rather than a novel of manners. My interest was more likely sparked by Varney the Vampire and 'Monk' Lewis, but I can't remember for certain. So I set out to read as many (reprints mostly) of the Gothic classics and 'Northanger Novels' as UVic's library held, which turned out to be rather a lot. I'll stick the list in if I have time.
Fortunately, at the time I had a high tolerance for florid prose and stories-within-stories, since a proper Gothic heroine never meets another character without having to learn that character's tragic and plot-development-related life story. She rarely ventures into a haunted chamber or dank underground cell without finding a tattered scroll or sheaf of papers stained with tears or blood and relating someone else's T&PDRLS, which she must read by the light of a single flickering taper in her own haunted chamber. The layering doesn't quite reach Thousand and One Nights level, but it can be difficult to keep track of how far one is from the main storyline. In my 20s I had patience with this sort of structure. I'm grumpier now, so it will be interesting to see if things have changed.
I haven't read nearly a many equivalent novels of manners (if that's the right term) so I should try to even it out. Most of Jane Austen, one Fanny Burney, a Charlotte Smith that teetered between Gothic & manners (can't remember the name - her first novel though), oh and a little Richardson--Pamela of course and an excerpted Sir Charles Grandison (the original Gary Stu).
Anyway, I plan to indulge myself soundly in epistolary unlikeliness. But until then, I'm sorting out The Cost of Silver into Scrivener, and figuring out what keywords & notes are appropriate for each scene. It was awfully hard to leave the Mac at home, but I wouldn't have had the time and concentration to get any further with it.
Friday, August 28, 2009
lifting my head from revision
to say that Spellcheck is now online at Mindflights.
A trifle of a story, but mine own.
And a favour, please, from those of you who are on Facebook (which I'm not). Could you go and 'fan' Mark's business on Facebook? He's Mark Shier, and the business is Gaukler Medieval Wares. Thank you!
Okay, back to revision now.
A trifle of a story, but mine own.
And a favour, please, from those of you who are on Facebook (which I'm not). Could you go and 'fan' Mark's business on Facebook? He's Mark Shier, and the business is Gaukler Medieval Wares. Thank you!
Okay, back to revision now.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
things done and undone
All kinds of productive this weekend!
The garden shop had a 30% off sale, so I bought a cherry tree (Glacier) for the backyard, and Mark dug the hole and now we have a second cherry tree. I have a new big plant-pot to shift the potted willow into, and a place to put it, beside my hanging chair. I have a tall trellis-y thing that I have used to restrain the Quatresaisons damask against the fence, and hardly got thorn-stabbed at all this time. I watered many plants, and identified a couple of roses
I bought a big oak half-barrel so we can soak hides at Fort Rodd Hill and try making parchment again--if only I can figure out how to do it without rubber gloves (which are non-medieval). I cut out a linen shift that I may get sewn up in time for FRH. I stained and assembled the non-modern-looking standing easel so that I'll have more viewable workspace in the tent, and won't have to stack canvases on the bed.
I finished the Bluebeard's Widow story that came out of chat on the Scribblers thread (just over 4k). Then I became discontented with it, and wrote a second take on the same plot twist, with a different voice and setting, in just over 2k. I have no idea just yet whether either of them is any good, so I'll look again in a couple of days.
What is good, though, is Ferret's take on Rumplestiltskin, (also from the Scribblers thread) which I'm reading over. The ending makes me kind of weepy, but this is a good thing. Now I need to wake up my inner critiquer and be coherent about it.
Also I'm rewriting the ending of Chimps for the fifth or so time, and have it almost right!
In Willow Knot news, I'm muddling about with the index cards as I try to sift Myl's five years in the forest into three years. I don't want it to end up too schematic, with one rescue or encounter or bird/baby image per year, but I also don't want to have events treading on each other's heels.
For those keeping track at home, Mylla will still be 17 when she returns to the city, because I'm making her a little older when they run away, 14, so that she can be under threat of being apprenticed out by Midame, and being parted from Tyl. Tyl stays the same age. He has to be young, because it gives him license to be feckless and reckless and slightly reduces the reader's urge to smack him for it. So he'll be younger at the end of the book this time, closer to Silly's age.
Anyway, a lot more happened in the forest than I'd really considered, especially when the events are split up into 'scenes', which sometimes mean sequences. For instance, an escape would be a scene, and the pursuit that follows it another scene, but if I split them up like theatrical scenes I'll just confuse myself with two index cards that might as well be stapled together, since they make no sense alone. But some other scenes stand by themselves, like the Babes in the Wood discovery, and could be moved fairly seamlessly.
I'm also muddling about figuring out how the palace events mirror the forest events. Not exactly, but there are equivalances, so perhaps a funhouse mirror.
The hard part of this stage is convincing myself to stick with it and not just plunge back into the text. I need to be a picador, circling daintily and plunking lances into the vulnerable spots until I can get close enough for butchery.
I have to remind myself that this part really is work, however much it feels like work avoidance.
Oh, and the domain name willowknot.com is mine. Mine, mine, mine! But there's nothing there yet. Sorry.
The garden shop had a 30% off sale, so I bought a cherry tree (Glacier) for the backyard, and Mark dug the hole and now we have a second cherry tree. I have a new big plant-pot to shift the potted willow into, and a place to put it, beside my hanging chair. I have a tall trellis-y thing that I have used to restrain the Quatresaisons damask against the fence, and hardly got thorn-stabbed at all this time. I watered many plants, and identified a couple of roses
I bought a big oak half-barrel so we can soak hides at Fort Rodd Hill and try making parchment again--if only I can figure out how to do it without rubber gloves (which are non-medieval). I cut out a linen shift that I may get sewn up in time for FRH. I stained and assembled the non-modern-looking standing easel so that I'll have more viewable workspace in the tent, and won't have to stack canvases on the bed.
I finished the Bluebeard's Widow story that came out of chat on the Scribblers thread (just over 4k). Then I became discontented with it, and wrote a second take on the same plot twist, with a different voice and setting, in just over 2k. I have no idea just yet whether either of them is any good, so I'll look again in a couple of days.
What is good, though, is Ferret's take on Rumplestiltskin, (also from the Scribblers thread) which I'm reading over. The ending makes me kind of weepy, but this is a good thing. Now I need to wake up my inner critiquer and be coherent about it.
Also I'm rewriting the ending of Chimps for the fifth or so time, and have it almost right!
In Willow Knot news, I'm muddling about with the index cards as I try to sift Myl's five years in the forest into three years. I don't want it to end up too schematic, with one rescue or encounter or bird/baby image per year, but I also don't want to have events treading on each other's heels.
For those keeping track at home, Mylla will still be 17 when she returns to the city, because I'm making her a little older when they run away, 14, so that she can be under threat of being apprenticed out by Midame, and being parted from Tyl. Tyl stays the same age. He has to be young, because it gives him license to be feckless and reckless and slightly reduces the reader's urge to smack him for it. So he'll be younger at the end of the book this time, closer to Silly's age.
Anyway, a lot more happened in the forest than I'd really considered, especially when the events are split up into 'scenes', which sometimes mean sequences. For instance, an escape would be a scene, and the pursuit that follows it another scene, but if I split them up like theatrical scenes I'll just confuse myself with two index cards that might as well be stapled together, since they make no sense alone. But some other scenes stand by themselves, like the Babes in the Wood discovery, and could be moved fairly seamlessly.
I'm also muddling about figuring out how the palace events mirror the forest events. Not exactly, but there are equivalances, so perhaps a funhouse mirror.
The hard part of this stage is convincing myself to stick with it and not just plunge back into the text. I need to be a picador, circling daintily and plunking lances into the vulnerable spots until I can get close enough for butchery.
I have to remind myself that this part really is work, however much it feels like work avoidance.
Oh, and the domain name willowknot.com is mine. Mine, mine, mine! But there's nothing there yet. Sorry.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
roses and revisions
Here's the backyard roses. Every rose here is medieval or earlier, while the frontyard roses are Victorian or David Austin Roses.These are the garage-devouring albas. You can see that they're recovering nicely from two winters back when the snow peeled them off the garage and flattened them.
Today we put a garden bench in the space between them, and I'm hoping to put an arbour frame over the bench to prevent it disappearing into a mass of vines & blossoms.
The rose on the right (of the pic above) is Alba maxima, also called the Jacobite rose. One of the descriptions calls it rampantly flowering, which sounds about right. A very strong fragrance. I cut some for Thursday night table, and the dining room was nicely perfumed.I've been picking up the dropped petals and putting them in a bowl as a sort of immediate pot-pourri, though I suppose I should be drying them first.
This is alba semi-plena, and it's pretty rampantly flowering and highly scented as well. It may be the White Rose of York, which is appropriate, because I'm a bit of a Ricardian.I'm not sure which rose would be the Red Rose of Lancaster. I'm sure it's in one of the rose books or websites.
Three gallicas behind the window seat, though you can only see one blooming right now.The leafy green behind the drainpipe is an acanthus plant. It's the big scallopy leaves that medieval manuscript painters liked to have running down the margins, to unfold into big scalloped platforms for little scenes.
Acanthus grows rather like rhubarb (there's a rhubarb plant next to it) and it's probably time that I separated its crowns and planted some in the front, perhaps under the bay window.
Here's a closer view of the gallica bloom and buds. It will open up much more than this, but I rather like the flower at this stage.
The bush next to it hasn't opened yet, so whatever sort of gallica it is, it's a later-blooming one. I'll know more when I see the flowers. The backyard roses don't have little metal tags to identify them. Or if they do, the tags are buried and lost.
This gallica grows closest to the window where my writing place is, and I can look out the window and see the blossoms. It's Rosa Mundi (gallica versicolor) and seeing it from the corner of my eye I always think of carnations. The rosa mundi has much more fragrance than a carnation, of course.And yes, I'm terribly spoiled to have roses flowering away while I'm writing.
This last is a damask rose, Quatre Saisons, or Autumn Damask, and it's supposed to flower repeatedly through to autumn, rather like the Dortmund only prettier. Another strongly scented rose.Both Mark and I have a fondness for the streaky roses. This one was at first trained along the fence, but our neighbour pulled it down a few years ago when he painted both sides of the fence, and it had been sprawling along the ground since. It's a very thorny rose, and its location under the apple tree made for some exciting apple-recoveries.
At present I'm trying to figure out some way to keep it upright that's a bit more secure than loops of twine. Very specialised trellis?
Revising: I've taken the first steps of changing the font and format--a different monospace font, single spacing--and stripping out the chapter divisions and headings so I can look at just the text.
Now I'm listing the scenes / sequences / events /whatever and what each event or set of events does in the plot, what's established or laid in or changed by each one. Pretty much I get to put these on index cards (real or figurative) and play 52-pickup.
Because you see, my book is lumpy. The stuffing has all gone out to the edges, and I need to shake and prod it back into the middle where it will do some good. I need to speed up some parts and slow down others. I need to simplify the politics, and to do that I need to wipe out an entire kingdom (farewell, Valdosa!) as well as focus the guild disputes onto just the one guild.
On the other hand, I get to spend more time on searching for food, on Alard and Myl getting to know each other and on her decision to return to the city. I'm giving serious thought to at least one scene with Myl and Alard encountering each other in the forest unrecognised, before he 'finds' her properly.
The chronology is going to be difficult, because what happens in the forest needs to match up with events in the city, and if I split Rembert's enchantment, say, away from the Lusantian princess's visit, in order to have Tyl's enchantment happen right away, the timing of the triggering events has to fit, even though no one knows the connection at the time.
Index cards are my friends.
But, blessing of blessings, I can banish the Dread of Wordcount for this revision. Spend as much wordage as I need to spackle the gaps, and cut it out on the next go-through. I've been assured that it's okay to go up to 130k in the final draft, even, because I am 'so good at realistic detail and grittiness'.
Woo!
I'm still reading books on writing, both Revision, by Kit Reed, and How Not to Write a Novel, by Newman and Mittelmark, which is utterly hilarious. I've only found one of my own mistakes in it so far, though.
Which reminds me, I need to order Evil Editor's new book!
Saturday, June 6, 2009
On becoming real
A statistical update
Queries submitted to agents: 33
Form rejections: 18
Rejection by no response: 7
Requests for partial: 3
Request for full mss: 1
Offer to represent: 1
Timeline
May 10 - e-query sent.
May 12 - partial requested.
May 13 - full requested on 2-week exclusive.
May 27 - phone call scheduled.
Jun 1 - phone call and offer.
So, yes, I have an agent. And I have a page-and-a-bit list of Large Structural Revisions that Willow Knot needs, and a deadline to complete them.
And yes, I did spend portions of Monday going 'bwuh-bwuh-bwuh' and OMG!!! and if you are my close friend and haven't already heard this news, it's because I've been dazed and struck silly by sheer good fortune.
As I came out of the daze, I was overtaken by the unnerving realisation that being something very much like a Real Writer means Real Deadlines, not self-set deadlines like 'must finish 2d draft or can't do Nanowrimo'.
But I will try not to gripe about fear of deadlines and doubts of my own competence, because I know there are a good many as-yet-unagented writers out there who would gladly smack me upside the head for any such griping.
Queries submitted to agents: 33
Form rejections: 18
Rejection by no response: 7
Requests for partial: 3
Request for full mss: 1
Offer to represent: 1
Timeline
May 10 - e-query sent.
May 12 - partial requested.
May 13 - full requested on 2-week exclusive.
May 27 - phone call scheduled.
Jun 1 - phone call and offer.
So, yes, I have an agent. And I have a page-and-a-bit list of Large Structural Revisions that Willow Knot needs, and a deadline to complete them.
And yes, I did spend portions of Monday going 'bwuh-bwuh-bwuh' and OMG!!! and if you are my close friend and haven't already heard this news, it's because I've been dazed and struck silly by sheer good fortune.
As I came out of the daze, I was overtaken by the unnerving realisation that being something very much like a Real Writer means Real Deadlines, not self-set deadlines like 'must finish 2d draft or can't do Nanowrimo'.
But I will try not to gripe about fear of deadlines and doubts of my own competence, because I know there are a good many as-yet-unagented writers out there who would gladly smack me upside the head for any such griping.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
I r srs riter, I r revising
Reading another book on writing: Revision, by Kit Reed. Opened with some little trepidation, because as a pre-teen I read a Kit Reed story that scarred me for years. (I've just spent 10 minutes with the wonderful Index to SF Anthologies, and I think the story may have been called 'Winston') Even when I bought Other Stories and Attack of the Giant Baby, I read with my eyes half-closed, ready to flinch away.
Fortunately, this is non-fiction. Originally I picked it up to recommend to the writer I was prepping a critique for last week, but I'm finding it interesting for myself. I skimmed the first two chapters, which are openly intended to convince a beginning writer that Revision Is Necessary, because I belong to that weird subgroup that believes Revision Is Fun.
Lately I've been trying to puzzle out what separates one draft from another draft. I mean, at what point do you say you're now working on a 3d draft rather than continuing to fix the 2d draft? I get that the first draft is when you actually have some form of the whole story down, even if bits are more notes-to-oneself than actual narrative. But after that? Where's the split between 3d and 4th? Should I be rewriting the entire story, start to finish, every time?
Reed's chapter 3 gave me a clue about my own revision, um, system. She differentiates between
Reed's discussion of the advantages of 'block construction' sound very close to what I enjoy, especially the 'running head start' of tidying yesterday's work to build up speed for the next bit of story.
I'm not quite a match, because I'll also jump ahead in the narrative to write a scene that's in my head, while I still have it fresh. But I'm getting so many little sparks of 'oh yes!' reading about block construction that it's a bit exciting. After all I've read about coshing your internal editor to get the first draft down, and dreadful warnings about writers who endlessly polish their first pages or first chapters and never complete a book, I've felt somewhat defensive about my friendly relationship with my inner editor. As long as I can keep her from dithering, she's quite helpful.
Revision is on my mind because I've received a request to rewrite a story, and have a file of editorial comments and suggestions. Just as if I were a professional writer & stuff! Speed up the opening, fill out the ending, change the commas to house style. And change the title.
I think I will look at my old copies of Boy's Own Annual etc., to get the correct feel, because this is the Chimps story.
Here's some sample story titles from a boy's annual of 1928:
Or perhaps the titles of articles might be more fruitful?
With a little work, I could rearrange those into a flashfic. But revision comes first. And tidying the cat.
As Priscilla Fluffycat loses her winter coat, brushing her is no longer sufficient. She must be combed, combed with a fine tooth, which makes her puff out like a seeding dandelion and become surpassingly plushy.
She's afraid of the vacuum noise, though, so that's out.
Fortunately, this is non-fiction. Originally I picked it up to recommend to the writer I was prepping a critique for last week, but I'm finding it interesting for myself. I skimmed the first two chapters, which are openly intended to convince a beginning writer that Revision Is Necessary, because I belong to that weird subgroup that believes Revision Is Fun.
Lately I've been trying to puzzle out what separates one draft from another draft. I mean, at what point do you say you're now working on a 3d draft rather than continuing to fix the 2d draft? I get that the first draft is when you actually have some form of the whole story down, even if bits are more notes-to-oneself than actual narrative. But after that? Where's the split between 3d and 4th? Should I be rewriting the entire story, start to finish, every time?
Reed's chapter 3 gave me a clue about my own revision, um, system. She differentiates between
1. Draft writing, draft revision. The draft writer gets out a first draft without stopping to look back and make changes. Revision comes in subsequent drafts.I know I turn out a pretty clean first draft. I realise that the superficial smoothness can mask structural problems. And I've been fidgetty when general discussions of problems with first drafts tend to concentrate on fixing surface messiness.
2. Block construction, or; revising as you go. The writer using block construction revises sentence by sentence, progressing slowly through a story of novel to what is essentally a polished version.
Add to these first two major types of revision, a third. This one takes place after the story or novel exists in more or less complete form. It is:
3. Revision to strengthen structure and story. ... This third type of revision comes after you think you're finished.
Reed's discussion of the advantages of 'block construction' sound very close to what I enjoy, especially the 'running head start' of tidying yesterday's work to build up speed for the next bit of story.
I'm not quite a match, because I'll also jump ahead in the narrative to write a scene that's in my head, while I still have it fresh. But I'm getting so many little sparks of 'oh yes!' reading about block construction that it's a bit exciting. After all I've read about coshing your internal editor to get the first draft down, and dreadful warnings about writers who endlessly polish their first pages or first chapters and never complete a book, I've felt somewhat defensive about my friendly relationship with my inner editor. As long as I can keep her from dithering, she's quite helpful.
Revision is on my mind because I've received a request to rewrite a story, and have a file of editorial comments and suggestions. Just as if I were a professional writer & stuff! Speed up the opening, fill out the ending, change the commas to house style. And change the title.
I think I will look at my old copies of Boy's Own Annual etc., to get the correct feel, because this is the Chimps story.
Here's some sample story titles from a boy's annual of 1928:
- Dangerous Cargo
- The First Grenadier of France
- Coward of the Lost Legion
- Del Oro's Luck
- Two Miles a Minute
- When the War God Walked Again
- The Mystery of the Malakai Light
- The Riddle of the River
- To Rescue the King
- The Red God's Call
Or perhaps the titles of articles might be more fruitful?
- How I Flew from New York to Paris
- My Most Thrilling Air Experience
- Sentenced to the Hulks
- Twenty-five Thousand Miles in an Eight-ton Boat
- And Then I Jumped
With a little work, I could rearrange those into a flashfic. But revision comes first. And tidying the cat.
As Priscilla Fluffycat loses her winter coat, brushing her is no longer sufficient. She must be combed, combed with a fine tooth, which makes her puff out like a seeding dandelion and become surpassingly plushy.
She's afraid of the vacuum noise, though, so that's out.
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