Octave again

A week past the 3-Day Contest. A complete story went in, though definitely one of my shorter entries. As always, there were aspects I could have expanded on, but the writing was competent enough. I finished at a quarter past eleven on the Monday, enough time to read over quickly and discover 2 typos.
The cats decided that 9:30pm on Monday was the perfect time to have a series of altercations over territorial boundaries, and I could have done without that.

What I didn't find this year was the strangeness that drifts in when I'm writing with insufficient sleep or sufficient focus. On the other hand, I may be saying that because I'm too close to the story still, and it's true that I don't always notice strangeness at the time, because it's coming from the story and not from me.
Maybe when I read it over in a week or so I will find strangeness. Also, I used a real setting, as I did in Doorways (in fact, the same setting I used for Doorways) and that sets certain boundaries on what goes on within.

The squat challenge has been of mixed success. Most days I manage 5 to 6 minutes of squatting, and a couple of days I have done the full 10 minutes. The difficulty is to fit in things I can do while squatting. Waiting in line-ups is obviously the best opportunity, and the day I did library tours was an easy 10 separate minutes between tours. Petting the cats is another; Khandi will usually remain in place for 2 minutes at a time, but Priss prefers to be in the lap and where is my lap? It is not convenient for cats in this position.
Yesterday she tried to sit in my lap while I was doing seated leg raises, sitting on the edge of the chair with my legs extended at an angle, raising and lowering them. She was pretty determined, even though I couldn't pet her, since I was gripping the sides of the chair.
I suppose I should take a lesson in determination from my cat.

Last day, all or nothing

Last sentence written last night:
The rift in the earth closed to a long welt like a turned furrow.

First sentence written this morning:
Elsa was restless all the morning, waiting for the stones to arrive.

I have sort of complicated my day by signing up for the 30-day Squat Challenge, to squat for a total of 10 minutes a day for every day of this month. It should be do-able, since I don't have much trouble holding a squat, and it may remind me to get up and move around regularly. My longest writing stint yesterday left me with stiff hips even though I have an ergonomic saddle chair that keeps me shifting position.

So we'll see how it goes. Sometime around lunch I plan to write the ending, and see if I can bring the events of the story to it. That's what broke the short story - I had a terrific revelation scene in mind, and I could not bring the story up to that point. With more room to manoeuvre, maybe it will work.

slow dive, surfacing

First line written yesterday:
"I'm back, and nothing is the same."
Last line written yesterday:
"Maybe I should tell her about the trolls."

First line written today:
"The gas station has swollen hugely."

So far I have held to the no-deletion-except-for-errors rule. Today I want to add in speed, and throwing the wrong word in if I cannot bring up the right word right away. This is particularly difficult because my usual comfort is that I can fix a poor wording in editing. But I have never had time to edit a 3-Day ms. and I know I won't have time this go-round either.

Lacking a plot and characters, I've brought out versions of both from a short story that wouldn't come together earlier this year. I suppose it might be a poor omen to re-use aspects of a failure, but one reason the story wouldn't hold was that I couldn't bring it to a resolution in 5k, and had to keep cutting out bits that would have given it more resonance. So it may fill out a novella more successfully.
First person and present tense for the present-day storyline, and 3d-person past tense for the past storyline. It's surprisingly difficult to move to present tense after working in past, especially keeping track of which clauses and sentences should be in past tense while the narrative is in present. "The road was paved (at some time in the past)" and "The road is paved (and I am just seeing that now)"  have different connotations.

The cats have been relatively non-obstructionist so far. Khandi paces around on my desk and sticks her face in mine, or curls up and purrs in her basket. Priss demands to be on my lap when I go downstairs for food, or lurks on the stair landing to protect the house from evil other cats. There has only been one noisy cat-altercation, but it came when I was writing with concentration and had not noticed it building, so the effects lingered more than they might have.

Jumping in again

Obstacles to writing: cats.
We have two cats now. They are both cute and purring, but also both senior females used to being the only cat in the house.  The newer cat, Khandi, has been settled in my writing room, because we needed to keep her in a room with a door that closed for the first few weeks. Now she has been with us almost a year, but still regards that room as her bastion and refuge, not to be entered by any other cats. Established cat, Priss, still regards the whole house as hers, and my writing room as her place to snuggle with me and interfere with composition.
Now they both interfere with composition by hissing and batting at each other at random intervals. It somewhat interferes with getting into the zone of steady writing.

I skipped the 3-Day Novel Contest last year, because the online submission through Geist (who are handling it now) was a pain and a half, and because Melissa's personal touch (the daily email of encouragement, etc.) was gone. Same admission fee, and you had to print out your own certificate of survival at the end. Pfah.
But it's really a contest between me and the screen, isn't it? The way writing always is - sit down and put your fingers on the keyboard. Just more compressed, instead of continual. So I'm giving it another shot, although I have no plot or characters or setting.
I did have an idea, rather Neil Gaiman-ish, of slipping between a fantastical world and everyday world, echoing each other, with fairy-tale tropes (I mean the original fairy-tales, with ogres and bones, not sparkles and cute animals). Whether that's going to develop into an actual story I do not know as yet.
Okay, time to grab another cup of tea and get down to writing. And since this is the 3-Day, I will not allow myself to backtrack or delete text, except for correcting obvious typos.
Oh lord, that is going to be hard.
See you all later!

the octave of the 3-Day contest

A week later and I am mostly recovered. As you may have noticed, dear reader, I was not able to post updates during the 3-Day Novel contest. That was in part because on Saturday and Sunday, my eyes were closing and my head was tipping forward by 8:30 pm, though I managed to struggle on past 9 pm.
Ah well, I told myself. I'll get an early night and start off all chipper by 5 am (my usual time of getting up). Did I? Nope, I lay slugabed until 6:30 am.
On the Monday night, when I had to chuck it in at midnight no matter what, the story (finally!) came together, I was full of caffeinated energy and could have kept going until 2 am. Instead, I forced myself to let it go at 11:30 pm, with a brief read-through.

Tuesday morning I compiled from Scrivener, emailed it to myself, and spent part of my lunch-hour trying to submit it through the Geist website. This worked better once I realised that the submission page only accepted pdf, doc, docx and odt, and re-saved the file as .doc.
Excuse me while I express astonishment that .rtf is not one of the accepted formats. What the hell?

Then there was more muddling about because I also needed to submit a signed statement from someone that I wrote the whole thing during the allotted time. Or rather, a scan of said statement, saved in one of the admissable formats, which do not include jpg.
The submission directions, by the way, were barely adapted from the hard-copy snail-mail directions, and included an admonition to not send in your only copy of your ms. because it would not be returned. It's been so long since I've seen that note; I don't think I've subbed hard-copy for  two or three years.

So. Anyways. Story.
Wordcount came out short of 15k, which is the lowest I've had, though I've never got much above 18k. Even with the old trick of expandable middle, some scenes are seriously skimped.
Saturday I started out with an exploration, discovering the setting for myself as much as for the hypothetical reader. Little Cressida wanders through the huge, ever-changing house that she has lived in for as long as she remembers. She needs to find someone who will listen to her news:  that she has seen a stranger--a young boy--in the untended gardens. The others who are usually present in the house are the cook, Betta, and the librarian (never named). The other she doesn't know about is Granda, the old woman spinning in the topmost tower. Granda dreams of a dance on the eve of war, and waking sees the smoke of battle and destruction from her high window.
Sunday I picked up the boy's storyline, making him a refugee from an internment camp with traumatic memories of escape. I also inserted segments of two undergrad girls discussing the Heroine's Journey and its application to fiction. I'd meant to have them discussing what was happening in the story, but somehow the talk wouldn't go that way--it felt too blatant, so I went for echoes instead, discussing the books that inspired aspects of the storyline, like The Secret Garden, The Princess and the Goblins, and Gormenghast.
This is where the absence of an outline really hit me. I knew in a vague way that Cressida needed to go through the house, with different rooms providing experiences--a choice of fates or paths--that would take her through the heroine's journey, and that the boy would take different roles in each of them, such as brother, consort, opponent, child. But I couldn't get them started. I set up the scenes in Scrivener, but other than a confrontation with the Sphinx and a ballroom scene, they were barely sketched, and I couldn't get enough of a picture in my head to do the in-media-res opening that I usually do when I don't know what's going to happen (it saves me the work of figuring out how they got there in the first place, which in this case would be by opening a door).
Monday I could see the ending. Cressida, charged with closing off the paths/doors that connected the house with the world, so that it would be protected from the war that was engulfing said world, decides that she won't close off the last one, which is where the boy Alph had come through, because if the house didn't provide a refuge, at whatever risk, it would wither. But how to get there?
Mark, when I went downstairs to whinge, pointed out that I usually wrote the ending Monday afternoon, and why didn't I do that now and see if the middle came in after that. So I did--and the ending expanded, because once Cressida (now about 20 yrs old, as both children grew up in the course of the journey, time being flexible in the house) understood what Alph had come from, she couldn't just let it go. So there was a rescue and escape of those in the internment camp, which I tried to play low-key so that the kinda-magic-realism story wasn't overtaken by an action movie.
Then I whipped back and started filling in the interior journey, full of caffeinated energy (non-decaf coffee supplied by supportive husband, thank you) but time was ticking on, and at 11:30 I had to accept that I wasn't going to finish the fill-in to my satisfaction.

What with low wordcount and skimpy middle, I doubt this one will hit the shortlist. I might take the concept and mess around with it some more, maybe for Nanowrimo. But I can't do Nanowrimo until the Cost of Silver revision is done.
So, back to the salt mines of revision I go.

ideas in the blender

The 3-Day Novel Contest looms above me, scarcely an hour away. In other time zones, 3-Dayers are scribbling happily away, having started as the stroke of midnight wavered away to echoes. But I'm going to go to bed right after this blogpost, and start fresh in the morning. I'm too old for those all-nighters.

What with one thing and another, I haven't done any outlining, research, character creation or, well, anything. The most I can say is that the house is well stocked with Healthy Snacks, veggies to take for lunches, oatcakes and scones and such. And tea. There's lots of tea.
In desperation, I'm pulling out a number of half-formed ideas, themes, tropes, characters, situations and images that I've meant to do something with at various times, but which never gelled.

-The decaying Gothic (or carpenter Gothic) mansion or castle, with unnumbered rooms
-An old woman with memories unstuck in time
-A neglected young girl in an empty house
-The heroine's journey, encountering avatars of the masculine (I've joked about this before - the Mary Sue's Journey).

So I'll see if something comes together from this. It's likely to be a Big Bag of Tropes, so I may throw in interludes with undergrad students discussing symbolism and motifs if I can remember enough of the jargon from my two years of English lit.
Now I'll go to be and hope that I dream a good opening scene. If I can work the Lovecraftian archaeology dream into this, I will.

Cyclopean dreams

Warning! The following blog post contains references to a dream that I had, though I attempt to avoid a full narration of it, because other people's dreams are boring.

I can tell that I've been away from steady writing for over a week, because my dreams are getting more complex and plotty and the sets are more elaborate. When I'm writing every day (as I should) my dreams are more fragmentary and disconnected. Or at least I remember them that way. The other night my dream segued from a jumble of recent events into something fairly plotty, with impressive matte-painting sets.
The setting was an archaeological dig along the ridges of sharp mountains, with dozens of small teams excavating particular areas. I was part of a three-person team, two dark and dour scholars (male and female) and one fair and lively one (female). All three were in their twenties and had been involved with each other in ways that caused underlying tension during the dig. They worked in a hollow of crumbling earth (presumably once fertile but now barren) set amidst sharp rocks that rose up like a spiked crown around them. They must have been close to the top of the ridge, because they could look across and down at the other teams scraping away.
The excavation was of a long-gone city, and it was becoming clear that the builders had not been human (size and shape of doorways, etc.). The life of the city had abruptly stopped; there was no evidence that the builders had migrated or resettled, and it was unclear what had caused the change.
Our team had unearthed a cache of small oval objects, about the size to fit in your hand, and had laid them on a tarp below their site. My dream-character then had her own dream, in which she understood that these objects were eyes, open eyes lying there helplessly, and it would be a terrible thing if dirt fell into them. She got up and moved the tarp to a safer place, and began cleaning the objects. This activated one to display a stored memory--like a film, but surrounding the viewer rather than in two dimensions.
The memory was of several non-human, vaguely octopodish creatures playing a game that was oddly similar in look to Oranges and Lemons. The two tallest picked up the smallest (which my character understood to be the youngest, although it looked much more like a fat starfish than an octopod) and held it up between them while the middle-sized ones processed under it, singing.
It all seemed very happy and homey, until they paused and 'looked' up. The song changed and was understandable as 'He is coming'. The octopod-people rolled up and shrank into the eye-objects, and my character understood that they stopped themselves to freeze the moment so that He never arrived.
Looking down across the excavation site, she realised that all the teams had stopped what they were doing, and were looking up as the octopod-people had. At her feet, the eyes were extruding little feelers from one end, like sea-anenomes tentatively opening, and 'He is coming' was singing across the mountains.

I woke up then, thinking how Lovecraftian that was, then fell asleep again and dreamed of a zombie outbreak at an airport.
Maybe my subconscious is reminding me that the 3-Day Novel Contest is almost here and I don't have a plot, characters, or opening scene yet?

I win at shortlist

The results are in for the  3-Day Novel Contest, everybody!

GRAND PRIZE WINNER

THORAZINE BEACH by Bradley Harris of Memphis, Tennessee

Bradley Harris

* * *

SECOND PRIZE WINNER

Winning $500

Embodying Geography by Manpreet Dhaliwal of Surrey, B.C.

* * *

THIRD PRIZE WINNER

Winning $100

Drift, Disappear by Mallory McMahon of Brooklyn, New York

* * *

Our Top 12 Runners-Up

• Suicide Season by Jay Bethke of Sioux Falls, South Dakota
• Fauvel by Kayt Burgess of Aurora, Ontario
• Recycled Virgins by Dorothyanne Brown of Dartmouth, Nova Scotia
• Fall of Breath by Anne DeGrace of South Slocan, B.C.
• The Clothes We Wear by Vanessa Fernando of Montreal, Quebec
• Doorways by Barbara Gordon of Victoria, B.C.
• The Pledge by Annie Mahoney of Toronto, Ontario
• The Jewish Joke Factory by Kelsey Osgood of Brooklyn, New York
• Werewolves of Vegas by Teresa Perrin of Albuquerque, New Mexico
• Baselines by Anna Stewart of Bakersfield, California
• Go Bullet by Rudy Thauberger of Vancouver, B.C.
• Giant by Ben R. Williams of Basset, Virginia

And look, there I am, in alphabetical order.

7 days after 3 days

I didn't manage, as you may have noticed, to blog my 3-Day Novel writing. I tried so hard to stay offline that I could only allow myself to post a daily wordcount on Facebook. Which didn't prevent me finding random things I needed to research for 'inspiration' (excuses, excuses) online.

On the debit side, I went in tired and mentally unprepared, because somehow, with dealing entirely with the Transparent apple harvest, followed by the Living History Week, followed by a week of unpacking and washing linens after Living History Week, I hadn't given myself time to put together an outline, come up with an opening scene, or sketch a couple of characters.
What I did have was my brother's request / suggestion that I write about our childhood, particularly the summer of looking for ways into other worlds.
After a couple of days of muttering 'memoir is not story', I remembered a half-formed idea I'd had of conflict between a young man and his mother over her ebay habit:  she is attempting to recreate her childhood home or room so she can throw herself back in time to it.
As said at Viable Paradise, two half-baked ideas can make one good one. So I thought I'd go with mashing those up.
Three storylines:  a) present-day, from the son's POV, watching his mother's behaviour with some trepidation but not wanting to take away her independence. This because I'd wanted to write from a male POV, which I haven't done since Fold, I guess, and to keep some mystery going about what the old woman was up to (especially since I didn't know myself yet).
b) past, from the child's pov, she and her brother exploring the woods, playing make-believe, getting into petty crime with a neighbour boy, with the real-world worry of their own mother's health.
c) meta: an adventure story by the child, mixing in elements of her own life with bits from books she's read.

It was unexpectedly difficult to write autobiographical material. That old guideline of 'write what you know' has never rung particularly true to me, and not just because I write fantasy by preference. Sure, experiences like the death of parents, or miscarriage, or moving away, are things I draw on, but not necessarily directly. The emotions are mirrored, distorted, scraped off and re-applied.
The big obstacle to writing from life was knowing what to leave out. When I imagine a scene, I don't see every brick in the wall or even every character in the room. When I remember a scene, I remember too much of it, especially the before-and-after parts. What's relevant? I don't know, especially when writing something that's as improvisational as a 3-Day Novel.
Looking back, I wish I'd let my fingers run more often, and just filled the time with words, even if it did mean starting many hares that were never caught. But I was worrying, up until Monday late morning, about where the story was going, and whether I was building towards any kind of conclusion, let alone a satisfying one.  Monday morning I finally got an idea, and wrote the ending, so the rest of the day was bringing the story up to that ending.

I changed names and conflated incidents, but I'm not sure how I feel about other people seeing this one (says she, who sent it off to a panel of unknown judges on Tuesday). Rather, I don't mind strangers seeing it, but having written it sort of for my brother, I don't know how I'd feel about showing it to him. Whether the hesitation springs from the made-up parts or the from-memory parts, I'm not sure.

Ah well. Wordcounts: Midnight on Saturday, 6019 words; 11 pm on Sunday, 12019 words; midnight on Monday, 17400 words by Scrivener count.
ETA: Here's my banner, courtesy of the 3-Day rep. 

Beginning and ending were young Sandy's story, beginning PRIVATE! DO NOT LOOK! and ending To be continued...

wandering around

Maze pictures!
Because of the new campsite for Living History Week, I was able to place the labyrinth much closer to the tents and make it easier to spot. Because of some great help bringing up stones, I got it finished on the first full day, and later on tweaked it a little to make the 'walls' more curved and natural looking, though I don't know whether that really shows up on the photos.
It annoys me that apparently there's no way to zoom or enlarge a photo once it's posted on Blogger. Argh.
Anyways ....

 The maze in early morning, uninhabited.

 The maze in full use by the young and spry.

The maze for contemplation by the more sedate.

The ghost of the maze, all its bones removed.  (photo credit Joan Kew)

All symbolical this is for me, because tomorrow, right after midnight, the 3-Day Novel Contest begins--though I will not myself begin until something like 6 am, because I am old and need my sleep--and I am less prepared for it than I have ever been.
Seriously. I have less of an idea than ever, no outline, no characters. I might have a setting, in that my brother suggested I write about our childhood running about in the woods and lake and so on, specifically this passage from my website bio:

"The Chronicles of Narnia and Lord of the Rings taught me that forests were full of magic, and my brother and I spent most of one summer looking for the secret door to other worlds. We thought we'd found it once, where a huge tree had broken above our head-height, and toppled to land on another, making a rough gate. We walked between the trunks as many ways as we could think of, with different things in our pockets or hands, but never got through into the other world."

Will anything come of this? We shall see. 

and so on

No great changes. I'm still sleeping downstairs, the upstairs windows haven't come back yet, my leg is still in an immobilizer and I'm still crutching to and from the bathroom. The cat still thinks this is the best thing ever, unless the sun is out and she'd rather sleep in the straw-bedded garden.

I managed, by cunning use of gravity, to bend my leg nearly 90 degrees--hanging it over the edge of the bed. No further than that, though I've been gently bending and straightening each day. I've continued with weights and leg-lifts, but haven't increased my reps or anything. Calf is still flabby but the swelling around the knee has gone down a fair bit.

And after a lot of angsting about crutches and fear of falling, I'm going to try a half-day at work tomorrow morning. My supervisor has been great, finding me a non-wheeled chair so I can get up and down safely, and a footrest, and arranging for me to get in through the mailroom and service elevator so I don't have to crutch all over heck and gone. She also said I shouldn't fixate on doing a half-day but just see how I hold up with crutches and stop as soon as I'm tired.

So we'll see how tired I am tomorrow. My energy levels are still unpredictable.

Writing:  The best thing about getting started with the interweaving of Storyline Two and Storyline One is that I get to revise Storyline One. I like revising, in part because it means working with something that's already written and just needs fixing.
Whether I'll still feel happy about this when I hit the Great Big Revision parts (like peeling out the reusable bits of one war and filling them in with the appropriate historical detail of another war altogether? Not sure.
However, I am telling myself to Not Worry whether the two storylines resonate or echo each other yet. That can wait. For now, just get them sliced and interleaved in rough proportion.

Oh, and I sent my application in for the 3-Day Novel Contest. Somewhat later than usual, because I dithered about whether I should go to WorldCon instead. But that would be expensive travel, hotel, and so on, and the 3-Day is only $50 plus some measure of sanity. And sanity is overrated, right?

The others ran too fast

Was the title my dad had chosen for his autobiography, from an overheard exchange at a school Sports Day:  "Why didn't you win?" "The others ran too fast."
And thus I have not won nor shortlisted in the recently-announced results of the 2011 3-Day Novel Contest.
The winners (hurrah, hurrah, hurrah!):


HEIDEGGER STAIRWELL by Kayt Burgess of Aurora, Ontario

Kayt Burgess

About the Author
Kayt Burgess is a writer, artist, opera singer and musician. She studied classical music at the University of Western Ontario and earned her Master’s degree in creative writing from Bath Spa University in the UK. Kayt was born in Manitouwadge, Ontario, grew up in Elliot Lake and now lives near Toronto after stints in New Zealand, England and Scotland. Heidegger Stairwell is her first novel. It will be released by 3-Day Books in September 2012.
About the Book
Music journalist Evan Strocker has almost finished a memoir chronicling his time with Heidegger Stairwell, an indie-rock legend from small-town Ontario whose members he has known his whole life. But the band thinks he’s left a little too much of himself on the page—allowing his experiences as a transgender man and his complicated romance with the lead guitarist eclipse the story of the group’s dramatic rise and fall. Through graphic notes and colourful marginalia, the musicians weigh in on their friend’s version of the truth, and fight to put their own testimony on the record. As Strocker’s manuscript finally comes together, both band and writer are forced to face a shocking new event that will once again change their fortunes.

SECOND PRIZE WINNER
Winning $500

Street Dogs by Brandon Hobson
Brandon Hobson is a PhD candidate in Creative Writing atOklahoma State University. His fiction has appeared in NOON, New York Tyrant, Puerto del Sol, Narrative Magazine, Web Conjunctions and elsewhere. He lives in Hennessey, Oklahoma, with his wife and son.

THIRD PRIZE WINNER
Winning $100

She Felt Like Velvet by Karen Cressman
Karen Cressman is a marketing writer with a fascination for all things Alice In Wonderland. She is currently developing three novels-in-progress and, of course, dreaming up plots for the next 3-Day Novel Contest. She lives with her husband in Brampton, Ontario.


Our Top-10 Runners-Up

• Full Moon Rules by LENORE BUTCHER of Woodstock, Ontario
• Alice’s Adventures Through a Very Big Mirror by VICTORIA DUNN of Ottawa, Ontario
• Darius to the Max by CATHI RADNER CASTRIO of Argyle, New York
• Not by TERRY LEEDER of Oakville, Ontario
• Rounds Down Range by J.L. MYERS of Tulsa, Oklahoma
• Half of No by KARI PILGRIM of Brooklyn, New York
• Happily Destroyed by EVAN PURCELL of Bullhead City, Arizona
• Deadfall by RACHEL SLANSKY of San Francisco, California
• Lords of Ironfire by RUDY THAUBERGER of Vancouver, British Columbia
• Banquet of Consequences by ANDERSON TODD of Toronto, Ontario

In honesty, I wasn't surprised. While I continue to have 'local dexterity', Vessels came out rather thin, and not nearly as dark as it might have been. It has potential, especially if I interweave the child-goddess's story with Effie's story, and pick up various dropped plot-threads, like the clues to the fate of Effie's husband. And embrace the dark as well as the humour.
I did get, as before, a lovely 'I survived' certificate with a shiny seal, and an entry form for next year. Oh, and a sticky note:

Barbara -
The judges had such a hard time choosing this year. They very much enjoyed your submission, as always. All the best to you for 2012!
Melissa

As usual, some really intriguing titles in the shortlist. My choice for wish-I-could-read is Victoria Dunn's title, but the last two are pretty eye-catching as well.
I'd like to give a special shout-out to Cathi Radner Castrio, a 5-time entrant and regular poster to the ABE Bookforum 3-Day entrants thread, who hit the shortlist this year. Go, catrad, go!

did not break 20k

Final wordcount, once title page, address and End were added: 18k exactly. Annoyingly, I signed off at midnight feeling that I could have kept writing, although the two nights before I'd been propping my eyelids open and ready to fall face-forward.

Last line: "At least in the meantime you and Persie can earn money babysitting the gods."

Thanks to the advent of (hurrah!) online submission, I don't have to muck about reformatting, dragging the file through bloody Word, and traipsing over to Zap to have it printed out. Yay! all done!
Next year I am a)going to have an outline, however minimal
b)going to have more than one pov character so I can swap around. Nothing gooses a story better (for me) than bringing in a new person with their own backstory and angle.

 And this is the rose that was blooming Tuesday morning, in the gallica bush behind my window seat.

Sunday wordcount

Finished near midnight with 11011.
Not my lowest, but not the 12-14k I aimed for.  Today will be a hard slog if I want to break the 20k ceiling for the first time. Saturday is easier usually because I'm following the characters around and exploring the world. Sunday the characters need to do something, and I start to second-guess myself about what they should do and how it will lead to a resolution. However, in the last couple of hours I decided to write from the child-goddess's pov, and that perked things up. (I should remember this! Alternating storylines are a Good and Helpful Thing.)

Last lines written last night:
    Only I wondered sometimes, as I was washed and painted for the day, why only the Little Girl aspect took a mortal vessel, and the Fierce One went unbodied?

Saturday wordcount

Yesterday's progress:
Sitting at the laptop by 7 AM with a cup of tea.
8 AM broke for breakfast with a wordcount of 1002.
1:20 PM stopped for lunch, wordcount 3045
6:30 PM stopped for dinner, needing food, although my wordcount was only 4682, not the 5k I'd aimed for.
Closed at 11 PM with a wordcount of 6763, shy of the 7-8k I'd wanted, but still my highest Day 1 count ever. Previous highest was 6555 in 2009.

Title is Vessels.
First line: The day began with portents. That's never a good sign.
Last bit written last night:
    Virgie thought it over, tearing her muffin into blue-stained crumbs. "There are only two groups? Not more?"
    "Lots more," I said, taking my turn at the cookpot. "But only two that want a public fight for dominance."

on my way to bed

Because this weekend is the 3-Day Novel Contest, and I must be well rested. And sparkling with brilliant ideas and thick with fully-rounded characters and chattering with witty dialogue! Or at least rested.

In other exciting news, Mark suggested that I take over Chris's old room for a writing room. He's been using it to sort & store antiquities and take photos for the website, but if I got my desk and the futon-couch out of the 'computer room' he'd probably have room to do that in there.
I could move my stacks of research books into one place and put them on shelves - of course we'd need to build floor-to-ceiling shelves on two walls. Maybe move my children's books in there as well.
A room of my own, just for writing.

I had been longingly browsing shed designs (Summerwood lets you customise your designs online, plus has immense design galleries to play around in) and occasionally looking at cabins at realtor.ca. (I classify this as house-pr0n, lusting after things impossible to perform) But having my own room would be pretty much as good as having my own building, with access to electricity, refrigeration, and tea.
So now I'm browsing Where I Write and the Guardian's series on Writers' Rooms.

Bed time! I'll try to post my 3-Day progress.

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.

bike to work week

So I have been biking to work. So far (cross fingers, knock on wood) the weather has cooperated by not actually raining, and not being too hot for comfortable bicycling.

Registrations have opened up for the 3-Day Novel Contest, so I will be getting mine in. I wish I had any sort of idea for this year, whether plotline, conceit, opening scene or character. The last few mornings I haven't even been able to remember my dreams.

The weekend before last I cut about 4 inches off my hair, by the expedient of braiding it tight to the end, and cutting across the braid. Now my brushed-out hair is only to my waist, and braided hangs to the middle of my back. It is even across the bottom, which it has never been, creating the illusion that my hair is unexpectedly thicker.
I find myself fiddling with the tail of it, and having odd tactile memories of my mother's hair. She had the most gorgeous thick auburn hair, shoulder-length and wavy. The very tail-end of my hair verges on her colour, but mostly mine is duller and browner.
My mother was the last person to cut my hair, in September of 1974, shortly before she died. I wondered if I would have a massive spasm of regret after hacking off the bottom part, but so far I haven't.

In other news, I still haven't finished The Cost of Silver. It is the book that never ends.

three times a bridesmaid

Never a bride? Or is it like a midway game, where if you win three small prizes you can trade up to a larger, and up to a big plushie?
Which is to say that the 3-Day Novel Contest results are out, and this is the email I received this morning:

Hi Barbara,

Congratulations on making our Honourable Mention list once again! As always, the judges very much enjoyed your novel. Like last year, because you made it so far in our judging process we'll be offering you complimentary entry to the upcoming contest... so I hope you are ready for yet another round! We'll be sending out your certificate and entry coupon in the next week or so.

Best,
Melissa for 3DN

I honestly didn't expect to make the shortlist this year, since Archipelago, basically 'Barbara does a Jo Clayton pastiche' was classed in my mind with Trading in Ghosts, something that might work up to a full-scale fantasy novel with a bunch more plot and characters stirred in, but wasn't necessarily a tiny perfect object like Fold (Fold is an egg: to change it would require breaking it). So that was an exciting way to begin the day.

Here's the full notice, swiped from the 3-Day website, and can I just say that I would love, love, love to read the 2d runner up? Also, Gayleen Froese, a shortlister, is the author of Touch, a book given to me by my awesome apprentice (and fellow writer) Alis, and published by NeWest Press in Edmonton . Oh, and another shortlister, Paul Colley has put his novel, co-written with his 12 year old daughter, on Lulu, to be found and ordered here. Worth mentioning that Paul used the Wondermark Genre Fiction Generator to outline their plot (which like most outlines, was abandoned early on in the process, or at least mutated beyond recognition).
And because I guess I should plug it, my previous 3-Day entries have been collected into Threefold: a nine-day novel, on Lulu, which can be purchased here (or downloaded for free).

GRAND PRIZE WINNER

Jennifer K. Chung of Bellevue, Washington, for TERRORYAKI!

Jennifer K. Chung, photo by Gavin Jensen

About the Book
It’s three months until the wedding, and Samantha’s Taiwanese parents won’t warm up to her hopelessly white fiancé. Meanwhile, Sam’s food-obsessed sister, Daisy, is on the hunt for an otherworldly take-out truck whose dishes are to die for. Terroryaki! is a quirky tale of love, family, redemption and the best—if slightly cursed—dish of chicken teriyaki to be found in this realm of existence.

About the Author
Jennifer K. Chung is a Taiwanese-American writer, pianist and software engineer. She grew up in Southern California and studied computer science at MIT in Cambridge, MA. In her spare time, Jennifer plays keyboard in a goth metal band and studies the Japanese martial art of Naginata. She lives near Seattle.

SECOND PRIZE WINNER

Gwendolyn Bird of Kasilof, Alaska
For The Island of Broken Toys, the haunting tale of a community of mysterious children who seek out the truth behind their exile.

THIRD PRIZE WINNER

Tate Young of Toronto, Ontario
For The Ridgeback, a witty thriller about a bloody murder, a very large diamond and a dogwalker on the run.

HONOURABLE MENTIONS

• Jon Billman of Stillwater, Oklahoma, for Bicycle Tramps
• Alan James Blair of Stillwater, Oklahoma, for The Mermaid’s Brother
• Jenni Bomford of Prince George, B.C., for Spiritual
• Keith Chittleborough of Glen Waverley, Australia, for Near Dreg Experience
• Paul Colley & Laura Colley of Pickering, Ontario, for Clockwork
• Logan Evans of Pullman, Washington, for The Boundary Nebula
• Gayleen Froese of Edmonton, Alberta, for What the Cat Dragged In
• B. Gordon of Victoria, B.C., for Archipelago
• Diana Holdsworth of Amherst, Massachusetts, for The Golden Tooth
• Jimmm Kelly of Vancouver, B.C., for The Little Man
• Ashok Mathur of Vancouver, B.C., for The First White Black Man
• Iulia Park of Toronto, Ontario, for Canadian Experience
• Rudy Thauberger of Vancouver, B.C., for Evil Beach Dance Party
• Jake Wallis Simons of Winchester, United Kingdom, for 24/3
• Jenny D. Williams of Brooklyn, New York, for The Widow and the Twin

We’d also like to give special mention to this year’s youngest entrants, three-time contest veterans Natasha Carr-Harris, Abby Adams and Sean Vipond, as well as our latest under-10 entrant, Albrightine Ngusurun Orsar.

done done done

Wrapped Archipelago up at 11:35 last night, with 19,700 words approx. Didn't quite break the 20k barrier, but getting closer!
I'd call this one 'Barbara does Jo Clayton', and closer to Trading in Ghosts than it is to Culture Heroes, which was more like 'Barbara does Ursula K Le Guin'.

I can say with confidence that it will NOT make the shortlist, but it was fun, so I'm not bothered.