An excerpt from Maenads at Band Camp, which, if I finish it and have the nerve to attempt the YA Paranormal market, will probably go out with one of those portentous one-word titles instead. I'm favouring Muse.
This is about midway, from the pov of the Sensible Girl, Cassia:
I slid down the grassy overhang, and landed with a sandy thump on the narrow beach. Good thing they'd picked the sand beach, instead of the pebbled boat lauch. And there they were, all seven of the Parthenoi, some standing with arms crossed, some cross-legged or kneeling on the sand. I couldn't tell which was which in the moonlight, with all their hair turned black and silver.
"Okay," I said. "I came. And I didn't tell anyone I was coming. But I'm telling you now, I'm going to use my own judgement about what I tell Kay. I'm not keeping secrets from her."
"That is well." Oleia's voice. "She may believe what she hears from you."
"You're going to tell me something that's hard to believe, right?" I wasn't too sure what was still hard to believe, if the last few days were believable. They happened, I told myself. That means you believe them. Otherwise you can't trust anything.
"Hard for some. Your friend will not wish to believe."
I'd read about 'her heart sank'. Now I knew what it felt like. More in my stomach than heart, but I guess that doesn't sound as dramatic. "This is about Adrian."
"What have you guessed?"
"Uh-uh." I shook my head. "No. I know how a cold reading works. You have to tell me what's going on, you don't get to let me fill it in while you pretend you knew all along. That's what con artists and fake mediums do, and I'm not going to fall for it."
A sigh rippled across them, starting with Oleia and ending with the two who were kneeling.
Oleia seemed to hesitate, which was not what I was used to from her. "You have seen what happens when we sing. When Adrian plays."
"No kidding. And I've seen that Dubois and Sawchuk don't see what happens. Cute trick."
"Do you know what Parthenoi means?"
Jazz had told me, after he'd googled it in town. "Virgins. So?"
"It is a name of--courtesy for the dancers of Dionysus. The Maenads."
I bit my tongue and managed not to say 'the what?' Maenads was the spelling my brain came up with after a second. The first thing I remembered was The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, with Bacchus and the wild girls making vines spring up in freed Narnia. But C. S. Lewis hadn't written the real maenads and bacchanalia, not in a kid's book, not by a long way. Hadn't Lucy said she'd have been afraid of them if Aslan hadn't been there? What about the real (mythical) maenads? Come on, brain, you read a book of Greek myths when you were thirteen...
Dionysus, the god of wine and madness. The bacchanalia, a mad dance and orgy, which sounded like fun (a ceilidh?) until you read about mad women chasing animals and tearing them apart with their bare hands. Mad women who demanded that Orpheus play his lyre for them. But Orpheus was mourning for what's-her-name and refused. So the Maenads tore him apart, and his head floated down the river, singing...
I shivered, and it wasn't just the cold wind off the water. "The Maenads who murdered Orpheus."
One of the sitting girls spoke. "Not murdered. The son of a god is not so easily dealt with."
There were seven of them, and one of me. I knew the ground better, and my night sight was pretty good, but--better to stand and face them. "You got me to break bounds so you could test my trivia knowledge of Myths and Legends of the Ancient World?"
"Not ancient," said Oreia, without a smile or sneer. "Now. We are the Maenads, we pursue Orpheus down the millennia, but the story is not as you have learnt it."
I crossed my arms, partly for warmth and partly to look bigger and more businesslike. "No kidding. What's your version?"
The sitting girl spoke again. "She is not ready to hear. Let us go." They swivelled their heads all together as if they had practiced for hours, and the seated ones flowed smoothly to standing, so they were all poised to leap up the bank and run into the night.
"Wait," I said. "Is this about Kayley? Is she in some kind of danger?"
They turned their faces toward me, all together, and the moon lit their eyes to white. "She s always in danger. In every life."
"Wait, every life? You mean, reincarnation?" I tried to remember. Did the ancient Greeks even believe in reincarnation? Didn't all their dead end up as ghosts in Hades, the most boring afterlife ever? "No, forget that. Is Kayley in danger now? Here and now, at Forbidden Lake, this summer? No double-talk, just tell me yes or no."
The moonlight cut Oleia's face into cold stone, a statue that didn't understand pity or fear. "Yes. She is in danger."
That book of myths had taught me one thing: gods and other immortals were double-talking, double-dealing bastards, worse than lawyers about hidden clauses, fine print, and reading between the lines. "Be specific."
"If she continues on her present path, she will be dead before the week is out."
Showing posts with label nanowrimo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nanowrimo. Show all posts
Monday, November 21, 2011
Thursday, December 3, 2009
the bag, it is mixed
The bad: I failed at Nanowrimo. Better than last year, not as good as the year before, only just beat 20k. I had much fun with what I did write, but getting myself sitting at the keyboard and typing was like shoveling mud. Why, I do not know.
I don't want to let the story go, because I still love the concept (unpublishable though it is) and the character names, and writing in that ornate, wordy, 18th c. voice. So I may be a Nano Rebel next year, and pick the story up where I left it.
The good: Christmas cards are signed & mailed. Christmas letters (personalised & newsletter) are sent. Donations are sent (Oxfam, Operation Eyesight, Amnesty International, Red Cross, Unicef, Save the Children, SOS Children's Villages, Covenant House, etc.). Most presents are bought, and mailed as required. Approx 1/3 of home-based presents are wrapped. Freezer is stuffed full of pastry, butter tart mix, cheese pastry, roll cookie dough, shortbread dough, choc shortbread dough, cheese shortbread dough, checker cookie dough, sugar cookie dough, honey cookie dough, coffee spice cookie dough, icing, choc icing, caramel icing, gingerbread dough, half-dozen pies (berry & apple).
New curtains on two of the kitchen windows (I did not make these. One I sewed a lining to, and the other pair I hemmed up). So there will be less heat loss this winter. Finally found an arbour to hold up the garage roses (there's a story to go with that, but maybe later) and stained it. Haven't put it up yet.
It's kind of impressive how much I can get done by not doing something else. I need to keep some particularly difficult task in reserve at all times, to goad me into getting everything else done.
A particular mixed bag, for those who haven't heard elsewise--agent comments on revision arrived, and more revision is required, which I did expect, but she very much likes the changes and expansions made to the latter half of the book, with words like 'perfect' and 'loved'. The first half needs condensing and tightening still, but I can add some scenes from Midame's pov, which I'd rather wanted to do earlier but was afraid of losing focus. And consider making Nomency a duchy, which is another thing I'd considered before and held off as something I could change at any point. It would move closer to the reality of the Small States and away from the fairytale-standard-kingdom, which wouldn't harm the story.
Good writey stuff: I wrote a flashfic!! I honestly didn't think I could do this, but I turned out an 88-word story. I may have to look into flash markets. So that is something positive coming from the local group, which seems to be developing into a real writing group.
Willow Knot has been hacked up again on Scrivener, and spaces cut into it for scenes with Midame, the four chapters that need to be cut by half (faint screams of manuscript heard off stage) have been isolated and prepped for surgery (More ether, nurse!), and notes made throughout for what needs to be enhanced our emphasised or cut.
My chimps story will be going up on Beneath Ceaseless Skies #33 on December 31, with the airship cover art still up (yay!). December 31 is apparently a blue moon, which amuses me mightily.
December 2 is a blue moon as well--two in one month! and ferociously bright it has been the last couple of nights.
Why does this cat insist on resting its head on the crook of my arm?
I don't want to let the story go, because I still love the concept (unpublishable though it is) and the character names, and writing in that ornate, wordy, 18th c. voice. So I may be a Nano Rebel next year, and pick the story up where I left it.
The good: Christmas cards are signed & mailed. Christmas letters (personalised & newsletter) are sent. Donations are sent (Oxfam, Operation Eyesight, Amnesty International, Red Cross, Unicef, Save the Children, SOS Children's Villages, Covenant House, etc.). Most presents are bought, and mailed as required. Approx 1/3 of home-based presents are wrapped. Freezer is stuffed full of pastry, butter tart mix, cheese pastry, roll cookie dough, shortbread dough, choc shortbread dough, cheese shortbread dough, checker cookie dough, sugar cookie dough, honey cookie dough, coffee spice cookie dough, icing, choc icing, caramel icing, gingerbread dough, half-dozen pies (berry & apple).
New curtains on two of the kitchen windows (I did not make these. One I sewed a lining to, and the other pair I hemmed up). So there will be less heat loss this winter. Finally found an arbour to hold up the garage roses (there's a story to go with that, but maybe later) and stained it. Haven't put it up yet.
It's kind of impressive how much I can get done by not doing something else. I need to keep some particularly difficult task in reserve at all times, to goad me into getting everything else done.
A particular mixed bag, for those who haven't heard elsewise--agent comments on revision arrived, and more revision is required, which I did expect, but she very much likes the changes and expansions made to the latter half of the book, with words like 'perfect' and 'loved'. The first half needs condensing and tightening still, but I can add some scenes from Midame's pov, which I'd rather wanted to do earlier but was afraid of losing focus. And consider making Nomency a duchy, which is another thing I'd considered before and held off as something I could change at any point. It would move closer to the reality of the Small States and away from the fairytale-standard-kingdom, which wouldn't harm the story.
Good writey stuff: I wrote a flashfic!! I honestly didn't think I could do this, but I turned out an 88-word story. I may have to look into flash markets. So that is something positive coming from the local group, which seems to be developing into a real writing group.
Willow Knot has been hacked up again on Scrivener, and spaces cut into it for scenes with Midame, the four chapters that need to be cut by half (faint screams of manuscript heard off stage) have been isolated and prepped for surgery (More ether, nurse!), and notes made throughout for what needs to be enhanced our emphasised or cut.
My chimps story will be going up on Beneath Ceaseless Skies #33 on December 31, with the airship cover art still up (yay!). December 31 is apparently a blue moon, which amuses me mightily.
December 2 is a blue moon as well--two in one month! and ferociously bright it has been the last couple of nights.
Why does this cat insist on resting its head on the crook of my arm?
Friday, November 20, 2009
deathless prose
I promised you an Anne Radcliffe quote, didn't I? Here we go, from Manfrone, or, The One-Handed Monk:
You'd never get away with that nowadays, which is why I want to play with it for Nano, which is like a hugely stressful adventure playground of time. It's an easy style to guy, as Mark Twain did, among many others, and it's desperately vague to a modern eye. But it's not the eye it appeals to, I think. It's the ear. It demands to be read aloud--and probably was by thousands of people.
Here's my venture:
I didn't say anything about Rosalinda last time, did I? She's the bold bad twin, the Little Robber Girl to Ethelinda's Gerda. Instead of a kindly dithering clergyman grandfather-figure, she has the infamous Count Scarlatto, and instead of the redoutable Fortuna Beldam, she has the pale and mysterious Clara M--t (you may note, I also love the period convention of dashes to hide identity) of secret sorrows and sorrowful secrets.
The table was crowded with the principal officers belonging to the prince and the duca, who, as the minstrels swept the sounding chords of their lutes, and in their verses celebrated the martial deeds of heroes of other days, while at intervals the hollow timbrels and the warlike trumpets resounded through the hall, with stern and haughty look recalled to their remembrance their own prowess on the sanguine plains.
High was raised the goblet sparkling with the ruby draught, and joy reigned in every heart, save those of the duca and Rosalina: far different indeed was the cause, but great was the grief of both.
Affliction had found a passage to the heart of Rodolpho in the early death of the amiable duchesa, and fatally, in order to divert his grief, he had abandoned himself to every species of dissipation, which, at last, had made him commit deeds of sable hue, which darkened all his future days, and rendered him a slave to the horrors of an accusing conscience.
You'd never get away with that nowadays, which is why I want to play with it for Nano, which is like a hugely stressful adventure playground of time. It's an easy style to guy, as Mark Twain did, among many others, and it's desperately vague to a modern eye. But it's not the eye it appeals to, I think. It's the ear. It demands to be read aloud--and probably was by thousands of people.
Here's my venture:
The Count Scarlatto to Rosalinda
Rosalinda! I command you set aside that insolent air, that bold and disobedient spirit that leads you to defy me! Bow that haughty black-tressed head, lower your flashing eyes and learn obedience if you have it not!
Hear me. You will leave your craggy fastness and, attended by the virtuous Clara M--t, to H--k repair with all speed. I will allow no question, no hesitation, and above all no flouting of my will.
Child, I am not vindictive if I am not crossed. Therefore do not cross me, but obey. You think me, perhaps, grown forgetful or forgiving in my latter years, but I am still the man who brought terror to rule the chasms and passes of the Pyrenees, whose name--that name you bear--was whispered in shuddering breath by cowering travellers, whose lightest word summoned scores of brigands from the rocks themselves!
It was my strength of arm, my reputation, that has ensured your survival, as the eagle's fierce talons protect and nourish the downy eaglet in its tow'ring nursery, and think not I will hesitate to turn those talons upon you, should you prove ungrateful as the pelican's young.
I bid you go to my estate in H--k. Once there, much will be revealed, and you will be repaid in knowledge for this submission to one who must command your duty if your proud heart refuses fear. This much I tell you now, in proof of earnest: thy mother's name was Dulcinella.
Dulcinella! How the sound pierces my heart, how my rage rushes torrent-like as I recall her fate! You think me heartless, and I tell you it is because the fate of Dulcinella has torn that organ to bloody fragments.
Yet she will be avenged. Yes, and you my instrument. Haste, Rosalinda, haste, and I will unfold a tale that will harrow thy young soul and bring you to swear yourself to my cause, to devote yourself to one aim only--to bring just revenge upon the head of him who--but I say too much. Lest these letters go astray and be seen by impious eyes, I will restrain my impatience until you have arrived.
Bring with you your mourning-clothes and the locket set with jet and pearls--do not pry it open--also the small casket bound in brass. Do not pry the lock, nor drop it upon the rocks. What it holds is precious beyond your knowing.
In your absence, Arnaldo will take command, with the castellan Rinaldo as his second. Bring with you also the account-books and the morocco-bound ledger, and be sure the sums are correct. Do not allow the men to fire off their muskets into the air merely for celebration: it is only to be done in order to terrify travellers, and to cease immediately on their surrender. We have spent altogether too much on powder this quarter.
thy respected and to-be-obeyed great-uncle,
Adalbert, Count Scarletto
Castello Mont'alban
I didn't say anything about Rosalinda last time, did I? She's the bold bad twin, the Little Robber Girl to Ethelinda's Gerda. Instead of a kindly dithering clergyman grandfather-figure, she has the infamous Count Scarlatto, and instead of the redoutable Fortuna Beldam, she has the pale and mysterious Clara M--t (you may note, I also love the period convention of dashes to hide identity) of secret sorrows and sorrowful secrets.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
hitherto-ignored Nanowrimo
I've hit the stage where the intarwebz are seriously interfering with my nanocount, so I'll go all meta and write about writing (write about not-writing?) instead of writing.
Started by dipping back into some source material, picking up Evelina (by Fanny Burney), and on the Richardson side, Pamela and a (severely trimmed so that it fits into one volume) Clarissa Harlowe. I've read a severely-trimmed Sir Charles Grandison, with lovely Chris Hammond illustrations, but this is my first acquaintance with Clarissa Harlowe. That for the novel of sentiment/manners, trusting that I had Jane Austen's works reasonably well absorbed into the hindbrain, having read them all twice (okay, except for Mansfield Park, that only once) as well as most of the juvenilia and several continuations-by-other-hands.
For the Gothick, I had Clermont, Castle of Wolfenbach, Manfrone or the One-handed Monk, and The Passions by Rosa Matilda, having read the first two previously, and dipping into the second two. There's a beautiful passage from Manfrone that I will try to quote later.
For scholarly material, I had The Epistolary Novel in the Late Eighteenth Century, by Frank Gee Black and The Gothic Novel 1790-1830, by Ann B. Tracy, which is a collection of plot summaries (all hail Ann Tracy!) and index of motifs that makes for somewhat hilarious reading--one of the reasons synopses are so difficult is that summary piles on what narrative portions out, and the effect can be, um, bathos instead of pathos--as Tracy admits.
Back when I'd come up with the original concept, I'd thought of the two correspondents as being cousins, and each writing from her own coign or eyrie (look, it's already affected my vocabulary) of genre and convention. When I came to the point of needing a plot, what swam up from the depths was the old twins switching places plot (because the idea is not to be original), allowing for more explanation and observation and complication all around.
Which meant not starting in media res with an existing correspondance, but bringing the two to the same place so that they could become acquainted (because obviously they had been parted and kept in ignorance of each other, I mean, obviously!) and the switch could be effected.
Which meant they had to start out with other correspondents to whom to confide their situations, hopes and fears, and thus I had more characters all at once. As to be expected with twins, there was immediate mirroring of their circumstances. Each had an older woman companion or mentor (with her own secrets), and each had an older man who stood in as grandfather. Each was about to be removed from her home and sent to the place (London) where she could meet her long-lost twin.
Ethelinda is the good twin. As you might guess from the name, she and her circs are a hommage (as they say in high-toned literary circles, rather than copy or rip-off) of Evelina, including her fluttery old hen of a clergyman guardian (I heartily disliked Evelina's guardian, so I'm taking some resentment out on his double), but for female mentor I've given her a more redoubtable sort, Lady Fortuna Beldam (I'm so in love with that name you wouldn't believe) based on early women travellers like Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Lady Hester Stanhope.
Poking through my background reading, I realised that the divide between the Novel of Sentiment/Manners and the Novel of Gothick Horror (they weren't called Gothics in the day, any more than Gothic architecture was called that in the 14th c.) was much less a chasm than a ditch. The highly-coloured and unlikely events of the Gothick, the abductions, the imprisonments, the forced marriages and secret marriages, the concealed births and disinherited heirs ... pretty well all happened in novels of sentiment as well. Richardson built his reputation on Pamela, a long series of abductions and attempted seductions, but of a servant girl instead of a heiress (Clarissa and Sir Charles Grandison are about gentryfolk abducting each other). Evelina, because of a secret marriage and concealed documents, is really the heir to two fortunes, but she has been raised in rustic seclusion, just as Ann Radcliffe's heroine was in Mysteries of Udolpho.
Evidently I would need to distinguish the two storylines by something more than choice of events.
Started by dipping back into some source material, picking up Evelina (by Fanny Burney), and on the Richardson side, Pamela and a (severely trimmed so that it fits into one volume) Clarissa Harlowe. I've read a severely-trimmed Sir Charles Grandison, with lovely Chris Hammond illustrations, but this is my first acquaintance with Clarissa Harlowe. That for the novel of sentiment/manners, trusting that I had Jane Austen's works reasonably well absorbed into the hindbrain, having read them all twice (okay, except for Mansfield Park, that only once) as well as most of the juvenilia and several continuations-by-other-hands.
For the Gothick, I had Clermont, Castle of Wolfenbach, Manfrone or the One-handed Monk, and The Passions by Rosa Matilda, having read the first two previously, and dipping into the second two. There's a beautiful passage from Manfrone that I will try to quote later.
For scholarly material, I had The Epistolary Novel in the Late Eighteenth Century, by Frank Gee Black and The Gothic Novel 1790-1830, by Ann B. Tracy, which is a collection of plot summaries (all hail Ann Tracy!) and index of motifs that makes for somewhat hilarious reading--one of the reasons synopses are so difficult is that summary piles on what narrative portions out, and the effect can be, um, bathos instead of pathos--as Tracy admits.
Back when I'd come up with the original concept, I'd thought of the two correspondents as being cousins, and each writing from her own coign or eyrie (look, it's already affected my vocabulary) of genre and convention. When I came to the point of needing a plot, what swam up from the depths was the old twins switching places plot (because the idea is not to be original), allowing for more explanation and observation and complication all around.
Which meant not starting in media res with an existing correspondance, but bringing the two to the same place so that they could become acquainted (because obviously they had been parted and kept in ignorance of each other, I mean, obviously!) and the switch could be effected.
Which meant they had to start out with other correspondents to whom to confide their situations, hopes and fears, and thus I had more characters all at once. As to be expected with twins, there was immediate mirroring of their circumstances. Each had an older woman companion or mentor (with her own secrets), and each had an older man who stood in as grandfather. Each was about to be removed from her home and sent to the place (London) where she could meet her long-lost twin.
Ethelinda is the good twin. As you might guess from the name, she and her circs are a hommage (as they say in high-toned literary circles, rather than copy or rip-off) of Evelina, including her fluttery old hen of a clergyman guardian (I heartily disliked Evelina's guardian, so I'm taking some resentment out on his double), but for female mentor I've given her a more redoubtable sort, Lady Fortuna Beldam (I'm so in love with that name you wouldn't believe) based on early women travellers like Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Lady Hester Stanhope.
Poking through my background reading, I realised that the divide between the Novel of Sentiment/Manners and the Novel of Gothick Horror (they weren't called Gothics in the day, any more than Gothic architecture was called that in the 14th c.) was much less a chasm than a ditch. The highly-coloured and unlikely events of the Gothick, the abductions, the imprisonments, the forced marriages and secret marriages, the concealed births and disinherited heirs ... pretty well all happened in novels of sentiment as well. Richardson built his reputation on Pamela, a long series of abductions and attempted seductions, but of a servant girl instead of a heiress (Clarissa and Sir Charles Grandison are about gentryfolk abducting each other). Evelina, because of a secret marriage and concealed documents, is really the heir to two fortunes, but she has been raised in rustic seclusion, just as Ann Radcliffe's heroine was in Mysteries of Udolpho.
Evidently I would need to distinguish the two storylines by something more than choice of events.
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.
Monday, December 3, 2007
nanowrimo aftermath
I went off to Bremerton without my laptop. Intentionally. It felt odd to walk into the Coho caff without looking for a 3-prong outlet. Instead I tucked myself in a corner and wrote Christmas cards. What are you writing this month? This month I'm writing Christmas cards and letters.
All my US cards have been addressed, stamped (with the stamps on hand, lord knows if they were correct) and posted from Port Angeles. If I can get the UK and Canadian cards off this week, it will be an unprecedented achievement for me. Usually I send New Year's cards, or Epiphany cards. What may yet bring me down is the writing of Christmas letters, and over half of the UK cards require letters. One year I got all my cards off early, and never mailed the letter-included cards at all.
I'll have to offer myself some sort of bribe.
The drive back from Bremerton to Port Angeles was entertaining. The weather along the route varied from snow to sleet to rain, and all pretty much horizontal. Probably a dozen cars in ditches, including one lying right on its side on the shoulder, and two or three attended by police cars with flashing lights. I crawled along at 30 mph for much of the snow passages, keeping carefully in the tracks of the car ahead. I spent enough time behind a red pickup truck to wave goodbye to it with quite a feeling of regret when it took an exit.
Very scenic, though. Very winter wonderland calendar picture with the snow. The rain less so. Driving through falling snow is mildly hypnotic, for me at least, and just before I reached Port Angeles I was overcome with a conviction that I'd driven past it without noticing. Yes, I know it's next to impossible to drive through Port Angeles without noticing, but bear in mind that when I was driving the I-5 on a fairly frequent basis, I managed to drive through Seattle without consciously registering it. And Seattle is bigger than Port Angeles.
Do not underestimate my powers of abstraction.
Accomplished: Well, I didn't make the 50k wordcount target. But I had fun. My main character has caught a wendigo in a sack, been swallowed and disgorged by a monster, scared off the Bad Thing by exposing herself to it (there are folkloric precedents, yes), sulked her way into being allowed to witness the ceremony for restoring life to her murdered friend (motif J1955, in case you wondered) even though she isn't in the right clan, and is about to confront the Bad Thing again in a carnival Spook Ride, while dealing with distracting feelings about the Girl Who Might Be an Angel, as well as an old flame who works at the carnival.
Eventually I should stop dropping visual hints about the angel-aspect (dust cloud billows up like wings, light halos hair) and start just calling her that--there's still the question of what kind of angel she'd be. Bendy the devil is a devil, that's established, but I'm not sure whether his belly-mouth tells the truth more than his head-mouth does, and what about his arse-mouth? It hasn't said anything yet, but it could.
It would help if I knew what was really going on, but it's too soon in the story still. I have no idea where the unreadable book with the Library of Alexandria bookplate will come in, but maybe I'll figure that out.
1/3 of Christmas cards sent, 1/3 addressed but not sent.
Reading: things to do this month are finishing Christmas cards, baking, and reading. Harsh, mm? We don't do the tree until Christmas eve. Not much shopping, since most of my gift-list are adults now, and adults get charitable donations.
Read Blood Engines (great title) by T.A. Pratt, urban fantasy, published Bantam 2007. It took me a while to get wrapped up in the book, and if I hadn't been in a ferry lineup I might have put it aside. Pratt has taken the chance of starting with a somewhat off-putting main character, who does improve and learn from her mistakes as she goes. The secondary characters Rondeau and B carry the weight of reader interest for the opening. B in particular intrigued me. At first he seemed like a Tim Powers character who'd wandered in (which is a good thing) but he became more integral to the story and to providing an alternative way of being to the MC, Marla Mason. Once the chained god Chang Hao showed up, the story picked up greatly for me.
On the downside, it was another festival of infodumps. This time it was backstory for Marla and her colleagues. While I do very much like the idea that we've come into Marla's story partway through, and all these characters have a history, whether of their own or with each other, I don't necessarily want to know all about their history when they first appear. Seriously. For instance, Marla did a serious wrong to Rondeau when he was a 'child'. Cool, this is intriguing. It's not so intriguing when I'm flat-out told about it with no relevance to the story. Much later, Marla confesses the story to an ally - see, there it was relevant. And it would have been a shocker if it had first come up then, instead of having me going yeah, yeah, already know that.
This bugged me enough that I did not bother to read the teaser for the next book. And dude, I always read teasers. And prologues, and acknowledgements, and dedications, and appendices. But I couldn't face the strong possibility of yet again having every character's backstory dumped on me, plus, I suppose, whatever items of interest had been added in the first book.
There was a lot to like in Blood Engines. If the infodumps could have been trimmed out, I'd be almost certainly buying the next one. As it is, I don't know.
Second thoughts: I skimmed through the last part of Tinker, with a growing unease. Here's my issue. You've got the impossibly gorgeous long-haired Nordic-type elves, who have kind of a crap political system (I give Spencer credit, the elf social system gets some criticism), with whom our heroine allies herself, not entirely by choice (again, good for Spencer, I like uncertain and equivocal alliances).
The baddies, and are they ever bad, are another supernatural/alien race, the oni. And their slave-races, the kitsune and tengu. Spencer is obviously an anime/manga fan and that's cool too. However. One of the sympathetic elf characters says twice that the oni and associates "breed like mice". Anybody else catching ugly echoes here? Because I am.
The human baddies are the Chinese, who stole Tinker's dad's plans and killed him in the doing, and built the Gate that dumped Pittsburgh in Elfhome. There are supposedly Chinese immigrants in Pittsburgh, though I don't recall any Chinese characters actually appearing. It turns out
*SPOILER ALERT*
that the Chinese govt is actually being run by the oni, and all the Chinese immigrants in Pittsburgh are actually oni in disguise.
At which point, the WTF indicators lit up. Look, I'm just an old white broad who never got past second year in Asian languages, but even I know that oni are Japanese, as are kitsune and tengu. Where is Japan in all this? Why is China ruled by Japanese spirits, and why do they not have Chinese names if they've embedded themselves in Chinese culture as long as suggested? Are there no real Chinese or Japanese people? Are they all evil spirits that breed like mice?
I'm sure Spencer is a very nice person. And none of the Amazon reviews commented on any racist subtext. So maybe it's just me. But it made me uncomfortable, and I'm not inclined to read the next one.
All my US cards have been addressed, stamped (with the stamps on hand, lord knows if they were correct) and posted from Port Angeles. If I can get the UK and Canadian cards off this week, it will be an unprecedented achievement for me. Usually I send New Year's cards, or Epiphany cards. What may yet bring me down is the writing of Christmas letters, and over half of the UK cards require letters. One year I got all my cards off early, and never mailed the letter-included cards at all.
I'll have to offer myself some sort of bribe.
The drive back from Bremerton to Port Angeles was entertaining. The weather along the route varied from snow to sleet to rain, and all pretty much horizontal. Probably a dozen cars in ditches, including one lying right on its side on the shoulder, and two or three attended by police cars with flashing lights. I crawled along at 30 mph for much of the snow passages, keeping carefully in the tracks of the car ahead. I spent enough time behind a red pickup truck to wave goodbye to it with quite a feeling of regret when it took an exit.
Very scenic, though. Very winter wonderland calendar picture with the snow. The rain less so. Driving through falling snow is mildly hypnotic, for me at least, and just before I reached Port Angeles I was overcome with a conviction that I'd driven past it without noticing. Yes, I know it's next to impossible to drive through Port Angeles without noticing, but bear in mind that when I was driving the I-5 on a fairly frequent basis, I managed to drive through Seattle without consciously registering it. And Seattle is bigger than Port Angeles.
Do not underestimate my powers of abstraction.
Accomplished: Well, I didn't make the 50k wordcount target. But I had fun. My main character has caught a wendigo in a sack, been swallowed and disgorged by a monster, scared off the Bad Thing by exposing herself to it (there are folkloric precedents, yes), sulked her way into being allowed to witness the ceremony for restoring life to her murdered friend (motif J1955, in case you wondered) even though she isn't in the right clan, and is about to confront the Bad Thing again in a carnival Spook Ride, while dealing with distracting feelings about the Girl Who Might Be an Angel, as well as an old flame who works at the carnival.
Eventually I should stop dropping visual hints about the angel-aspect (dust cloud billows up like wings, light halos hair) and start just calling her that--there's still the question of what kind of angel she'd be. Bendy the devil is a devil, that's established, but I'm not sure whether his belly-mouth tells the truth more than his head-mouth does, and what about his arse-mouth? It hasn't said anything yet, but it could.
It would help if I knew what was really going on, but it's too soon in the story still. I have no idea where the unreadable book with the Library of Alexandria bookplate will come in, but maybe I'll figure that out.
1/3 of Christmas cards sent, 1/3 addressed but not sent.
Reading: things to do this month are finishing Christmas cards, baking, and reading. Harsh, mm? We don't do the tree until Christmas eve. Not much shopping, since most of my gift-list are adults now, and adults get charitable donations.
Read Blood Engines (great title) by T.A. Pratt, urban fantasy, published Bantam 2007. It took me a while to get wrapped up in the book, and if I hadn't been in a ferry lineup I might have put it aside. Pratt has taken the chance of starting with a somewhat off-putting main character, who does improve and learn from her mistakes as she goes. The secondary characters Rondeau and B carry the weight of reader interest for the opening. B in particular intrigued me. At first he seemed like a Tim Powers character who'd wandered in (which is a good thing) but he became more integral to the story and to providing an alternative way of being to the MC, Marla Mason. Once the chained god Chang Hao showed up, the story picked up greatly for me.
On the downside, it was another festival of infodumps. This time it was backstory for Marla and her colleagues. While I do very much like the idea that we've come into Marla's story partway through, and all these characters have a history, whether of their own or with each other, I don't necessarily want to know all about their history when they first appear. Seriously. For instance, Marla did a serious wrong to Rondeau when he was a 'child'. Cool, this is intriguing. It's not so intriguing when I'm flat-out told about it with no relevance to the story. Much later, Marla confesses the story to an ally - see, there it was relevant. And it would have been a shocker if it had first come up then, instead of having me going yeah, yeah, already know that.
This bugged me enough that I did not bother to read the teaser for the next book. And dude, I always read teasers. And prologues, and acknowledgements, and dedications, and appendices. But I couldn't face the strong possibility of yet again having every character's backstory dumped on me, plus, I suppose, whatever items of interest had been added in the first book.
There was a lot to like in Blood Engines. If the infodumps could have been trimmed out, I'd be almost certainly buying the next one. As it is, I don't know.
Second thoughts: I skimmed through the last part of Tinker, with a growing unease. Here's my issue. You've got the impossibly gorgeous long-haired Nordic-type elves, who have kind of a crap political system (I give Spencer credit, the elf social system gets some criticism), with whom our heroine allies herself, not entirely by choice (again, good for Spencer, I like uncertain and equivocal alliances).
The baddies, and are they ever bad, are another supernatural/alien race, the oni. And their slave-races, the kitsune and tengu. Spencer is obviously an anime/manga fan and that's cool too. However. One of the sympathetic elf characters says twice that the oni and associates "breed like mice". Anybody else catching ugly echoes here? Because I am.
The human baddies are the Chinese, who stole Tinker's dad's plans and killed him in the doing, and built the Gate that dumped Pittsburgh in Elfhome. There are supposedly Chinese immigrants in Pittsburgh, though I don't recall any Chinese characters actually appearing. It turns out
*SPOILER ALERT*
that the Chinese govt is actually being run by the oni, and all the Chinese immigrants in Pittsburgh are actually oni in disguise.
At which point, the WTF indicators lit up. Look, I'm just an old white broad who never got past second year in Asian languages, but even I know that oni are Japanese, as are kitsune and tengu. Where is Japan in all this? Why is China ruled by Japanese spirits, and why do they not have Chinese names if they've embedded themselves in Chinese culture as long as suggested? Are there no real Chinese or Japanese people? Are they all evil spirits that breed like mice?
I'm sure Spencer is a very nice person. And none of the Amazon reviews commented on any racist subtext. So maybe it's just me. But it made me uncomfortable, and I'm not inclined to read the next one.
Friday, November 30, 2007
Last day of Nanowrimo, wordcount 30kish
Lowered expectations, your key to success. So, in the last week, I decided that if I hit 30k, I'd be happy. OpenOffice tells me I have 31006 words, and the Nano validation tells me I have 30112 words. Abiword says 30044. I may shoot the file over to work and see what Word thinks it is, but the Nano validation is what counts.
I don't get the cute purple bar that says Winner! but that's okay. I feel justified in wearing my Nanowrimo 2007 t-shirt, because I have 30k words that I didn't have in October. Although I may have to trim out about 10k of a secondary plot that doesn't really go anywhere, at least in that story.
And I have an idea for next year! So apparently I'm going to do this again. An 18th c. epistolary novel, letters between two young women in different 18th c. genres. One to be in a Jane Austen / Fanny Burney sort of social comedy (though, obviously, not anywhere near as skilfully written), the other to be in an Ann Radcliffe / Horace Walpole gothick thriller. So one would be hiding in the shrubbery after being snubbed at an assembly, pouring out her grief onto tear-spotted letter paper, the other dashing off hurried bulletins while holding villainous abductors off with her sharp pen-knife.
Mark asked me why they'd be writing to each other. Because they're cousins. Seems obvious.
For the next while, the only writing I'll be doing is Christmas cards and letters. I hope I can find a printout of the address list I did up a couple of years ago, because it isn't showing up in My Documents.
Tonight I'm off to Bremerton for an SCA event on the Saturday, and hopefully spend some time with my amazing apprentice Eileen.
Sunday I'll be trying to get online for the Drollerie Press chat with Rachael de Vienne. This may be difficult, because I'll be in transit for part of it, and I don't have a laptop with all that cool wifi stuff. Maybe I can borrow Mark's?
Ah, technology.
I don't get the cute purple bar that says Winner! but that's okay. I feel justified in wearing my Nanowrimo 2007 t-shirt, because I have 30k words that I didn't have in October. Although I may have to trim out about 10k of a secondary plot that doesn't really go anywhere, at least in that story.
And I have an idea for next year! So apparently I'm going to do this again. An 18th c. epistolary novel, letters between two young women in different 18th c. genres. One to be in a Jane Austen / Fanny Burney sort of social comedy (though, obviously, not anywhere near as skilfully written), the other to be in an Ann Radcliffe / Horace Walpole gothick thriller. So one would be hiding in the shrubbery after being snubbed at an assembly, pouring out her grief onto tear-spotted letter paper, the other dashing off hurried bulletins while holding villainous abductors off with her sharp pen-knife.
Mark asked me why they'd be writing to each other. Because they're cousins. Seems obvious.
For the next while, the only writing I'll be doing is Christmas cards and letters. I hope I can find a printout of the address list I did up a couple of years ago, because it isn't showing up in My Documents.
Tonight I'm off to Bremerton for an SCA event on the Saturday, and hopefully spend some time with my amazing apprentice Eileen.
Sunday I'll be trying to get online for the Drollerie Press chat with Rachael de Vienne. This may be difficult, because I'll be in transit for part of it, and I don't have a laptop with all that cool wifi stuff. Maybe I can borrow Mark's?
Ah, technology.
Monday, November 26, 2007
Twentysixth day of NaNoWriMo, wordcount 27kish
I'm mostly posting so that I can update the tickerfactory counter. Self-indulgent, yes. The wordcount here is the count from a .txt file in OpenOffice. When I transfer the text to the Nano wordcount validator, or, apparently to AbiWord, I lose a substantial number of words by wordcount. The first time it was about 500, but as the text increases, it's up to 800 less, give or take.
Which is kind of disconcerting, even though it's just the count, not actual text gone away.
Anyway, for comparison purposes, here's the counter again.
My cunning plan to write a story that required no research other than checking the Motif Index wasn't all that cunning (big surprise). So far I've had to research Northwest Indian tribes, carny slang and the sharecropping system. All because of my inability to just make things up.
However, I did find a very interesting article on gender bias in the Arne-Thompson Motif Index, which made some telling points. I posted the link on the scribblers thread, and realised that I'd reached some pinnacle of geekery just in saying that.
The article is in JSTOR, if you're the same kind of geek that I am, and it's Folklore Heroines and the Type and Motif Indexes, by Torborg Lundell.
And now I believe I'll go to bed, and read a bit more of The Serpent's Egg, by Caroline Stevermer. And be thankful that the author doesn't feel the need to explain the monarchy system when the prince arrives, nor the physiology of horses whenever someone rides somewhere. (Why yes, I am thinking of the last book I was reading).
Which is kind of disconcerting, even though it's just the count, not actual text gone away.
Anyway, for comparison purposes, here's the counter again.
My cunning plan to write a story that required no research other than checking the Motif Index wasn't all that cunning (big surprise). So far I've had to research Northwest Indian tribes, carny slang and the sharecropping system. All because of my inability to just make things up.
However, I did find a very interesting article on gender bias in the Arne-Thompson Motif Index, which made some telling points. I posted the link on the scribblers thread, and realised that I'd reached some pinnacle of geekery just in saying that.
The article is in JSTOR, if you're the same kind of geek that I am, and it's Folklore Heroines and the Type and Motif Indexes, by Torborg Lundell.
And now I believe I'll go to bed, and read a bit more of The Serpent's Egg, by Caroline Stevermer. And be thankful that the author doesn't feel the need to explain the monarchy system when the prince arrives, nor the physiology of horses whenever someone rides somewhere. (Why yes, I am thinking of the last book I was reading).
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Twentysecond day of Nanowrimo, wordcount 22kish
About half of that is a secondary storyline that doesn't really go anywhere, but oh well. It may find its place later. So, parts of this are fun. Last weekend was more productive than I'd expected, so it looks as if I'm faster when I'm banging words out while in a cafeteria or sitting on a dorm bed drinking wine than I am when I'm dedicating specific time to at home.
Or rather, I'm more productive when I can't go online. That's the big time-suck for me. I don't seem to have any willpower that will keep me off FandomWank, or Making Light, or the ABE book forum. By forgetting my password, I did manage to stay off LJ for some days, but that's changed now.
In 2003-4 I was writing and revising the co-written novel on my desk computer, mostly keeping my online time to checking the Modern Herbal and googling things like the date of invention of strike-anywhere matches. But in 2003 my online social interaction was a smaller thing. Some badmovie sites, the book forum, not much else.
Story stuff: My MC is traipsing around N America, accompanied by a very attractive young woman who may be a (fallen?) angel, and a devil in a backpack. The devil is having to walk, currently, because the backpack is full of a wendigo. MC is unsure how to deal with the wendigo, now that she has it, and is asking advice of an old woman who was once an informant for the MC's folklorist parents.
Which has put me in a bit of an ethical quandary. On the one hand, if the old woman turns out to have already been taken over or replaced by the Evil Thing (and there's a cool story about a woman who skins another wife and wears the skin to fool the husband, which works until it starts to rot), we get a plot turn and some cool SFX. On the other hand, it's not the most original plot twist going, and the old woman is First Nations, so I'd be running the risk of the Disposable Ethnic Character, which I'd rather not, really. Plus I dislike the trope of having secondary characters die just to point up the danger to Our Hero--it brings out my Bolshie streak.
So I may jump past that into the next sequence and figure it out later. It would also be good if I figured out what she wants in her own story, so she's not just there to advise and warn the MC in that story.
The ethnicity of the main character is uncertain, since her name is entirely made up, and her sexual orientation seems to be either bi or lesbian. Things you don't know when you start writing.
What I am enjoying about the enforced speed of nanowrimo is that there's no pressure to write in what I call the 'drenched' style, with a lot of sensory detail. The narrative can be fairly stripped down, with minimal scene-setting. Because wordcount is desirable, I don't have to fuss about my character's inclination to ponder, and then muse, and then ponder a bit more. It's all good, and edit in December.
Not that I'll have anything like a novel, even in first draft, by then. My immediate goal is to get up to 25k by the weekend, and see if I can get above 35k by next week. I'm not going to beat myself up trying to hit 50k.
Next year I'll try this with an outline, and maybe try an 18th c. epistolary style thriller.
Arthritis: definitely this would be a flare-up without the meds. Yay meds! Yesterday my left shoulder was hurting, reminding me of this time last year, when I still thought it was a rotater cuff injury, and was hauling out the sling every time my shoulder hurt. Today is pretty good. An awareness, I might say, of feet and hands, stiffness in the shoulders. Nothing to be fussed about.
Not finished reading: Tinker, by Wen Spencer. I'm having problems with this, mostly related to my reading as a writer. I like the character Tinker okay, but she is one heck of a Mary Sue. She's a genius, she's cute, everyone loves her except the elf-woman who's jealous, she wins fights despite (as we are frequently told) she's just a little thing, she's related to the most important people you can think of in that world, and I'm getting the strong feeling she has a Destiny. The narrative is thick with info-dumps, just sitting there like lumps in mashed potatoes. So those aspects are slowing me down. What may cause me to stop is not related to the writing at all. It's my personal squick. SPOILER!! Tinker is turned into an elf.
I've only attempted to read Jack Chalker once, and it was exactly this that put me off. An interesting, imperfect, realistic character changes into a supernatural being. Just because, as far as I could tell.
There's an Andre Norton I didn't enjoy because the character ends up transferred mentally first into a wolf, then into an alien body, because his own body is murdered in the course of torture. I did read that one all the way through, because there was a valid reason for him to be changed, and because the way the story dealt with someone losing his physical self and losing that continuity worked for me. But it still made me profoundly uncomfortable.
Sometime I should examine in more detail why this is a disturbing idea to me. It's not as if I'm that crazy about my physical self. Taller, with cheekbones, and much less body fat would be preferred. Oh, and 20/20 vision and no arthritis. But would I take a completely different body if it were offered? I don't know.
Not that it's going to happen.
Or rather, I'm more productive when I can't go online. That's the big time-suck for me. I don't seem to have any willpower that will keep me off FandomWank, or Making Light, or the ABE book forum. By forgetting my password, I did manage to stay off LJ for some days, but that's changed now.
In 2003-4 I was writing and revising the co-written novel on my desk computer, mostly keeping my online time to checking the Modern Herbal and googling things like the date of invention of strike-anywhere matches. But in 2003 my online social interaction was a smaller thing. Some badmovie sites, the book forum, not much else.
Story stuff: My MC is traipsing around N America, accompanied by a very attractive young woman who may be a (fallen?) angel, and a devil in a backpack. The devil is having to walk, currently, because the backpack is full of a wendigo. MC is unsure how to deal with the wendigo, now that she has it, and is asking advice of an old woman who was once an informant for the MC's folklorist parents.
Which has put me in a bit of an ethical quandary. On the one hand, if the old woman turns out to have already been taken over or replaced by the Evil Thing (and there's a cool story about a woman who skins another wife and wears the skin to fool the husband, which works until it starts to rot), we get a plot turn and some cool SFX. On the other hand, it's not the most original plot twist going, and the old woman is First Nations, so I'd be running the risk of the Disposable Ethnic Character, which I'd rather not, really. Plus I dislike the trope of having secondary characters die just to point up the danger to Our Hero--it brings out my Bolshie streak.
So I may jump past that into the next sequence and figure it out later. It would also be good if I figured out what she wants in her own story, so she's not just there to advise and warn the MC in that story.
The ethnicity of the main character is uncertain, since her name is entirely made up, and her sexual orientation seems to be either bi or lesbian. Things you don't know when you start writing.
What I am enjoying about the enforced speed of nanowrimo is that there's no pressure to write in what I call the 'drenched' style, with a lot of sensory detail. The narrative can be fairly stripped down, with minimal scene-setting. Because wordcount is desirable, I don't have to fuss about my character's inclination to ponder, and then muse, and then ponder a bit more. It's all good, and edit in December.
Not that I'll have anything like a novel, even in first draft, by then. My immediate goal is to get up to 25k by the weekend, and see if I can get above 35k by next week. I'm not going to beat myself up trying to hit 50k.
Next year I'll try this with an outline, and maybe try an 18th c. epistolary style thriller.
Arthritis: definitely this would be a flare-up without the meds. Yay meds! Yesterday my left shoulder was hurting, reminding me of this time last year, when I still thought it was a rotater cuff injury, and was hauling out the sling every time my shoulder hurt. Today is pretty good. An awareness, I might say, of feet and hands, stiffness in the shoulders. Nothing to be fussed about.
Not finished reading: Tinker, by Wen Spencer. I'm having problems with this, mostly related to my reading as a writer. I like the character Tinker okay, but she is one heck of a Mary Sue. She's a genius, she's cute, everyone loves her except the elf-woman who's jealous, she wins fights despite (as we are frequently told) she's just a little thing, she's related to the most important people you can think of in that world, and I'm getting the strong feeling she has a Destiny. The narrative is thick with info-dumps, just sitting there like lumps in mashed potatoes. So those aspects are slowing me down. What may cause me to stop is not related to the writing at all. It's my personal squick. SPOILER!! Tinker is turned into an elf.
I've only attempted to read Jack Chalker once, and it was exactly this that put me off. An interesting, imperfect, realistic character changes into a supernatural being. Just because, as far as I could tell.
There's an Andre Norton I didn't enjoy because the character ends up transferred mentally first into a wolf, then into an alien body, because his own body is murdered in the course of torture. I did read that one all the way through, because there was a valid reason for him to be changed, and because the way the story dealt with someone losing his physical self and losing that continuity worked for me. But it still made me profoundly uncomfortable.
Sometime I should examine in more detail why this is a disturbing idea to me. It's not as if I'm that crazy about my physical self. Taller, with cheekbones, and much less body fat would be preferred. Oh, and 20/20 vision and no arthritis. But would I take a completely different body if it were offered? I don't know.
Not that it's going to happen.
Thursday, November 15, 2007
interlude: what's your story about?
The Willow Knot: As mentioned previously, I've been bunging the Willow Knot file out to my Deeply Appreciated beta-readers. In the course of making sure that the file hadn't undergone some strange transmogrification while being transferred (the Star Trek transporter beam cock-ups are nothing compared to what I can do pushing a file through three different OSs), I did a bit of a read-through before sending it out. Then I had to stop, because I'd be wanting to tweak and smooth, and fix some of the problems I know are in there.
But since the point of this exercise is to get feedback on what needs to be in the story and what doesn't, doing cosmetic repairs would be a waste of time.
It would be helpful, of course, if I knew from the start what needed to be in the story. To do that, I'd need to know what the story is about. This may be what's called 'theme'. I'm not sure. Theme is sometimes stated as a sort of moral lesson--"possessive love leads to loss" for instance--that reminds me inescapably of the Snakes and Ladders board we had when I was a kid, which was all moral lessons. Sometimes theme is stated in a single word, like 'courage' or 'endurance'. Some writers have their themes in place before they start writing, others find out partway through. And I suppose some wait for the critics to tell them what it was.
If I have a theme, and my body of work may not be sufficient a body of evidence to argue for that, I think it might be: It's more complicated than you think. And messier.
One of the ideas (I hesitate to consider it a theme) that I seem to be working with in Willow Knot is the idea of one's own story, or of how stories intersect.
Myl is in the Maerchenwald, the Folkloric Woods, the Enchanted Forest where the stories live, where they begin and often end. She doesn't know whether she's in her own story or someone else's. After all, she's the older sister, and stories usually belong to the youngest child. Maybe she's a walk-on in someone else's story, and she does seem to play that part. She's even the Supernatural Helper in one, or seen as such. Other characters pass through, having their own stories to follow to the end, touching the edges of her story.
Which is a concept that appeals to me, and ties in with one of the Viable Paradise lessons, that every piece on the chessboard thinks it's a queen. But that concept fights with another one, that everything that stays in the story needs to be necessary to the story in a clear and straightforward way. Which would mean that only those scenes that belong to Myl's storyline should stay. The scenes that belong to the idea of 'the forest harbours strangeness', for instance, don't need to be there.
It depends what the story is really about. At this point, I'm going to ask the readers what it's about for them.
Nanowrimo: pretty darned slow. The weekend was not as productive as I'd hoped, and this weekend I'll be in transit for some part of it, and at an SCA event for part of it. Saturday will be booked, at least. However, I'm taking the laptop, and hopefully I can get some use out of the travel time, and afterwards be able to pry the text out of the laptop again and push it into my desktop.
And perhaps those circs will allow me to recapture the panic and urgency of the 3-day. Man, it's hard to have the longer time stretching out, and the foolish confidence that one can catch up, by just oh, doubling or tripling one's wordcount. Well, difficult for me. Other people, I see, finished their 50k last week.
The event I'm attending is the Tir Righ Investiture, and the reason I'm going is that it's the Principality Arts & Sciences Championship, and supposedly I'll be doing some judging, though the details seem to be a bit up in the air.
Palindromic rheumatism: hands, particularly the left hand, stiff for the last couple of days. No difficulty in moving them, no problem typing, just discomfort. It takes conscious effort to close my left hand into a fist. My guess is that if I weren't on the meds, this would be a flare-up. On the Monday the knuckles of my left hand were a bit swollen, but not painful.
Hm. In December it will be a year since I figured out that there was something going on with my joints that wasn't a rotator cuff injury. Happy anniversary, mm?
But since the point of this exercise is to get feedback on what needs to be in the story and what doesn't, doing cosmetic repairs would be a waste of time.
It would be helpful, of course, if I knew from the start what needed to be in the story. To do that, I'd need to know what the story is about. This may be what's called 'theme'. I'm not sure. Theme is sometimes stated as a sort of moral lesson--"possessive love leads to loss" for instance--that reminds me inescapably of the Snakes and Ladders board we had when I was a kid, which was all moral lessons. Sometimes theme is stated in a single word, like 'courage' or 'endurance'. Some writers have their themes in place before they start writing, others find out partway through. And I suppose some wait for the critics to tell them what it was.
If I have a theme, and my body of work may not be sufficient a body of evidence to argue for that, I think it might be: It's more complicated than you think. And messier.
One of the ideas (I hesitate to consider it a theme) that I seem to be working with in Willow Knot is the idea of one's own story, or of how stories intersect.
Myl is in the Maerchenwald, the Folkloric Woods, the Enchanted Forest where the stories live, where they begin and often end. She doesn't know whether she's in her own story or someone else's. After all, she's the older sister, and stories usually belong to the youngest child. Maybe she's a walk-on in someone else's story, and she does seem to play that part. She's even the Supernatural Helper in one, or seen as such. Other characters pass through, having their own stories to follow to the end, touching the edges of her story.
Which is a concept that appeals to me, and ties in with one of the Viable Paradise lessons, that every piece on the chessboard thinks it's a queen. But that concept fights with another one, that everything that stays in the story needs to be necessary to the story in a clear and straightforward way. Which would mean that only those scenes that belong to Myl's storyline should stay. The scenes that belong to the idea of 'the forest harbours strangeness', for instance, don't need to be there.
It depends what the story is really about. At this point, I'm going to ask the readers what it's about for them.
Nanowrimo: pretty darned slow. The weekend was not as productive as I'd hoped, and this weekend I'll be in transit for some part of it, and at an SCA event for part of it. Saturday will be booked, at least. However, I'm taking the laptop, and hopefully I can get some use out of the travel time, and afterwards be able to pry the text out of the laptop again and push it into my desktop.
And perhaps those circs will allow me to recapture the panic and urgency of the 3-day. Man, it's hard to have the longer time stretching out, and the foolish confidence that one can catch up, by just oh, doubling or tripling one's wordcount. Well, difficult for me. Other people, I see, finished their 50k last week.
The event I'm attending is the Tir Righ Investiture, and the reason I'm going is that it's the Principality Arts & Sciences Championship, and supposedly I'll be doing some judging, though the details seem to be a bit up in the air.
Palindromic rheumatism: hands, particularly the left hand, stiff for the last couple of days. No difficulty in moving them, no problem typing, just discomfort. It takes conscious effort to close my left hand into a fist. My guess is that if I weren't on the meds, this would be a flare-up. On the Monday the knuckles of my left hand were a bit swollen, but not painful.
Hm. In December it will be a year since I figured out that there was something going on with my joints that wasn't a rotator cuff injury. Happy anniversary, mm?
Monday, November 12, 2007
Twelfth day of NaNoWriMo, wordcount 11Kish
Disturbing lack of gold rings, partridges, noted. Action due.
Well, I was social yesterday. At Mark's urging I biked over to the Black Stilt coffeeshop for the 2d meeting of Victoria's Nanowrimo group. It was lively and entertaining, more than a little geekish and excitable. In-jokes and running gags are well underway. I was almost certainly twice as old as any other person there. Presumably there are other members my age, or at least in their 30s. They just weren't present that afternoon. Fortunately no one seemed to mind (or even notice) my demographic oddness, though there was a comment that I seemed to know rather a lot about zombies.
But doesn't everyone?
I'm thinking of adding a talking cat to Sack of Lies. It would up the repartee quotient. And Charles de Lint put one in Mulengro, for reasons never clear to me. Okay, what I couldn't buy was not so much the cat talking (explained as a side-effect of too much ambient magic) as the cat giving sage advice and snarky comments with human intelligence. Jeez, why not have a talking witty gay neighbour instead? It would be lower entropy.
I know, I know, long tradition, going back to Saki's 'Tobermory'. I'm now tempted to have a talking cat that only talks about cat stuff, like food and naps and licking itself.
So far I prefer the 3-Day's burst of manic activity. Nano is closer to the slog of regular writing. Get up, write, come home from work, write. Mind you, I'm not getting the full experience yet, since I've been fussing about getting WK's draft 2 out - you don't want to hear about me, three different OSs and two (three?) wordprocessing programs, do you?
I didn't think so. I will only mention that the SMF .rtf turned out to be too big to get onto a single floppy, and that Mark had the joy of walking me through the ftp thingy on my Thinkpad 380something. Which I love deeply and only wish had a usb thingy so I could transfer files without so much rigmarole.
Rigmarole is 'rambling or meaningless talk or tale' apparently from 'ragman roll' a list or catalogue. In case you wondered (because I wondered, so I checked). I may have a subtitle for Sack of Lies: a rigmarole. Instead of 'a novel'. Though Ragman Roll would be a cool title too. I wonder if it's taken?
I'm trying to stay away from the Making Light strikeplate thread, but I don't think it's working. The rays are seeping through the internet at me, and the tinfoil is useless. It could be a repeat of the first big distraction from writing, which was the Nanowrimo Wank detailed here on Fandom Wank (definitely on the Big Three of my shouldn't you be writing sites).
Back to the (not terribly productive) salt mines. I'll post something about the actual story later.
Well, I was social yesterday. At Mark's urging I biked over to the Black Stilt coffeeshop for the 2d meeting of Victoria's Nanowrimo group. It was lively and entertaining, more than a little geekish and excitable. In-jokes and running gags are well underway. I was almost certainly twice as old as any other person there. Presumably there are other members my age, or at least in their 30s. They just weren't present that afternoon. Fortunately no one seemed to mind (or even notice) my demographic oddness, though there was a comment that I seemed to know rather a lot about zombies.
But doesn't everyone?
I'm thinking of adding a talking cat to Sack of Lies. It would up the repartee quotient. And Charles de Lint put one in Mulengro, for reasons never clear to me. Okay, what I couldn't buy was not so much the cat talking (explained as a side-effect of too much ambient magic) as the cat giving sage advice and snarky comments with human intelligence. Jeez, why not have a talking witty gay neighbour instead? It would be lower entropy.
I know, I know, long tradition, going back to Saki's 'Tobermory'. I'm now tempted to have a talking cat that only talks about cat stuff, like food and naps and licking itself.
So far I prefer the 3-Day's burst of manic activity. Nano is closer to the slog of regular writing. Get up, write, come home from work, write. Mind you, I'm not getting the full experience yet, since I've been fussing about getting WK's draft 2 out - you don't want to hear about me, three different OSs and two (three?) wordprocessing programs, do you?
I didn't think so. I will only mention that the SMF .rtf turned out to be too big to get onto a single floppy, and that Mark had the joy of walking me through the ftp thingy on my Thinkpad 380something. Which I love deeply and only wish had a usb thingy so I could transfer files without so much rigmarole.
Rigmarole is 'rambling or meaningless talk or tale' apparently from 'ragman roll' a list or catalogue. In case you wondered (because I wondered, so I checked). I may have a subtitle for Sack of Lies: a rigmarole. Instead of 'a novel'. Though Ragman Roll would be a cool title too. I wonder if it's taken?
I'm trying to stay away from the Making Light strikeplate thread, but I don't think it's working. The rays are seeping through the internet at me, and the tinfoil is useless. It could be a repeat of the first big distraction from writing, which was the Nanowrimo Wank detailed here on Fandom Wank (definitely on the Big Three of my shouldn't you be writing sites).
Back to the (not terribly productive) salt mines. I'll post something about the actual story later.
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Fifth day of Nanowrimo, wordcount 3kish
Things done list:
1) Seven hours of teaching accomplished on Saturday. The Survey of Medieval Arts ended up being taught by Mark and me together. The students seemed to appreciate it, especially the collection of ancient and reproduction glass, pottery, bone comb, brooches, buckles, manuscript pages etc. to be looked at. The body of the class was nearly 300 slides, and we had a 5 minute break every half-hour or so, so people could come up and touch the real things.
Nobody said a word about Mark being there--I suppose that's the unexpected benefit of the blacklisting being secret. Anyway, I'm done, there. Mark is already thinking of ways to improve and fine-tune the class, which will be useful if another Ithra campus asks for it. But I've decided I'm only going to co-teach it with him, so I'm probably free and clear for local commitments.
2) The Peel Affinity proofread--though not impeccably, because Alicia found a repeated word in the first chapter, after Mark, Daniel and I had all gone through it. Pity there wasn't time for her to do the rest of it.
The Peel Affinity isn't related to the Avengers tv show (thanks Bart! but I do have a proof copy of the biography of John Steed). It's a living history book about the life, lands and household of a 14th century knight, through one year. The illustrations are photos of the reenactors, showing everyday life and tasks in peace and war, as the knight joins the war in France. I appear as a painter, with Chris as the apprentice grinding pigments, and Mark is shown peering into a bake-oven (actually a pottery kiln). Several of the photos imitate well-known manuscript illustrations, so part of the fun is to spot the source. Froissart! Christine de Pizan!
3) Sunday visit to M-- to see how she's been fixing up the house and garden. This went from 4:30 to 10ish, which did in what might have been a fair chunk of writing time. I did manage to get in about an hour after getting home at 10:30, which impressed me, because I'd been near nodding off during the visit.
She did share the cheering news that she's started writing again, a short story about a young woman who may be delusional but whose delusions change her behaviour for the better, because she believes she's affecting the lives of others, and begins to feel less helpless and more responsible. It sounded interesting, and the wobbly balance of whether she's mad or sane reminded me a bit of athenais's snow-woman story. We talked a very little bit about writing; it seems she talks about it with Irene, and mentioned this to me because Irene didn't like the ambiguity.
Things not quite done:
1) Formatting Willow Knot and sending it out as an .rtf
I admit, I'm still reading through and making sure there's no really stupid glitches or continuity bumps. The sort of thing that becomes blindingly clear when you change the font or layout, or read straight through after you've been writing non-chronologically. Tomorrow. I'll get this sucker out tomorrow.
I wish I could have pulled an all-nighter or two in October, but it turns out that I am too old and decrepit. I'm still tired from the weekend, when I didn't even stay up late.
2) Getting somewhere with my NaNoWriMo. Which is just for fun, and I won't be stressing about it, though I have been stressed at the things I've had to clear out of the way to get to it.
Let's see, can I put a ticker factory countdown on here?
Looks like I can! The little purple dealy is a fountain pen, by the way.
Well, my first-person protag has had her rather sketchily-depicted grad student life disrupted by the sudden arrival of the girl with the devil in her backpack, and they are about to depart on a poorly-understood quest. I decided that her thesis was going to involve comparing the hero's journey to the folktale journey, so that ties in to much of what's going to happen to her. I'm thinking more sarcasm than irony.
No commitments this weekend, except for getting a basketful of apples through the dehydrator, so I should be able to catch up a bit. Though not to the people who already have 20k or so. It's started, that's the main thing.
1) Seven hours of teaching accomplished on Saturday. The Survey of Medieval Arts ended up being taught by Mark and me together. The students seemed to appreciate it, especially the collection of ancient and reproduction glass, pottery, bone comb, brooches, buckles, manuscript pages etc. to be looked at. The body of the class was nearly 300 slides, and we had a 5 minute break every half-hour or so, so people could come up and touch the real things.
Nobody said a word about Mark being there--I suppose that's the unexpected benefit of the blacklisting being secret. Anyway, I'm done, there. Mark is already thinking of ways to improve and fine-tune the class, which will be useful if another Ithra campus asks for it. But I've decided I'm only going to co-teach it with him, so I'm probably free and clear for local commitments.
2) The Peel Affinity proofread--though not impeccably, because Alicia found a repeated word in the first chapter, after Mark, Daniel and I had all gone through it. Pity there wasn't time for her to do the rest of it.
The Peel Affinity isn't related to the Avengers tv show (thanks Bart! but I do have a proof copy of the biography of John Steed). It's a living history book about the life, lands and household of a 14th century knight, through one year. The illustrations are photos of the reenactors, showing everyday life and tasks in peace and war, as the knight joins the war in France. I appear as a painter, with Chris as the apprentice grinding pigments, and Mark is shown peering into a bake-oven (actually a pottery kiln). Several of the photos imitate well-known manuscript illustrations, so part of the fun is to spot the source. Froissart! Christine de Pizan!
3) Sunday visit to M-- to see how she's been fixing up the house and garden. This went from 4:30 to 10ish, which did in what might have been a fair chunk of writing time. I did manage to get in about an hour after getting home at 10:30, which impressed me, because I'd been near nodding off during the visit.
She did share the cheering news that she's started writing again, a short story about a young woman who may be delusional but whose delusions change her behaviour for the better, because she believes she's affecting the lives of others, and begins to feel less helpless and more responsible. It sounded interesting, and the wobbly balance of whether she's mad or sane reminded me a bit of athenais's snow-woman story. We talked a very little bit about writing; it seems she talks about it with Irene, and mentioned this to me because Irene didn't like the ambiguity.
Things not quite done:
1) Formatting Willow Knot and sending it out as an .rtf
I admit, I'm still reading through and making sure there's no really stupid glitches or continuity bumps. The sort of thing that becomes blindingly clear when you change the font or layout, or read straight through after you've been writing non-chronologically. Tomorrow. I'll get this sucker out tomorrow.
I wish I could have pulled an all-nighter or two in October, but it turns out that I am too old and decrepit. I'm still tired from the weekend, when I didn't even stay up late.
2) Getting somewhere with my NaNoWriMo. Which is just for fun, and I won't be stressing about it, though I have been stressed at the things I've had to clear out of the way to get to it.
Let's see, can I put a ticker factory countdown on here?
Looks like I can! The little purple dealy is a fountain pen, by the way.
Well, my first-person protag has had her rather sketchily-depicted grad student life disrupted by the sudden arrival of the girl with the devil in her backpack, and they are about to depart on a poorly-understood quest. I decided that her thesis was going to involve comparing the hero's journey to the folktale journey, so that ties in to much of what's going to happen to her. I'm thinking more sarcasm than irony.
No commitments this weekend, except for getting a basketful of apples through the dehydrator, so I should be able to catch up a bit. Though not to the people who already have 20k or so. It's started, that's the main thing.
Thursday, November 1, 2007
First day of NaNoWriMo : wordcount zero
Things to do list:
1) finish the handout for the 4 hr lecture I'll be doing on Saturday, for Survey of Medieval Arts, a class I have various philosophical issues with, right from the start, mostly related to the poor fit of SCA 'Arts' with either medieval or traditional understanding of 'arts'. Fortunately, Mark the Wonder Husband is scanning in pictures for me, in return for the following,
2) finish proofreading The Peel Affinity by Friday, ideally tonight so the pages can go back in time. This isn't too difficult, since the text has been gone over severely already, and I'm just a pair of relatively fresh eyes ('relatively' being one of the words I've been flagging, along with 'substantially' and 'virtually') picking up the odd typo or missing word. But it's slow and somewhat painstaking.
3) format Willow Knot draft two in SMF and make it an .rtf so that the disket (yes, archaic, I'm an old-fashioned sort) can convey the file from my laptop (Windows) to Mark's computer (BeOs) to be emailed to my computer (Ubuntu) because my floppy drive never works. And then I can send it to my lovely, lovely, deeply appreciated beta-readers.
Then I can fall into Nanowrimo with little joyful hungry cries. Or possibly cries of dismay. Sunday morning, I'm hoping.
There was a meeting of Victoria NaNo participants on the 28th, but I didn't make it, since I was busy writing Willow Knot. That may be ironic, I'm not quite sure. Then I missed Robert Wiersema's reading on the 30th, which was more annoying, because I'd been looking forward to that, where the first was more duty. It seems I'm becoming a hermit except for when people come to see me, or else my ability to remember dates is diminishing.
It's particularly kind of Mark to help with this course, given that he's been unofficially blacklisted by the local Ithra campus. But that's a long story, and I have to admit that sometimes I'd be just as happy to be blacklisted as well. But somehow I come across as sweet and inoffensive (the acceptable face of Mark).
Anyway, it's a pain to be toting the barge and lifting the bale for classes by myself here, when other campuses (campi?) want both of us. If two people whom I do respect and like hadn't asked me to teach this one, I would have begged off. I hope, for their sake, that I do a decent job of this, and they get something out of it beyond the required credit for a Lector Artis.
1) finish the handout for the 4 hr lecture I'll be doing on Saturday, for Survey of Medieval Arts, a class I have various philosophical issues with, right from the start, mostly related to the poor fit of SCA 'Arts' with either medieval or traditional understanding of 'arts'. Fortunately, Mark the Wonder Husband is scanning in pictures for me, in return for the following,
2) finish proofreading The Peel Affinity by Friday, ideally tonight so the pages can go back in time. This isn't too difficult, since the text has been gone over severely already, and I'm just a pair of relatively fresh eyes ('relatively' being one of the words I've been flagging, along with 'substantially' and 'virtually') picking up the odd typo or missing word. But it's slow and somewhat painstaking.
3) format Willow Knot draft two in SMF and make it an .rtf so that the disket (yes, archaic, I'm an old-fashioned sort) can convey the file from my laptop (Windows) to Mark's computer (BeOs) to be emailed to my computer (Ubuntu) because my floppy drive never works. And then I can send it to my lovely, lovely, deeply appreciated beta-readers.
Then I can fall into Nanowrimo with little joyful hungry cries. Or possibly cries of dismay. Sunday morning, I'm hoping.
There was a meeting of Victoria NaNo participants on the 28th, but I didn't make it, since I was busy writing Willow Knot. That may be ironic, I'm not quite sure. Then I missed Robert Wiersema's reading on the 30th, which was more annoying, because I'd been looking forward to that, where the first was more duty. It seems I'm becoming a hermit except for when people come to see me, or else my ability to remember dates is diminishing.
It's particularly kind of Mark to help with this course, given that he's been unofficially blacklisted by the local Ithra campus. But that's a long story, and I have to admit that sometimes I'd be just as happy to be blacklisted as well. But somehow I come across as sweet and inoffensive (the acceptable face of Mark).
Anyway, it's a pain to be toting the barge and lifting the bale for classes by myself here, when other campuses (campi?) want both of us. If two people whom I do respect and like hadn't asked me to teach this one, I would have begged off. I hope, for their sake, that I do a decent job of this, and they get something out of it beyond the required credit for a Lector Artis.
Sunday, October 14, 2007
my writing space
Orogeny posted a pic of her writing space, and I am torn between envy and admiration, especially of her gorgeous red sponge-painted wall. Athenais has a lovely clean-lined one as well.
Me?
Well, I have two spaces. Here's my downstairs isolation cell (no internet access) where srs writting gets done:
It's a window seat, and I am a total sucker for window seats (one of the reasons we bought the house, the main one being a room big enough for the 10x4' table). This is where I write in the mornings, when the house is quiet.
It doesn't look nearly as cluttered as it actually is, due to my not being able to show the full space. Wait, this is what it looks like from my side (note clutter):
And here's my upstairs writing space--I do have a sponge-painted wall behind it, in 'colours left over from the painters'.
I guess 'comfortable clutter' is about the kindest I can say, here.
Other writey stuff: I'm thinking of trying NaNoWriMo next month. This is my carrot (or is it the stick?) for finishing the second draft of Willow Knot this month and getting it to betas. Which reminds me I should confirm who still wants to beta it, considering that it's getting up to 110k (ah, the heady days when I groaned about it reaching 90k, dear dead days that they were when I was young).
So. If I don't finish the second draft, which includes cleaning up the new material enough that I'm not consumed with embarrassment about someone else seeing it, by the end of October, I can't do NaNo. So swear I.
But if I do get that done, I can play NaNo for the month of not looking at Willow Knot and getting fresh eyes.
This weekend I got the 'queen comes back from the dead' scene written, and revised the confrontation between Myl and one of her ladies-in-waiting. The lady has fallen ill and whispers are going around that she's been bewitched, and what did happen to Myl's brother anyways, hm?
I was aiming for drama, but. The chief lady-in-waiting, Havoisie, who's otherwise a bit of a self-important figure of fun, asked the stricken one just what was wrong with her. On hearing the list of symptoms, she sniffed and said 'You're not bewitched, you're with child. And if you think the queen had aught to do with that, your mother shouldn't have let you out alone.'
So Myl doesn't get a big dramatic moment. Sigh. But this may be better.
Next weekend I'll be at VCon, the Vancouver Science Fiction Convention, guest of honour Peter Beagle.
I hope I can get the subplot about the Lusantia refugees and the guilds all tucked in by then.
Me?
Well, I have two spaces. Here's my downstairs isolation cell (no internet access) where srs writting gets done:
It's a window seat, and I am a total sucker for window seats (one of the reasons we bought the house, the main one being a room big enough for the 10x4' table). This is where I write in the mornings, when the house is quiet.
It doesn't look nearly as cluttered as it actually is, due to my not being able to show the full space. Wait, this is what it looks like from my side (note clutter):
And here's my upstairs writing space--I do have a sponge-painted wall behind it, in 'colours left over from the painters'.
I guess 'comfortable clutter' is about the kindest I can say, here.
Other writey stuff: I'm thinking of trying NaNoWriMo next month. This is my carrot (or is it the stick?) for finishing the second draft of Willow Knot this month and getting it to betas. Which reminds me I should confirm who still wants to beta it, considering that it's getting up to 110k (ah, the heady days when I groaned about it reaching 90k, dear dead days that they were when I was young).
So. If I don't finish the second draft, which includes cleaning up the new material enough that I'm not consumed with embarrassment about someone else seeing it, by the end of October, I can't do NaNo. So swear I.
But if I do get that done, I can play NaNo for the month of not looking at Willow Knot and getting fresh eyes.
This weekend I got the 'queen comes back from the dead' scene written, and revised the confrontation between Myl and one of her ladies-in-waiting. The lady has fallen ill and whispers are going around that she's been bewitched, and what did happen to Myl's brother anyways, hm?
I was aiming for drama, but. The chief lady-in-waiting, Havoisie, who's otherwise a bit of a self-important figure of fun, asked the stricken one just what was wrong with her. On hearing the list of symptoms, she sniffed and said 'You're not bewitched, you're with child. And if you think the queen had aught to do with that, your mother shouldn't have let you out alone.'
So Myl doesn't get a big dramatic moment. Sigh. But this may be better.
Next weekend I'll be at VCon, the Vancouver Science Fiction Convention, guest of honour Peter Beagle.
I hope I can get the subplot about the Lusantia refugees and the guilds all tucked in by then.
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