'tis the season…

 asides, novels, shadow bound  1 Response »
Dec 232007
 

…to be absent from the blog. Sorry about that. I've had my head buried in fixing the plot, and that always leaves me silent.

I have finished the read-through and, as I suspected, I left out half the story. (Okay, maybe not half, as such. I do like to exaggerate.) Inserting the missing half while not inflating the word count might, in any other circumstance, prove difficult — but luckily (ha!), I appear to have doubled up on story as well, so cutting the extraneous should make everything balance out. That's the plan, anyway. My beta drafts always tend to grow. We'll see if this one bucks the pattern or not.

In the meantime, there is little to no chance I'll remember to update the blog between now and the new year, so have a great one, and I'll see you all on the flip side.

where were you when we took calais?

 journal, novels, shadow bound  2 Responses »
Dec 112007
 

As of Sunday night, the abysmal draft is done, or at least abandoned. From here on in, it's revision all the way, and an attempt to construct a viable beta draft.

Finishing the abysmal draft always leaves me malcontent and cranky, so I spent most of Monday stamping around and scowling. My head is full of nothing but the novel, only the novel is too big to fit. I can catalogue every flaw (real and imagined) in this draft, and I am itching to get to fixing them now, only I cannot start now, I must wait. I must read through the manuscript, to make sure my outline (which currently I stopped recording at about the sixth scene) is complete. I must contemplate the outline to ensure it makes sense and isn't entirely full of holes.1 I must scribble all the notes I will doubtless take during this process into the manuscript itself so that, come revision, I can start to tease this into its right and proper shape. Or pound it into a useless blob. One or t'other.

Today has been a little better: I've segued from being angry and itching to work on the manuscript into a calmer mood. I am also devouring books again, because I tend to starve myself of other people's writing when I'm working on an abysmal draft. I think one more night off should do the trick, and tomorrow I can start the read-through in the right frame of mind: not in the fever-flush of finishing which makes me rushrushrush, but not yet sunk into the lassitude which makes me care diddly-squat about this one because, hey, there's time.

In the meantime, I have some Asimov, Bill Bryson, and whatever's lurking under them to read, and only a single afternoon to enjoy it guilt-free.

  1. Or rather, I need to note where it is full of holes, and devise fixes. Same difference. Sorta. [↩]

i suppose i could call it an interesting day

 journal, novels, shadow bound, writing life  Comments Off
Dec 082007
 

After yet another storm last night which knocked the clocks out halfway through the night, there was a very real danger (of which, being asleep, I was blissfully unaware) that I would not in fact stumble out of bed in time to get to work.

Thanks to my neighbour's distinctly glorious (and singularly extensive) bout of retching, however, I did manage to wake in time. Not my first choice of early-morning serenade, I have to say. I would feel sorry for my neighbour, if only they didn't make my life hell in other ways; as it is, feeling amused by their pain was about the only reason I didn't hurl my non-functioning alarm clock at their bathroom window.

In case you're wondering, all these storms are a touch unseasonable, yes. Round about this time of year we're usually heading into bushfire season. In fact, round about this time last year, I was sitting at work, watching the sky turn the black and cracked red of hot embers, and thinking, "That one's gotta be close…" It was. It was one (long) building away. I guess thunder storms and lots of rain is better than bushfires.

Blerk. In rather better news, though, thanks to a very liberal sprinkling of the comment insert sheer genius here!, I think I only have one actual scene left to write before the abysmal draft is done, and I can start trying to insert scene and chapter breaks and making sense out of the narrative and turning said draft into an actual story. I can but hope, anyway.

Wish me luck. I'm going in.

there's a purr of a pigeon to break the still of day

 journal, novels, shadow bound  Comments Off
Dec 052007
 

Another storm, another blackout. I swear, I must live connected to the worst exchange of the worst substation in town. For srs. Other places have trees and possums and yet manage to go entire years without blackouts. Me? If I don't lose power once a month, I may start to believe the whole of Australia has been kidnapped by aliens and translocated somewhere. Somewhere with an unquenchable supply of electrons. In which case I would probably go ravening mad in search of the broadband.

It would not be pretty.

Yesterday, beavering away on the laptop (because if lightning strikes the house, that, my friends, will still keep working and not lose me my meagre words), I decided that I hate this draft so much it's time to simply finish the sucker. Transitions? Transitions shall not even be mentioned. I am writing the paltry scenelets I know, leaving enormous markers for myself which basically note something that makes sense here, m'kay?, and calling it done. This is partly because the manuscript is in such a mess it's actually quite hard to write an ending that ties everything up, since I seem to have neglected to write a goodly portion of the everything. So, in an ugly parody of "write what you know" (ha!), I shall indeed. And only that.

Then I get to go back to the start and take the abysmal draft (which can more rightly be described as an incredibly inefficient outline without any, you know, outline), and do it all again. This time with less suck.

Remarkably, feel moody, and the blogosphere shall deliver: agent Nephele Tempest describes writer's blues, and points to Laura Anne Gilman's post on the same, which just about sums up my mood over the past whenever. (Time blurs a bit in that moodset. It's a side-effect of the brooding.)

five three things make a post

 journal, writing life  1 Response »
Dec 032007
 

I have had "Space Oddity" running through my head for days and days and days on end…

Over the past couple of days, I've been able to muck around drawing maps and (this is the ultra-cool part) call it "work". Writing. Best job evah. Apart from the constant neuroses, that is.

I am sitting at work, watching the water pour in under the door, wondering when the thunder and lightning will stop, and hoping the hail does not damage my poor car too much. I am also wondering precisely how I will get to my car without tripling my weight in water absorption, since I was clever and left my umbrella in the car, where it will be, of course, most useful.

is that a stick in your balustrading…?

 journal  6 Responses »
Nov 292007
 

Came home today to find the biggest stick insect in the world1 hanging out by the rabbit's cage.

stickinsect1.jpg

At first I told myself, no, it's a stick. Really, it's just a stick.

A stick with six perfectly aligned legs, complete with teeny feet clinging to the balustrade. A stick with antennae.

stickinsect2.jpg

You know what's ridiculous? I couldn't actually get up the gumption to stick my hand too close to this fellow, when two weeks ago I had my face only inches away from one of the deadliest land snakes… Granted, the snake was a baby, and allegedly dead at the time, but still… No one ever died from a stick insect. I'm just saying.

  1. Those who live in equatorial regions will probably consider this fellow tiny, or at most average. But any insect longer than my forearm officially qualifies as "biggest in the world", just so you know. [↩]

it leads you here, despite your destination…

 journal, novels, shadow bound, writing life  Comments Off
Nov 272007
 

Thank you, everyone, for your congratulations and your good wishes.

It's been a long month, trying to keep the cat in the bag, and it's an immense relief to be able to speak about it. My daily writing has even picked up — I passed the 1,000 word mark with ease this evening, something which hasn't happened in I really don't want to count how many days weeks.

I'm entering the final slog of the manuscript now; I can tell because I have very little mind for anything else, and, at the same time, very little idea how it will all play out. I know the epilogue (if it remains as an epilogue; anyway, I know the final words), I'm just not entirely sure how to get there. Guess I'll find out. Sooner would be nicer than later, so let's hope today's writing mood continues apace.1

I'm not looking forward to revising this one, because this first draft is a complete and utter mess. There's scenes out of order, I'm nearly four hundred pages in and I still haven't chapterised (actually, in a lot of cases I haven't even scenerised2), not to mention entire subplots missing and characters absent as if they live in a void except when I need them.3 Still, it's entirely possible it won't be as bad as I imagine.4 I have been known to imagine non existent horrors before.

I really should start referring to these novels by at least a working title, shouldn't I?

Writing: Golem Novel the Second (one day it will have a real, grown-up, proper title, I promise)
Reading: Jane Eyre

  1. This whole selling a novel I haven't finished yet is a bit tricky. I think I'm going to have to come up with some new and fantastic writers lies in order to get the draft finished, because all of a sudden "It's okay to write crap! It's a first draft! No one will see it!" isn't quite cutting it. [↩]
  2. hush, yes, that is a word. I say so. [↩]
  3. Another sign I'm near to that elusive ending: I'm thinking about the next project. [↩]
  4. Did you spot it? That, right there, is a lie. It helps me keep writing, so it's allowed to stay. [↩]

ground control to major tom…

 journal, novels, shadow bound, shadow queen  2 Responses »
Nov 212007
 

It turns out that packing up all your belongings and, in the following days, unpacking them all right back where they came from, does not make for blogging (or bloggable) days. It does not make for particularly good writing days, either. I am a creature of habit and routine, and when my routine is askew the writing is harder. Actually, pretty much everything sailed out the window, up to and including eating; the writing probably survived the best of all.

On the bright side, the walls are repainted and shiny clean now, although it is entirely possible the paint fumes are messing with my head, for I am ludicrously tempted to never title another story, ever again. I shall set a minimalist trend. Story #1, followed by Story #2, and so on. Establishing chronology will be ridiculously easy.

Or! I could title them all "Choose Your Own Title". That would work, wouldn't it? It could be a sort of post-modern deconstruction of the storywriting/reading process.

(No, I don't buy it either. I told you the paint fumes were messing with my head.)

 Older Entries