cherry crow children, the playlist

 cherry crow children, journal  No Responses »
May 172013
 
The Unstrung Harp – Completed Draft; text and image from Edward Gorey's "The Unstrung Harp", icon created by me

Having finished the cherry crow children story (for certain values of finished), I find myself unable to concentrate particularly well. Coherency is not my strong point right now. It's taken me the last three days to pack, in fits and starts and indecisions, for our overnight stay in Sydney this weekend.

So in lieu of intelligent content, I shall share with you the playlist to which I wrote the cherry crow children.

The official list is over at my last.fm profile.

Unofficially, the playlist was pretty much always drowned out by Squawk. Sometime during the last month she discovered the pram pig, which plays a new song every time you tug on its feet:

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I'd take the damn thing off her, but she giggles and grins at it so much I don't have the heart.

why is there no fire? why aren't there the makings of one?

 cherry crow children, journal, writing life  No Responses »
May 132013
 
The Unstrung Harp – Drafting; text and image from Edward Gorey's "The Unstrung Harp", icon created by me

On Saturday I decided I had No More Time. So while the pterosaur did his diligent best to look after Squawk and ensure she didn't try to feed tooooo often, I sat myself down in front of the laptop and deathmarched the cherry crow children story.

I sat down at 10am. There were breaks (Squawk did require feeding, after all, and bathing and putting to bed, and a couple of times my brain required ten minutes to whinge/vent/whine/tantrum/daze out), but by and large it was me and the desk/couch and the laptop and my ipod and the sheer force of my will.

I wrote the ending at 1am. It hurt. I have no actual idea, even today, what is on the page. I can't bear to look. I simply emailed my publisher the attachment accompanied by the sentence: "I have literally not checked the Scrivener export to make sure it's not gibberish."

Because professional is how I roll. Clearly.1

Yesterday and today, I've been, in the words of Gorey, conscious, but very little more.

Turns out, part of the problem I was having with this story was that I was trying to cram what turned out to be 21,000 words of story into only 12,000 words. (The fact that what I considered to be the inciting incident kept happening at the 7,000 mark should perhaps have been my first clue. When I couldn't collapse that 7,000 down into anything leaner than 2,000? Another clue.)

The other part of the problem, of course, was trying to write around a baby. Who just happened to roll her 3-month and 4-month growth spurts in together, with a head-cold2 in the middle of it all for shits and giggles. Did you know the 4 month growth spurt is renowned for making parents want to walk in front of oncoming traffic? Neither did I. I swear it's like the faeries passed by one night and swapped the baby for a changeling. The effing happiest changeling in the world, who only wants to gaze adoringly at people and make them laugh, but SHE WILL NOT SLEEP. EVER. AGAIN.

If you'll excuse me, I'm afraid I need to collapse now. And then start work on the next story.

  1. In my defense, I would ordinarily hide from the manuscript for at least a week, before doing a final edit, and then maybe even hiding it for another week before handing it in. However, I'm on a tight deadline, and I have my publisher's permission to misbehave just this once. [↩]
  2. A head cold may not sound like much of a problem. But in the shit I never knew department, turns out babies are obligate nose breathers. And if their little nose is too congested to breathe through, not only can they not breathe, they can't feed. Or sleep. They can, however, cry. [↩]

ideas breed on ideas

 ideas breed on ideas  cherry crow children, journal  2 Responses »
May 022013
 
image courtesy of xkcd.com (http://xkcd.com/470/)

GUYS, (I THINK) I KNOW HOW TO GET TO THE END OF THIS STORY.

I am so relieved. I was beginning to wonder if I didn't have a workable idea at all. Turns out it was simply a case of exhaustion and time poverty. Getting a break on that front has given me the valuable thinking time I needed to get some ideas breeding.1

Now I just need to actually churn the words out (and therein discover precisely how much I still don't know), and hope the story passes muster.

  1. Which is not to say Squawk is sleeping any better. She's not. It's just that during the days she's currently being babysat by her Nanna so I can focus on wordcraft. [↩]

only how many months late?

 only how many months late?  cherry crow children, journal, writing life  No Responses »
Apr 302013
 
Sesame Street Martians (phone)

GUYS, I KNOW THE END OF THIS STORY.

(This story being the cherry crow children).1

Now I just have to get there. I don't actually know that bit. Yet.

  1. I'm scared to stop and count how many words I've written, thrown out, dragged back in, rewritten, edited, revised, and just generally stared at. Least efficient process ever. [↩]

my kingdom for some meaning

 my kingdom for some meaning  journal  4 Responses »
Mar 282013
 
Luke-Chueh_Wrestling-With-Demons-Big

I've taken to singing. All the effing time.

I have songs about burps (they're nasty); nappy changes (they're awesome); boredom grizzles; the fear of sleeping; the necessity of sleeping; the insidious and all-too-easily-missed-or-mistaken nature of weariness; socks that won't stay on; the loveliness of whichever drink bottle, chandelier or featureless wall she currently finds fascinating — you name it, I've probably sung about it. An awful lot of my songs are, lately, to the tune of "If you're happy and you know it…"

I am so. utterly. sick. of myself.

Aurealis!

 announcements, first they came, journal  6 Responses »
Mar 212013
 
Aurealis Awards - Finalist - for Web

Squawk woke me at 5am this morning (needing moral support to make it through a fart — we both survived physically unscathed, despite her fears to the contrary), and as I always do I checked my phone. My phone is my brain these days. I can't tell if she's really hungry or just fussing unless I know what time it is now and what time it was that she last ate, and yes, I know I have a brain for just this circumstance but did you know brains don't function quite so awesomely after a few days (let alone months) of sleep deprivation?

Anyrate, that's all beside the point, because in checking my phone I found not only the time, but a rather attention-grabbing tweet:

Of course I then had to google and you guys:

AA2012finalist

"First They Came…" has been short-listed for an Aurealis Award!

I am so chuffed that even though I got Squawk safely back to sleep, and even though you must always, always, always sleep when the baby is sleeping, I haven't been able to close my eyes for the buzzing in my blood. I pretty much currently look like this (sans the rabbits):

I can't lie: this photo was taken well before hearing the news. I really do get this excited by finding Red Tulip Elegant Rabbits in white chocolate. Especially since my local supermarket only started stocking Easter chocolate a week ago and they've elected not to stock the white one at all, even though it's clearly and obviously the best.

I can't lie: this photo was taken well before hearing the news. I really do get this excited by finding Red Tulip Elegant Rabbits in white chocolate. Especially since my local supermarket only started stocking Easter chocolate a week ago (omg why you make me wait so long?) and they've treacherously elected not to stock the white one at all (omg why you hate me, coles?).

 Posted by at 6:33 am  Tagged with:

Quietly, Gently, Quietly

 first they came, journal  2 Responses »
Mar 122013
 
8299682569_f3b2d0e08c_q

The last week has been somewhat of the hard-slog variety, for a variety of baby-related reasons. Or rather, for a variety of baby-modified reasons. Heat waves aren't fun at the best of times, especially when you don't have air conditioning (and our place doesn't even have access to the cooling southerly breezes) — but when you're cuddling a baby for an average of 50 minutes of every hour, it gets even less so. Similarly, RSI is whimper-making, but when it's caused and aggravated by constantly picking up and holding and settling and soothing and putting down a baby, and there's simply no option of ceasing that activity… Well, you get the picture.

I'm currently wearing a splinted brace on each wrist, a compression band on my right forearm to alleviate the tennis elbow, and I think I need to add a brace to my left knee as well. I'm more neoprene now than woman…

But, to balance things out, the world has been sending me happy-making news regarding my story, "First They Came…". There's some news I'm not yet at liberty to discuss, but among that I can talk about is this wondrous review by Tsana Dolichva:

A really beautiful story that subverts expectation in unexpected ways. It started as a tale of a Melbourne in which shyness had been classed a disease, but it ended as so much more.

…I know which future Twelve Planet collection I'm most looking forward to now.

The story has also been nominated for a Ditmar, and I have to admit the thought of anybody reckoning the story as worthy of attention makes me stupidly happy. (For those keeping count, it's also eligible for the Chronos Awards.)

Given its theme, it seems supremely fitting that the way this story is gathering attention is quietly, gently, quietly.

Dragonfly
Dragonfly, a photo by Moyan_Brenn on Flickr.
 Posted by at 1:17 pm  Tagged with:
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