the atlantic is not a damn girl

 away come away, journal, shaping lily  Comments Off
Aug 222009
 

Let it be known that live music is good for the soul.

Now, I'll grant you that seeing Eddy Current Suppression Ring and Tex Perkins in the space of two nights, one of said nights being a school night no less, may have been more than my bio-rhythms were prepared to cope with, and I would have far preferred to get more than 9 hours sleep in the last 57, but…eh. It was worth it. I REGRET NOTHING.

Of course, as a consequence, today has so far been spent playing catch-up on the chores. And, er, lolling upon the couch. Which is how I intend to pass the rest of the afternoon. Although, in the interests of being a somewhat productive member of society, said lolling will be accompanied by words on the faerie novel, and edits on "Shaping Lily". At some point.

Honest.

just your typical glamorous day, really

 away come away, journal, shadow queen, shaping lily  Comments Off
Aug 152009
 

All week I was promised: 20°C on Saturday. And now Saturday is here, and I'm sitting on the couch wearing my fingerless gloves and wrapped in a throw rug, because it is very clearly NOT 20°C. No doubt when I leave the house this afternoon, the wind will sweep itself and all the clouds away to the south and Melbourne will start to bake and I, I will be overdressed and thus I will suffer. This is the natural way of things.

So far this morning, I have managed to wake up at 6:39 (and this is despite not getting to sleep until about 02:30 and where can I lodge a complaint about my bio-rhythms, anyway?) and pick my way through maybe half of the copyedits on "Shaping Lily". Suffice to say I've had better days as far as focus is concerned. Ah well.

Now I think it's time for breakfast.

Before I dive back into wrangling that effing car-crash of a narrative the faerie novel.

ETA: Since the A-format of Shadow Queen should be hitting bookshelves soon, it occurs to me now would be a good time to remind visitors to the blog that you can read the first chapter online for free.

just keep going, dammit

 away come away, journal, the wages of honey, writing life  6 Responses »
Jul 292009
 

Last Saturday, a friend of mine said he might take a break from the novel for a bit, because he wasn't sure quite where it was going, and he didn't like it very much at the moment. And I told him that meant he was most definitely Not Allowed to put the novel aside for a bit. Put a novel down when you don't like it very much, and you run the very real risk of never picking it up again. And the only way to be quite sure of where the novel is going is to actually write it, and see where it takes you. Plenty of time to assess whether it went in the right direction once you've gotten there.

(For those planning-type writers out there, that last snippet of advice is going to sound heinous and dreadful and like telling small children they should totally just run out into the middle of a busy road without looking first, everything will be fine, and for that matter strangers present no danger whatsoever and while we're at it, in the interests of making sure you fit in at school, have you considered smoking? I can only say I'M SORRY, but I don't plan my stories in advance. In fact, writing them in linear fashion is still kinda new to me, and something I'm struggling with, and if I could come up with a substitute analogy for you pre-planning types I would. Honest.)

Anyrate, the point of all the above is this: I have totally spent the past two weeks avoiding my novel. Because I'm not sure quite where it's going. And I don't like it very much at the moment.

I've had all sorts of reasonable and legitimate excuses. Edits on a short story needed to be done.1 Then when those edits were done, there was no point picking up the novel again because edits on Pledged should be landing on my desk soonish, and if I picked up the novel again I'd only have to put it down again. So I picked up a short story instead, because I don't have any finished short stories to submit and perhaps I could work on that. Only I've just hit a point in the short story wherein I'm not sure quite where it's going, and I don't like it very much at the moment AND ARE YOU SENSING A PATTERN, PEOPLE?

Because I sure as heck am. And, quite frankly, I don't like it very much.

The thing is, the middle of a story is always hell. (I have even heard the pre-planning types opine this, although presumably for different reasons.) This is partly why it's not-very-affectionately known as the muddle, among other names.2 And every single time I attempt a story, without fail, I have to learn this lesson about the muddle anew. Every single time I have to remind myself that it's not okay to put the thing down, the key is to get past this section, however I can. Slog through the words until I find a way out; leave a note "And then something genius happens!" and skip ahead; consume some stimulant of choice and stay up all night; try whatever trick has worked in the past and even a few that haven't, because every story is different, but whatever you do: just. keep. going.

So. Time to figure out a trick that will work for the novel.

  1. Okay, that one actually is quite reasonable and legitimate, but in the interests of full disclosure I'm including it. Because it was the excuse I jumped on to start this whole avoidance caper rolling, after all. [↩]
  2. My novels always earn themselves appellations like THAT EFFING CAR-CRASH OF A NARRATIVE around this time. For full impact it must be delivered through tight lips and with narrowed eyes and followed by the phrase WE'RE NOT TALKING ABOUT IT ANY MORE. Which is promptly followed by brooding silence and then, just when my friends have tentatively moved on to another subject, interrupting them with an angst-ridden yawp and the desperate plea MAKE IT WORK WHY IS IT BROKEN PUT IT BACK TOGETHER FOR ME! [↩]

i hate to say it, but you're perfect together

 away come away, journal, writing life  Comments Off
Jul 072009
 

Tactic: set the alarm clock for five minutes later. More sleep!

The world's answering gambit: garbage trucks. Ten minutes earlier. Ugh.

World: 1, Deb: 0.

Bit of a slow effort, writing last night, because I got distracted by playing with Scrivener. I suppose I could argue that I didn't get entirely distracted and skip writing altogether, and it would be a true argument, but a weakish one nonetheless. Bad author. No biscuit. No wonder the world sent me garbage trucks this morning by way of punishment.

Actually, it's occurred to me that I haven't spoken much about my writing on this blog of late. Or, in actual fact, quite some time. I suspect this is because I'm in the alpha draft of the faerie novel, and I'm one of those writers who isn't comfortable talking about a story until I've got something pinned to the page. My alpha drafts are usually shockingly incomplete, the equivalent of snagging a butterfly by the wingtip. It's an imperfect process, to say the least, because at best a few scales are going to shake loose and the snagged butterfly is going to look a little tatty. Sometimes the damn butterfly would rather rip its wing off than be caught, and I'm left with nothing but a ragged handful of dreck.

I would far rather be one of those efficient, organised types who nets the butterfly and pins it through the heart in one go, but of course I'd rather have wings of my own and buckets of gold to boot, for that matter.

i'm going back to the start…

 away come away  4 Responses »
Jul 062009
 

I woke up off-colour yesterday, and felt too sick to do much of anything…so I cranked up Scrivener (at long last) and tried to figure out whether it would work for me.

I'm still undecided. I suspect I erred in attempting to discover how it works while in the middle of a novel, rather than starting fresh. I transferred most of the text of the faerie novel across into a scrivener file, and discovered that Scrivener feels the novel is almost 6,000 words longer than Microsoft Word thinks it is. Interesting… This evening I discovered a second way of counting words in Scrivener,1 which tells me the novel is only 200ish words longer than Microsoft Word's tally. I do not understand yet why Scrivener feels the need to count words in two different realities simultaneously. Or which one I'm supposed to trust.

Either way, I've written basically 50,000 words of the faerie novel so far…and the faeries have only just turned up. That's a whole lotta non-faerie faerie story to start off with there.2

I suspect I'm not going to like the rewrite of this book very much.

But then, that could just be the dreaded muddle talking. Here's hoping, eh?3

  1. using the Project Statistics window, as opposed to the Project Targets window, for those who care [↩]
  2. In my defense, there has been killing while the faeries weren't around. Never let it be said that all my characters survive my stories. [↩]
  3. Now, where did I leave that plot, anyway? [↩]

honest to goodness news

 announcements, away come away, journal, shadow bound, shadow queen  6 Responses »
Jun 182009
 

An email from my publisher today tells me that the mass market paperback version of Shadow Queen should be available for purchase before the end of the year. This means those of you who hate and loathe the trade paperback format, or don't hate it so much as think it's simply too expensive, will have the chance to buy the smaller, cheaper format. Much more suitable for shoving in small bags and reading on buses and trains and planes.

This means the current publication date for the second book, which I've been calling Pledged (but the title is already slated for change), should be hitting shelves around March 2010.

The (first round of) publication edits for Pledged are due to land on my desk inside the next month. At which point I'll probably have to put aside the faerie novel and retreat from the world until they're done, because otherwise they'll never get done and the book won't be out in March because I'll still be slaving away over where to put my commas and everyone who's waiting to find out how on earth Matilde manages to dig herself out of the hole the first book put her in will come and bludgeon me to a paste with their trade paperback versions of the book.1

  1. Except for Tessa, who already knows what happens. But she may join in just in the interests of solidarity, I suppose. [↩]

i'm looking for an interruption

 away come away, journal, the binding, writing life  Comments Off
Apr 182009
 

I've had a handful of questions of late as to what I'm working on, and it's slowly sunk into my addled brain that perhaps I'm not as clear about what's currently eating my brain as I could be.

There's two reasons for this. For one thing, I'm dreadful at titles. This shouldn't be a problem, really, as I do use working titles of a sort, even if it's just as generic as "the faerie novel". But, and this is where the second problem rears its head, maybe I never did get around to explaining the tags and categories I use on my posts.1

On my website, I2 use categories for stories, and tags for the stages of a story's life cycle. So a post which is filed under Shadow Queen and tagged as alpha draft would be about, at least in part, writing the first incarnation of Shadow Queen. Hopefully a quick glance at the archives should clear up any confusion on the tags/categories front.

I realise it does get confusing, particularly when I'm working on more than one manuscript at a time, in which case a post will have multiple tags and categories and it can be tricky to figure out which tag is paired with which category; or when I simply talk in the post about "the book". It also relies on you all understanding what I mean when I say "alpha draft" and "gamma draft" — wait, do you know what I mean when I use those terms? The writers probably do, but the non-writers maybe not. Well, that's a longer explanation, so I'll save that for a later post, if anyone's interested.

In the meantime, I should actually definitively answer the "What are you working on again?" question.

In short, I'm currently working on the alpha draft of the faerie novel, the working title for which is Away, Come Away. This is uncontracted; because I'm new to this writing gig, it's still best for me to finish a novel before I start trying to shop it around.

I'm also, at last, thinking about working on a third book in The Binding series. (I had to take a bit of a break after finishing delivering the second book, to recharge the batteries, which is when I started working on the faerie novel. Variety is as good as a holiday and all that.) By thinking about I mean I've spent a bit of time noodling around with plot ideas, that sort of thing. No actual words have yet been committed to paper or hard drive, which is why this particular book does not even have a working title.

And now, it's probably time to actually write.

  1. If you read the blog through the livejournal feed, I think they all come across as tags, so read the following with that in mind. [↩]
  2. currently — these things are always subject to change [↩]

sometimes alcohol is the best medicine

 away come away, writing life  4 Responses »
Mar 262009
 

Right. Back again. I'll spare you all the details, mainly because I don't want to live through them a second time. Suffice to say things looked bleak for a while there. Not everything has fallen back into place just yet, but I don't think the light at the end of the tunnel is the oncoming train any more, so that's positive.

My writing time vanished out the window in all the panic, so I'm very much looking forward to getting words on paper again. All I've managed in the past week is scrawling one or two sentences on scraps of paper during spare minutes in my lunch break. There are a lot of scraps of paper, but a preliminary sort shows most of them have variations of the same sentence on them. Probably because I have a habit of writing down the last sentence I can remember as a starting point, but I obviously never got past the starting point most days. C'est la vie.

It puts me behind, of course, and I might have to start looking at allocating my writing time from a more financially responsible point of view. The novel I'm working on currently is uncontracted; perhaps it's time to put it aside in favour of one that has a more certain future. I shall ponder the issue. Tomorrow. Or maybe over the weekend.

In the meantime, I have spent a goodly portion of this evening attempting to understand the telephone provider system in Australia. I am baffled. Should it be this hard? Really?

i miss being able to download

 away come away, journal, writing life  2 Responses »
Mar 152009
 

This weekend's adventures in relocation involved the purchasing of white goods (fridge and washing machine; not exciting in the least, but time-consuming). Oh yeah, I live the high life. (Also, payday cannot arrive soon enough.) Thankfully, Tess rescued me from myself today and dragged me through various shopping districts (where I fell in lust with expensive boots and spectacularly failed to purchase any clothing suitable for work, but did find a little black dress) and generally humoured me by laughing at my stories.

Apocalypse update: no more earthquakes, but I have used my umbrella more often in the last 3 days than I have in the last 3 years, so it's possible that Melbourne is now gearing up for floods. I apologise. GET TO THE HIGH GROUND. (Don't say I didn't warn you.)

Update on Spawn: a text message from home informs me that Spawn's favourite movie is currently The Princess Bride. This strikes me as a touch advanced for a two and a half year old, but I admit I know not whereof I speak. Regardless, the girl clearly has great taste.

Fun Research Fact of the day: This morning, as part of research for the novel in progress (the faerie novel, for those of you playing along at home), I stumbled across the wikipedia page of unusual deaths. My favourite (well, one of them) is poor Philitas of Cos, said to have studied false arguments and erroneous word-usage so intensely that he wasted away and starved to death.

oh call my name. you know my name.

 away come away, journal, shadow bound, shadow queen  6 Responses »
Aug 182008
 

I hafta say, the number of people who oppose or fear or distrust the toe sock is a little worrying to me.

If I owned more than the single pair of toe socks, I would wear them every day for weeks and months on end, and treat you all to photographs every day, in the interests of teaching you not to fear, or at the very least wearing you down into submission. Sadly, I only have the one pair, and photos of them are going to get same-ish mighty quick. So you are all off the hook. For now.

I've been doing my best, as per my previous plan, to work on several projects at once. Originally I thought this would only encompass the gamma draft of the sequel to Shadow Queen and the alpha draft of the faerie novel. Life intervened, however, and I added an outline and blurb for a paranormal short(ish) story and the proofs for Shadow Queen to that. Hafta say, this multi-tasking is breaking my brain. Don't quite know how grown-up writers manage it.

I'm also not entirely sure how helpful I'm going to be to my publisher in proofreading Shadow Queen at this point, since I appear to be reading what has been hammered into my head by previous drafts, rather than what is actually on the page.

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