it's alive!

 journal, the wages of honey, writing life  2 Responses »
Mar 132011
 

You guys, I've done it: I've finished the thorn girls short story.

And by short I mean 9,156 / 10,750 words (depending on whether you count by human rules or printer's rule), so, um, yeah, not exactly short. In fact, it's what I affectionately like to call one of those unsellable lengths between a short story and a novel.

And by finished I mean I have a working first draft that I'm not ashamed to show people, and will doubtless need more work but I'm pretty sure said work, from this point on, will be polishing only, not structural. (Please, please, please let it not need any more structural work. This story has been taken apart and put back into exactly the same shape only different so many times I've lost count. Not to mention numerous brain cells in the process.)

This poor little frankenstein of a story was first started halfway through 2007, which takes a bit of believing even for me. I always forget that writing a short story is no quicker for me than writing a novel — in fact sometimes it's slower. Although in all honesty a great deal of the slowness in this case had to do with the story being constantly temporarily abandoned in favour of higher priorities, such as the editing passes on Shadow Queen and Shadow Bound.

There's something heady about the moment you know you have an actual draft, a "finished" draft. Somewhat akin to the moment you pull your hands back from adding the final card to a house of cards, holding your breath for fear of triggering the collapse and realising no, it's steady.

If I had the means on hand, I would totally be getting celebratorily drunk right now.

you know that second book you promised…?

 journal, shadow bound  2 Responses »
Jan 012009
 

Aaaaannnnd…..book.

Or at least, close enough to call it book. I still need to go through and check my chapter lengths, because I have a feeling (er, I know) they got dangerously out of control in the second half of the book, what with all the revisioning. I have a nasty habit of not bothering with scene or chapter breaks. Ludicrously short or asphyxiation-inducingly long, that's how I write if left to my own devices.

Those of you who've read Shadow Queen will have a hint what I'm talking about, because you'll have noticed the book is basically ONE SCENE with convenient page breaks thrown in, courtesy of my editor (because a) she's nice and b) she didn't want my reading public to fall over dead, or alternatively to hunt me down and beat me over the head with a book that didn't let you get any sleep because you couldn't find a convenient place to stop reading). Trust me when I say my beta readers have suffered.

I did somehow manage to add over 10,000 words to this draft. That's proper words, not manuscript-words: I added nearly 20,000 of the latter. Luckily, I also cut almost as much as I added, so the book is currently at 120,000 manuscript words, or 100,000 actual words, so right on target. (Although a 20% discrepancy between actual and manuscript count bugs me. That's a lot of white space. But perhaps the rechaptering will fix that.)

It occurs to me the problems I was having with the previous drafts of this novel might have been because I, um, skipped bits. Just maybe.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I plan to celebrate. By doing no novel writing whatsoever for the rest of the night rechaptering. (Yeah, I know…)

is it the apocalypse yet…?

 journal, shadow queen, writing life  2 Responses »
Jul 222008
 

Right, yes, hello…where were we?

There is a stack of paper 400+ pages thick sitting beside me, otherwise known as the copyedited manuscript, which I am tentatively calling done. Barring acts of random deities, genius ideas at two am, a plague of mice ravenous for a meal entirely of paper, or what-have-you, this stack of paper will be going in the post … er, soon. I missed today's post, and am flying to Melbourne for the day tomorrow for dayjob purposes. What do you think? Is it worth the agony of carting the stack on the plane and finding a post office in Melbourne, or do I attempt to make it to the post office on Thursday, in between knocking off work and closing time? Dilemmas, dilemmas.

The malware issue is not fixed, precisely, but I have narrowed in on the issue. I have found the registry key which was changed, but I may or may not have found whatever snippet of code did the changing. Just in case I didn't find it, I have set the firewall to be extra-vigilant at monitoring that set of registry keys. At any rate, I have not been plagued by hijacked websites for a whole day, which is promising. And a relief, because I was very, very close to reformatting the hard drive and resorting to a clean install.

There are probably other things, but I am quite braindead right now. So instead, have a photo:

I took this snap on my walk in to work about a month ago now. It had been raining and drizzling for over a week, and the colour in the sky as the sun cleared the hills was breathtaking.

dreams of ice and wings

 journal, shadow queen  1 Response »
Jul 032008
 

The copyedit is dead done, long live the copyedit!

At this point I'm honestly not sure I could tell the difference between my novel, and 300 pages of the letter k. Luckily I have an editor who can tell the difference, and is not rendered loopy by the editing process the way I am.

Today…today I get the day off.

Only… I'm not quite sure what to do with all this time. And I have a few stories and novels that still need work, you see… I suspect I shall have to use episodes of Doctor Who to enforce a rest, but you know, that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make.

In other news, today is also my grandparent's 60th wedding anniversary.

60 years!

This seems to me an incredible achievement, given I have a habit of running out of patience and tolerance with people much sooner than 60 years, and a temper which sees people run out of patience and tolerance with me much sooner than 60 years.

So here's to you, Cyberpop and not-so-cyber Nan.

we now return you to your scheduled programming

 journal  1 Response »
Mar 072008
 

Right. Hi there. This is me, marginally returned from the brink of lunacy. At least, the incidence of seagull songs seems to be decreasing, steadily if not swiftly. 1

I have mailed the manuscript to my agent and my beta readers, and threatened them with Nasty Things if they so much as think of returning it too soon, and I have spent the past couple of days desperately avoiding the computer. I say desperately, because it was like crash withdrawal. What do people who don't write do with all that time?

In the interim, my cousin is beleaguered by a tricksome assignment. She wants my help but, given that my brain is broken, I thought she might get better help from the rest of you.

So, here's the assignment question:

think of a speculative technological object or device that you might propose to enhance or restrict the capacity of the human body. It may be serious, experimental or fantastic. It can be, but does not have to be, possible within the realms of current technology. It may extend, combine or depart from current technology devices (but should not to simply augment a ubiquitous technology such as a mobile phone or mp3 player). The representations that you will produce will all relate to this object or device.

Have at it. My suggestions were a jetpack, an amoeba bed which removes the need to eat (and therefore cook, clean up after cooking, plan the next meal, and shop for food)2, and I forget the third one, but there was a third one, and by golly it was brilliant. Oh! No, I remember. It was a dockable brain. A computer in my head.

Have at it, people. The more fantastic the better. What have you always wanted in the future?

  1. Y'all think I'm joking about the seagull singing, but honest to god I'm not. I even got so trashed by the whole novel-writing-revising process that I started my godawful yawping at the dayjob last week. Way to act professional. At least I had the sense not to … 'perform' in front of the patients. [↩]
  2. Plus, you could still overeat and indulge by taking a nap — seriously, what is NOT TO LOVE about that? [↩]

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. [↩]

name that book! (please?)

 journal, novels, shadow bound, shadow queen, writing life  3 Responses »
Nov 132007
 

Yesterday I was cursing myself and calling myself all kinds of stupid for not writing down the ending.

Today I found the slips of paper on which I'd written down the ending. I'd only gone and slipped them inside my on-the-go notebook, so I could work on the novel at any convenient time, hadn't I.

Note to self: organisation is your friend. Truly. Not just a great and satisfying way to procrastinate.

Also today I wrote the very, very last words of the current novel. For those of you who've read the novel preceding: it's Dieter, being cheeky. Now all I have to do is write the words to get me to the end.

I am also trying — so far unsuccessfully — to come up with a title for both the current novel, and the preceding novel. Oh, and a title for the two as a set, since they're a single story in two volumes.

As is my usual luck with titles, I got nothing. Oh well, back to brainstorming.

-30-

 journal, shadow queen  7 Responses »
Sep 282006
 

And… book.

I think, anyway. The problem is though, I ended with the climax. No denouement, no catharsis. Now the book is really half of a story, in that there's a sequel (this time I was clever enough to stop at a more commercial length ;) ), so it's normal for not everything to be tied up. Heck, it's normal even for a stand-alone for not everything to be tied up. But ending on the climax feels… weird.

I tried to write a denouement. Wrote 700 words, deleted them. Wrote 1400 words, deleted them. The problem is, any scene I come up with now is actually starting new stuff rather than tying up old stuff, so it all feels like it belongs in the next book.

Rather than worry about it needlessly, I've typed -30- into the manuscript, and right under that a little note to myself: um, catharsis, maybe? You know, for those of us who hate cliffhanger endings?. And I'll worry about that in the revision.

But for now! Book!

this writing is a funny thing, really

 journal, shadow queen, snakeskin  4 Responses »
Sep 032006
 

The week six clarion story what desperately needs a title is finished. Well, except for the title. This is an immense relief, and I can only anticipate this relief extending into bliss when I find a title I like. (Or even a title at all.) So far I'm looking for quotes, because I think this story needs a lyrical title, but nothing appropriate is springing to mind. Quick, what's a good title for a story with faeries, skin-cookies, and bargains gone awry? I got nuffin.

In order to finish said story by the end of August, I had to put aside the novel for a week. Boy, was that a mistake. When I picked it up again on Friday, I'd forgotten everything. I'd left off in the middle of a scene that should be relatively easy to pick up again: my characters were arguing and there's nothing my characters like more than slinging around a bit of invective and accusations of snivelly natures. So it shoulda been easy to get going again, right? Um, yeah.

Fortunately, today being Sunday, I decided to start the day writing, and to stay tucked up in bed at the same time, and let's just say I've caught up a ways. Enough that I can take time off to do inconsequential things such as, you know, shower. Shop for cat food. Those sort of trivialities.

Unfortunately (for me) I'm going to have to hit 1500 words a day on the novel to get it finished this month as planned. Provided the novel comes in at or under 100,000 words; if it goes over, there's no way I'm finishing this month. 1500 words a day is a little difficult for me, with this novel, so forgive me if things go a bit silent at times.