house of cards

 journal, shaping lily, writing life  Comments Off
Jul 142009
 

Last night I stared at "Shaping Lily" with my edit letter in mind, and wondered if it's possible to fix what needs fixing without pulling the story to pieces.

It was a totally vain endeavour, of course, and I knew this at the time as well, but it appears to be part of my process. There is a point in my process — just after I've received feedback on a story but before I've actually started any (further) revisions — when the story hangs in the balance. A point wherein I basically sit staring at the story, hesitating, thinking a lot but achieving nothing. Or nothing material, at least.

Because as soon as I start — as soon as I select a single thread on which to work — the entire story will unravel and in the process a whole slew of other things that require fixing will fall out, and what was once a story will become instead a mess of shredded words scattered haphazardly over my desk. And I will have to examine every word, singly and in context, yet one more time, as I try to weave it all (seamlessly!) back into a cohesive narrative.1

All that sitting and staring has its place as well, however. It's a moment of waiting, of zen before the battle frenzy, which fixes the big picture in mind before I get lost in the minutiae.

Which is what it's time to do now.

  1. This metaphor would probably be much stronger if I knew anything at all about sewing, or weaving, or knitting. [↩]

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? [↩]

hour upon hour of motivation fail

 journal, writing life  Comments Off
May 122009
 

Today I mailed in my electoral enrolment details, officially changing my address to the state of Victoria. On Thursday I have an appointment to transfer my licence from a NSW one to a Victorian one, and to transfer the car's registration likewise. This is it, people: after Thursday it's official. This is no longer just some kind of cheap version of an international working holiday visa.

I had a visit from my family over the weekend, which resulted in the greatest steady consumption of alcohol I have enjoyed since arriving in Melbourne. (My family: we drink to survive each other's company.) Clearly I'm going to have to step up my game when it comes to socialising down here. Do you know, I still don't know the location of (m)any watering holes? That's an appalling lapse of judgement.

The new plan for the writing routine, namely dropping into the library after work, has hit the week-two snag. It's always week two that trips me up. (Sometimes week two is actually week three. As in this case. But I'm sure my point stands, provided you define week two as "the novelty has worn off, but the habit hasn't quite worn in". Which, I'll grant you, is very different to the standard "the second week" definition normally applied to week two. Yeah, my head. I don't make the rules, I just live inside it as best I can.) This week I have hit the I-don't-wanna's, and it's a bit of a slog to convince myself on leaving the dayjob that I really do want to walk to the library and sit down and start working on something else instead of going home and sitting in front of the tv and doing nothing. Meh. Here's hoping the habit wears in quickly.

Still, I got my words and change today, in time to go and see an evening session of Wolverine, which … yeah. About that.

like finding shapes in the clouds

 journal, writing life  Comments Off
May 042009
 

So far, the new plan appears to be dropping in to the local library after work. It's survived first contact, but then my new writing routines rarely hit a snag in the first few days. It's the second week that gets tricksome, usually. Oh well. We shall see.

I've been sitting through a fair few classroom-style lectures of late, as part of the training for the new dayjob. To keep my mind ticking over and listening actively, I draw while I'm listening. Some of these absent-minded little drawings are getting quite elaborate.

This is one of the first ones:

20090421

I can see an echidna, curled up around its own stomach, at the left of that one. And I'm quite fond of the warped smiley face towards the right.

time for a new plan

 journal, writing life  4 Responses »
Apr 302009
 

Today, I admitted defeat. I've been getting up at 5 a.m. to get an hour's writing in before the dayjob takes over. It's been working okay (when I'm disciplined enough not to check my email, that is), but it's been chilly enough that I've been working from bed to keep warm. This morning, however,1 it was too cold to even THINK about sitting up at 5 a.m. For that matter, it was actually too cold to move. I tested the air with a single ear, but quickly tucked my head back under the blankets when I instantly lost all sensation in said exposed ear. Consequently, there was no writing this morning.

So, time for a new plan.

Buggered if I know what it will be, though.

In the meantime, my crazy-talented brother (one of my crazy-talented brothers, to be more precise) has written a game for the iphone: it's called AAA Gun Club.

My mother tells me she's been using it to tease amuse the cats: they look for the spent cartridges which they can hear falling to the floor. Hours of fun for the whole family! (Don't let my irreverance fool you. When I googled last night it was ranking among the top downloads of iTunes UK store. I'm just not entirely sure what to tell you because I don't have an iPhone. But I'm not bitter about that, not in the least, oh no, why do you ask?)

  1. coldest night in April in 52 years, I'm told — I haven't googled to check [↩]

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 [↩]

you mean i have to come up with a title as well?

 journal  2 Responses »
Mar 122009
 

Stupid o'clock hurt just as much today, but it was nonetheless a smidge easier. It is just possible I might be settling into a routine. Huzzah! (About time!) Of course, my new routine means I'm yawning from about midday onward, and I'm crawling into bed at ludicrous o'clock in the evening, when everyone else is just about starting to wind down and thinking about phoning me to catch up. So there are some issues. But the getting of words always comes with issues of one kind or another.

In non-writing news, I'm not sure if it's just the learning, to which I've always been partial, or the pedantry, to which I've always had a predilection, but the new dayjob… is interesting. :shock: (And huzzah!)

Right, back to the getting of words.

this is the part where i start making no sense during a conversation

 journal, talatu, writing life  6 Responses »
Jan 162009
 

A productive day on the short story today; I finally, after days of false starts, feel like I'm getting somewhere. (Did I mention I think outlining in advance is much more efficient? I did, didn't I? Although, to be fair to my poor beleaguered brain, this story is not entirely without (my kind of) outline. I know the characters, and their motivations, and I know the arc of the story. It just wasn't flowing.)

I've hit the end of the first third, and this is the dangerous time. This is the time when the world-building starts to reinforce itself and remind me I need to actually include it in the story, not just in my head. The characters start doing things which remind me I haven't foreshadowed that particular motivation yet, oops. The plot starts to hang on a few threads I'd meant to set up, honestly, I knew I meant to, I just got sidetracked.

Do you see the danger? This is the point in the story when I want to go back and start revising. And I am not allowed to, on pain of never finishing a story death.

This is the point where I start racing, wanting to get to the end so I can revise, and simultaneously I start toying with the idea of just tweaking this paragraph, just this section, just this whole manuscript so far. Because I hate the idea of the start of the story being broken, and not matching the ending, and what if I do forget the changes I need to incorporate, even though I've just taken the time to write myself a copious note in the margin?1 I've even toyed with the idea of letting myself write two drafts of this story simultaneously, writing the first draft and then, as a reward once I'd hit the day's quota, opening a fresh copy and revising as I go.2

Also, I am really, really tempted to name this story after the lyrics in a Cyndi Lauper song. That would be wrong, wouldn't it? It could also be expensive, which would definitely make it wrong.3

  1. This is not entirely an irrational fear. I've written myself some very strange notes in the margin in my time. I swear I thought they all made sense at the time, but that does not always mean they make sense on the second pass. At least short stories generally have less time between passes, so there's more chance I'll remember. [↩]
  2. Writers really is nuts. Who would think that's a reward? [↩]
  3. But I still wanna. [↩]

i bet i'll give up before it's written

 journal, writing life  3 Responses »
Jan 142009
 

In a move that surprises absolutely no one but me, I have come to a decision: outlines are not my style.

Seriously, now, stop laughing.

I would love to be one of those writers who outlines; it seems ever so much more efficient and streamlined a process than my own, which is to know a high point or two, to muddle through a draft of the manuscript which could more correctly be called a befuddlement of contradictory notes to myself, and then tear my hair out on revising said befuddlement into something approaching a story. Outlining would be much, much quicker, and less damaging on my hair.

It is with some irony, therefore, that Diana Peterfreund chose the very day I made this decision to post a tutorial on writing fiction synopses.

Here I am, trying to come to terms with my utter inability to plan a story in advance, doing my best to resign myself to the lengthy process that does work for me, and she goes and makes writing a synopsis sound easy. Attractive. Fun!

No fair. (And, er, yes, I will be trying out her advice by writing a not-a-synopsis of the next novel before I write said next novel. Because have I mentioned I'd love to be one of those writers who can outline?)

and to top it off, it's cicada season

 shadow bound, shadow queen, writing life  Comments Off
Dec 162008
 

I'm nose-deep in the final stretch of the current round of edits1 on Pledged, and it's a good thing that my A&U sent me my author's copies of Shdadow Queen because I kid you not, I can't remember the story. Oh, I know the gist, but the details, the details are killing me. I have no idea which of the myriad details of the myriad versions made it into the final published copy. Is this normal? It's probably normal. Let's at least all pretend it's normal.

In other news, my listening history on Last.FM is really taking a beating now that I can't have iTunes running. Plus, it's really quiet-like, and hard to concentrate. Also, and here's a sign of just how much I'd come to rely on iTunes for my music, I'm currently not coping with the fact that my CD player only plays one CD at a time. That's only 50-70 minutes of music, and then I have to physically get up and change the CD. Oh, the humanity!

  1. For those keeping track at home, or attempting to, this would be what I call the gamma draft, or the draft which, when completed, can be shown to my editor [↩]
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