but two miles more and then we rest!

News from the powers that be at Allen & Unwin is that the publication date of Pledged, aka Matilde #2, aka the sequel to Shadow Queen, aka That Book I Have Been Studiously Pretending Does Not Exist, will now be May 2010, not March 2010.

There's a few reasons for the change in schedule, not least of which is that my editor would like to edit the book herself rather than delegate. Truthfully, I'm happy about the change.

Yes, I know it means the book is coming out later, and you all have to wait just that bit longer to find out what happens to Matilde. I'm sorry!

But it will be worth the wait. It was Louise's hard and patient work that quashed all my writer's tics in Shadow Queen, and made my incoherent ramblings look like a narrative, and I'd love her deft touch to carry through to the sequel. I'd rather the book be as strong as I and my editors can make it, and giving the edits the time and attention they need is part of that process.

So May 2010 it is!

In the meantime, I promise to entertain you with stories of how the edits are driving me mad ;-)

21 September 2009 @ 20:21 | 2 Comments

got my fever down

Yesterday, I popped in to a pre-auction inspection. As if I have the money to buy property!1 As if I have the money to buy this particular property! As if I could ever have the know-how to make a bid at an auction or negotiate the tangled thicket that is the purchasing of property — or wrap my head around the very concept of owning land, for that matter.

Rank foolishness.

Said property is less than 5 minutes walk from work, however, and thus it continues to haunt my brain.

In writing news…I think I've converted to Scrivener.

I know this not because I've started using Scrivener in preference to Word for my first drafts (which I have been doing, on and off (more on than off) for the last however long lately), but because over the weekend I took the plunge and actually handed over money for the program. Me! Hand over money for software!2 It must be commitment.

I'm not sure what made me switch, in the end. Probably a whole host of little things which just add up to a far smoother first-drafting experience, because to be honest I haven't even started using the corkboard or outliner in any depth. But I'm loving the typewriter scrolling feature which keeps my text at eye level instead of at the bottom of the screen, and the way everything from notes to pictures to previous drafts is all in the one window.3

But d'you realise what this means? This means I can never go back to a PC. (Or at least, I can never go back to "just" PC.) I HAVE ASSIMILATED. :shock:

  1. Hush, I know no one ever has the money to buy property and everyone borrows from banks and thus the world continues to turn, its impetus fuelled by debt…but you know what I mean. [↩]
  2. I know it doesn't cost much, but that is decidedly beside the point. [↩]
  3. And no, having it neatly organised in Explorer/Finder does not count as having it all in the one window. This is quicker. And definitely betterer. I speak as one who has spent years trying, and jettisoning in favour of Windows/Finder, software designed to keep writing notes organised for me. [↩]

My Favourite Thing (Silverchair — Diorama)

3 September 2009 @ 16:54 | 2 Comments

just keep going, dammit

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! [↩]

29 July 2009 @ 17:55 | 6 Comments

i'm going back to the start…

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? [↩]

The Scientist (Live) (Aimee Mann — Lost In Space)

6 July 2009 @ 20:50 | 4 Comments

felicitous moments

one:

At work on Friday, during fraud and ethics awareness training, I discovered an amusing editing artefact in the Code of Conduct. Apparently, all employees "must treat everyone with respect and with harassment."

Now that, my friends, is one hell of a code of conduct. Licence for polite savagery: issued. I don't care what the manager says about mistakes, I have written evidence.

two:

Sitting on the tram on Thursday, I was listening to the conversation of two nearby school girls, who want to be writers.

Bless 'em.

They were full of enthusiasm and verve, laughing and chatting about how their ambition is received by others. Friends are excited, and want to read their work; parents and teachers, on the other hand, are always asking what sort of real job they're going to have. What outdated attitudes! Maybe in their parents' day, writers needed a dayjob and then pursued their dreams at night, but that's not the way the world works any more. They won't need to bother with any of that.

I nearly choked trying to hold back gales of laughter.

Poor children. The world will set them straight plenty soon enough.

Bella's Lullaby (Carter Burwell — Twilight)

17 May 2009 @ 16:34 | 4 Comments

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

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. [↩]

Sad & Beautiful World (Sparklehorse — Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot)

16 January 2009 @ 17:04 | 6 Comments

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

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?)

14 January 2009 @ 17:35 | 3 Comments

pondering the deep questions

Oy vey. The start of this novel really is problematic. I would cry "What was I thinking?" except I suspect the answer is that I wasn't thinking. Or rather, I was thinking too much, and not finding the answers I needed, and therefore reduced to feeling my way. I'm hoping that once I sort out the opening chapters, it will start to flow a little more smoothly. At least the retaliative catch-up strike is proceeding apace, yesterday's virus notwithstanding.

Right now, the television is blaring about Kath & Kim — The American Version, the circularity of which makes me cringe. I have never understood the American urge to take a successful tv show, staff it with American writers, cast and crew, and reshoot it. Is it meant to be an homage? Is it meant to sanitise American television of anything non-American? Is it related to the publishing trend Justine was talking about a couple of days back? Do other countries do this and I'm simply not aware of it?

And why oh why does Australian tv feel the need to air our original series back to back with the American remake?

I grow old, I grow old
I shall wear the bottom of my trousers rolled

18 October 2008 @ 20:41 | 6 Comments

could it be…?

October has come along and plumped itself on the couch and has been watching TV solidly for days, and where is the cover art I promised you, you might be wondering?

The answer is: I don't yet have the green light to post it.

However, if you were so inclined, you could wander over to the galleries of the fantabulous Les Petersen, where you would find a picture titled Shadow Queen which, yes, would be the artwork forming the basis of the cover. In fact, this way, you get to see the artwork without all those distracting things like names and titles ;)

I have spent today launching a retaliative catch-up strike on the novel, and at last feel like I'm making some headway. Here's hoping it continues apace, and I don't get stuck again!

Pompeii (E.S. Posthumus — Unearthed)

15 October 2008 @ 17:56 | 3 Comments

choose your own adventure (tess style)

For those of you who don't read Tessa's blog (are there any of you?), her bouts of nightshift, while sometimes throwing her off-kilter, are pure genius for the rest of us.

Previously, she's indulged in the 7 wishes.

This time, she's writing a choose your own adventure.

Go. Choose. Enjoy.

26 September 2008 @ 7:32 |
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