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Renovating rooms, knocking down walls
I’m not going gung-ho with writing right now. I know it’s a bit of a fruitless endeavor, what with family and holidays and everything. As my lovely friend Jennifer said to me yesterday during coffee, “Just enjoy doing nothing for a while.” Yeah, I’m not good with doing nothing. Especially writing-wise. But hey, I’m pacing myself. Except characters just have minds of their own now, don’t they? The last three days I’ve been assaulted with bits and pieces of dialogue, scenes, sentences, and stories from The Ward of the Rose (taking a wee break from the followup to Queen of None, but still going to be writing more Arthuriana posts). For those…
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Updates in a Nutshell: Publishing, Reading, and Writing
Well, enough has been going on in the last few weeks that I thought it might be helpful to make a fancy wee bullet list for organization’s sake! First up is a reading that I’ll be doing on December 10th with Jeff VanderMeer and Mur Lafferty at Chapel Hill Comics (which is both thrilling and awe-inspiring, since I get to read, um, my stuff next to their stuff!). Jeff was kind enough to invite me along. Following the readings will be a freeform storytelling session where we’ll work together on a story all live and junk! Makes me glad for all those years of improv and, also, quite thankful for…
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(re)writing blind
I’m in the process of a complete rewrite, the most extensive I’ve ever done. It’s true, first novels aren’t the best novels. And my first novel was written three times before I put it away for a while. But it kept pestering me until I realized that the characters, the story, and the plot (if tweaked considerably) were still worth the trouble. The exact trouble is rewriting a 75K exceptionally mediocre story into something around 120K that has a lot more grit and substance. What I’ve done is written blind. I didn’t even read the last draft, completed some three or four years ago. Oh, it’s still around, and occasionally…
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Glut, glut, glut.
I am trying to be candid here. I have too many words. Not counting finished drafts, I have somewhere around 230K of unfinished business. This is either work in process (currently I am writing two separate books) or words that need to be edited. This morning I thought I’d total it up, for reasons of amusement. But now? Looking at it I’ve got to wonder what the hell it is I’m getting at. This started when I got frustrated editing a first draft. Then I decided to do something else; which lead to something else… which means, ah, what the hell? Self: Stop this grumblefest. You need to look on…
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Writing with the darkness.
This week’s writing has been more difficult than others, and not because of the usual reasons (laziness, business, distractedness). While I’ve slowly made progress from 0k to 4K (about 2K from the chapter end) it’s been laborious, to say the least. Though I’m writing from a draft, I know what’s going to happen, so technically I shouldn’t be having issues. Except I am. And it’s all because it’s so damned dark. Fantasy tends to fall to either side of the extreme: light and hopeful, or dark and mournful. Or at least, it’s light peppered with enough dark that the contrast leaves you a bit heartbroken. And I have to blame…
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Crowded house: writing a party
Nah, not the kind with ale and food and wenches, though that happens from time to time. More like a party of people. At the moment I’m struggling with some of my chapters, as there are just too many damned people there all the time. Up until this point most of what I’ve written has been fairly straight-forward, with a handful of people doing fairly straight-forward things. Two, maybe three people in conversation, nice tight little story arcs… It was particularly comfortable in The Aldersgate because, well, every chapter was a new point of view, and helped me keep things neat and in a row. Now, in Peter of Windbourne,…
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Novelfail: Facing rejection with grace (or learning to)
I’ve had short stories rejected before, and I like to think I’m pretty good at dealing with it. At least, it’s enough to piss me off a while, but not enough to throw me into the pit and give up writing. The story selection process is extremely subjective, and I can deal with that. I just keep writing. However, yesterday, on my way to take my sister to her chemotherapy treatment, I got my first novel rejection letter. This is another bird altogether, and due to the timing of the situation–dealing with jetlag and the issues my sister is facing–I was a little bent out of shape for a few…
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A note on giving up.
It’s okay. Really it is. Set it aside, take a walk. Go somewhere new; get a cup of coffee. Do some yoga, or scream a little. Writing can be such a pain in the ass, you deserve to take give up for a little while. Or a month. Or a year. Or a few years. Writing, if anything, is a roller-coaster. It’s moments of ebullient joy cut short by self-doubt and skepticism. It’s dark and light, brilliance and idiocy, utter bliss and deepest despair. And, it seems, such contradictions don’t go away, not with success or fame or age or time. Writers both in the glow of youth and the…
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Dreams and revelations.
I have written lots of stuff over the years, but my problem is always finalization, finishing. The first finished novel I ever wrote is a prequel, of sorts, to The Aldersgate, occurring in the same world but some 400 years before. It’s called Peter of Windbourne, and it has been sitting in stasis for… oh, three years or so. First novels are a tricky business. Writing them is like having your first crush; it’s a hectic, messy, emotional process, and the outcome isn’t necessarily something you hold onto for the rest of your life. Peter isn’t that bad, but it’s had a major, central problem that has taken me a…
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The blood between the lines: writing who we are
When I was three, my world was changed irrevocably. I had been a very happy child, by all accounts, albeit a little precocious and sometimes serious for my age. I loved art, music. I used to stand next to my dad while he played guitar, and leaned my head on his knee to hear the vibrations of the music. I watched my mother sketch life from the nib of a pencil. But no one was as life-changing for me as my sister. Llana was born, and everything came into focus. I remember virtually nothing before she came into the world, this little blond miracle. Though now she’s an elegant woman,…
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I haven’t lost to February.
And February was so long that it lasted into March And found us walking a path alone together. You stopped and pointed and you said, “That’s a crocus,” And I said, “What’s a crocus?” and you said, “Its a flower,” I tried to remember, but I said, “Whats a flower?” You said, “I still love you.” – Dar Williams, “February” I usually hate February. I drown in this sunless, useless, brown month quicker than Jimmy Hoffa in concrete shoes. At least, up until this year, that’s how the game’s gone. While I’m sure it’s seasonal depression, I’ve never done much about it except get through it. And eat chocolate. That…
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The white space: what we don’t write
Writers are always told: write what you know. It’s as cliche was “the pen is mightier than the sword”. Unfortunately this leads to lots of fledgling writers composing short stories about twenty-somethings disillusioned with life, breakups, and college. At least, that’s the bulk of what I wrote in my undergraduate writing classes (and what most folks wrote)–for the most part, they were drivel. The thing is, you can take the adage to mean more than one thing. It’s not just writing about what you know, as in what your life is about, but also what kind of reading you do, what worlds you know. Hence, these days I write fantasy,…
