on the road of rue & wormwood

Oh, writing. And life, you too.

2009-07-01T17:57:00Z

I sat down with an open novel file and my new Touch last night. Download app, write paragraph. Download app, write paragraph. Right now, I'm sticking with free apps until I figure out what is actually worth purchasing.

The problem struck when I realized No, I really, really, really need an end goal for the last third of the novel. Like. A structure. A plot. A map. I know I had this realization before, but I was kind of writing it all out and planning to go back and structure then, but I am mired. So I can't do that. To move forward, I have to go backward. And basically rewrite this section all over. Not bigly, but somely... Just, need to make sure events happen in the right order, threads don't get lost.

Anyway, as I was settling down with my Brainstormin' Paper, I got mugged by a short story: "Five Rules and One Exception for Commuting to the Underworld."

So I stayed up until 2 AM working on that. And I have absolutely no plot for it, but it is delightful to write. And short. So maybe it can survive without a plot. Or just be literary.

I want to finish this book. Maybe tonight.

Because Progress Must Be Measured.

2009-06-29T03:39:28Z

I just Twittered that I had one more scene to add to the book, but I don't quite know what to do with said scene. Then I hit on the brill idea of considering a scene goal.

But not tonight. No, today, we squared away Chapter 35 and most of Chapter 36, and wrote a whole new scene and a couple of scenelets and moved a whole bunch of stuff around. Unfortunately, the end of the book is feeling a bit disjointed to me, and I think I'm going to have to chart out the action and see if it rises enough, or whatever it's supposed to do.

And, in fact, if it doesn't rise enough, I'm probably going to have to add some more to the book. I mean, I'm not sure what, but I suspect that there are enough mysteries lying fallow for book 2 that I could waken a few of those.

Ugh.

Have I ever told you that one of my "other duties as assigned" at my day job has been space planning for the past three years? It started with reorganizing the mail area, and morphed from there. Every time we add new staff, I start measuring things, then hop onto Visio and draw up a new plan. Thus, we have managed to improve workflow and fit three additional people into about a thousand less square feet, or something ridiculous like that. (That's not even one of my insane hyperboles.) This has actually been a rewarding bit of my job, and considering I have no training in it other than having rearranged my childhood bedroom about eight times a year, a little bit amazing--I didn't actually know I had spatial organization skills.

Anyway, the point is, whenever I get down to the end of a new space plan, I always end up with what I call a "mushy area." Where my ideas haven't quite coalesced, and my brain is going to have to go through a number of REM cycles before I figure out how to actually make the last section fit together better. It almost always comes down to a mushy area, too, unless I'm working on just four desks or something small.

I'm really hoping the end of my book is just a temporary mushy area, right now, and that I'll be able to get all the furniture in place soon. Like. Tomorrow. Wednesday at the latest.

But, I'm almost there. Mushy or not, here I come.

Cutest little robot guy ever is available for preorder!

2009-06-25T01:52:02Z

Unplugged: The Web's Best Sci-Fi & Fantasy: 2008 Download

Is it always shameless self-promotion if the robot is that cute?

Here, let me promote the whole darn TOC:

Beth Bernobich, “Air and Angels” (Subterranean, Spring)
Mercurio D Rivera, “Snatch Me Another” (Abyss and Apex, First Quarter)
Nancy Kress, “First Rites” (Baen’s Universe, October)
Tina Connolly, “The Bitrunners” (Helix, Summer)
Rebecce Epstein, “When We Were Stardust” (Fantasy, February)
Jason Stoddard, “Willpower” (Futurismic, December)
Peter S Beagle, “The Tale of Junko and Sayiri” (IGMS, July)
David Dumitru, “Little Moon, Too, Goes Round” (Aeon Thirteen)
Hal Duncan, “The Behold of the Eye” (Lone Star, August)
Will McIntosh, “Linkworlds” (Strange Horizons, March 17-24)
Merrie Haskell, “The Girl-Prince” (Coyote Wild, August)
Brendan DuBois, “Not Enough Stars in the Night” (Cosmos)
Catherynne M Valente, “A Buyer’s Guide to Maps of Antarctica” (Clarkesworld, May)
Cory Doctorow, “The Things that Make Me Weak and Strange Get Engineered Away” (Tor.com)

Written last night...

2009-06-23T01:46:52Z

I'm am all tuckered out from gardening really really hard all weekend. We had reached the point of annoying the neighbors; plus, there came a point about two weeks ago where I was utterly losing my mind between dayjob work and the novel rewrite, and came home and spent an hour digging out an overgrown flower bed and putting in some new plants, and immediately started to feel better about life. So. Gardening.

Unfortunately, there is a "wildflower" bed left over from the previous homeowners that every year presents the unique challenge of "should I dig this up? should I let it grow? is it a weed, or is it something I'm going to kick myself for excising?" I dither too long, and the next thing you know, it's August, and we're getting the hairiest eyeballs from our neighbors that you've ever seen, and then it's September and everything has gone to seed, and it's too late to save the garden yet again.

Plus, there have been several years where my first assay into the perennial garden (read: "weed bed") has resulted in poison ivy. The last poison ivy incident was so terrible, I had to resort to Prednizone, which I hate, but not as much as I hate having both arms drowning in suppurating goo. I've had many dances with the ivy in my (relatively short) life; that was not the worst of them, but it was darn close. (Famously, I got it in my eyes when I was in the fifth grade. My eyes.) Well, guess what happens on poison ivy years? I don't handle the weed bed thereafter. The autumn after the worst year, I went in with Harsh Chemicals (poison ivy/brush killer), and destroyed my clothes afterwards. There's not yet been a recurrence of the ivy--neither a sighting, nor an attack. *crosses fingers*

Anyway, this year's move on the weed bed was timed so that I could spot the sweet William, which is the only flower really worth fighting for in amongst the reseeding annuals. This time also happily coincided with daisy-time. I left five or eight clumps of sweet William (not for lack of trying to leave more, but they don't have very deep roots--or mine don't--and are too delicate to weed around in many cases). And I left a three-foot-by-three-foot chunk of daisies, merely cutting back the faux clover and not pulling it out altogether, because in the grand scheme of things, faux clover ain't so bad, not when it supports numerous delicate daisies which would otherwise topple over without the support of the faux clover.

Interestingly, I've noted that the weeds go in epidemics. I think it's a combination of weather conditions (hot/cool, wet/dry)--and the effect of a cycle of selective weeding, as I've slowly come to realize what are flowers and what are weeds. I can't remember far back enough (we've been in the house 9 years) what it was like at the beginning--"random weed jungle," maybe--but at some point I learned to identify wild carrots, and took all of them out, and let everyone else grow in peace in hopes that there would be gorgeous flowers in the mix. And there were--but goldenrod is still a weed, particularly in the eyes of our homeowner's association and township. (le sigh) And so on. Goldenrod, thistle, prickly pear (I think), sumac, prickly pear's unidentified cousin, "that stuff" that is the segmented centipede of the plant world, the mysterious bindweed-type thing with little cockle burr seeds... This year, faux clover. (And I've just spent half an hour trying to figure out what it is on Google, and I give up.)

I need to whip my herb garden back into shape (the invader there is grass, and desperate ash tree shoots from the tree that got taken down years ago due to a emerald ash borer infestation--the tree was quite dead, but apparently, it doesn't exactly know that. Part of me would like to let it resurrect itself, but I have a feeling it wouldn't be long before it got ash borered again, so it seems needlessly cruel to both of us to go through all that again). And then I need to go back over the ~~weed bed~~ perennial garden (it no longer being a weed bed) and actually, you know... fill it in with plants that will crowd out further infestations. I filled in a nice section of it this year with pachysandra and a nice holly bush, and put in two hydrangeas, and that's a good beginning. I also need to figure out a way to protect my blueberry bushes from bunnies, because right now, they are not thriving, and are quite nibbled. They should be luxuriously large in their second and third years, and getting ready to bear fruit. Instead, they're just cringing and hoping the buns won't notice them. Should I consider planting decoy lettuce, I wonder?

Anyway, I've accomplished the hard push, I guess, and even though when I close my eyes I see... oh, it's not prickly pear, that's a cactus, right? But that bush with the thorns and the dark green leaves and the THORNS. My family always called it prickly pear, but you can't trust that. My grandma always referred to lighting as "lightling." (An artifact of English being her second language--or possibly her third, since her German-speaking parents came from two very different parts of the German-speaking world (the now-Russian area just south of Lithuania, from whence rises the problem of the Seven Bridges of Konigsberg, and then all the way down in Switzerland).)

Oh, and in the meantime, while googling to try and figure out what the not-prickly-pear is called, I learned about Giant Hogweed, a plant that outdoes poison ivy itself in terms of noxiousness and seeping sore-causingness. Uhm. *shudder*

Awe and Wonder

2009-06-19T22:00:50Z

I am so-very-close to finishing my rewrite. I have a couple more concrete things to do, and then I need to go through and make sure I didn't lose my narrative voice during my edits, drop in some more jokes (or at least, put in some where I took others out), and so forth.

But one note from my agent in particular has been giving me some grief. To the point where I had almost sorta decided to ignore it, if I couldn't figure it out. And that was "to show more of a sense of awe and wonder" during my main character's early explorations of the underworld.

Well. How in heck do you show more of a sense of awe and wonder? I mean, I went through the draft a second time, putting in character reactions.

Like so:

~~"It was amazing."~~

~~"I was hornswoggled! ABSOLUTELY hornswoggled!"~~

~~"OMG! WTF! BBQ! ELEVENTY!"~~

And then went back to "It was amazing." And decided to come back to it later.

The usual tactic (think of when you've experienced awe and wonder; extrapolate) only semi-applies. I mean--okay, I remember standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon, and thinking, "I can no longer tell which way is up." I was staggeringly overwhelmed there for a good 5 minutes. But I've got a character who needs to be thinking and doing, not standing there. I suppose I could put a little of that in.

But the other problem is--when do we experience awe and wonder on that kind of scale? On the scale of "Holy f*ck, are those jeweled apples?" Awe and wonder, for me, goes hand in hand with being overwhelmed and vertiginous (Grand Canyon), dazed (Brighton Pavilion, maybe?), and repulsed/annoyed/horrified (THAT DID NOT JUST HAPPEN, where "that" = appalling personal behavior). Awe and wonder are, in fact, pretty far outside of my personal repertoire, and I can literally only think of the examples I just cited.

Beyond that, I've been cultivating unflappability, skepticism, and satirical calm for so long, I'm sort of afraid I lost my ability to feel awe along the way--am I supposed to feel it more than I do? Do I know how to properly express this stuff? And--the other side of it--having had to feign enthusiasm for a myriad of mundanities throughout my life (the "you pooped in the potty!" variety, I guess; sure, it causes awe once, but you have to cheer about it for like MONTHS), I'm not really sure what I'm feeling when I wax effusive about things anymore.

So, obviously, I'm of no help to myself anymore...

I did re-read most of Karl Iglesias's Writing for Emotional Impact, but the paragraphs on wonder and awe were kinda skimpy, and the wonder he talks most about is the "I wonder why the character how the character will get out of the forest of jeweled apples" variety. It's not an SF book, and it's not a novelist's book. And it's certainly not a book to address my specific problems. It's done a bunch of other stuff for me, so I can't complain.

So... now we go to Google. And two hits in particular were very good for me:

1) HP Lovecraft's Notes on Writing Weird Fiction:

Inconceivable events and conditions have a special handicap to over come, and this can be accomplished only through the maintenance of a careful realism in every phase of the story except that touching on the one given marvel. This marvel must be treated very impressively and deliberately - with a careful emotional "build-up" - else it will seem flat and unconvincing...

In relation to the central wonder, the characters should shew the same overwhelming emotion which similar characters would shew toward such a wonder in real life. Never have a wonder taken for granted. Even when the characters are supposed to be accustomed to the wonder I try to weave an air of awe and impressiveness corresponding to what the reader should feel. A casual style ruins any serious fantasy.

Atmosphere, not action, is the great desideratum of weird fiction. Indeed, all that a wonder story can ever be is a vivid picture of a certain type of human mood. The moment it tries to be anything else it becomes cheap, puerile, and unconvincing.

Okay. So, maybe I wasn't totally off with my correlations with my personal experiences. I need to relate the character's wonder to the character's mood. To completely distill Lovecraft's thought to its most literal, journeyman-minded, writing-as-a-craft essence. Also, the "careful realism" thing rings true to me...

2) And... NOT a note on writing, but a bio entry on a woman who works with the aesthetics of astronomical images, that I think works very well when you consider writing is a similar kind of interpretation:

She considers the methods astronomers use to translate the telescope's data into aesthetically pleasing scenes that communicate with non-scientists and ultimately argues that the images rely on the visual language of Romantic landscapes to convey a sense of wonder and awe as well as propose the possibility of conquering another frontier.

I read that, and started scribbling notes. Wonder needs to open up possibilities. A-duh.

And then, everything clicked into place. And by everything, I mean a bunch of other things entirely.

And it was good. For now.

fairmer @ 2009-06-16T22:19:00

2009-06-17T02:34:22Z

I met Leah Bobet (cristalia at Worldcon back in 2004, right? With me so far? And I was overwhelmed by her awesome then, and I've been frequently overwhelmed by her awesome since.

Today, she got herself a book agent*, and that's just freaking awesome, too.

I think it's weird when people tell other people to go congratulate someone they've never heard of, so don't do that, but I am telling you that if you haven't heard of her--and here, I'm probably not talking to my writer-friends (since most of them have known her better and longer than they've known me, for sure), but my other friends, the ones who like to read, and more specifically, the ones who like to read what I like to read, because her short fiction is good, and you should be as ready for her book as I am so we can talk about it some day, and perhaps give it to each other as a Christmas gift.

(*And not a little bit of me is superpsyched that we have the same agent, because, well, in college, when we all went down to dinner together, someone made a very silly rule that you had to walk with your height buddy, I think because some people of the same height had crushes on each other, but never mind--in any case, because of this conditioning, I have a thing about having a buddy. I have my The Office buddy (sunnydecho) and my speak-dead-languages-when-we're-drunk buddy (iuliamentis) and my we-got-married-in-the-same-year-but-not-to-each-other buddy (lj user="mykkel">), and now I have a got-the-same-agent-in-the-same-year buddy. So. Thank god for Leah Bobet, 'cause I kinda needed a buddy.)

Throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

2009-06-10T02:22:45Z

And for good reason.

I'm killing this (excising it from my book). It's not a darling, in spite of being a poop joke.

I was having a hard time with certain book logistics, but fortunately, a super-obvious alternate appeared to me on the drive home, and I do not need to go any further with this.

I woke near mid-day, and sat on my pallet for nearly an hour, trying to convince myself to brew another cup of valerian to ensure Adina's afternoon nap. I wanted to use the time to continue netting the fern cap. But I'd promised God and myself I wouldn't slip secret sedatives to old women, ever again. And a promise was a promise.

There was a chamber pot behind a screen in the corner of the room, and eventually, I decided that a mundane excuse was the best one.

I clutched my belly--right over where I carried the wrapped up fern cap under my apron--and made an uncomfortable expression. “Excuse me, *stapana,” I said, and went behind the screen.

I sat cross-legged on the floor, whipped out the cap, and started netting.

After a few moments, Adina said, “Are you straining, Reveka?”

I tried to sound pained. “Yes.”

More silence. I netted quickly. Time passed. Adina called, “Should I make you a tea of *laxative?”

I should have known that was coming. I groaned a little, both because I didn't want to drink a tea of *laxative and because it added authenticity to my performance.

She busied herself making a tisane for me, and when I heard her pour the water into a cup, I secreted away the cap and came out from behind the screen. I wondered if the inch or so I'd added to the cap was worth the price I was about to pay.

Because, while we all know that going on an adventure and taking an unneeded laxative is definitely problematic, it does not necessarily increase dramatic tension.

Phew, glad I solved that.

That also may be the shortest time a scenelet has lived in this book.

Also, I should probably not write during my lunch hour, if that's what happens.

I've been written hard and put away wet. And other novel puns.

2009-06-08T02:53:15Z

Actually, the title is a lie. There are no other puns.

Things which have been saving my soul lately: My husband. We just had a long(ish) conversation about "novels are haaaard." Of course, what I was unable to convey is that it's not hard, it's just difficult.

Do you know what I mean? No, you probably don't, since my brain is wired funny on this topic. "Hard" is like, well, things where the learning curve is prohibitive. Where I'm not given all the information and making the leaps is problematic. Like my ninth-grade geometry class, where the teacher didn't actually understand geometry, let alone how to teach it, and I didn't realize that I could cheat and solve the problems algebraically and reverse engineer the learning of geometry. Where the super-difficult stuff was (somehow) intuitive for me, but the basic concepts left me in the dust, so that when I took the state proofs test, I got a 0 out of 4 on the basic question and a 4 out of 4 on the impossible question. Geometry is HARD (all caps). Reading Robert Graves is Hard (speaking of funny-wired brains) (one cap). Reading Tartuffe in French is hard (no caps, as long as one has a dictionary, but good luck getting all the jokes). That's my scale of hardness.

Novels aren't hard, by this definition. Not anymore, anyway, praise be. My first novel was HARD. My first novel was like figuring out the importance of f-stops and ISO in the first week of photography class.

This novel isn't hard. This novel is like hand-tinting a perfectly exposed print. I have to do it right, and it takes a lot of concentration and precision and a good eye for color and the right tools and some patience and about 45 minutes (which is 40 minutes longer than anyone else is going to spend post-enlarger on their print for this week's critique).

Only. It's like hand-tinting a book of prints.

Which, you know. Time-wise? Concentration-wise? Is hard. But it's not really on the Mer Haskell scale of hardness, when it comes down to it.

Things which have been saving my soul lately, part the second: Karl Iglesias.

I read Writing for Emotional Impact a while back, but honestly, it's a journeyman writer's book, and most of it went over my head. I knew it was good, but a lot of it seemed irrelevant. But on Friday, I got it into my head that this book would save me a great deal of trouble. And probably had the character stuff in it that I've been looking for, to the depth that I needed it. Like a beacon in my brain (or something) the memory of this book returned.

Well, it's not stocked at any of the local stores of course, and it's not at my library, so I was a bit vexed. I was pretty sure I needed it, like, a week ago. (Which is true.) I wondered if the author had posted any snippets or essays on-line, and when I found his website, I hit the jackpot: e-book of Writing for Emotional Impact, cheaper than the book, in a useful format.

Angels sang.

I read through a few chapters of the book that night, furiously scribbling notes, solidifying helpful things like my freakin' theme ("Can compassion change the world?") and good character moments that I needed to hit. Between that and my giant Post-It calendar? I'm feeling pretty good.

And this, in spite of two power outages. (Thank goodness for my diligent daily back ups; they aren't fancy--I email my nightly changes to my Gmail account from my Exchange account, save daily to my thumbdrive, my netbook and my laptop--but they are effective enough.)

Back to the hand coloring.

The good news is, I was up writing, and they didn't wake me.

2009-06-06T05:32:59Z

The bad news is, I'm totally freakin' distracted from it, now.

About 20 minutes ago, the doorbell rang three times in rapid succession. CREEPY. I was suddenly sad that I've taken a "no guns in the house" stance all these years. (I'm not sad at the moment, though. I'm too impulsive for gun ownership, or at least, not cool-headed enough. I *am* sadder I don't have a baseball bat handy, though. And some skills to use it, if necessary, but mostly, a bat looks intimidating, whereas in the dark, I'm not sure anyone could see a gun.)

So then, after panicking slightly and running around to make sure all the doors were locked, I came back to peer out the window. I hesitated a while, until I saw some movement in the driveway, then worked up my nerve to open the door and say in the lowest voice that I can project, "Who's out there?" And three kids, about 15ish, ran off like bats out of hell, screaming and laughing and swearing.

And I really wanted to shoot them, until it really occurred to me that they were kids. At least, shoot over their heads.

See why I shouldn't have a gun?

(Note, this is not the entry for US 2nd amendment arguments. You aren't going to change anyone's mind, no matter how that mind is made up, regardless of your steaming rhetoric, in either direction. I promise.)

Now, here's the writer lesson, the "now I know how that feels" lesson. I had a seriously knee-jerk fight reaction to a scare. That was interesting. And while I didn't actually exert myself physically, I feel like I ran about a mile, maybe two, and then stopped to lift very heavy weights. My left shoulder, the one that used to ache but hasn't since I started living a healthier life? ACHES. My wrists ache. My neck aches.

I do not do adrenaline well.

Ouch. There goes my head. Now it aches, too.

Also? Boys of the world? You do not actually a) impress girls with this shit; b) you definitely don't impress girls who aren't home with this shit; and c) batshit stepmothers might just shoot you, if they are foolish enough to own guns. It can't possibly be worth it.

Oh, yeah, my husband put on pants about ten minutes later and went downstairs to get a glass of water.

Idiot teenage boys are in no danger there... Of course, having been one, he maybe takes it less seriously.

ETA: Of course, now he tells me he said to call the cops, but of course, I was too busy looking for a bat to hear him.

Dreaming the Dream, then Being Willing to Live It

2009-06-04T20:54:58Z

sarah_prineas has an essay up about living the dream. She means the writerly dream, of course, but you can extrapolate, if you wish.

If you're reading on, go. Read it. What follows here is a response. It ultimately says the same thing, which is: "keep writing." I'm less about avoiding goat entrails, but it's good advice.

I figure, there have been at least three phases of the dreaming, as I've experienced it.

The Childish Dream

Phase one was the Childish Dream. Much like the Underpants Gnomes, I had an idea of where I was, and where I wanted to be. The middle step was a big question mark, of course:

Because that's how childish dreams are. I'd even venture to say that in the phase of Childish Dreams, you're lucky if you know step 2 exists. I had a well-visited fantasy about running into Madeleine L'Engle at the world's biggest bookstore, which my aunt and uncle occasionally discussed taking me to, but never actually did. (In fact, I still haven't been to Toronto, in spite of having worn a Toronto t-shirt for probably 1/10th of my life in junior high. But I've never been to Daytona Beach either, and had a similarly well-worn t-shirt for there as well. Paris, at least, I made it to.)

I knew enough about phase one to collect underpants (I practiced writing), and spent lot of time fantasizing about step two (Madeleine L'Engle would introduce me to her editor, obvi, when I told her how much I loved her work and how I was a writer too, when we met, at the world's largest bookstore). Step three, where I wrote all the time and was a bestseller and children wrote me letters saying how much they loved me? I think the closest I got to really imagining that was in one of the later Little Women books, possibly Jo's Boys, where Jo March Baer is hanging around home, trying to get a little writing done amidst the chaos of running a school, and someone knocks at the door, and oh, noes! It is her adoring public, come to gawk at the writer and interrupt her day!

Step three would be living the dream, all right! And it's actually--but for the fact that Jo March was fictional, and you're not going to live in the 19th century--probably not too unrealistic a picture of life, is it? I never thought the step three life would be like, well, Castle.

Not that I'd mind if it were.

The Dream Deferred

Phase two, for me, was the sudden and abrupt belief that the dream was so far-fetched that it was useless to pursue. Suddenly, instead of the cheeriness of the Underwear Gnomes, you have the Crushing Reality of Parental/Societal Expectations. I'm sure anyone who's even thought for two seconds about going into the arts has had this conversation with an authority figure:

authority figure: It's nice you have this interest. But what will you do to make a living?
the dreamer: I'm, uhm, going to Do Art.
authority figure: Perhaps you should get a teaching certificate. Then you will have the summers off to waste, I mean, spend on your art, and yet will pull in a real paycheck/not be living in my basement/not get on welfare.

In addition to that, you begin to be aware of just how long the step of step two is, and while it's still a big question mark in many ways, you can't see how you'd possibly get from step one to step three. So, you back off from the dream, demote it to hobby status if you're lucky, or abandon it altogether if you're not.

During my deferment time, I wrote complex roleplaying game scenarios for my friends, and in the games I played, wrote complex character diaries. I told myself it was valuable practice for the future. Later, when I had to spend about three years unlearning all of my bad habits, I cursed it. But it did keep my writing fingers limber, and while I was not, actually, learning great things about character and viewpoint and plotting, at least all my writing skills weren't atrophying.

I do not honestly know what it takes to get out of this phase. I only know what it took me to get out of it--and that was my then-boyfriend, now-husband saying, "Look, if you're unhappy because you're not a writer, my suggestion is write." He said it differently, I'm sure, but the tone was clear: I wasn't allowed to whine on his watch. Not when there was something I could do about it.

Have I ever mentioned how much I love my husband, and how good he is for me? I'm not sure either of us would be a good match for most people on earth, but this definitely works for us.

There was more to it, of course (there always is). I had dropped out of college for financial reasons, and had pretty low self-esteem about being a drop-out, even though it wasn't my fault. I was working a too-stressful job, and I was too scared that I'd never find one as good to leave it. And when you're scared and low on self-esteem, it's just not a good time to start a writing career.

Determination

But eventually--and not without plenty of support from my then-boyfriend, now-husband--I did give up that job, and went back to school. I spent the fortnight before returning up north, at the river with my mom and aunt and my best friend from my earlier stint at college, canoeing and getting sunburned and reading the Vorkosigan series for the first time. At one point, we went a-wandering around Mackinac City, and I found a small notebook with a (bastardized) Thoreau quote on it:

It's actually:

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavours to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

But I guess they couldn't fit that on a notebook.

I picked that notebook up, even though I knew it was not-quite-Thoreau, and pretty much spent the next three years with it propped right beside my computer, staring me down. I wouldn't say it got me through school, or made me start writing the day after graduation, or caused me to do my first NaNo, or to send my first story out, but it didn't hurt.

Phase three of dreaming a dream is to admit that you have a dream, then to put your head down and start walking towards it. It's finally learning what is involved in step two. I can't deny that it has been a six-year education, starting with learning proper manuscript format and ending with being able to read Sarah's entry and understand every last thing she mentions in it. And I have more to learn, in spite of the fact that I'm up on book contracts and what kind of money "success" really means.

I note every milestone, and I've certainly traveled through the Slough of Despair. But at some point, I moved from phase three to phase four, without even realizing it.

Living with your dream

See, somewhen very early, I realized: I was actually living my dream. Because the dream isn't all about the profit. The dream is about collecting underpants. And the underpants here is the writing.

Sure, I'd like to be in the enviable position of choosing whether or not to quit my day job and so forth, because that is "the dream" as it has been preached to us. But that's actually not my dream. My next dream is getting that letter that says I helped someone survive adolescence, in the same way all my favorite writers helped me to survive mine.

For now, though, every achievement, every sale or review, is just another brick in the house that I'm already building. That first, post-novel-sale year that I really, really, really hope is coming soon? Is probably not going to be that much different than this year right here: "Head down. Write lots."

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to scoop the litter boxes. I smell poop.

Oh, yes. The dream. It is good.

Farewell, my darling

2009-05-31T21:58:48Z

Cutting a bit that goes nowhere and does nothing in my book. I'm not even sure what my original subtext was, and it seems that any character illustration I'd be doing with it doesn't help much. Plus, I'm shoe-horning my Romanian folk-tale research in.

So, guess what, little bit? You gotta go! I'll immortalize you here in LJ, though.

"He tells me that you're like the old woman on the road who offers two impossible choices," he said.

"How's that?" I asked, not sure if I should be offended or delighted by this comparison.

"Think on it," he said.

I did, and we walked in silence for a time. "I don't think it's an apt comparison," I said at last. "The old women that Prince Frumos meets say things like 'If you turn right, you'll walk through sorrow; if you turn left, you'll walk through sorrow as well.' I don't think that's offering impossible choices, anyway. I think that Frumos was a fool for accepting those as the only two choices. What if he went backward? What if he went straight? Maybe saying that left-right thing was the old woman's way of saying 'Don't turn!'"

He was smiling broadly at me now. I didn't know what to make of him at all. By now, Pa would be telling me to shut up, and claiming a natter-induced headache.

Writing it Right the First Time

2009-05-29T01:56:20Z

Listened to this week's Writing Excuses this morning. Brandon Sanderson mentioned that the only piece of writing advice given by a well-respected agent that he's tossed out summarily is the advice "you want to train yourself how to get it right on the first try." Sanderson is (wisely) a proponent of revising and second drafts. Most writers I know are.

But I disagreed with Sanderson right off.

Now, this was remembered advice, spoken impromptu on a podcast, so the fact that I'm about to pick nits with the wording is very much a, uhm, whatsit. A strawman? I'm just setting up the argument the way I want so I can go "BOO! Ya ain't nothing but moldy straw!" (Isn't that what a strawman argument is?)

Because I think, "Yes. It's about training yourself to get it right on the first try. Because if you don't enter the training, faithfully, and with the dedication of a triathlete, you will lose your freaking mind."

You, in this case, being me.

Mostly, that's because I'm slogging through this rewrite, trying to figure out the motivations of secondary characters and things like that--things I probably should have known when I was in the outlining stage. Today, I think I just figured out the purpose of the Underworld. It's not like the Underworld isn't the second most important thing in the book, and the impetus for the whole plot. It's not like the King of the Underworld isn't the antagonist. It's not like the last third of the book takes place in the Underworld.

These are things that make writing much easier, you! (You--still meaning me.) You don't have to go back and layer in all the meaning if you know these things from the beginning, you! You should probably get that right the first time, next time, you.

God knows, if I don't get that right the first time from now on, I'm probably going to have a conniption.

So, IMHO, (I told the iPod), Reknowned Agent is SO RIGHT.

Of course, by the time I'd gotten done with this argument in my head, Sanderson pointed out exactly what I just said, but in his own words, and more eloquently.

But I never said I was a solitary genius.

In the last 24 hours...

2009-05-25T19:51:26Z

I have:

1) Become relatively adept at using Minnow's tiny keyboard, to the point that when I tried to check my mail on Dann's laptop, my fingers couldn't adequately reach to all the keys the first time I typed my password. I am slightly concerned about going home to the desktop tomorrow, but I guess if I'm back to laptop usage as my main writing computer, that's no real hardship--I'm more likely to get out to the coffeeshop some weekends, this way.

Mostly, I'd just like to be fluent with both keyboards, all the time. I have this vision that someday I'll be able to come home with my Great Ideas, and when I start dinner, I'll sit down at the dining room table in between frying things. I'll let you know how that goes.

2) Gone for a run. I did 5 of 7 60-second jogs/90 second walks in the Couch to 5K running plan. Naturally, I'd like to have done 7 of 7, but I decided that I'd give myself a chance to get up to speed before cracking any whips. The goal is to get two more in of at least 5/7 in the next week. Weds or Thurs, and Sat or Sun. We shall see. The wind was just perfect off the lake for the first/last chunks of my run, drying all my sweat before it appeared. I didn't start sweating noticeably until I went inside. Running would be a hell of a lot easier if it was always like this.

3) Added 2000 words of necessary material to my novel. Connective tissue, explanatory tissue, character development, tension-building stuff. Booyah.

I know that at least half of what has made this novel work is that I didn't shy away from writing longer works for a while, as unsaleable as they are. This novel, frex, developed out of a 12k word story. At the same time, I know that simply finishing loads of short stories helped me with the comprehension of overall story structure. And I'm sure that all my false starts to the six other novels I've written helped me, too, in spite of the fact that they were not completed. But. The single biggest thing that contributed to finishing this novel was the threat of library school that I held over my head. I could be content being a librarian. But I wouldn't be content like I am right now--even now, book half-rewritten, unpublished...

It's the difference between marrying a good guy and the right guy for you, I suspect.

4) Did a jack tonne of more research for this book. Every time I think I'm getting somewhere, I scratch something and uncover a billion more things I didn't know or think to know about 1489 Romania. Like, it didn't really hit me until recently that jannissaries were relevant to this setting. Ah, DUH. So, last night, read up on devshirme and figured out that, no, that doesn't play a huge role in the book, but it's a factor--in the culture, and in at least one character's background.

5) Stuck to Phase 1 of the South Beach Rewrite Your Eating Life Plan. Being at the lake and NOT eating cheetos, ice cream, cookies and red licorice at whim? BLASPHEMY. But I did it. Just eating like a normal person at the lake is hard--actually, maybe harder, in some ways, because you don't have the diet to fall back on. But we're about an hour from leaving, and I haven't even opened the bag of Twizzlers sitting on the counter. The hardest part was not getting any potato at dinner, and not getting chips with lunch. But I lived to tell about it. That would make tomorrow one week in on my low-glycemic index carbs and no refined anything effort, and I could already tell by Friday that some of my pants were fitting looser. Lunch today was Brussels sprouts and buffalo burger, which I rather enjoyed. About three days ago, I thought I might kill for a piece of fruit. Today--eh. We'll see what I think at the end of the week. Interestingly, the dairy at this phase has not set off my lactose intolerance...

This is the story / of a lovely milestone

2009-05-22T02:39:10Z

I have an offer from Nature to buy "Fine-tuning the Universe," and a contract in hand, and that means... my third pro sale.

Well, at least the gaps between them are getting shorter...

When I started thinking about this endeavor, back in my twenties, sometime around 2002, SFWA eligibility seemed impossible and yet so simple. Surely, getting the first pro acceptance must be hard. But equally sure, getting the second and third must be easy. Momentum, eh? It's a thing. Or so I hear.

Or, not so much.

Back when I threw my shoulder into novels and gave up on short stories--last June, so about a year ago--I had pretty much figured that I was going to have to sell a novel to become eligible to join SFWA. Any short stories I've written since then, I've written for funsies. (Granted, submitting them isn't so much fun, but I have a near-Pavlovian response to typing "The End" anymore. I start salivating in order to lick the envelope.) And in writing for funsies, I have the highest acceptance rate of my career.

Anyway, it's not like I thought (much past the first few months, anyway) that SFWA was the end-all, be-all of this shindig. It was just... that's how you knew you were There.

Interestingly, I'd pretty much decided earlier this year, for good or for ill, that I was as Here as I'm going to get. I decided I couldn't really call myself a Neopro anymore, if only because of the passage of time, and not so much due to credentials. But a funny thing happened on the way to accepting that I might never be more than a name one occasionally saw in the table of contents (I had even painted myself into the scenario where I was That Convention Panelist who talks about writing Scads o' Things You've Never Heard Of): I kept writing.

I think I mentioned pretty recently how much patience figures into this writing career thing... like how long it was between first draft and publication for one particular story (five years). That, I would call specific patience, and is not applicable to the story of this story. (I finished "Fine-tuning the Universe" in mid-April. I sent it out. It is now accepted, twenty-four days later. This is no Scalzian thirteen minutes, but at least I don't have whiplash.) But general patience is also very important.

My general patience is what allowed me to stop firing so many blanks with my short stories. I realized that being in it for the long haul meant that I could continue to be Nobody in Particular at conventions (as long as I kept writing), that I could write novels and not worry about the gratification short stories provide--yes, even rejections provide a kind of gratification--(as long as I kept writing), that I could accept that my career seems to have a long fuse that may very well never ignite anything (as long as I kept writing).

Anyway, lessons learned: it doesn't come fast to most of us. It always looks like it's happening faster for other people. And momentum is a tricky thing.

Oh, book.

2009-05-20T01:43:41Z

Why, dearest book, do you wrong me so?

You share intimate glances with my subconscious when I'm on the bus; little bits of you flirt coyly when I am furthest from paper, hinting at the passionate affair I know you carry on with my brain when I'm not looking. But when my conscious mind turns to you, it receives nothing in return.

Do you not realize, book, that the subconscious and I, we are the same person? I am Cyrano and Christian. We are united in one. You do not have to worry, dear book, that some unfortunate choice is being put before you. You can love me, book. Without reservation.

*sniffles*

Book.

In other words, I'm having a little bit of trouble with the rewrite. But, we'll see what turning off the internet does. And maybe also my conscious mind?

Home again, home again

2009-05-18T01:18:02Z

Home from the workshop, and busted. I got more than adequate sleep every night but I'm still tired. Of course, in spite of the fact that it may not seem true, I do test as an introvert, and the experience was pretty intense in that regard--even though (I think) I stayed very rational and pragmatic and did not take the burden of everyone's good time on my shoulders or anything silly like that. My little introvert brain was taxed nonetheless.

Right now, I seem to have the ability to comb through sheets of manuscript pages and pull out the ones with marks. Seriously. That's all I got. Oh, and I can pet the cat, too.

*pulls out MS pages with Red Markings On Them*

*peers*

steve_buchheit is apparently from some elvish race. He writes in runes.

Anyway, back to our story of Workshop Recovery.

I was making time a little too well on the drive home, so I decided to stop at the Leila Arboretum. I've been looking for a labyrinth to walk for a few years, but only recently discovered the World-Wide Labyrinth Locator--which tells me that there are something like 38 labyrinths within a reasonable drive of my house, and at least three that are as close as the nearest Whole Foods. And yet, I've still not managed to get out to one since discovering this pertinent set of facts. But! The Leila Arboretum has a labyrinth, so I walked it.

I was at low ebb after I dropped Amy and Larry off at the airport. There's something about any big event that, once it has passed, sort of glumifies me for a bit. So, the labyrinth was an attempt to de-glum, and it largely worked. I was back in reasonable spirits by the time I hit the highway.

And, of course, now I'm home, and I'm staring at this novel rewrite and wondering where to start.

Back to sorting MS pages... And petting the cat.

Workshopped

2009-05-17T13:58:06Z

setting

We are on Hastings Point, workshopping novels. The weather the first day was great, and we all went on a nature walk (except for steve_buccheit, who was still en route when we went) down around Elmwood Beach, saw wild ladyslippers, unfurling ferns, trillium, dogwood, and skunk cabbage. And lilies of the valley, which were the whole goal. Mayflies and gnats are everywhere, but at least it was very windy a few days.... and rained a lot... anyway, we got a nice afternoon yesterday, but we were trapped inside critting. Today looks good. The lake is blue, and the sun is bright.

plot

Critiques are done, and life is good. We crammed four crits in yesterday, rather than leaving one isolated on its own for this morning. Should we do this format of critique again (which I'm still debating), or even really any other format, I don't think I'll plan in an iso-crit again. Maybe leave Sunday as a buffer zone for spillage? Or just leave it open for the travelers. We'll see.

Critiques in general seemed to be successful/helpful/satisfying for people. I think blood was let, but it all seemed productive blood, and no one had to jump in the lake, which I believe people had to do at Milford the year I was there... I amused myself by guessing how kaiweilau writes novels, and being validated. (I guessed she was a non-sequential writer. She is. Though my guess was more lengthy and detailed than that.)

I, of course, did not have That Brilliant Revelation on my novel, but that probably wasn't going to happen anyway, and hey, I sort of had That Brilliant Revelation a few weeks ago, anyway. It's really a matter of putting it into action. Or words.

characters

toriw7 has been aiming cameras at us on the sly throughout the event, and kaiweilau has taken up residence as our chef. dendrophilous, who brought sylvrilyn up from IL with her, steve_buchheit, and Larry of No Known LJ, round out the group. kaiweilau is conducting an anthropological study of the Midwest, and we have taught her how to collect kindling, how to build a fire, and how to toast marshmallows. (This seems fair payment for her excellent culinary skills: last night she created a French/Italian cassoulet for us, and the night before we got a Thai/Indian curry. Both full of vegetables and served over brown rice, which allowed us to feel virtuous when we scarfed down s'mores later.)

For non-critique group events, we went with three rounds of Cranium, which resulted in some pretty good moments. Larry of No Known LJ, for example, did a stunning rendition of Dances with Wolves in charades. steve_buccheit and I proved to be an excellent team, so much so that they forcibly split us up later.

goals

We are about to hit up Sandy's for breakfast.

motivation

For we are hungry.

Three Exercises I'm Doing Tonight

2009-05-13T02:58:53Z

From the Packing Heat podcast:

Describe your main character(s) in one word. Demonstrate the word throughout the book, but never--not even from the mouth of another character--relate the word and the character.

(My words are: Reveka = resourceful; Dragos = conflicted.)

From learningtoread (at this post here):

Give your main character an assignment: Tell me 20 things you've learned about life by the beginning of this book.

Reveka:

1. Lying is only bad if you get caught.
2. Saint Hildegarde is the greatest woman who ever lived. Pity she isn't canonized yet.
3. Thyme pies taste better if you pick the thyme yourself.
4. You can never be too clean or take too many baths.
5. Fathers are probably more trouble than they're worth.
6. Nuns live a pretty good life. Even with the getting up in the middle of the night to pray thing.
7. Breakfast may be sinful, but it sure is delicious.
8. Tansy is good for repelling ants.
9. Apparently, unwed men and women can conceive children. Apparently also, Sister Maria is a bigger liar than me, as it turns out.
10. Orthodox priests aren't that bad. But they are a little shady, if Brother Cosmin is any example.
11. Princesses are kind of useless. I think it's because of their shoes. Impractical. Also, no pockets.
12. There are no gypsies in Sylvania. Everywhere else I've lived, they've been slaves.
13. I am not cut out for kitchen work.
14. Wild cabbage cures lust.
15. Inheritance law is kind of stupid, everywhere you go.
16. Not everyone loves the King of Hungary. And by "not everyone," I mean more than just the Turks!
17. Living in the Last Outpost of Christianity stinks like rotten Easter eggs.
18. Young wives are notoriously discontent.
19. Dracula wasn't all that honest, you know? Testing people's honesty all the time requires tricking them. He didn't actually live up to his own standards, if you ask me.
20. I'm not beautiful, but I am pretty smart.

From Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook by Donald Maass, Secondary Character Development.

Pick a secondary character who aids your protagonist. Write down the character's defining quality, and the opposite of that. Create a paragraph in which the character demonstrates the opposite of that. Then create an inner conflict: what does the character most want, and what's the opposite of that? How can this character want both things simultaneously? How can they be mutually exclusive?

Marjit the Bathwoman. She's an outspoken gossip. The opposite of that, I suppose, would be a secret-keeper. Actually, I've already done this for Marjit! We find out halfway through the book that she's been holding onto a huge secret.

If she were to have an inner conflict... well, Marjit is working for the Princess Consort, and her primary motivation is money. She wants to retire in wealth, and obtain a young husband who will devote himself to her comfort. And she can't stand the twelve princesses, thinks they're all horrible. She dreams of the day the curse is broken, and they're scatted to the four winds. However, she deeply enjoys being the information hub of the castle, and the perks of running the baths (endless supplies of clean, warm water) aren't so bad, either. She keeps saving up money and not retiring, telling herself she doesn't have enough yet. Plus, she would absolutely hate having a husband again. The happiest day of her life was when her first husband died, and she moved to the castle.

Lost

2009-05-12T19:08:19Z

1. I liked Sawyer more than I've ever liked Sawyer when I felt we were at the "Locke is Jesus and Sawyer is Peter" stage. But sadly, I feel that stage may be over. In any case, Sawyer has lost his faith, I think.

On the other hand, Jack has acquired faith, so maybe...

2. OMG, I really really really want to pull a stupid prank. Somewhere on campus, I want to put up a picture of Daniel Faraday and a little memorial plaque. Ideally, in the physics department. Or what used to be the physics dept. back in, say, '75. But then what? I mean, what's the point of a prank unless you get to see someone enjoying it?

(Since we know Daniel Faraday hung out in Ann Arbor from 1973-1976, one presumes he was at least a visiting scholar at UM.)

3. via pegkerr

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

scritch

2009-05-11T02:36:59Z

Mystery ailment week around Casa Fuller. I don't want to talk about the other stuff other people are experiencing, but for myself, Mystery Hives. It's probably my detergent or my shampoo. We'll see. I itch. I am itchy. I have itchiness. I'm also Super Attractive, especially since part of how my hives are manifesting includes intermittent dermographia.

Also, you know what's not interesting about dermographia? Being told 43 times that there's an artist who incorporates her dermographia in her art. I'm all for taking your lemons and making lemonade, but right now I want to stop itching. And also? I'm a writer. You have not met the Weird Thing That's Happened To Me that won't make it into a story or novel or poem one day. Incorporating your pain into your art? This is not new territory. And also, I want to stop itching.

In other news, Stepdaughter has passed me in number of books read this year. The Haskell Campaign has No Comment.

14) Traitor to the Crown: The Patriot Witch by C.C. Finlay (you can find my amazon.com review by following the link)

The next three books are workshop books for later this week, so all you get are initials and names.

15) TT by Victoria Witt
16) G by Emily Kajsa Herrstrom
17) HiNY by A.M. Lau

But they are IN THE RECORD, so I'm back in the running. And I have a month and a half to hit 25 at the mid-year point. WATCH OUT, STEPDAUGHTER.

Briefly Memed

2009-05-07T02:54:24Z

dsudis and iuliamentis led, and I shall follow.

"This can be a quick one. Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you've read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes."

To paraphrase others who have gone before me... not necessarily recommendations. But maybe. I don't know. In the roughest and vaguest of chronological order (that I read them in).

1. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
2. A Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton Porter
3. Clan of the Cavebear by Jean M. Auel
4. Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery (but maybe more Anne of the Island, I'm not sure)
5. The High King by Lloyd Alexander
6. Restoree by Anne McCaffrey
7. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
8. Dragonsong (and Dragonsinger) by Anne McCaffrey
9. The Drawing of the Three by Stephen King
10. Arrows of the Queen by Mercedes Lackey
11. Ashes on the Wind by Kathleen Woodiweiss
12. Silver by Penny Jordan
13. The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley
14. The Changeling Sea by Patricia McKillip
15. In the Hand of the Goddess by Tamora Pierce

I read all of these before I grew up, which may account for their places in my heart. (I read the vast majority of them before the age of 15, which is fitting, given the 15ness of the meme; and quite a few before I turned 12.) I don't think it's a big shocker that the ones you read young stick with you a long time.

It's interesting (to me) that many of these have dropped off the most fave list, and that I didn't get much past my mid-teens before reaching the end of the list. But it is rather like all these books have a little doorway in my mind; I could slip backwards into any of these books at a moments' notice, either on paper or in my brain. There are bits of my personality, or themes in my work, which--when scratched--reveal these books.

1. Little Women Jo March's pen; the care of elderly relatives... this book is more a general feeling about the world than much in particular
2. A Girl of the Limberlost the magic inherent in the natural world
3. Clan of the Cavebear herbs! prehistoric times! stone tools! survival.
4. Anne of Green Gables the cult of red hair and green eyes. Dramaticness!
5. The High King singing stones. choosing your destiny. defying prophecy.
6. Restoree found family. domineering men. the participant-observer. the fish out of water.
7. Jane Eyre er. See #6!
8. Dragonsong (and Dragonsinger) being excellent/having talent as a validation.
9. The Drawing of the Three second worlds. end of worlds. mythologies turned perpendicular to the third dimension.
10. Arrows of the Queen belonging. found family. the orphan made good tale.
11. Ashes on the Wind GIRLS dressed as BOYS having ADVENTURES. (So not what that book is about, and so what I took from it)
12. Silver face-changing! revenge! blind men!
13. The Blue Sword girl gets sword, kicks ass, saves the kingdom. Uhm....
14. The Changeling Sea accidental magic. the power of wishing. hexes.
15. In the Hand of the Goddess GIRLS dressed as BOYS having ADVENTURES (the original)

Hm. I'm not actually all that hard to figure out.

Onward: 3 things make 3/5ths of a post

2009-05-01T21:39:19Z

1) Heading to Penguicon. Erm. Tomorrow, though. Early as I can roust splash_the_cat from her warm bed. I am not on panels, but I intend to meet Mary Robinette in person, and hand $5 to E Bear. All other bets are off as to what may happen.

really

2) Tomorrow is my husband's birthday, which is why I'm not heading to Penguicon tonight. We are celebrating tonight. With massive quantities of Mongolian barbecue and Carvel.

3) the_flea_king just emailed to say Escape Pod would like to buy "An Almanac for the Alien Invaders." I'm very pleased! Contracts a-coming...

Dinner of Awesome

2009-05-01T02:43:16Z

Just came back from some SERIOUS DINING with a suite of LJ users: colomon, a2macgeek, mandolinjen, matociquala, sithdragn, jillfelice, (ETA) a2gemma(end edit), THE CONFUSION PRINCESS, the infamous pirate king, and the Kitchen Chick herself. (And. Uhm. I'm forgetting someone(s).) Here's the Kitchen Chick's rundown of Chia Shiang, which is where we ate. It is foodie heaven.

I liked and even loved, most of what we ate, which was a Chinese banquet. Some of the dishes were so complex and arresting that I couldn't outright love them--it was good to sample, and not have a whole meal of them. I could contemplate eating a full meal of the, uhm... pineapple fish, I think; certainly the chicken and chestnuts, which is featured in the above review; the lamb with cumin; and maybe two or three other things that I munched on as they went past and I've now forgotten. But the most impressive things on the menu would be hard for me to contemplate as a whole meal. Mainly, the fish stew and the spicy chicken we ate were so intense and multi-flavored that I kind of went on culinary overload, and it was hard to cleanse my palate afterward. In fact, bizarrely, my tongue and whole mouth kind of went numb while eating them, which I'm told was due to Sichuan peppercorns. The ConFusion Princess actually wondered aloud if she were having a neurological event. That was a good question.

I ended up "cleansing" my palate at one point with... Duck Stuffed with Everything. Eight Treasures Duck? It was ah-mazing. I would get that again. In a heartbeat. In fact, this duck may be why civilization must continue to function at current levels.

I have been experiencing a weird kind of synesthesia lately, where tastes read in my mind as experiences. "This tastes like stepping out of a hot tub onto cold decking" was a recent experience--tonight I had "This is like driving toward Estes Park on a chilly summer day, with the windows cracked and the heat on." (I think I said, "Tastes like Colorado," when trying to explain it tonight, but that was inadequate.)

Anyway. Good times, catching up with folks I don't often catch, and meeting new folks.

PS See you at Penguicon?

It's a record low for this time of year

2009-04-26T03:23:45Z

For serious, it is nearly May, and I've only read 12 books this year.

8) Playing For Keeps by Mur Lafferty

Read this as a writer, particularly trolling for first-published novels. This is definitely a book that reinforces the belief that story trumps everything else. Very fast-paced and enjoyable, which kept me going through the blocking muddles and the word repetition.

9) Romanian Folk-culture by Nicolae Constantinescu

Absolutely jam-packed with details, and relatively accessible.

10) Unstrung Harp, Or, Mr Earbrass Writes a Novel by Edward Gorey

Adoration. Mounds of it.

11) Broken by Megan Hart

A re-read. I skipped all the sex (yes, I really did) in favor of the emotional wallops. I have not been able to get these characters out of my head since I read this the first time. This may even be the third time.

12) The Career Novelist by Donald Maass

This is currently offered as a free download on Maass's website. It's very good, and still very relevant in most chapters. Lovely Agent was, I think, pleased that I was reading it. I skipped right over the chapter on e-books, though. Some solid advice on advances, rights, contracts, expectations, agents, publishers--oh, everything. A lot of "don't quit your dayjob" advice, which is good. I'll be keeping this around to dig into periodically.

Eating the frogs

2009-04-25T13:46:12Z

To do today:

1. Rewrite novel.
(a partial process, and has its own sublist)
2. Read for workshop.
(I'm about one novel behind where I want to be)
3. 1 hour of gardening.
(plant asparagus, wildflower seeds, lettuce, attend to seedlings, plant more seedlings, clean at least one flower bed out) (I'm aiming for this to be my 3PM break)
4. (Send husband to) Buy an in-house watering can and lawn debris bags.
5. ~~Clean cat boxes.~~
6. ~~Clean cat box area so that the new water meter may be installed easily.~~
7. Attend to personal hygiene rituals.

Naturally, I least want to attend to 5 & 6, so I must go get them done first. Eat those frogs.

Things that came up since 9AM:

8. ~~Install Tweetdeck and see how that goes.~~
9.

~~Cut one cat nail.~~
~~Cut one cat nail.~~
~~Cut one cat nail.~~
Cut one cat nail.
Cut one cat nail.
Cut one cat nail.
Cut one cat nail.
Cut one cat nail.
Cut one cat nail.
Cut one cat nail.

10. Put away laundry.
11. Eat something. And drink something.