November 2/225 words
Home. I opened the door and discovered both living room sofas in my office, the entryway filled with all the other furniture and about a foot of space to squeeze from room to room.
Very much like finding yourself in the middle of a puzzle, except for the part where there is no hand smushing you into a spot because you are doing it quite nicely on your own.
The puzzle will wait until I return home after school and the Eldest Child appears.
World Fantasy was quite a bit of fun, although odd since there was no immediate amoeba to attach myself to like at a Worldcon. I spent time in conversation with Lori Ann White and friends on Thursday night, hit the Google settlement discussion (end result: of course it's not good. D'oh.) attended several panels and readings on Friday, and just wandered. Lots of ex-Clarion people showed and I had delightful conversations with many.
The best panel to my thinking was the one on Writing Human Characters Whether or Not They're Human. It applied in many ways to my novel and the situations I've set, so there is definitely going to have to be more horror! as these contrasting peoples act in ohmygod! I would so not ever do that! ways.
The close runners-up were the Steampunk one and the Urban Fantasy one, if only to see Michael Swanwick and Bill Willingham posit story ideas and titles right before my eyes.
I slept quite a bit and hit few parties. Friday night was a maybe I'm sick, go to bed night, which nipped whatever it was in the bud. Saturday, Kelly and I hit the 20th floor, managed to skip the 19th completely, and headed to bed around midnight.
Still, even though it was odd, I still classify it as a good con. I've got far more faces matched to people, and if I have regrets, it's that sitting at any distance from someone meant that I couldn't hear much of the conversation. Damn aging.
Oh, and there was that thing where I totally blew Kelly off when she came over to me because hey! I'd never seen that woman before in my life. (Well, I hadn't. But she's about a foot shorter than I expected. She's taller on the internets.)
November 4/475 words
To celebrate my one additional year of supposed ability to learn from past mistakes, I had my first Irish Car Bomb. Two gulps, actually. And then I passed the remainder to the Eldest Child who finished it for me.
Verdict: Not quite the waste of good Guinness that I feared, however, definitely not the chocolate milk that the Middle Child promised me.
Anything that curdles on its own if you don't drink it quickly enough quite probably isn't designed for my tummy, and I most likely won't repeat the experience. Also, the volcanic reaction I anticipated (much akin to red food coloring, baking soda and vinegar) was understated. Or I gulped too fast to notice.
I figure the drink's rep relies solely on the amount of alcohol you consume quickly. Two or three of these and you are gone.
Live and learn, right?
My brother's photography book made Amazon's top ten list for the month of October and 2009. I don't have this one, so I may very well have to buy the darn thing. It's a cool premise--to look at a number of well-known photographs and study the ones that were taken immediately before the iconic shot and those immediately after to study why one worked better than the others. Steve's first career was as a photographer and he worked for many years for William Claxton. I'm interested in learning what makes a good photograph versus a great--maybe you will be, too. You can find Contact Sheet at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
WFC still has me thinking, about the Steampunk panel especially. I thought a lot during that panel on early influences on this sub-genre--Frankenstein was the first novel to spatter my mind's windshield. TicTok of Oz, the second. Swirling around still is The Island of Dr. Moreau and Sherlock Holmes. I'm trying to nail down why I love the steampunk I've read thus far, and Sherlock Holmes and TicTok nail it for me. TicTok's the quintessential robot (especially in the original illos) and Sherlock Holmes brings that touch of intellectual study and observation that the Steampunk enthusiast/inventor should have in abundance. I also believe there's a pinch of Indiana Jones tossed in for good luck.
More thinks coming.
With dinner out, there was no writing last night, but I've upgraded my goal to about 500 words a day until Dec. 31st. That'll give me 30K to play with, and surely, surely!, I can finish the novel in 30K. Or die trying.
Stay tuned. I may die right before your very eyes.
November 7/925 words
Not so good on the self-promised word count this week--birthday celebrations and a strong desire to nap have taken the forefront. Yesterday's after-school celebration with the kindergarten teachers had me wine-tasting. French bread, cheese, and lovely chocolates took center stage, and I ended up home with a bottle of wine and no desire to consume more.
Except there was this chocolate cake I'd brought home because no one else could eat anything more, either.
Luckily, the middle child and wife showed up. With three dogs, including a visitor.
Now Odie, despite a number of visits, has never fully figured out his place in the pack, so Harley and Zoey tried to demonstrate.
Harley tried humping him from one end of the house to another, and he never got it. Then Zoey and he went chest to chest, and she humped him.
Since this whole exercise involved a fair amount of running through the house and excited barking, Harley got timed out upstairs in our bedroom, and the kids eventually left with all the dogs.
Mind you, the little dogs had their own excitement. They'd found a brownie in the trash somewhere and waited to empty their tummies until they arrived here. And were on the rugs, rather than, say, the tile floors. So thoughtful.
I went to bed about 9P when I couldn't stand the turmoil any longer. It was just like kindergarten but with four-legged beasts and fur and no comprehension.
Thankfully, dogs don't talk: if they could have, I'd have heard, "Mom! Odie touched my butt! Make him stop!" or "Mom! Harley's jumping on me again, make him stop!"
I cannot warn you strongly enough about the advisability of choosing names carefully. You name a dog Odie, you're going to get an Odie. Name your kid Jesus or Angel, and they can't live up to the hype, so they don't even bother to try. Trust me on this.
As for the writing last night, there was no way. I am making up for the lack of word count this morning, and I will do it all over again tonight. Bad girl, Marsha. No biscuit.
I just want this novel--ugly, patched, and dangling threads everywhere--to be finished. Really finished.
The beatings word count will continue until then.
November 8/1025 words
I struggle with my writing, and my nemesis is plot. You can capitalize that word, and make it appear absolutely evil: P.L.O.T.
For me, it is.
I've moved from a model of rising action, climax, falling action, denoument to shit happens. Yes, I freely admit I couldn't get my head around nailing that rising action thing until after the story was written. And sometimes not even then.
So, I've migrated to a 'shit happens' model, and I'm currently in the process of tossing all sorts of stuff into the novel. Gee, the infirmary scenes seem a little slow? Fine, toss in a plague. Don't care too much for the sidekick? Okay, add a competing love interest.
In some respects, the plotting has improved, but I'm not there yet. No, I've got miles to go before I sleep. That's where I am. And it doesn't help knowing that my sentence level stuff is good enough to keep people reading--no, because in the end, they still raise their head and tell me nothing happened.
This rewrite is going to suck donkey balls.
I'm going to have to streamline the bits of novel, dump the slow transitions, squeeze all the threads together--once I know how I've tied them all, which I don't, although another one came together in yesterday's writing, and I just stared at it going "Really? Bashak knows him? Really?"
Gotta weave another damn bit of foreshadowing in now. Dammit.
I really would like to comprehend 'raising the stakes' on an intuitive level. Either I've got it subconsciously, and I don't really recognize it because I have to be able to do it consciously, or I need another model.
Some day I'll be able to plot. Just not today.
And somewhere along the line, I've got to get another 500 words. That's in between two more Ideo icons, a bunch of housework, and laundry.
I do wish I had more than twenty-four hours in a day.
November 11/1550 words
Because I have a day off--and unplanned for, because day off! Woo! Sleep in!--I am up early. The dogs did not get the memo about sleeping in, dagnabit.
So I used a random generator to select an abandoned short story to work on. (Where random equals the piece of paper I grabbed to write the information I needed to send the Slug, which turned out to be the image I used for Beryl's story. Clearly random.)
I open the document, am impressed by the quality of writing and how much I love the story, and then slam into the spot where I quit writing.
Damn. I still don't know what happens.
Well, I've got a collector bad guy, who would really like to collect Beryl, and if he can do that without actually paying for her, so much the better. I have the captain, who guides her to the quay where the man she wants to find is working, but no sign of him yet. I have set up keys, clock hands and her hands, and the moon as images I want to tie in. My dream book says hand represent self-expression, our grasp on life, our hold on people and situations, and possess the power to give, take, would, heal, support, do. Ooooookay. A ticking clock can represent a heart, in addition to our sense of duty and timing. (Yeah, that's definitely in there.) Daylight hours represent our conscious waking live--and during night, we go in search of who we are. The latter is definitely something I want to tie in here.
All these are in my brain's rinse cycle swirling about, but nothing in crystallizing into the how of it.
Well, no. I do have an ending image of Beryl, in a small boat, traveling by night for the ending. Crescent moon, or possibly new moon, reflected in her wake.
And that is it. I know the man she desires fails her in some way. I know the collector fails in his attempt to collect her--and that she must find the means on her own to escape. And I know that ending follows her escape.
Okay, and maybe the collector drowns by Beryl's hands. Maybe. I have to think about what that means symbolically. Although it may mean that she's just going in search of who she is as a person--her owner is killed, which is why she goes in search of the man she's attracted to and is rejected by in some fashion, and then must fight the collector's nefarious schemes, in order to discover just who she is.
Hrm. So maybe I do have a sense of what this tale will be about.
But damn, it took a lot of nattering to get to the meat of it. Not to mention gestation and wait time.
However, I'm open to anybody else's insights. (KIAP, this means you. Or anyone else who knows what I want to say. Feel free to read into my brain, because the damn brain isn't very good at speaking my language, and translators are required.)
November 14/1200 words
Another day, another day of good intentions just waiting to be blown.
No writing due to choir practice on Thursday--two choirs, double the fun. No writing last night either. I arrived home in an exhausted heap at 5P, completely worthless. I finally ate dinner and vanished into my pillow.
But today! A gleaming bright morning full of promises!
The list begins with cleaning, but I'm slipping yesterday's novel words into the forefront. (So I must tear myself away from the short that is coming along quite nicely, mind you, and face the monster that will not get to the damn ending. I may have to outline (very roughly) where each POV character must go in order to tie this ever-expanding growth into order--cordoning three rambunctious vines into espalier.)
I'm sure there will be screaming. But better the screaming now than the prospect of screaming at the fourth or fifth rewrite.
I mean, I love my rewrites, but eesh.
The short story is evolving nicely. Beryl's lost a father figure, been rejected by the one she viewed through love-tinted lenses, and is in the process of physically rejecting the one human who wishes to possess her. It's wrapping up nicely, although there will be rewrites. The language of the opening doesn't quite match the language of the end--a dilemma when one chooses to abandon a tale mid-stream.
My solution is simply to reread the earlier parts over and over and let that level of detail and manipulation of language seep into my brain.
I think it will work. Cross my fingers.
Another short is waving its arms yelling, "Remember me?" but I'm not going to complicate matters any further until I have this short under control.
Then maybe.
Now to get that list of good intentions written in black ink, so I will know exactly how many I will have written off or ignored by the end of the day. Guilt r us. Works for everything, apparently, except exercise. Dammit.
November 15/1000 words
So one day as you're writing another bunch of words to the meandering thing you laughingly call the novel, you realize that perhaps--just perhaps!--a little outlining would be good.
Okay, not an outline, but a running record of where you think you need to go to wrap the damn thin it up.
Okay, not a running record, but half-written notes on three pieces of 3x3" paper, both sides. (Because writing by hand? Anathema. God gave us fingers to type. You are allowed to print for lists and that's the extent of it. Explains the 3x3" paper, doesn't it?)
And in that half-assed process, you discover that one POV character is in a place he cannot physically be in order to do what he must do. What do you do? (Also, if you are now singing doo-be-doo-be-doo-be-doo, it is so not my fault.)
I don't know about you, but I jumped ship. (Mind you, I had to get chance's permission first. One can't jump ship without the chain of command being notified.)
On the next draft, that massive plot hole which could swallow an entire caravan will be fixed. Right now, I just want to get to the end--and it's doable in the next six weeks if I focus, kill the two characters off I must have die, and rescue the others from fates worse than... well, death. Although one more faces death, while the other just wishes she could.
Oh, yeah, and there's a whole lot of unburdening before that, so one character can realize the depth of perfidy in another.
It'll still suck when it's finished and I'll have to purge and polish like a mad thing, but it will Be Done.
December 31st is the free at last date. I plan to drink heavily--well, provided I'm not still typing furiously.
It may not be Christmas yet, but the carols are playing in some stores, the decorations for sale have been out for at least a month, and I'm feeling nibbled by geese, which are, in reality, crafts. With pointy beaks.
I just want to survive. Napping moments catch at me when I'm not looking, and then I have to fight being half-asleep.
Like right now.
Maybe if I do my word count, all my suffering will pass like a dream.
(Or not. It's a constant battle between the characters and me to determine who suffers the most.)
November 18/950 words
I'm frustrated.
The trouble with not visualing enough beforehand is that I visualize too much now as I write. In excruciating detail. Every step. Every little movement. And I'm yanking recalcitrant description out by the roots.
I thought I was going to die of word ripping last night--those writing minutes were the longest of my life.
So. There will be some research tonight, because I don't have a strong sense of this ship, have no idea where the rigging is, although it exists. Sails billow, but I have no image to sustain the crew's precarious positions on the masts and in the rigging. They're barefoot, that's about all I know. And they've got to be wearing different clothes than the crew who doesn't have to climb.
Nailing details is what I must do, and somehow I'm going to have to squeeze that in between school and parent conferences. I think I'll have an hour, if I'm lucky--unless I decide to do something mundane like, oh, wash the dishes.
I woke to Zoey out of her crate this morning, and trailing the afghan I keep on the living room couch.
Guess who had been on the verboten sofa?
I'm hoping the afghan catches her again, but it was funny to see her trotting out with a long off-white crocheted cape trailing behind her. Harley would have been upset at that--as it was he was pretty upset that I tripped over him as I tried to return the afghan to its proper placement. Lots of pre-emptive screaming just in case.
School proceeds. Monday was the first day I had everyone in class for the first time in three weeks. Guess what? Yesterday I had one child out. Something tells me it's time for another round of whatever is plaguing us. Allergies sidelined me Monday, weren't quite so bad yesterday, and now I'm about to head off into the winds again. My mom is pushing allergy shots, and I'm not quite ready to commit to visits three times a week to get them. (I do remember that from the three years the Eldest Child had trying to de-sensitize him to bee stings. I think we accomplished getting the bees to avoid him, and not much more. But that was a step in the right direction; and it beat stabbing him in the thigh with an EpiPen.)
Where does time go? It's time to sally forth, Adam Lambert's album is not finished, and I still have a couple of things to grab.
Please let this week be over soon. And let me find a ship online so I can purloin details to my heart's content.
November 21/0 words
Word count failure.
Parent conferences and the week from hell contributed, because I only have so much energy. Last night I slept eleven hours straight, and the Slug (who is home! Yay!) woke me up for breakfast (she cooks! Yay! She eats eggs! 0.0) and saved me from having to sing a solo in the weirdest venue ever--an elevator, the size of a room. With a piano. And my choice of pink or yellow plastic spoons to use a mic.
I am so not looking up these images in my dream book, because... why?
But the stress level will drop after Monday, when the pumpkin pies are done, and I will have a very short vacation (four days, not counting. Not a bit.) until the Christmas crafts arrive.
Next up is to get my next chunk to the Posse for ritual dissection. And then, amazingly, I'm going to come up with some critical scenes to write to the end of the novel. (Not planning, no. Just... oh, brainstorming.) And lay them out in sequence, and then it will be all about the writing and the transitions from one scene to the next.
But shh! It's a sekrit. Don't tell the brain.
Just had to listen to the Eldest Child's music--he tested my tolerance, and finally told me, "You can't tell me you don't like any of my music. You do like it in some form or another."
So I was mean and agreed--I do like it in some form or another: unplayed.
You leave me an opening, I'm going to skewer you--provided you are one of my children or a spouse. The rest of you? Not so much.
He's now threatening revenge, but I think he gets it whenever he runs off to climb. He's just not here to see.
And now that the kitchen is clean (the Slug cooks but does not clean) I'm off to plan write. Yeah, that's what I'm calling it. Writing.
November 22/500 words
It was a four-dog night, and the beasts were restless.
Three of them were in bed with us. For a few hours, and then we were rescued by the Eldest Child. I have no idea where they actually slept, but presumably it was together, and I awoke to the lovely morning medley of three noses ramming the bedroom door simultaneously.
I fed them, and they are now sleeping with the Spousling. I am alone.
With shreds of carpet.
Yes, Baxter found another tasty treat: carpet edges.
The supposed owners of these beasts are camping for the night, and thankfully, I will throw their little darlings in their faces upon their return. I figure this will stand me in good stead for grandmotherdom.
And pray really really hard I don't get a grandchild like my brother.
Grandchild 1: Papa, I have a dead rat in my backpack that needs to be buried with the cats.
Brother: O.O Get your backpack this instant. Do NOT say anything to your grandmother. DO NOT.
Grandchild 1: *complies and during the burial receives a lecture on how dead rats from the trashcan do not need burial like pet cats. Backpack is returned to house.*
Meanwhile, the phone rings. Grandmother answers.
Mother of child: Hey, go check Grandchild 1's backpack. I have a horrible feeling a dead rat is in it.
Grandmother: O.O *checks but backpack is miraculously clear of rats*
Mother of child: Hrm. Hrmhrmhrm. I have a really bad feeling about this. It's not in the trash. I wonder where he put it.
Phone conversation ends, so mother can search house.
Grandchild 2, puffed with excitement, enters: I have a really big sekrit, but I can't tell you what it is. I really can't. Papa says.
Grandmother: Well, if you can't tell me, you can't tell me. Better keep it a sekrit.
Grandchild 2: It's a sekrit. *yearns to spill the beans, then sadly adds* But Papa says I can't tell you.
I never found out who exactly spilled the beans, but my guess is that it was my brother. Because dead rats in a backpack are hard to keep a sekrit.
But the biggest miracle of all was that the sekrit of the dead rat in the backpack remained a sekrit throughout the entire school day.
November 25/0 words
I have the plague.
Okay, some plague. And, as plagues go, it's a mild case. No boils, no parts blackening and dropping off. However, that still means I spent a good thirty-plus hours in bed sleeping and am now able to remain in an upright position for six or seven hours at a time before the meat puppet demands a prone position again.
I ate a real breakfast this morning (an egg, half a bagel, and a cup of coffee) and I now don't believe I'll need to eat anything else for the next day.
How sick was I? This is my first cup of coffee in two days, and I finished it, but barely, and I won't be having another. Ick, coffee. (I know, I know. I'm as horrified as you.)
This loss of appetite is going to put a real damper on Thanksgiving gluttony. Luckily, I can survive the day and feel I participated in the frenzied eating by having my grandmother's dressing. (Yes, it's green, but with all the parsley and celery she threw in that recipe, no wonder. Nothing else really matters to most members of the family.)
Still, we leave for Mom's today and spend two nights. Life and writing will be waiting for me upon my return.
Because, yeah. Nothing happened the past couple of days. The house exploded while I was in bed, a child returned home, and it's too overwhelming to even think about doing anything much to put it back in shape.
I wish I could take a pill and have the house clean itself.
In other news, there is no other news. Harley had a bath yesterday. I managed to make it to choir rehearsal last night and survive. I volunteered for a solo part during the Advent concert, like I don't have enough insanity in my life, but now with Added Insanity! Yay!
Now I just have to resist going back to bed. There's a kitchen to dig out.
November 28/0 words
Still not 100%, although I'm better. Food now smells good, but the reality of eating leaves a lot to be desired. Will peck again today and hope for the best.
The trip to Mom's, the feasting went off well, although I was not pleased with the dressing at all. No one else seemed to notice, and I believe their tastebuds have turned. It was just not right. Now some of that was due to the lack of sourdough french bread and the substitution of loaves of regular french bread. Some of that was due to my sister's capitulation in the small matter of bell pepper use, which we have never done in the past, so if, as my mother claims, my grandmother used it at some point, it was before I helped chop celery and onions in her kitchen. Let's just say there will never be bell pepper added again. And some of it was due to the fact that I didn't add quite enough poultry seasoning. In retrospect, I should have been able to smell it, right?
Ah, well, live and learn.
It was a small gathering for us--only ten people. Our larger feasts have included up to twenty-five, so it was not the chaos we are used to and no small children running amuck. OTOH, we had a good time and Mom seemed happy to get the two partial families she had. That was important.
And now we're back home, and life here resumes. The kids will put up lights and the tree for us either today or tomorrow, and then it will be all about Christmas chaos and school. Yay. Sort of.
Actually, I'm thinking about going back to bed now that all the dogs have been fed and have subsided into drowsy beasts rather than whirling dervishes.
Yeah, they woke me up at 6A. Again.
(And the beasts heard me typing about them: they are up and wrestling under my feet.)
And life, or what it masquerades as, continues. I'll be in bed, and behind a locked door, for the immediate future.
