That One Thing

Finally! After working on the manuscript build, typing in all those notes and starting to plan out the new, unwritten sections, I found something I’ve misplaced for months now. And I can’t even describe it. Sitting here, trying to think of the right metaphor and finding everything that my mind offers up to be utterly inadequate. Wait, hold on. Okay.

The stage may be utterly dark before the play begins but it is strangely alive at the edges of your senses. Even in the dark you can see the hint of color in the stage and props, get a sense of the shapes and places of the actors on stage as their whispers and nervous, last minute movements tease your ears. And then the spotlight, solitary and brilliant, lights up a point on the stage and the audience stills as you do and you focus on it, whatever it is, before the light softens and others come on, bringing the whole scene to life before your eyes. It all starts with that first spotlight — whether it’s a telephone off the hook or a crumpled bed, a polished skull in someone’s hand or a loaded gun on the mantle — that leads you into the rest of the scene, provides the doorway into the story.

I came close recently, writing a scene fragment that takes place ahead in the story after the funeral, but it wasn’t the next link in the narrative where I left off. And I’d sort have been dancing around it, nervous I guess that I’d feel like I’d not be able to reconnect to the story since it’s been so many months since I last made regular progress on the word count. But the spotlight came on when I was writing my notes for the build, that set piece, that posture, that look, and suddenly I’m back in the world of the story.

Lily’s sitting on a bench in the courtyard of the University, holding an umbrella and wearing sunglasses while it rains. She’s stalking someone, come to see their handiwork first hand, and she’s angry that her friend, her mentor, wouldn’t come.

So I wrote yesterday and today. Granted, today’s words were shit, but they at least got some of the ideas down. When I type them in tomorrow they will be better, and they will grow.

I think that tomorrow I’m going to split up the work, alternate between raw words and manuscript building. I’ll type in the new material on the current scene, get going and keep going as long as the words flow, then go back to the build and start plotting, and when I get stuck there pop back. Maybe if I weave it back and forth I can keep my monkey-brain satisfied and keep the distractions at bay.

Ahead Of My Game

Hot damn, finally finished summarizing all the scenes written to date in the format for the manuscript build. It’s taken way long that it should be that can be blamed not just on my own skittishness but because to make these notes I have to refer to the draft written so far. I could have lugged the print-outs around with me while I worked on the notes long hand, but it’s much faster skimming and skipping back and forth between two open Scrivener windows.

And now it’s done. And on my “Saturday” no less.

I don’t, however, get to crow about it at the next Hypergraphics meeting. Family thing that same night. I’m a little bummed, since this meeting promised to be more hands-on work on our current projects and reading from what we’ve worked on recently. Dammit. It’s also going to be the first meeting I’m going to miss since the group started. Not that it wasn’t going to happen eventually – August 7th I’ll be deliriously happy somewhere in a hotel hallway in the midst of the mania that is World Con – but I’ve started to get superstitious about stuff like that. As soon as I skip one, just one, it becomes acceptable to skip, and then your skipping and not in the fun, “Look at the butterflies on this glorious summer day!” sort of skipping. ‘Cause skipping leads to stopping.

It happened when I had a gym membership. Happened again when I started my write every day plan. I was doing so well and then I skipped once, for whatever reason, and then that led to more skipping, and then stopping. I’m back to writing either in page spurts (though longer pieces now, I’ve noticed) or in chunks on the computer. And since working on the manuscript build, I’ve written hardly a new damn word since.

Which is why I’m so pleased at this progress. Summarizing all the scenes I’ve written before was a big, overwhelming task. But I worked away at it, bit by lazy-ass bit, and now it’s done. All new work from here out.

The nice thing is that it really let me take a good look at the first part of the book. Originally written over a year ago, I can see where I was finding my way and I can see clearly places where I can cut and combine. Especially the first three scenes. Skipping all that stuff, going right to the mini-funeral, dropping my backstory here and there in little tidbits, and wham — should be a tighter and more intriguing beginning. Of course, I’m not writing that until the draft is completed. I will not (ever again) fall back into First Chapter Redux Syndrome.

Off to read a while.

Water Fowl Ready!

It’s done. Not only has the room at the hotel been booked (and a month ago at that) but I have finally purchased my tickets and bought the membership for Anticipation, the 67th World Science Fiction Convention!

The ducks are all in their row, neat and squeaky and ready to fly! Er, bus, anyway. You know what I mean.

I spent a half hour consolidating all my notes into Evernote, including hotel maps, bus routes and walking paths. The only thing I don’t have an electronic-only version of is my set of bus tickets. Still, having it all kept in Evernote will eliminate the amount of paper I have to carry around and will support my “travel light” mantra that I’m trying to take to heart.

Not that I don’t normally, but since I’ll be traveling mostly on my own, I want to minimize the amount of luggage I have to look after. Not just for the on-the-road stuff either – there’s that whole Sunday where after we check-out when I’ll be homeless until it’s time for me to catch my bus. I don’t want to be lugging around bags more than absolutely necessary.

I had plans to work on the manuscript build, but that’s not likely to happen tonight. I’m tempted to get Todd to drop me off at work early tomorrow so I can sit down with the computer in the quiet of the cafeteria. Then again, so long as I get up with him and get myself ready early, I could have an hour of undisturbed writing time before I have to walk to work. Okay, that has the ring of a plan to it — and better writing here than spending any more time at work than I must.

And the logical fallacies of Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune continue to drive me insane. Todd’s playing it, and I swear to the video game gods he has killed upwards of 300 mercenaries who are armed to the teeth and can be found in every single location, no matter how remote, how well-hidden, how difficult to reach it is for Drake himself to find. “We only found this area by using a secret passageway and then I had to scale the finger-wide ledges of a bottomless gorge before pulling myself up to find, well, 15 heavily armed men and large cargo crates of supplies!” And did I mention the reams of gasoline-filled barrels that float down rivers and pile up strategically against walls? Not stacked, no — piled like wayward acorns of some fuel-obsessed rodent. Keep in mind that this is coming from an avowed Tomb Raider fan, used to nonsense but the delightful kind of nonsense that at least still held together in some sort of a story. With Drake’s Fortune I’m not sure if I should be furious or insulted. Kudos to Todd for sticking with it for so long — I would have thrown the controller down in disgust long before now. I hear the sequel is much improved and honestly, they have the bones of something worthwhile. Sure, Drake may have Lara Kroft’s moves executed with the agility and speed of Spiderman, but the world they’ve depicted is a lush one and, if they strike a better balance between gunplay and game play, it could be a real winner.

But, wow! Neither here nor there. </rant>

Making Real Progress

Taking a small break to crow a bit, as all the preparatory work that I’d written long hand is finally, fantastically entered into Scrivener and with the help of Pages has also been printed into a to-go file for when I’m writing away from home. Even got all nerdy for way too long and made a title page for the documents and put them in a shiny, newish folder.

Not that I’m done yet. Not by a long shot. Now I have the scene-by-scene breakdowns. I’ve actually created a separate Scrivener file to do all this work in and if the two end up getting merged … well, we’ll see.

In the meantime, nibbling on teeny Goldfish crackers (not the three cheese kind, unfortunately), lactose-free milk (you get used to it) and I’m singing along with the Dr. Horrible Sing-A-Long Blog soundtrack (don’t worry, the drapes and windows are closed).

But now, back to the build. Working up a mental sweat, but enjoying the hell out of myself.

Yeah, yeah, I know. The blog roll. It’s coming. I swear.

No More Mags

Recently I listened to a podcast by Mur Lafferty where she reviewed the big two mags, Writer’s Digest and The Writer, and reversed her opinions on which she felt more valuable. But she also talked about the plateau that writers hit when it comes to advice – eventually you’ve read it all and now you need to put it into practice. With that on my mind, I picked up copies of both magazines on the way to Niagara and I’ve only just gotten to them now.

And, yes, these magazines are all saying the same basic topics in a series of shallow treatments that you’ve seen before. One article about self-publishing, for example, was way, way too short to actually guide an would-be writer through that quagmire and while it highlights social media, leaves it at a brief mention of Facebook and never once looks at podcasting. Um, okay.

Got me thinking about my magazine consumption, and it’s true – the magazines don’t offer me much that I haven’t read before. And I know this. In the 90s I used to buy the magazine monthly, then stopped when I realized it was just the same thing month after month. I suppose that’s to be expected. Nowadays, I tend to read select how-to books, ones well-reviewed and dealing with the topic in depth, listen to podcasts and I read blogs.

Lots of blogs.

I look at the bylines of the writers in Writers Digest and The Writer and while I am sure they are nice, talented people, half of them write non-fiction, the other half mainstream genres. They aren’t the people I read. Ever.

Where do I find the writers that I read? Online.

I get more insight, more fresh inspiration and tips from the science fiction and fantasy writers who are actually in the trenches. Alongside the blogs and podcasts, Locus Magazine provides a completely different angle — the books themselves. This market insider and author interviews complement the blogs and the few writing how-to books that let me explore the topics in depth at my own pace.

So while I think I may have reached a point where the mainstream writer magazines no longer have anything for me, what I used to get, or what I went looking for, I find online. And, I think, I’m getting it better.

Edited to add: Wow. Writing a blog entry on my WordPress app for the iPhone, while convenient, is not a good idea. I’ve re-written half of this posting. (And that’s still no guarantee it’s any better!) The blogroll will be posted sometime today.

Cork or Stone?

I’ve put down the Deryni Rising book. I gave it about 50 pages but it just didn’t grab me like I’d hoped (feared?). A shame, really. There’s something about an old paperback, recovered from a used book store, with its cheesy covers, stained page-edges and teeny tiny type that makes me feel all warm and fuzzy with nostalgia. But the book itself started off very generic, with a king murdered, making way for an untested son, amidst a tenuously united realm with scheming dukes and witches about to beset them all. There was regular cheese, too, but of the mustache-twirling variety. And then the head-hopping within scenes. Urk. I have a hard time with this, only managed to enjoy it in Dune, but I’m starting to suspect that was more a habit of the 70s instead of particular authors. Still, I tried. Went as far as I could go before I couldn’t justify pushing myself through it when I have a gigantic pile of books that whisper my name and shake their pages suggestively at me.

So I switched over to Ysabel by Guy Gavriel Kay. And boom. No struggling, no fighting, I was down and under and in and gone.

And it got me to thinking, when I could raise my head up from this new book, about reading and books. At least how I experience them.

These stories. To me, they are either cork stories or they are stone stories.

Cork stories bob along, unable to pierce the surface tension between air and water. You may be able to see something in the shadows beneath, but there is no way to get there and your not quite sure it isn’t a shoe or old tin can. You can force it, either holding the cork under water or tying a weight to it, but it will never go in of its own accord. It becomes a miserable experience for you both.

Stone stories are effortless. The moment they are let go over the water, they fall, they splash in — a cold shock that makes you take notice — and then dive, dive, dive, until they land at the bottom. The water is your world now, with the mermaids and the sharks, the sunken ships and their lost gold, and you wouldn’t dare wish to be anywhere else. They will stay with you, stone stories, even after you surface.

Anyways, Ysabel. Loving it. The story is told from the view point, so far, of a 15-year-old Canadian boy in Provence with his father and the secret world, an older story, that he’s stumbled into. As I was reading it, besides thinking about nonsense things like cork and stone, I was also admiring at how real the characters seemed, how utterly genuine and human and interesting they were.

I recently read another book with a young protagonist (no, I won’t mention which), where I had deep issues with how the character was presented. The character was sweet, pretty, smart, loved, and perfect in that annoying sort of way. She doesn’t sound real, feels like she lacks depth. The writer had taken pains to mimic adolescence — was up on the latest tech and social tools (sorta), kept referencing Canadian bands for her to listen to — but all of her movements felt superficial. A doll moving in a diorama.

Yet in Ysabel I never once doubt the main character — he is young but wise in the way young people can be briefly when they aren’t trying and he’s also dumb in the same way sometimes, accidentally, as he feels his way to adult hood in the same trial and error way we all do. His voice, his thoughts, his actions all ring true. I am no longer thinking about the character or the story, I am in it, happily gone.

(Which makes it damn difficult for me to step back from a good book to learn from it. My book journal is full of notes about what I think goes wrong in a book, but when it comes to one I loved the page is nothing more then gushing and squealing. I keep those books, though, and give away the former.)

This should have been posted yesterday, but I let it sit overnight. Glad I did. Tweaked a few things. Tonight is the Hypergraphics Meeting (Yay!) and that means I am heading in to work early to type up notes and try to get ahead. Good morning, world!

Is Coffee Supposed to be Loud?

The coffee shop ended up being a terrible idea. I managed to get a couple of pages typed in before a crowd of patrons raised the noise level to un-ignorable heights. In the end, I packed up my bag, drove home and treated the dog to an early walk since weather reports hinted at rain later in the day. (It didn’t. Just endlessly hot and breezeless. Still not great dog-walking weather.) Then groceries, stocking up mostly on healthy goods for a change, then picking up Mr. Boyd, and then … well, not much. The heat sapped my focus, and I ended up frittering the afternoon away on computer-related fiddling. All email is now handled in Thunderbird, I’ve figured out how to set up the tethering on the iPhone (but I have to wait until we know just exactly what my new contract is supposed to cover), handed off my old and potentially fire-starting iPhone charger adapter to the UPS man, and I read a little, once I’d given up on being productive.

Tomorrow will be different. Soon as I rise, it’s pot of tea, the computer and all my notes.

Everything gets entered.

And if everything gets entered, I get to have McDonalds for dinner.

(I know, doesn’t sound like encouragement, but it is for me even if it’s in a bad, fatty-fat sort of way.)

This may not be doable. I’ve been working on the build for weeks, I have 30-odd pages of notes. But I am going to try. I will also be turning off the wireless, using my iPhone’s Ambiance app to provide some background noise that I won’t start singing or listening intently to, and I will use an egg timer, just to create the rush of a deadline combined with the release of frequent fidget breaks.

Yes, it’s a bit of throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks but it’s more of a plan than I normally have, okay?

So, that’s it. All of this preparatory work needs to be done so I can start Thursday fresh and I want to go to Friday’s Hypergraphic Meeting with something substantial accomplished.

Note Typing a.k.a. Uninspiring Blog Post Titles

I am out and about.

First day of my weekend and I have the car. The goal this morning is to sit, sipping Chai tea latte and typing in all my notes from the manuscript build that I’ve been working on these last weeks. I have two days to get it all in and then, starting Thursday, I’m going to be getting up early to write before Todd wakes up and before the demands of they day start weighting me down.

I’ve always been a natural early bird — that is, until the Thyroid cancer. After that, and the surgery and the pills, I slept. A lot. No more early rising. I had to claw my way to consciousness almost every morning. But since the very late (hopefully not too late, though I try not to think about that much or often) radioactive iodine treatment, I’ve been up around 6:00 am more often then not. It may be psychosematic but I should take advantage of it. After reading some encouraging Tweets from other writers doing the same thing, I decided to do so.

To prepare? All the notes into the Mac before the end of tomorrow night. Not that that’s the only activity on tap. Groceries need shopping, shelf needs assembling, dog needs walking.

But right now it’s me, my tea and my notes.

Plum Crazy

Playing on the computer and sipping some Japanese plum wine. It was an impulse purchase while we were in Niagara, something I’d always wanted to try, and now I’ve gotten into the bad habit of treating myself with a half glass of the sweet and sour wine in the evening. Todd’s practicing his virtual swing on the new Tiger Woods golf game for the Wii and the animals are around, pleased to have us back after our brief vacation.

There was no time to write while we were away, which is a lie, but a soft one, a gentle one. We really were on the go together for most of the trip, and when we weren’t we took advantage of the two-person jacuzzi and generally enjoyed each other’s company. I should be working on that now, writing all my thoughts and impressions in my journal, but I’ve long neglected the computer so I’m catching up here instead. iTunes is scrolling through my songs (which I am happily rating with my new toy, I Love Stars 3.0) I’m updating Delicious Library 2, catching up on web comics and other odds and ends.

And I’ve even gotten further behind in my reading, after dropping a wad of cash at the Chapters on magazines and a book. Yes, I know. Book Purchase Embargo. The only reason I picked it up was because I thought I would be able to use my coupon. Not so with magazines. Darn it. But instead of reading Fire Study, the third book in Snyder’s series, I’m reading Deryni Rising by Katherine Kurtz, a rescue from the local used bookstore. Just starting, so nothing specific to say about it yet. Would it sound bad to say I hope I don’t like it? I have so many series on the go and it would be relief not to get hooked into another but I hear it’s a series not to be missed. Not sure which to hope for, actually.

… sip … sip … sip …

Highlights from the Niagara Trip:

• The Falls, especially the Maid in the Mist tour, were an absolute joy. I haven’t felt so possessed with childlike awe and glee in years and years. We drove into what felt like the heart of the falls, past where the gulls and cormorants felt safe to where the water went from mist to a wall that thrashed us, splashed us, making us all scream and whoop and cry. We left drenched but supremely happy.
• We went behind the Falls, too, and followed the river to the Class Six rapids (really harsh, what we were told) and even took the Aero Car, which is suspended over the giant whirlpool down river. Nearly ever major attraction involves wearing a large, plastic protector, either blue or yellow, even some of the ones inside. When donning our covers for an inside show, I asked, “Really, we’re going to get wet again?” and the attendant laughed and said, “This is Niagara. We’re all about getting you wet.”
• The kooky bed and breakfast we stayed at as the only guests, an historic home redecorated to modern(ish) tastes for the suites but whose common rooms were straight out of an old cozy mystery from the turn of the century. There were six chickens in a coup outside and overgrown flora cascading around every nook and crazy. We had an old fashioned key, one of those long-necked pieces that fit into a key hole you could look through. I loved it, as I normally do our B&B experiences, though having to walk up-street to another B&B for breakfast and no discernible company does make you feel like you’re trespassing, just a skoosh, and makes one think of ghostly innkeepers.
• Had a great pizza cooking in a wood oven at a place called Antica’s Pizzeria – went there on the recommendation of a friend and it was worth it. (No link, unfortunately, but here’s a review site.) The other memorable food event was a drive out to Niagara-on-the-Lake’s Old Angel Inn Pub, where we each had an amazing dinner, Todd with steak and kidney pie while I had a beautiful steak with peppercorn sauce and yorkshire pudding.

We would go back. Absolutely. We didn’t get to do any winery tours, didn’t see Fort Erie, and perhaps next time we could go down with up-to-date passports to check out the American side. Our Horseshoe Falls are the prettier falls — sorry, but we won out on that one.

Alright, eyeballs are starting to stick. Universal sign for me to shut up and shut down. Tomorrow, when I get back on schedule, a writing-related post.

… sip … sip … sip …

Ahhh.

Writing On The Sly

I sit under the hot lights and warm air of the upstairs room at the Laughing Buddha. There are 10 of us tonight, ejected from our regular hangout at La Fromagerie for the week, and we are melting as we eat our specialty pizzas and sandwiches. But good food, nice to have it mixed up from the normal cheese platter shtick. Course it’s meant a late start to the meeting, so we’re sort of spinning out wheels at the moment.

Let’s see – typed in the words for the “homework” we had assigned at the last meeting this morning. Its actually turned into a little something. Not sure if I will keep it/work on it/worry about it, but here I am — working on it while the others talk around me. The meeting has started in earnest now, discussing the upcoming Sudbury Arts Council kerfluffle and promotional elements, like the Northern Lights Festival and a book sale we’re organizing to fund raise for a local school. Due to my work schedule, I won’t be able to attend these events. There in spirit, I suppose.

That was one of the really weird things I discovered about NaNoWriMo, and which I’m sure I’ve talked about here. I am suddenly, strangely productive when there are others around me and I am able to tune them out. I think that goes back to high school and university, writing in the margins of my notebooks when the class became boring. So full of ideas and dialogue and images when I should be doing something else. Same at work, productive if I have the downtime from the calls while co-workers babble on around me. And when I am home, alone and working on my writing, it becomes much harder to be productive. Maybe I can try faking myself out with the TV loud in the other room, or the satellite radio, or what-have-you. While I can mimic this when I am out in a place like a coffee shop but then when it comes to a bathroom break, you’re stuck. Not like you’re going to leave your notes and computer on the table while you vanish and it’s inconvenient to pack everything up and then come back. It would be different if I had a writing buddy that I could go out with, but with my schedule that’s nearly impossible. Lesley would be the closest one to a person where I would want to do this with, but she’s an artist — unless she is working on planning or sketching there’s not much she can do.

All right, I’m sliding into whining. Sorry about that.

You may have noticed (You, yes, you, all of you fabulous readers … hahaha …) that I’ve begun posting every other day. That’s deliberate, and encouraged by my recent adoption of The Hit List. I’m using it to keep myself on track about the things I expect of myself day after day and so far it’s been helpful. If I have to post every two days, I have to think about what I’m going to write and, frankly, makes me make sure that I’m doing something, however small, that moves me forward.

… And I am ride-less for the evening. Dammit. Regrouping …