The Experiment Begins

So, here we are. The contract is over. The experiment begins.

The next three months, June, July and August, are going to be go time. I have so many projects that I will be throwing myself into, I’m excited and terrified all at once. They are, in not-so-random-order:

1. Second Round Edits on Blood of Wolves – a long time in coming, but coming now, dammit. Edits will be done, a fresh pair of eyeballs, and then queries out to agents and publishers.
2. Completed First Draft on Star Door – this is the WIP that’s been keeping me busy for the last two months, and now will be kicked into high gear. It is, however, second banana. If work on this derails the edits, it will be mercilessly put on hiatus to get the former done in a timely manner. What’s timely for the edit? I’m hoping by end of June, no later.
3. Continue to polish the short stories I have in various stages and get them in rotation on submissions. I’m considering making Friday my short story day.
4. Power through my to-be-read pile, fiction and non-fiction alike. I’m not a slacker at reading, but I would like to clear the backlog (see previous posts) and be able to buy books that I want to read when they are being published. (To dream the impossible dream, I know.)

Beyond that, I want get to know my city a bit better. General Scrooginess has kiboshed the sightseeing trip to Toronto in favor of bolstering the bank account. I have committed to World Fantasy in November — membership is bought and room has been booked, so I will just have to wait to satisfy my wanderlust until then. It also struck me that I’ve never really checked out what’s available locally in more than an ad-hoc manner. We have music festivals and food fairs and art shows and dragon boat races and more, and because of other life circumstances I’ve never been able to see them. So this summer, I’m getting out there and seeing what this town has to offer before I worry about what’s down the highway.

I’m also going to take some of those savings and buy myself a Supporting Membership to Chicon, this year’s Worldcon. Worldcon in Montreal was so amazing, and I can’t wait to head back, but it is not in the cards this year. But Supporting Membership means I can help support the Con and get to vote in the Hugos. (Go, Jo Walton, go!)

And that’s the plan. The blog will likely see an uptick in posting, but I am thinking of using my fangirl-spasming Tumblr account for daily progress reports and accountability. But we’ll see. That’s the point, really: this is an experiment and as such I will be recording all. I’m hoping to learn from the process, and maybe that will be valuable to others, too.

Either way, I’ve got work to do.

And I’m so freakin’ excited about it!

Pinning the Wings of the Muse

I had so hoped that my next writing-related post would have been an awesome, jumping-up-and-down, post about a shorty story acceptance to an anthology I was dying to get into, but I narrowly missed the cut on the second round. Il est l’auteur de la vie. Oui? Story is back out to the next market.

In the meantime, I have been trying to get scientific about my process, as much as I can be when it comes to something as nebulous and squishy as writing.

This yen to put things on graph paper has been brewing for a while, prompted by this post. I kept coming back to it, imagining what-if, could that sort of boost in output be possible for me? I don’t want to be a meat-grinder, but I know that there are days where I hit my words no problem, and I’m trying to tease out the conditions under which these days occur. I doubt I’ll ever be able to hit 10K a day, as days where I hit 5,000 or more words leave me feeling weak and hung-over the days following, but I would like to be able to reliably hit 2,000-3,000 words during a regular session. Partly it’s a matter of focus, partly a matter of flailing self-confidence. I want to improve the former and viscously stamp out the latter.

So I’ve been getting rather intimate with a large sheet of engineering graph paper over the last couple of days. I’ve been tracking my word counts, more or less, for the last couple of years. Originally it was done for the RA-RA-RA-WRITE! encouragement reasons. And it worked. Seeing that momentum in tiny black numbers, day after day, did bolster my confidence. However, the spreadsheet become a bit of a chore to maintain, so I switched to a little graph paper notebook where I crossed off blocks of words. (Mmm, graph paper.)

Problem was, I wasn’t writing down enough data. Word count is great, but without context, what can you hope to get out of it? Not much. I could see the numbers go up and down, but I couldn’t tell you why for the most part. Big life-events were immediately obvious, but why did I dip down consistently for that week, spike over there, go bananas for the first two weeks here, and then dropped down to dribbles for the rest of that month? No answer.

Let’s go sideways for a minute. This will come as no shock to anyone who knows me IRL, but I’m a bit of a notebook fiend. I journal constantly (obsessively?) and each major project gets its own notebook, too. Back in the days before decent novel-writing software, all the specifics of the novel went into those books and nothing else. (And they became cumbersome, too, for a variety of reasons.) As time went on and more of the world-building ended up in the computer, these notebooks morphed into focused diaries tied to those projects, where I would talk about when I was writing, how much, what I had written to date, what I needed to write next, what might happen down the line. I also noted my mood (as the mood struck me). I’d laugh at myself, needle myself too when I was being obtuse or flailing about. I would cheer myself on when I made and beat a short term goal. These books aren’t just writing notebooks, they are a dialogue between me and the novel … and me.

Which, weird, I get that. Weird, but helpful. This trend started on small, throw-away projects. I was working in a job I hated but that afforded me free reign with a pen. These small moleskines were the perfect cover — lightweight and small, reasonably disposable so I couldn’t get precious about them, and practically invisible to my co-workers. They were paired with throw-away ‘fun’ projects that didn’t freak me about about being important or meaningful. I could write and noodle with impunity. And I did.

And when I did, boy howdy, productivity went through the roof.

In looking for more data, I turned to these diaries for context for the raw word counts. Gold mine! And I could instantly see the difference between my “serious” projects, where I kept the notebook free from such trivial blatherings, and the fun ones, the ones I became accidentally passionate for, like the werewolf horror movie novel where I unwittingly beta-tested this process all the way up to the fan fiction experiment that refined the process.

Back to the main topic. Armed with new information, I charted out the months of this year so far. Instead of just day-of-the-month and word count, I compared them to days I worked the day job verses weekends off, as well charting the number of pages of long-hand prep-work. This created a very illuminating chart, one that clearly showed lulls in raw word count consistently occurred after days passing without planning. But when I had a good rhythm going, you can see the inverse relationship between pre-work and writing output — writing until I had exhausted the number of scenes mapped out ahead, followed by intense brainstorming, followed by more writing.

There’s more to do, of course, and I have set up a system to track my writing on a more granular level to track things like time of day, location, mood. (More graph paper. Mua-ha-ha! Though Numbers for Mac has been surprisingly useful.) Not to the point of utter cat-waxing, mind you, but having a system that will help me catalogue the conditions that I write under will help me make better choices.

Is it just about productivity? Yes and no. More than anything else, this whole thing has taught me that when I think mindfully yet playfully about something, it has a better chance of happening.

And that the reverse is true: that the I IZ SERIOUS WRITER attitude is not a helpful one for me to have. It’s overly harsh, and it gets in the way. Off it goes.

Bookkeeping

I have a books queue.

I try to keep it down to something manageable. I took a long, hard look at the shelf last year, as there is no sensible way that the number of books I have that I intend to read can be called anything as small and messy as a pile, and had paired it down to a manageable 25 books. That’s the number of books I can comfortably get through in about half a year’s time. This would allow me to catch up, and get to start buying new books as they come out. (I know, bizarre concept.)

When I did another headcount the other day, I discovered I had let my book buying run wild again. Between the shelf of physical books and the unexpected number of ebooks I’ve picked up for both Kindle and Kobo, I find myself sitting at around 65, and with none of the titles released in the last year or so that I’m really damn excited about. Nor does it take into account the books just out or are about to be out that I’m also really excited about.

One of these books is A Dance With Dragons by George R. R. Martin.

[insert happy Kermit-flailing here.]

I’d put off reading it right away for most of the reasons above as well as being pretty secure in the knowledge that the next one would not be out any time soon. I think I was spoiled on a major plot point last year when the book first came out, though, a grump-inducing spoiler that I’ve tried to forget. And then yesterday, while minding my own lurker business on a message board I’m subscribed to — WHAM — another big spoiler. Both involve major character deaths; both are ones I will be unhappy about. I would have loved to have read them fresh, and possibly with copious tissues and/or a pillow to scream in to. This is the tortured joy of being a fan of a Game of Thrones. You don’t want these characters to die, but sometimes they simply must.

So, it’s jumping the queue. Can’t have another piece of it spoiled. Soon as I am finished Karl Schroeder’s Virga: Cities of Air, Mr. Martin will be holding my eyeballs hostage like a Stark daughter for the next several weeks. (In a silks and beatings sort of way.)

Searching for Pink Tentacle

This is not a porn-a-rific post, or a hentai post. So, stop it.

Onward.

There was a picture/culture blog I followed called Pink Tentacle. It was a great blog that offered up images of Japan: today’s Japan, yesterday’s Japan, and (maybe) tomorrow’s Japan. You’d find everything from anime clips, to a series of prints on various subjects or themes, a collection of related advertising. Anything and everything, really, which is why it was so cool.

The person who updated the blog went silent almost a year ago. One might suspect that the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake had something to do with it, but in the weeks following there were posts — some offering up stunning photography of the damage sustained by the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant alongside a post showcasing a series of ‘earthquake catfish prints’ from the 1850s.

And then, nothing. No Twitter updates. No new posts, no response to any of the 100+ comments on the last entry, comments which have become semi-regular, “Hey. You’re missed. Are you okay?” You would think that if something had happened to the blogger, someone would have come by and posted something. And it’s nearly a year on and people are still coming, still hoping.

Every so often I pop over, and I check the thread on the last post. No word. I’ve even googled to see if I could find anything, but never turn anything up. A search on WHOIS shows that the domain was registered through Go Daddy, with the domain due to expire Dec 30, 2013, but having been updated last Dec 27, 2011. The website still gets hits and posts still get tweeted on Twitter — a search for @pinktentacle shows tweets referring to the blog’s posts as recent as a week ago.

And it makes me think about this online world of ours, how tenuous, how ephemeral. If something happened to me (not planning on it, but for argument’s sake), I have friends who (I hope) would post something in the various places were I hang out.

But to have nothing, no information, no hint. Ah, it’s like this thread that runs taut through space and then disappears into a bag of holding, continuing on somewhere that you can’t see. I’ve been trying to noodle an appropriate analogy here, but it’s not forthcoming. You can’t even compare it to a cut thread, a la Atropos. A cut thread falls away, beholden to gravity, and so ended. This just thread just keeps going, but somewhere that you can’t see. Maybe it’s like watching only half the movie, reading half the book. It continues on, but you can’t follow.

I’m not sure why it itches at me, this whole thing, the missing Pink Tentacle. But there it is.

Hope you’re well, wherever you are.

My Disbelief. It is Not Suspended.

My Easter weekend reward was to be finally cracking the seal on Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception. I loved the first two games, and was eager to get my teeth into this one. My last video game blitzes were the fantastic Assassin’s Creed 2 and the reasonably good followup Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood (I’m a few iterations behind on purpose), and then the duology Batman: Arkham Asylum and Batman: Arkham City.

All of which were games that I can’t recommend highly enough. You feel like Ezio as you stalk the streets of Renaissance Italy and decide how to take out your quarry. You feel like Batman as you figure out how to break into the derelict factory complex and take out the Joker. Immersive and compelling stories, with terrific gameplay, voice acting and visuals. I expected the same from Uncharted 3.

Perhaps I expected too much.

I have not sat and yelled at a television screen for as long and for as loud as I have with this game. It is maddening. It plays like a 3D platform scroller fused with a never-ending quick-time event. There is only one path to take and god help you if you can’t pick it out of the lush scenery. Except for climbing at least — in all corners of the globe, ledges are helpfully painted either bright red or yellow. Even historical monuments. Did I say helpfully? I meant condescendingly.

Oh yes, the sets are absolutely beautiful, but all you have to do, intrepid game player, is press the right button at the right time. Only one button. Just the one. The button in question may change from time to time, but really, that’s all there is to it. If you are lucky enough to be standing next to some pre-determined object, your single button press may result in a different outcome but you don’t really have any control over that. At all.

After dying spectacularly over and over again in the first sequence when trying to navigate the one true path out of overwhelming (and snappily-paced) disaster, I all but threw the controller at the PlayStation. I thought maybe I was just rusty, and pushed on with clenched teeth.

Not rusty.

For example, I am being chased through a burning castle that is engulfed, floor to ceiling, in flames. It’s not even a little bit not on fire. I should be dead from smoke inhalation before I make it to the top of the first set of stairs. Instead, I spend about twenty minutes navigating a maze of equally engulfed rooms and staircases as I head to the roof.

Yes, brilliant, the roof of the castle, some hundred feet or more into the air. Where else would I go?

A case could be made that if I am that immune to fire and smoke, I should make for the closest window on that starting first floor and bail, as I’d no doubt survive the fall, broken glass and flaming furniture. Hell, afterwards I’ll get up and give you that rugged-good looks trademarked grin when I stand up and dust the ash off my sexily-rumpled adventure gear! Of course, the bad guys must be similarly immune as they continue to take up positions and fire at me while the room is so intensely red with flames and wood-turned-coal that you would be forgiven for thinking you had suddenly found yourself on the set of the movie Backdraft.

(A case could also be made that Drake is Spiderman without the web shooters, but I digress.)

Don’t think I’m being overly harsh here. I love the Tomb Raider series in all it’s cheese-tastic glory and god knows they weren’t all that, story-wise: a female Bruce Wayne-cum-Indiana Jones that wrestles tigers in the Himalayas and shoots dinosaurs with unending ammo? Come on, I’m easy! You are allowed a certain amount of gimmes in a video game. You sort of have to, otherwise they would become unplayable. But Drake has used up his gimmes and even the character knows it. Most of the inter-character dialogue, the high point of the game so far, is given over to the discussion of just how unbelievable all of this is.

I play games to be part of the game, to feel like my choices help determine the outcome. I can’t even decide when I want Drake to walk or run: the game decides for me. If I want to be ‘railroaded’ through a story, I’ll read a book. And I promise you that the worst of those books will have a damn sight better story than the laughable narrative that this game offers up. I especially need a good story if I’m going to put up with hair-pullingly bad gameplay.

(Purposely skipping the comparison of a video game like Uncharted to a movie because a) playing a video game time-wise is more akin to reading a book and b) you want to ‘live’ the video game the way you can with a book, but not a movie. It’s a whole other blog post.)

And seriously, Drake: at least get a goddamned flashlight, will ya? How are you not dead yet fifty times over? Lara Croft would have you tied up for breakfast before she even had her boots on. Sheesh.

Edited for Further Thoughts: It strikes me that perhaps I am more willing to accept the bizarre and impossible from a game like Tomb Raider. The Tomb Raider series isn’t striving for realism, it’s striving for effect — and that effect is spectacular feats, a magical alternate history of the world, combined with the adrenaline rush of a great Indiana Jones film. The Uncharted Series is hyper-realistic visually, so I expect, nay demand more of it. Doesn’t mean the story can’t be fantastical, but by god, it has to make sense.

Pavlov Goes Both Ways

Hey, Steph. Why are you so bummed this last week?

I can’t get into this new novel. I wanted to spend the next eight weeks working on new material and once the contract was over, I would edit the old WIP while drafting on the new one. It might be a crazy plan, but I haven’t drafted anything new in so long, #vacationwriting excepted of course. I need to write something new, not just edit.

Maybe it’s the new schedule? You are still getting re-used to an afternoon shift you weird, early bird, you.

I don’t know. I don’t think so.

*taps pencil repeatedly on the desk in her very dark home office*

Maybe I should rearrange my office, get my desk over there and get some damned light in this place.

I don’t think that will really help, but you’re allowed one day of this long weekend. Go to town. 

Thanks, stern but fair subconscious! Only one day. Got it!

*draws up plans that mostly involve shuffling bookcases around*

I need the sunlight, but, you may be right. I don’t think it will help with the WIP. Why can’t I get into the novel’s headspace? I need to be breathing/thinking/dreaming/obsessed with this world. From previous experience, if I’m not I’ll just end up spinning my wheels for the next eight weeks and get nothing done. I was totally invested in this world just a few short weeks ago — ask Sylvie! What happened?

Maybe you should stop listening to the playlist for your #vacationwriting project over and over again?

*blink blink*

D’oh!

---

This was literally the mental conversation I had with myself at work last night.

I’m doing data entry now, surrounded by dozens of co-workers all doing the same thing. It can get noisy, with chatter and the constant pounding of keyboards all around you. In order to help focus, we’re allowed to use MP3 players to help drown out the noise. I figured, hey, sweet! I’ll load my Shuffle with soundtracks and go to town! (I thought music with lyrics, or even podcasts, would be too distracting, and left them at home.)

So I popped in my beloved BBC Sherlock and Sherlock Holmes movie soundtracks … and then all mental processes on the current novel came to a full stop. I stepped away from drafting these last few days thinking I’d come up against an empty well, so I dived back into research. But it all felt so blaaaaah. Blah, when there used to be AWESOME.

Cue bummed Steph.

And then last night, it hit me. The soundtracks, my novel-writing playlists – I wasn’t listening to the right one.

I’ll be dumping the Sherlock playlists and loading up my Shuffle with The Star Door Mix.

Pavlov. Powerful stuff.

New Routines

Today marks the first day at the new job, but it also marks the first day at the new writing routine. Baring some computer glitches, I’m starting the day right: minimum word count goal on the current WIP, cup of tea, and my novel playlist on random.

However, I’m starting to wonder if I’ve bitten off more than I can chew with this new WIP. I’m messing around with two different POV styles and I’ve found myself and the narrative going down the rabbit hole of fairy tale remix/commentary. This is so not my area, so there has been a lot of research and related readings. It means that while I have strong impressions and characters and situations, I don’t feel like I have the ground firm under me yet. This novel, more than my previous efforts, really requires that I think long and deeply about these subjects beforehand.

Of course, that might just be me being unnecessarily anxious about a new project. One of my other goals for this week is to go through progress journals for previous efforts to (hopefully) remind myself that all my novels start as nebulous, wishy-washy things that then resolve themselves into a complete arc when I’m through with it. (Especially with regards to endings, which I am always unclear on when I start.)

But right now I’m trying to focus on getting a good rhythm going. Those seeds, remember? For the next eight weeks I’m going to concentrate on output for the current WIP which, if I can keep pace of 1K a work day will give me half a novel draft. Short stories and novel edits for BLOOD OF WOLVES will be on the back-burner in the short term, but I will probably spend a chunk of time during the Easter weekend going through the novel critiques to plan my strategy post-contract.

(I can’t believe I have weekends. That’s such a foreign concept for me. The thought of it makes me giggle.)

In life news: not sure if it’s the lower thyroid dose, or if it’s just the relief of stress from the previous job, but I’m dreaming again. I know, you always dream, but I haven’t remembered by dreams for years now — not unless I was woken up suddenly in the midst of one. And my subconscious is firing again with respect to new writing ideas. Which, mixed blessing if they don’t connect to the WIP, but I’m taking notes. Always taking notes. Not that the writing well was dry before, but I was seeking, hunting. Now, I’m discovering, like the Universe is saying, “Oh, and by the way, take this.”

Will do.

Life Isn’t Fiction (And Thank God)

I’ve been distracted lately. (Ha, understatement.) March approached, promising an impressive conjunction of life events that sent me into a familiar state of panic-paralysis. I’m not good at waiting (ask Santa) and my anxiety started to chart up higher as every day passed.

Why the freak-out?

Well, my brain thinks fiction. All the time. Whatever I’m watching, doing, writing, or observing, it all gets tweaked in my writer-brain and sends my over-active imagination into full gear. And that includes my life.

I’m taking a big step and walking away from my current job. Not into nothing, mind you, but into contract work that hopefully will be extended or lead to other short-term contracts. I’ve been saving up my dollars as miserly as I could without feeling totally deprived and I have built up a small nest egg. The pay at the new position is much better than what I’m making now and will be significantly less stressful. I’ve been sitting on this news since the third week of February because I’ve been afraid that if I gave too much notice at my current job they would find a way to let me go earlier.

Add all the job stress to my medical tests, normally a yearly event but given a six-month twist after the last results in the fall.

See, I had cancer. This year is my 10-year anniversary since its diagnosis and removal. I’m pretty cagey about talking about it, as it’s private, but also for two reasons:

1) It was ‘the best cancer you could get’ (so they say): thyroid cancer. Lucky girl, we caught it early, too. They go in, pull back the skin around your neck, remove the offending material (and they took all of it) and sew you back up. Take your prescription for the rest of your life and we’ll keep tabs on you. Off you go. Which leads to …

2) I feel sort of attention-whorey bringing it up or having to explain it. I didn’t have to go through all the horrors that so many patients that are diagnosed with cancer have to survive — there was no chemotherapy, no anti-nausea drugs, no losing my hair for me. Just surgery. Do not get me wrong. Very, very grateful that it was as easily dealt with as it was. But it feels like I had cheater’s cancer, that it wasn’t the real thing and so I have no right to worry over it or get so worked up about it.

I do, though. I’m always expecting it to come back. Just you wait, that little voice says. It’ll come for you. And since they kept finding a wayward lymph node in my ultrasounds these last few visits, they wanted to take another look and sooner rather than later.

Cue the panic.

Because if my life was fiction, this would be the time when everything goes wrong. I’m leaving my albeit stressful but relatively secure job into unknown territory with no benefits, no insurance*, to focus on writing and editing during the lulls between contracts. Wouldn’t it be fiction-perfect for that test to come up positive? Now would be the time, writer-brain thinks until I can’t think of anything else, so get ready for the blow.

But life isn’t fiction.

And, yay.

Tests have come back clean. Back to yearly visits. They lowered my thyroid dose, so I should be less addled. I’ve handed in my notice and I have four more days at the old job before leaping into the next. I’ll have my mornings again, since it’s the night shift. I’ve missed writing in the quiet, private hours when I’m at my best before heading to the day job. All the tension in my shoulders, neck, and head are gone, and I’m sleeping again, which is wonderful. Better for my health, my sanity, and my writing. I’m so excited.

This has run overly long, and I have writing to do.

____________

* By no insurance, I mean life insurance, disability, and drug and dental coverage. I am Canadian. I say with no trace of hyperbole that if not for the Canadian health care system I would be either dead or have been bankrupted as a result of diagnosis and treatment. They caught my cancer very early, when it was just the smallest of tumors. Without free health care, I likely would have been diagnosed after it was much more visible/palpable and made me at risk for a worse diagnosis.

Ironically, the cancer was detected during a routine and free physical exam necessary in order to be prescribed birth control. Ask me how pre-marital sex saved my life! (I need to get that on a button.)

Cleaning House Since I Can’t Open The Door

Minor, house-cleaning sort of post.

The next two weeks should be interesting ones and I mean interesting in the Chinese proverb sense. It involves a lot of waiting, something I am not historically good at unless I can successfully distract myself with activities or tasks that do not allow me to dwell on the things I am waiting on. Here, in random order, are my current distractions.

New Shiny WIP!

Getting into a groove, albeit slowly. I’ve picked up a few books from the library on fairy tales for research and I’ve pulled together a tentative soundtrack. The plan now is to listen to this constantly while I am writing and ruminating, as music helps to settle my mind and drops me in the narrative landscape of the novel. Eventually, it becomes Pavlovian. (The research may also help me with a short story I’d set aside when it was clear it wasn’t gelling. We’ll see.)

Of course, this isn’t supposed to be a distraction. It’s supposed to be the main event but instead it’s sort of hair-pulling at the moment. Damn novel is being very coy.

Vacation Writing!

You may now, if so inclined, read my shameful (but not-so-secretly beloved) vacation writing project. For thirty days (and a skoosh) I wrote Sherlock Squared, a novella-length fan-fiction cross-over that takes Doctor Who, Sherlock (BBC) and Sherlock Holmes (Guy Ritchie) properties and fuses them together like a mad Monsanto gene-splicer had his way with them. You can find more information about it under the new Side Quests sub-page, where stuff of a similar sort may or may not appear in future.

Winter!

This isn’t a distraction, but an obstacle. In the ‘YOU’VE GOTTA BE EFFING KIDDING ME’ category.

So, this happened. On March 2nd. Overnight.

And this, too. Yes, those are snowbanks you can hide a car behind.

We were so close. The roads were bone-bare. At the beginning of March! And whenever the sun came out, everything started to drip-drip-drip, little rivers building up into currents that ran along and then under the edge of the snow banks. And you could smell it in the air, even in February, that smell of spring. No, not just the smell of dog shit melting, though that’s there too, but the nice sort of smells, the ones that perk you up, make you take a deeper breath. It smells like sleep is ending, things are stirring, yourself included.

Then all this happened and then the temperature plummeted. Boo. They didn’t even plow the streets until 7:30 pm on Saturday, so I couldn’t even go into work. One year, for my birthday, I would like spring. Just spring. Is that too much for a northern girl to ask? Probably.

Back to my distractions. And my polar fleece.

And waiting.

Can I Get Away With It? (POV Hijinks)

I have some good news that I’m sitting on. A story submission of mine to an anthology has made it to the second round, which was a much needed bit of good news that arrived in my inbox today. But more than that, I have news on the work front that I’m being coy about for another few weeks until the dust settles. It has the potential to really change my life in a positive way, especially for my writing. Details to follow.

That said, I still have some wilderness to traverse yet, waiting as I am for word on multiple issues: another sub I sent off, some dental work, feedback on the novel from my writing group, and on some medical tests. (My normal yearly medical tests prompted a 6-month check-in instead. Boo.) The latter always weighs heavily on my mind, and I tend to retreat until the thing has passed and I have my yearly reprieve. As such, I’ve not been all that bloggy and I’ve neglected the VP boards latest round of postings for critiques. (Bad Steph.) I plan to rectify that on my weekend off.

In the meantime, my focus has been on brainstorming and world building for the next novel. I’ve been doing what I normally do: gathering the shiny bits that seem to glom together, building characters, mind-mapping, writing down exchanges of dialogue that start running through my head, and free-writing scenes that spontaneously develop.

(I have a process, I guess? Weird, I know.)

However, some of these free-writing scenes that don’t match. Not quite. For my main character I have these stream-of-consciousness, first person POV, very confessional. But when I started free-writing dialogue between her and one of the other major characters, I naturally switched to third person, limited to her POV. (And I have another characters POV, also third person, but that’s neither here nor there.)

And … I can’t do both, can I?

I’ve read books where one viewpoint character was in first person, another in third. The first time I saw it, only a few years ago, I was shocked … then intrigued. I’ve only seen it a few other books since and for some it worked and others it didn’t. (The one that really stands out as one that did it well was Elizabeth Bear’s The Sea Thy Mistress, with three different styles of POV. It’s cool. Check it out. Well, read the first two books before you do.)

But I wouldn’t be for different characters. If I do this, I will have sections of the same character in first person, and then other sections in third person. (And still other sections in yet another person’s POV. Possibly.)

My brain is going, “Whoa. Whoa. WHOA.”

But my gut is going, “Hey. Just…wait. Maybe we can swing this.”

Madness? Possibly. I’ll find out.

Anywho. More to come as I can post it.