and a Happy New Year...

Well, I think the time has come to bid you farewell. I confess, I haven't been back here much lately because I just haven't got much to say. Yes, I'm still writing, and yes, I still hope to one day find myself in the stacks alongside the writers I grew up with. However, as the new year approaches I find myself more and more engaged in the doing, less with the talking about doing. Which I take as a good thing.

The purpose of this blog is done, so I'd rather call it now than let it fade away.

Should there there's anyone out there left at all, thanks for coming by, but I'm closing up shop. Wishing you all the best, this new year and every year :-)










(Although, ask me to tell you how much a pain in the *ss is to get WA plates. Long story short, it sucks...)

NANO Crunch

I'm at a little over 30,000 now, and I can see the homestretch. With eight days left the prospect of another 20,000 words seems a lot less daunting than getting to 30k did a week ago.

Funny how that happens.

I'm nowhere near the end, which is kind of scary and means editing is going to be a biatch -- but hey, can't worry about that now. Must push on.

Mom is here but being awesome about not minding my scramble for words. We've decided to ditch cooking Turkey Day dinner in favor of finding some place open that will cook for us. Yeah, mom! Plus I'll be home for Xmas and able to stuff my face full of good home cooking in the best place to do it: home!

Hehe.

Sixteen thousand and counting...

Today's total: 6,618
06 Total Word Count: 16,720

So my new nano strategy is, "write through it." When I get stuck or hung up on something i need more details (read: research) I create the nanowrimo equivalent of "..and god said let there be light, and it was..." (no "and it was good" necessary)

The nice part is I could probably do this six or eight times and still have plenty to write about to get in that 50,000words.

That's why December is going to be Ed(die)NoEd(it)mo.

Dinner time, now back to work.

Today, coffee. Tomorrow...well, we'll see...

It's officially NANO crunch time. To stay on track with my mid-late month goals I need about 20k words in the next few days. At least.

(I refuse to say I am behind, that does crap for the moral)

Excellent timing, considering I was looking for a diversion from the rest of my life anyway. However, this does require bringing out the heavy artillery: the Black Death, surefire lubricant of words stuck deep in my brain and deliverer of said words to my fingertips.

Reminder, nobody said they had to be good words.

Echo hadn't heard a bean grinder in so many days he jumped away from his food bowl and went back to bed. Smart dog, this could get ugly.

Today's schedule is a follows:

9-11:30am- Nano'd*
11:30-1p Dog park/feed the writer break.
1-4p - Nano'd with accompaniment
4-5p - Sanity/food break

This evenings festivities may change considering I offered to accompany S to some live theatre (something I had no business doing, trust me) but as it looks likely she may not even make it, I'm not counting on it. So Option A: No Theatre

5-10p Nano like hell.

Option B:

5-6 Nano like hell.
6-10 Keep promise
11-1a Nano

Okay. Deadline set. This is the fun part. Coffee's ready.



*Nanod: (verb) No email, no tv, no blogging, no phone in order to facilitate completion of NaNoWriMo project. Syn. To isolate oneself completely while dragging words kicking and screaming from one's brain.

NANOWRIMO Word Count: 4,500

So just in time for my second week wall, I get a nice little note from the folks at NANOWRIMO reminding us not to quit in the second week. Apparently week two is when a host of different obstacles batter the intrepid writer. For me, it's that old feeling of getting behind again.

Let's face it, I've always been terrible at the "write a little bit every day" strategy. After all, that's what I've been doing for the last 9 days (give or take, minus travel dates and hanging out with Na) and I'm ONLY 4,500 words in. I've always been more of the "give me a deadline and I will wait until the last minute and spend the last 48 hours sleepless, hopped up on caffeine and writing like my life depends on it...Which it does."

Yes, this is unhealthy. My goal now, write a little MORE every day. I'm hoping I can eventually break years of my journalistic writer under deadline style. God knows if I don't actually publish something that way, it just might kill me.

Hell, it probably will kill me anyway.

Okay okay, off to work.

Butterflies and The Pickup

So I posted "The Pickup" to my writer's group today. I'm actually a little proud of it because it's the SHORTEST story I've ever written. So short, in fact, it can actually be legitimately considered a Short Story, rather than a novelette masquerading as one (think: blue whale in a bikini)

Of course, even before I hit Send, the butterflies are raging up against my collarbones and kamikaze-ing themselves into my ribs. I actually had to talk myself into it. The dialogue went something like this:

The Writer: Come on, it's ready, go for it.
Me: Are you sure we shouldn't read it outloud one more time?
The Writer: SURE? Are you out of your mind? No, if we read it again I'll be out of mine, now push the button.
Me: But the ending. And the title. I don't like the title.
The Writer: You NEVER like the title. Now shut up and push the button.
Me: Don't be mean, I just want to make sure we haven't missed anything.
The Writer: What are you talking about, we ALWAYS miss something, that's what the group is for. Now quit babbling and push the goddamn button.

So that last passage officially marks me as a drama queen. He he he.

The funny thing is that submitting something new to the group revived a lot of very good yet very scary memories of writing at CW. I realize it's been almost a year since I've produced anything remotely new in the short story department. At least anything I'm willing to brave the Butterflies to let anyone else read. Rewrites don't take half the guts to submit as something entirely new.

Confession: I'm convinced I will never really get over the Butterflies. I'm convinced that the trick is to get learn to ignore, or at least turn the music up on the little buggers. I actually really like getting critted, but that period between the polish and the crit is the most nerve wracking time of my life. Every single time it happens.

Having that distinction helps. I'm not afraid of heights -- its falling that scares the shit out of me.

So it goes.

Oh God and did I mention...

NaNoWriMo starts next week. So begins my mantra for the month of November: I am going to finish this year, I am going to finish this year.

Rinse, Repeat.

But, first I have to start.

Where have I been?

Heather's most awesome Mayfly was published by Strange Horizons last week. Read HERE.


(So okay, this isn't our first publication and I should have been linking to them before this...Yeah, duh. If you haven't yet, check out Cat Rambo's blog. She keeps track of these things much better than little ole me. To all my fellow Clarion wastes -- 'policies for not growing a brain sooner. Will link as you publish, darlings!)

I'm writing, I'm really, really writing!

Okay so make that an edit/rewrite story I dug out of a trunk (literally: all my shit's in storage at the moment and I have to dig through piles to find ANYTHING)

For the record, this is actually the shortest story I have ever written -- thereby making it a short story, not a novelette. Working title (and you know how bad these are coming from me, so apologies in advance) "The Pickup"

Coming to a Miscue near you.

Other things under the pen:

Muchos, Muchos cover letters.

And reading:

I started the novel "Staying Dead" which is published on the Luna imprint of Harlequin, because I'm mildly interested to see what titles a romance publisher considers sf/fantasy with a romantic bent.

So far, I'm beginning to believe there is some truth to the idea that when mainstream (and other genres) publish something remotely sf/fantasy, it's decidedly behind in the been there, done that factor. The speculation being that because they haven't seen the "PI with magical/supernatural powers dealing with magical/supernatural cases" story done a hundred different ways they think anything in that category is interesting/exciting.

And it reads like a romance writer stuck some fantasy elements (tired, overdone fantasy elements) and called it done. Not even a very compelling "who done it."

I'm over it already and I'm on page 10.

Then again, who am I to crit? Nobody's publishing me yet.

Right, back to work.

It's getting late...

I am tempted to describe a horse as being, "out of its mind with terror."

Tomorrow it will undoubtedly become a "terrified horse," or better yet, a good description of how a horse would behave surrounded by fire. Terrified. Minus that word.

Right now, it's the unmistakable sign of a mind out wandering past bedtime in rough draft land.

Rejected!

Damn. Mareskin back in remarkable turnaround from favorite editor. Cat loved parsnip coverletter, story was much improved. ALAS (can I tell you how much I hate that word at this moment?) it did not "catch" said editor. He did express the hope that it finds the right home. Which is good news. At least he didn't say, "burn this pile of trash ASAP, you suck!"

That would be bad.

There is a reason he's my favorite editor. I just can't remember why right now.

Oh yeah, cause he has one of the best fantasy mags in the genre. And I want to be in it. Back to the drawing board.

MareSkin goes out again this afternoon.

Did I mention I really, really like the title now.

Cause I do. Finally. (Thank baby jezus.)

Clarion West Write-a-Thon

Just when Clarion withdrawal started to set in (about this time last year was agonizing over whether I could get the time off work to go) I found out about the CW Write-a-thon.

Here's the scoop:
"During the six weeks of the workshop (June 18-July 28, 2006), while the current students are studying with some of the finest writers and editors in speculative fiction, graduates of earlier workshops and other members of the Clarion West community declare their current writing goals and solicit individual sponsors in support of those goals to raise money to support the workshop."

Apparently all I have to do (hahaha) is write! I come up with writing goal for the six weeks and do it.

• Why? Well it's fun, a great recharge on ye old discipline, writing en masse is fun, and it raises funds for CW. Like most "fillintheblank" - a -thons participants raise funds by inviting sponsors to pledge support based on a goal.
  
• How can you help? I'll post the updated website with it's very own donation button as soon as it's, well, updated. I'll keep regular posts on my Write-a-Thon progress so you can see how I'm doing and choose to pledge a flat amount, match me, or an amount based on how well I'm meeting my goal.
• Also, From now until the end of the workshop ALL donations made to the tip jar on this page will go straight to CW - 100%! No kidding!

My Goal:

Since my NANOWRIMO project was sidelined last fall, I'm pledging to finish the novel I started by writing 10,000 words a week for the six weeks of Clarion West. (Which, the way I wrote during CW amounts to about a not so short story a week!) As Vylar mentioned in her last year write-a-thon goal, my hope is to relax and let the first draft come as it will, trusting the rewrite and editing process to make it pretty!

Strange out again

Strange goes out today - with a new cover sheet and first page thanks to my favorite editor's cat.

I am going to finish the Horseboy revision TODAY. Or sometime soon.

Dropped my car off at the shop today. They confirmed it's only inner CV boots that need replacing -- NOT -- as the dealership indicated, the entire front axel. Sheesh. I hate dealers.

I also got the most thorough explanation as to why my car gets the most shitty gas mileage around (besides the fact it's a V6 Toyota) and if I had about an hour I'd give you the full rundown but in brief:

• Winter gas mileage sucks - humidity in the air messes with the o2 sensor (blah blah blah blah, at this point my eyes started to glaze over)
  
• Costco sells crappy gas to the loss of about 1-3 mpg...
  
• I don't let my car warm up before driving it
• California gas has more junk in it than say, Oregon or Idaho, so you actually get less fuel per gallon = less miles
  
• Short trips around town in a cold, fuel injected V6 engine is a deal breaker

I have concluded -- as with most complex multi-issue problems -- that it's really all The Man's fault! Damn the Man! Damn, Damn Damn! Heeheee...

She must have stared too long...

"Do you need help, or...?" His voice drops off as his eyes dart toward her and then away again. He is trying not to be obvious. She looks confused, he considers, in the cute, sort of absent way smart girls are when they start working on something they can't immediately figure out. No map, instruction set or owners manual would withstand that look.

She laughs and begins to reply. "No I..."

How silly she must look - staring, with parted lips, at the silver triple loader. Between her feet is the empty laundry basket. Her full washer is the only one in the row that isn't busily thumping away with soapy socks appearing now like and again at the window. Besides his, of course. He's removing the freshly spun clothes from the depths of the machine.

Cute, she registers briefly. Not her type -- it's the goatee and chops thing -- but nice enough to avoid sounding like guy-know-it-all. Then she wonders how desperate she is that her immediate reaction is to gauge whether or not she would date this tentative Good Samaritan.

"It's just," she says, attempting to complete her sentence. She wishes briefly she could explain quickly and get on with things but the glass of wine before subjecting herself to the Laundromat on discount wash night has finally hit her head.

"You looked confused," he says.

"It's just," she says, pointing to the two column instruction panel, "I'm just figuring out the best way to do this. There are so many choices: Quick wash, heavy duty -- all hot, warm, cold...Extra spin cycle."

It's his turn to look confused. He pauses with his hands full of wet boxers and jeans and squints at the machine in front of him.

"I never noticed all that," he says. A brief flush rises up from his collar and he goes on unloading clothes. " I just put them in, shut the door and press start."

Finished unloading, he shuts the round, rubber sealed door and straightens up. He's her height although a bit on the thin side. He has nice shoulders, wide but not bulky.

He looks a little closer at the panel then back at her. She is the smart, instruction reading kind. He wishes he hadn't made himself look like such an idiot.

"Wow," he says and the blush creeps higher.

His eyes are green. He smiles and they both laugh.

"I just wish they would make a button that says 'Clean,'" she says, occupying her hands with the rest of the routine: add soap, choose a temperature.

She checks for his response with a sidelong glance and catches him looking at her again.

"Yeah." He laughs, and heads for the dryers.

She stares at the panel a minute longer and settles for 'Quick Wash.' When she looks toward the dryers he's gone.

Exhibit A. How my brain works.

Doing my own rather mundane wash tonight in anticipation of my mom's imminent visit (hurry, scrub the corners, get that junk out of the sink and for god's sake put away the JD) I overheard this conversation between two college aged people in the next row of washers. Doing my best not to look at them, I couldn't help but "tune in."

The rest -- his thoughts, her thoughts, facial expressions, the timing of their actions -- that came out of my own head. That's how my brain works. Tiny little snatches of conversation or a glimpse of something unusual and my brain slips of into la la land, fabricating a scenario for whatever it is I just saw or heard. The next inevitable step is to write it down.

That's what writing is for me on a daily basis: keeping track of all the little stories. Some of them have and will end up in longer pieces, neatly transfigured from their origins so as to be unrecognizable to anyone but me, but even if they don't get used immediately they're still worth the time it takes to craft them. These little bits exist on their own, in their own little universes. Not grand or sweeping or epublishableible, but still fodder for the storyteller.

Storytelling in the larger sense of a short story or a novel is like fishing from a stocked pond where story idea is the pole and line. I stock the pond with those collected little snippets that fill in the spaces in a story. They're the scenes that get to characters to meet each other, or get them from one scene to the next. I try to keep the pond well stocked, so when I cast, I've always got a little something waiting for me.

Finished!

Today I put the final touches on Grace for Fools. It such a relief to be done. I've been dreading the ending rewrite all week. Nothing but to get through it I suppose. I'm still feeling the end might be a bit weak. I've been fussing with the foreshadowing so much I can't tell if I'm writing well enough into the ending or not.
I need to take a break and look at it again later but I'm thinking it might be time to move it beyond into a new set of eyes. At least for a sanity check. Mine, mostly.

Still, feels good to be done. AHHHHH....

I got this crazy idea that I might actually start rewriting my novel. Sooner rather than later. It occurs to me that I might really need to scrap it and start over -- you know: read the thing once, toss it and start writing all over again. Trying to hang on to bits and pieces is just too hard for me right now. I wind up getting tangled up in the same mess I did on the first draft. The funny part is I'm almost terrified at the thought. I remember how consuming it was -- daunting -- living with the plot and characters constantly in my head for the better part of a year. Back to the days and nights of dropping whatever I'm doing because I just have to jot down a sentence (or paragraph or pages) that come to me when they come to me. Plus I already have a relationship with this story and these characters. It would almost be easier to start over with a new set of people and a new story.

Easy, yes? But where's the fun in easy?

Current Story Drama

So I'm currently picking the bones out of one of my CW stories, some of you might affectionately remember by my less than clever working title "Horseboy" (Hey, all I can say is that it was due by 9 am and I was titleless at 8:45) What I really liked about the story is the strength of the voice of the main character, Jack. I knew immediately who he was and what he was about, what moved him and what terrified him. The only thing I didn't know is what he would do with the choice I gave him at the end.

In the working draft I had three endings. Two that ranged from happily ever after to Disney cartoon and the last that was like Shakespeare tragedy at it's best (think Titus) Needless to say at 5 weeks into CW and emotionally overworked I went with the last. I also second guessed myself and totally fucked the beginning over instead of going with my gut.

The funny part was, the worst crit I got was that the manuscript was a mess. (It was) And that the beginning was bungled. (It was) People liked the ending or didn't like the ending but nobody said "NO WAY I didn't believe that for as long as it took to wipe my ass with the last page of your 'script." Or anything along those lines. And pretty much everybody liked the story overall.

All good things. So six months later I take a crack at this misshapen child o mine and the muse is smiling as she's sitting on her ass getting her third pedicure for the week and I toil away religiously at my laptop. I discover that there are so many good things I left out, sharpened it up a bit, tweaked the beginning. Then I get to the end and it's like hitting a brick wall.

Suddenly I find myself longing for ending # 1 or 2. I mean I LOVE this kid. Why would I ever him? And then it hits me. This is my biggest challenge as a writer. Making the bad things happen, especially to the ones I really like. So I am struggling, hemming and hawing now because I know when I sit down to this story I am going to have to do something really bad to someone really nice. Not because he asked for it, or he deserved it. But because sometimes that's just the way life is.

The best part is, he will be a stronger person because of it. Life goes on. Funny how those things work out.

Strange Done...

Well it's been a long (dare I say, odd) ride but in spite of packing and moving and packing again I finished Strange. At least to the point where I'm ready for Strange to go out into the world and come back needing to be cuddled and mailed out again, and again, and again if need be.

Books get to have pages for acknowledgements, but rarely do short stories give credit to the many people who help send them along the way. So, thanks to all who put eyes to paper and struggled through the urge to strangle me for improper use of "its" and "it's" -- your patience is lovely and staggering. That includes my fellow CWers: Amy, Ann, Chris, Eugene, Katie and Rachel; as well as Tazsa, Malia &D.

Big thanks to Naihma for checking my Spanish and Spanglish translation and phrase suggestion.
All further errors and liberties taken with Spanish are mine alone!

Support the Write-A-Thon, Donate today!

This year I am participating in the Clarion West Write-a-Thon from June 18 - July 28, 2006.

My Goal:

Since my NANOWRIMO project was sidelined last fall, I'm pledging to finish the novel I started by writing 10,000 words a week for the six weeks of Clarion West. (Which, the way I wrote during CW amounts to about a not so short story a week!) As Vylar mentioned in last year's write-a-thon, my hope is to relax and let the first draft come as it will, trusting the rewrite and editing process to make it pretty!

How can you help? Go to the write-a-thon page and make a pledge in my name. Otherwise you can contribute here: From May 1, 2006 until the end of this year's workshop all donations to this website will be sent directly to Clarion West to support a fabulous intensive workshop for writers of speculative fiction!

Nobody said they had to be GOOD words

Day 2 of NANOWRIMO: Word count 4,160 (Hey, I'm going for quantity, not quality here)
Actually the first bit has been in my head for a while, so it's been flowing pretty easily OUT of my head and onto the page. This year I'm trying a bit of a different strategy: planning.

Yes, that's right, you read it here first. The "inspiration and deadline" driven writer learns to plan. So with some basic math skills I have determined that 50,000 words puts me at about 10,000+ a week (I told you they were basic math skills) which is approximately one of my Clarion West stories. I was able to turn in one of those a week for six weeks (give or take) so I can certainly do this. After all, a full time job is NOT critting 3-4 stories a night, which is REAL WORK.

I've even broken my novel to be up into four major sections so that I can keep myself on a timeline for getting to the END of the novel, rather than just writing myself into a muddled middle. So I have a week (and a week's worth of words) to get through each section which will hopefully bring me to an END by the 30th.

I'm keeping this schedule regardless if I feel pulled sideways on a tangent in section two. I have promised to take detailed notes on said tangent and then plow forward. I'll go back and round up the strays at a later date.

And she's off!

And in the rarely serious department: Dearest Rachel, Wishing you peace and much love during this difficult time. My best to you! ((((hugs)))

NANOWRIMO and then some

I am officially moved in. Thanks to my incredible mom and her gal-pal extraordinare my kitchen is unpacked and homey and my fridge stocked with food. The rest of the house...Well, yeah...That's another story. We did, however, find the curtains. And the TV. No remote yet. T's comment: "Wow, Bj's room is done, the living room is coming together, the kitchen looks amazing...." (then he rounds the corner to my room--s-- ) "well, there's some work to be done here."

Thanks T.

What's a girl to do in the face of enormous mountains of boxes and lost sundries. Start my 2005 attempt at NANOWRIMO -- duh! What is that odd assortment of letters mean, you ask? Its NAtional NOvel WRIting MOnth, of course. Check it out!

Why unpack when you can write. What can be more fun than trying to cram 50,000 words in 30 days between a full time job, unpacking a house and paddling the fall flows with my sweetie? (I'm serious, just in case you thought I was being sarcastic, as per usual)

I, the journalist, require a deadline and some stress to be fully productive. Know thyself.

It's tempting to dive into Strange, but I think I might take a side trip to a story I wrote as a bedtime for my sister when we were kids and have since neglected. She's been begging for a rewrite and since I didn't get to it this summer, I'd be fun to have done for Christmas. I'd like to take a few of my "alterna-fantasy" worldbuilding Clarion lessons and put them to use. Starting with the title.

So as of November 1st, I'm off. Workingly untitled "The Good Queen's Daughter."

Keep ya posted.