Lilith Saintcrow

Ah, the new police state. Smell that vigorous surveillance.

I am determined to get through the rest of the setup before the Big Showdown today, so this will be short. I’ve hit the treadmill–I saw no squirrel activity, though Mercutio!Jay fluttered through at intervals to keep an eye on things. I think the silence is wearing on his nerves too, because he didn’t alight anywhere except the middle of the yard, where he could see anything sneaking up on him due to the shorn grass. Further bulletins as events warrant.

And now I’ve got the end of the world to plot and Guilder to frame for it. I’m swamped. And it’s sickly humid today, though cooler than yesterday. Time for ice water and a hellbreed congress while I play a ton of Rob Dougan and wish he’d put out more bloody CDs.

Over and out.

Eighty-plus degrees. Terrible humidity. I cannot believe this is September, and it doesn’t matter anyway, since the book is eating my head. Sometimes the shift from recalcitrant huge book-thing I have to drag with my teeth to galloping bronco pulling me along in the dust as I frantically try to stay upright is extraordinarily abrupt.

So, I only have a few moments, and I should record this extraordinary thing in the annals of SquirrelTerror.

I did mow the lawn this weekend–no, that was not the extraordinary thing, jeez, I know I don’t do it as much as I should, but I’m busy, all right? (Defensiveness, another symptom of approaching deadline.) ANYWAY. I was waiting to see what Squirrel!Neo would think of this, but ever since I hacked the grass into something resembling a reasonable suburban lawn there was no sight of him.

Until this morning.

The quiet did terrible things to my nerves, so I was almost relieved this morning to see the fuzzy little jerk up in the pussywillow tree, clinging in a fork and surveying the shorn grass. He stayed there so long I almost felt guilty for mowing, I imagined him thinking about the nuts he must have hidden and how the grass probably wouldn’t provide a safe cover for them now. I even imagined him bemoaning a natural disaster that had descended on his little patch, stunned by the seeming capriciousness. What does a squirrel know of the weekend and the various exigencies of lawn care?

Yes. I felt sorry for the little bugger.

I shouldn’t have.

He perched in the pussywillow for a good half hour while I ran, and I was even getting to the point where I imagined him sending me little reproachful glances from his beady little rodent eyes as he slid back and forth, checking the sight lines and contingencies. He looked utterly hangdog. I even thought–I am completely serious–that when I was done with five miles I’d go out and scatter some bread for him.

That was when Mercutio!Jay showed up.

He glided in to land on his usual branch, silently–maybe he was uneasy, maybe he was thinking about something else–and with enviable power and authority, as befit the master of the backyard.

And Squirrel!Neo sprang.

Barely had Mercutio!Jay landed before Squirrel!Neo, the doughty warrior who had lain in wait for so long, hit Mercutio’s favorite branch like a ton of bricks. The branch whipped back and forth, Mercutio!Jay was thrown.

But Squirrel!Neo had committed a classic blunder. The first is never get into a land war in Asia, and we all know what the second is. Apparently, Squirrel!Neo had this great plan, except he forgot one tiny detail.

Bluejays can fly. Or, more precisely, Neo forgot that jays fly…

…and squirrels, so far, do not.

Mercutio!Jay started shrieking and flapping, and I swear I saw a flash of triumph on Squirrel!Neo’s fuzzy snout before he realized he was falling. He flurried desperately, and now we get to the extraordinary thing.

He scrabbled, sliding down a long thin whippy branch, and he almost made it. I gasped, Mercutio!Jay was still screaming as he settled back on his favorite perch (I am not sure, but I think he was yelling “JESUS CHRIST! WHAT THE F!CK, YOU KUNG-FU WISEASS? WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?”), and Squirrel!Neo clutched desperately…

…and fell. He hit a metal bench set under the fence, then did this amazing flip off the bench and landed on the lawn, braced on all fours. His tail switched once, twice, and I could hear the theme music swelling.

Mercutio!Jay hopped from foot to foot. I could swear he was doing the Carlton. His beak moved, and again, I am not up on my bluejaytongue, but I believe he was taunting little Neo.

The closest translation I can offer is: “YEAH! WHO KNOWS KUNG FU NOW, YOU FUZZY-ARSED MORON! WHO KNOWS YOUR KUNG-FU NOW? BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”

Squirrel!Neo’s lips moved.

I could swear he said “Sonofabitch,” before he scampered for the plum tree and disappeared.

This does not bode well.

Crossposted to the Deadline Dames. Check us out!

I’ve finished somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty books. A good proportion of those are on the shelves. Yet, every time I sit down to write, it’s still a struggle. I still have the long shoal of “nobody will like this, it’s going to be shit, everyone will hate me” and the “Oh GOD why won’t this BOOK just DIE stabstabstab” and the terrible nerves before every release and the same jolt of pain when I read an awful review. I keep thinking time will mute the sting or that I’ll figure out how to do this whole thing without the emotional cost, but so far, I haven’t.

I wonder if any writer ever does. Certainly none of the ones I’ve spoken to have ever admitted it to me.

The last Kismet book has been a slog so far. It broke free this week, and I have the sense of accumulating momentum which means I am going to finish, which I’d spent some terrible hours laying in bed in the dead of night doubting. During the day I’m much too busy to doubt, but sometimes at night…well, the night always has teeth. Every single book I’ve finished, published or not, I have doubted it. I doubted when I started, I doubted after the first flush of enthusiasm wore off and the slog set in, I doubted when I finished, I doubted while my agent read it, I doubted while the editors read it, I doubted through every fucking revision and I doubt now.

This is a huge part of the reason why, when I am asked to give advice, I begin and end with write every day.

I point out things like John Scalzi’s excellent Writing: Find The Time, Or Don’t of Suzanne Johnson’s Excuses, Excuses: Writer’s Block because I think they are good advice. Often, I am depressingly unsurprised at the number of comments such essays receive along the lines of, “But what about XYZ, which means some people don’t have TIME? You’re being unfaaaaair!” Or the ever-popular comment where someone takes what could be a good respectable daily wordcount and wastes it whining about how they don’t have time to write, but they have time to show the author of an essay the Error Of Their Ways. Or the “of course YOU have time to write, it’s your JOB!” I wish someone would have told me that when I was desperately working my ass off and going to school, writing in minute chunks filched from job, study, and sleep. It would have been nice to know that was optional instead of the struggle for survival I mistook it for.

I write every day because I must. (And partly because I’m afraid of what would happen to my brain if I didn’t.) The everyday habit gave me the stamina to get through my first finished book, and my second, and every other of the thirty-odd and counting. But it also did something incredibly important: it taught me about my process.

My process shares some commonalities with other writers’ processes, while being unique as every writer’s is. But at least I know what it is, now. It was a damn sight harder to finish a book when I couldn’t look at the other ones I’d finished and say, oh yeah, I remember this part where I think it fucking sucks and nobody will ever want it and I feel like crying. Yeah. I remember–this isn’t the end of the world–it’s a stage in the process. I’ll get over it. Those first few books were literally murder. The first time I finished a book and had a week of emotional wind-down I thought I was going insane. The second, I’d forgotten all about the first–but by the third, I was starting to grasp the fact that there was an emotional cost to what I was doing, and I needed time to deal with the snapback. Which means today, I can schedule in time for the snapback to occur, and let it happen.

Just like I can tell myself, of course you feel like you want to quit. You always do at this part of the process. Keep going.

I am a firm believer in the truism that one doesn’t know how to write a novel, one can only guess how to get through the novel one’s writing now. Each one’s different. But thankfully, the process will begin to be clear to you, and that process tends to change much more slowly than the novels do. Your own general process for successfully finishing a novel (or a short story, an essay, a poem, what have you) is something you can plan for, anticipate, fine-tune, and generally learn how to work your way around.

But you can’t do that anticipating if you don’t know your process, you cannot know your process if you don’t finish anything, and you stand a much better chance of finishing something if you write every day. I say every day, knowing full well that for experienced writers there may be days off, when the mental work of building the story is happening but not much occurs with the fingers on the keyboard. I say every day, knowing full well that I could be wishy-washy and say “regularly” and hopefully avoid some of the “but I CAN’T!” that seems to pop up in the comments of posts like this. I say “every day” even though I know as soon as I say it, someone will pipe up with “but my process is different and I’m published!” and that’s OK. I say “every day” even though I know, my God do I know, Life Happens, things happen, and you may be called away from writing by an emergency.

I say this because if one says, “Write regularly” you can write once every six months and consider that “regularly” and you might die of old age before you get close to producing publishable work. I say it because I consider it to be the reason why my career is as (moderately) successful as it is. I say it because I consider that discipline crucial if you want to write for a living. I say it because I can have the rule of “write every day” and have occasional Emergencies that I am flexible enough to accommodate, but the needle of habit, discipline, and need gets me back up on the horse as soon as possible after the dust has cleared. Telling myself “write every day” is a foundation that makes it possible for me to even recognize I have a process.

Next week I’m going to talk a little more nuts and bolts about my particular process. But I want it to be absolutely clear that I consider the commitment to everyday writing as a precondition to recognizing one has a process early enough for it to do any bloody good. I firmly and fervently believe that writing every day gives you the chance to find your process before you get frustrated and decide you’d rather do something else with your time. Which is fine and well and good if that’s what you choose, but if I can point out a stumbling block and what I think is the best way around it, well, I will.

So. That’s out of the way. Next week, we’ll get nitty-gritty about just what my process entails.

Over and out.

I really should mow the grass.

I say this because the herbiage is now long enough to give Squirrel!Neo plenty of cover as he goes about his business in my back yard. This grants him, as a Ninja Squirrel, a certain latitude of action. Like the peanut he tried to break my sunroom window with this morning…

…this may require a little explanation, actually.

I was on the treadmill, powering my way through the third of five miles. I call it the break mile, because once I’ve finished it I might as well finish out the whole bloody hour, right? Since I’m over halfway. It’s just one of those little tricks I use to keep myself running. Anyway, I was on the treadmill, with a box of tissues. Because the cold still has me in a grip–well, not quite of iron, perhaps just of lead. Something a bit softer, but still metallic.

It had just begun to rain, and I could see the bread scattered earlier this morning for the bluejays and crows slowly getting sodden. If the birds don’t get it the possums will, and don’t talk to me about the possums. I am bribing them in the hopes that they will be allies when the squirrels try to hack my house. (I’m not saying this keeps me up at night, okay? I’m just saying prudence is a virtue.) Remember the bread, all right? Trust me, it’s important.

So along comes Squirrel!Neo. He’s head-down in the grass, tail twitching as he buries something a few feet from the window directly in front of me. I swear I can see every hair on the fuzzy little bastard’s rear. What happened next surprised us both.

I sneezed. I grabbed for a tissue, since it was a wet one. (Between the sweating and the sneezing, it was a very damp morning in there.) And something hit the window.

A peanut.

An actual peanut. I think someone in the neighborhood actually feeds these beasts.

That son of a bitch squirrel threw a peanut at me. He sat straight up, from the tuft of grass he’d fled to, apparently in terror, after chucking the peanut to save his miserable life.

It startled me, so I swore. Loudly. And Squirrel!Neo chittered. At least, I think he did, I had my earbuds in but I saw his little chest and mouth moving. I don’t know squirreltongue, but I believe I can translate what he was saying.

“BITCH! I KNOW KUNG FU! FIRST TIME IT’S A PEANUT! NEXT TIME I KICK YOU IN THE HEAD!”

And you know, that actually upset me a little. Because I have done nothing to this squirrel other than laugh at the cats when he shows up. Maybe he thinks I’m laughing at him? I don’t know. But the injustice of the situation struck me quite strongly at the moment. So I did what anyone would have done.

I yelled back. (Those among you who are easily offended or have tender ears may wish to quit reading now, while you’re ahead.)

“MOTHERF!CKER!” I yelled. “DON’T YOU F!CKING THREATEN ME! WHO GAVE YOU THAT GODDAMN PEANUT?! YOU BREAK MY WINDOW THERE WILL BE HELL TO PAY!”

Now, I of course knew that a peanut, even flung by The One, would not break the window. And I didn’t give a good-glory-goddamn where he got that peanut from. But when I get to cursing, the most amazing things come out of my mouth, things that have only a tenuous connection to logic. I mean, I wish I could taunt like John Cleese, but this is the best I can do, so I commit, you know?

Squirrel!Neo fled to the tenuous purchase of a red wagon the kids left in the middle of the yard. As he did, I caught sight of something amazing falling from the arc of his beautiful jump.

Yes, friends and neighbors. I literally scared the shit out of Squirrel!Neo. He scampered off into the plum tree, probably feeling a few ounces lighter.

By this time I was torn between embarrassment, gratification, the urge to laugh like a hyena, the aching in my legs, the fact that I did not have enough breath for all the multitasking I was doing, and a coughing fit. I think I coughed and swore through the next three minutes, an amazing clot of phlegm working free inside my chest. (I will NOT tell you what happened to the clot. I have some couth.)

Another mile and a half passed by, and I had almost recovered when I saw the little fuzzy bastard again. He sauntered out, bold as you please, and started working on the soggy bread. (I told you to remember the bread.)

Well, of course, I watched him. It was a tense detente.

Squirrel!Neo was so busy stuffing his face, in fact, that he didn’t notice the bluejay. (I had originally cast this jay as Mercutio, I suppose that’s as good a name as any.) One of a pair who frequents my backyard and scares everyone else at the birdfeeder, this particular jay likes to hang out in the pussywillow tree and roundly curse everyone in sight, or the weather, or what have you. He’s also incredibly jealous of bread. He won’t eat it if he’s already full, but he’ll be damned if he’ll let anyone take a bit of it. The only exception are the crows, who just sort of laugh at him as he jumps up and down screeching.

Anyway. Mercutio!Jay was unamused by this turn of events. He did not do what he usually does, which is stand up there and yell.

No. Mercutio hopped off the branch, glided down, and proceeded to beat the living hell out of Squirrel!Neo all the way across the yard. Once he was sure he had the fuzzy bastard on the run, he started yelling. Again, I’m no good at bluejaytongue, but I shall endeavor to translate.

“SONOFABITCH THAT’S MY GODDAMN BREAD! YOU KNOW KUNG FU? YOU KNOW KUNG FU? WELL I’M GODDAMN MERCUTIO, MOTHERF!CKER, AND I’LL WHOMP YOUR FUZZY ASS IN IAMBIC PENTAMETER!”

It’s a damn good thing I’d just finished my five miles. Because I barely had the wherewithal to hit the stop button. I stood there laughing so hard I cried, blowing my nose twice, coughing and sweating and sneezing. I actually got a vicious side-stitch from the whole deal, but here’s the best part.

Remember that peanut? The one Neo chucked at me? Well, after he chased the One across the yard, Mercutio!Jay flew back, still swearing at top volume, and picked up the peanut. That forced him to shut up. Still, he eyed me for a few seconds while in front of the window.

Then I swear to God, he winked and flew off.

And you know…he left the bread.

I have a terrible cold. My largest ambition is going to the grocery store to get DayQuil (I’m not completely out of those little orange capsules of DOOM, thank God), milk, and coffee. (Because I used the last of the coffee this morning OMGBBQLLAMA CRISIS AVERTED…) The common cold is actually rather an interesting little thing, when you consider how long it’s been with us, how successful it is, and how ubiquitous too. (This could, of course, be only the fever talking.)

So today is for pottering about and letting the next bit of the story cook. The book broke free last night–that’s the point in a work where I can feel it taking its own shape, where the setup has been done and now it’s just a matter of seeing where the dominoes fall. It’s much more comfortable than the first long slog after the freshness of the idea has worn off and the last long slog where it becomes the latest iteration of the Book That Will Not Die Stab It Quick.

Of squirrels I have only one more thing to report: Squirrel!Neo is the unchallenged master of our yard. Yesterday I was reduced to hysterical laughter as the youngest and silliest of our cats–the one so long and lean and big-eyed we call him the Lemur Cat–threw himself at my writing window to get at Squirrel!Neo. (There is still a little noseprint there.) I will swear to my dying day that Squirrel!Neo, calmly hopping about in the yard with his tail flicking unnecessarily but very aesthetically every few bounds, shot Lemur Cat the finger. He didn’t even flinch when Lemur Cat hit the window, either. He just flipped him off, as if to say “Bitch, I know kung fu.”

The funny thing is that Lemur Cat staggered back from the window and across the living room, where he somewhat drunkenly but very viciously attacked the mild-mannered, inoffensive little scratching post I spray with catnip oil every now and again. (Head trauma in felines is fun to watch.)

When he had taught that sorry inanimate object its place, he tore around the room twice, leaping from THE CHAIR to the couch and knocking various things over. Then he calmly sauntered back to my writing window (the window that even now bears a noseprint), hopped up, and settled down on his haunches, staring unblinking at Squirrel!Neo, who was digging around in the lavender under my window like he owned the place and was going to take a nosegay back to the Squirrel!Oracle.

I laughed so hard I coughed and choked. Which produced (or moved around) an incredible amount of phlegm. So I lunged for the tissues, desperate to avoid spraying my laptop with contagion, and almost fell out of my chair. Almost. Lemur Cat shot me a filthy look, but I did not fall over. And I was actually rather pleased about that, even though that would have made the story much, much funnier. I wasn’t sure whether or not to count that as a victory over Squirrel!Neo.

In the end, I think I’d best call it a tie between me and that fuzzy little bastard. But it’s Squirrel!Neo 3, cats 0; or cats .5 if I let them claim me not falling and cracking my fool head open.

I can’t decide if that makes me the referee or the scorekeeper. Further bulletins as events warrant…