Lilith Saintcrow

If you aren’t reading The Fox Sister or Girl Genius, dear God, hie ye forth and do so!

It’s a bright cold morning, and what isn’t frozen is close to it. Including me. I find myself in a curious abeyance today; Miss B is quiet and watchful as if she senses a change in the weather. Of course, it could just be that we’ve been too busy to be believed lately, and she’s been right with me during all of it. I bless the day I visited the shelter and saw her sweet doggie face. I know every owner thinks their dog is the best, but I’m sorry, my girl has them all beat.

Anyway, the Bandit King revisions proceed apace. I am really wishing I could have killed this protagonist early and saved myself all this fuss. I normally don’t like my heroes much (there’s an exception in Jack Gray, who I actually kind of admired, and Darik isn’t bad but he still has a long way to go) but it’s rare for me to dislike them to this degree. My mild irritation with this hero has turned into outright flaming hatred, which means my notes for revision are covered in little Post-Its saying I can kill him, please tell me I can kill him!, or Idiot asshole or even, Why did I think writing from his POV was a good idea? In the time it takes me to scribble one of those little notes, I could be making changes…so I suppose it’s just another avoidance tactic.

This career is full of those.

Anyway, it’s time to dive back in. If I can’t outright kill this guy I can stab, burn, heartbreak, and eye-mutilate him. He won’t be nearly as pretty when I finish with him, dammit, and it serves him right. *quietly fumes*

Over and out!

Hear that? The gargling sound? That’s the sound of one of the worst weekends in recent history swirling down the drain. I am not sad to see it go, either. This morning’s run was a pounding away of stress, frustration, anger, sadness, you name it. It was only four miles, but both Miss B and I were much calmer at the end of it. Funny thing–I was told Aussies get very attached to their owners, but I didn’t realize until this weekend just how attached Miss B is. She was up with me all night Saturday, corralling and helping me handle another very sick animal, and every once in a while she would give me a low, soft, consolatory woof! and a sideways glance, clearly saying “I’m right with you, Mum. Just tell me what to do next.” All damn night, and she was up with me all day Sunday dealing with fallout and cleanup. When things had finally settled down and I patted the bed last night, telling her she had earned (again) the privilege of sleeping on the Big Soft, she settled down and groaned a little, flipped an ear, and was out like a light. And this morning, she was antsy because I was needing to work some of the stress off, so we hit the pavement and went for it.

I can’t talk about the rest of the weekend, because dealing with other people’s thoughtless cruelty just works me up into a ball of frustration. A lot of why I write what I do is to understand. But no matter how much I can paint a picture of it, I just don’t get it. It doesn’t make sense to me. The frustration of my own incomprehension is very large. I keep aiming to have some sort of compassion for assholes, but it’s very difficult when I simply don’t get it. Suffice to say the animal is in good hands and resting comfortably, and everyone here is very glad of it.

Anyway, it’s Monday, and the dread beast of Revisions is nigh. I finished the proofs for Iron Wyrm and am now hard at work on revising Bandit King. I’ve hit the point where I have fully realized that my editor, bless her hard little heart, is right about pretty much everything, and my ego, while staggering under the blow, has accepted it and moved on. I have to go back and tweak what work I did manage to get done through the hustle and bustle of the weekend, for I suspect I was too agonized to think clearly.

So, yeah. Any work I did in the past two days is suspect. I might as well have just lit it on fire, for all the good it’s going to do the manuscript in the end. Which is a big pile of argh, but it’s something fixable, something I can do, and something I understand the process behind.

I suppose I’ll take what I can get.

See you around…

I keep being told “less roller derby, more girlfriend” for this book, and it puzzles me. I thought the problem a lot of people had with my books was too much girlfriend. But what would I know? I’m just a cranky, bitter little writer.

Yep, you guessed it. Edit letter time! That marvelous moment when one receives a letter detailing every way your cherished manuscript is ugly, needs work, or just doesn’t make the grade. To be fair, every editor I work with understands to give me a sweet little bit of fruit, something they liked about the story first–before getting down to what needs to be done to make it better. I understand the editor just wants to make it better. I want it to be better too. After a week of muttering and grousing, I’ll be ready to roll up my sleeves and start tweaking, shaping, filling holes and fixing highlights.

But there’s a good deal of thrashing about that happens at the moment an edit letter lands in my inbox. My writing partner is rolling her eyes apace, God bless her.

I’ve written before about my method of dealing with the beasts. It doesn’t get any easier, though it is fractionally more familiar each time. This time around, I want to keep picking at the letter like a scab, when I know–believe me, I know–that the best thing to do is just put the damn thing down and don’t look at it for a week. I give myself such very good advice…

I had a post planned about moving goalposts, and the crazymaking that happens with that, but all the running around today has just scrubbed anything substantive clean out of my pointed little head. So I’m going to shut off the wireless, get a glass of water, and return to the world of the zombie cowboy story I’m consoling myself with now. It’s the only proper course. I hear the edit letter, locked in its little drawer, tempting and taunting me. Not gonna respond, though. Just not going to do it.

Not even a little peek.

Famous last words, right? Wish me strength.

I am grateful for this last Thanksgiving. There was plenty of food, my sister visited, I made a lemon cake (my first ever) from scratch, and all was pretty relaxed. There was even piiiiie. (Said with a long, drool-filled i, no less.) Growing up, holidays were incredibly stressful, because they had to be Perfect, and the goalposts for Perfect kept moving. I’m everlastingly thankful that I don’t have to do that now as an adult.

I even turned in a revision almost two weeks early (I like working ahead, it soothes me) so I could concentrate on cooking and having a bit of a rest. And I could poke at the zombie cowboy story, which will probably get a fair bit of work done on it between now and my drop-dead date for beginning the next Bannon & Clare. Forcing myself to take a break is a good idea, even though my “breaks” look just the same as “work” to the untrained eye. *waggles eyebrows* The need to write is unceasing.

My irritation with the “holiday season” is likewise unceasing. Eh. I’ve complained about that elsewhere.

It’s taken me, what, five hours to get this far on this post? I’ve been doing a rush edit job for a friend at the same time, and my brain has been sieved. At least there was some quiet while I focused on it. Even if that quiet made me start up suspiciously sometimes, thinking that it was too quiet and the kids were Up To Something. Soon they’ll be home, and there will be the usual level of noise and frolic.

I can’t wait.

I am munching on crackers, Brie, and grapes. This means, according to the tortoiseshell cat, that I am the New Best Friend and my lap is meant to be purred upon. You’d think cats wouldn’t want Brie–I mean, it’s fermented, right? It can’t smell good to them. I am mystified. Also, I am a little annoyed at how the cat seems to think I’m loading the cracker with Brie for her. She even tries batting at it as it’s on its way to my waiting mouth. This does not end well–she gets put on the floor, as gently as possible, and springs back into my lap the instant my hands are occupied with the food again.

I suspect we will not reach a detente, but neither will we war openly.

Five miles run this morning, at about 9:39 per mile. Another personal best, fueled by the adrenaline I’m burning off from last night. Since the flu episode and adding the fact that the weather has turned positively filthy, I’ve bagged the 5AM runs for a while. I miss Phred the Coyote and the stillness of that early morning, but nearly spraining an ankle because I can’t see what’s living at the bottom of a puddle in the dark Taught Me A Lesson. (Do NOT ask. You don’t want to know. Trust me.) For once, I am choosing discretion over valor. Or something.

The leaves have mostly turned, all at once. The crisp nights have given them fantastic shades of red and orange and yellow. This is the best year for leaves easily in the last decade, or maybe I’m just seeing them afresh. Things do seem a lot brighter this year than they have for a while.

I am not upset at the weather, though. People who move to the Pacific Northwest and bitch about the rain are like…people who move to LA and complain about heat and gridlock, or New York and noise. I happen to love the rain. When it taps on a roof and I’m warm and dry inside, there are few things better. The luxury of running in the rain, getting physically pretty miserable, then coming in and drying off is pretty intense. Winter also tends to be my most productive period as a writer. I guess maybe it’s that there’s not much else to do but hole up and tell stories when it gets gray? Plus, it’s harder to guilt me into leaving my house in wintertime. I really am quite happy as a hermit, thankyouverymuch. I’m not quite a Henry-Chinaski-class lover of solitude, but it’s pretty close.

It’s taken me a long time to write this, between stuffing my face and fending off a very vocal and indignant tortie who wants some damn Brie, nao plz! I have the shades all drawn, and the door locked, and the house to myself while the kids are at school. The current revision–a fresh new YA–is calling my name. It needs a scene between a princess and a huntsman in a fairy housekeeper’s kitchen. Also, it needs more gunfire.

It’s shaping up to be a beautiful day.