I’m going offline until after New Year’s, mostly to mend my own fences and let the recent disturbances swirl to a halt inside me.
See you in 2013, dear little chickadees, a year that will no doubt be full of squirrelterror and writing.
Over and (temporarily) out…
Things I’ve actually said since Saturday:
* “They may be the most harmless people in the world. But that’s a chance I can’t take.”
* “You dumbass, it’s just a hairbrush.”
* “What would you do if you CAUGHT the motherfucker?”
* “I have to stick him in an asylum. He’s too much trouble otherwise.”
* “Oh yeah, give me a baseball bat and make a bunch of people yell at me. No way this could go wrong, right?”
* “Please take your dominance displays elsewhere, I just ate.”
* “Yeah, he humps everything that moves. But that’s one of his better qualities.”
Yessir, it’s been One Of Those Weeks, and it’s only Wednesday. I’ve reached the point in the damn book where I have to go back and cement little bits of what’s already written before I can lunge forward and build the middle of the book where all the tripwires (and most of the explosions) are. Add to that a mountain of housework and the various vexations of single parenting (keeping a straight face has never been so difficult as lately, and keeping my eyebrows from raising when a child thinks I won’t catch them in a stupid fib is just as hard) and the fact that both the dogs are feeling their oats–can it be oats? Feeling their kibble? They’re not herbivores, does it apply?–oh, sod it all, just hand me my tea and let me go mumble about asylums and murder in alt-historical Londinium.
It’s safer for all concerned.
*wanders off, muttering into tea mug*
This morning: Slavonic dances on the radio, Canadian geese rising from the high school’s football field in a cloud of feathers and honking audible even over Brahms and Dvorak, the evidence of yesterday’s wind and rain everywhere. Huge downed branches in the back yard along with puddles the dogs can’t leave alone. A mostly-sleepless night tinges these things with an odd hypercolor.
I think the insomnia is a function of the cold I’m still fighting off as well as the creative engine sputtering over the third Bannon & Clare book. Every word having to be chipped out of my cerebellum with a chisel and bloody sweat. But still, banging my head on the book is worse than nothing, I guess. Small mercies.
More small mercies: the Princess may finally be old enough to do her own laundry, the dogs are both happy and grinning, nothing has caught on fire or fallen down this week (yet). I have a couple movies to watch in between hammering at the book. The trailer-park fae are still speaking, the house is still solid. All things to be grateful for.
Other than that, not much to report. Life here is very wonderfully boring, except for Squirrel!Napoleon. He has developed quite a fondness for taunting the Mad Tortie, who keeps leaving dead birds all over the yard as warning. She’s a mighty hunter, that one; still, I suspect she may have found her match in a certain rodent.
But that’s another blog post. *wicked grin*
So I’m pretty unfit for human company today. *sigh*
There is, however, good news! My writing partner is a finalist in Harlequin’s So You Think You Can Write contest! Isn’t that cool? GO MEL! Voting starts on the 16th, so I’ll be reminding you, dear Readers, about it then too. Because I love this story of hers with the fiery love of a thousand suns, and I am over the moon with joy for the Selkie. *beams*
And with that happy to keep me company, I’m going to retreat into the cave and see if I can’t get this book seriously underway. Over and out.
I went running in the rain this morning, the first run of this winter’s season. It reminded me of why I lace up and hit the pavement. There’s a certain pitch of physical misery that I find damn near irresistible, probably because I’m putting myself through it. I’m sure if the zombiepocalypse hit and I had to be physically miserable, I would bitch about it endlessly, even if just inside my own head. Or to my dogs. I am thinking that my zombiepocalypse survival program will include canine support.
Anyway, Miss B and I went running in a cold driving rain and came home soaked and spent. I am relaxed and feeling the endorphins still vibrating in my bones and veins, and she is finally calm enough not to notice when poor Odd Trundles tries to get her to play. On and on we went, and the rain kept most of the idiots who let their dogs off-leash (around schools, for God’s sake!) inside, so all I had to worry about was Miss B’s doggie synapses fusing every time a schoolbus, SUV, or truck went by. I keep asking her what the bloody hell she would DO with one if she caught one, and she keeps giving me this look that says oh, you idiot, first things first…
Even my dog thinks I’m insufferable. Ha.
I am about to plunge into writing the third Bannon & Clare adventure, which means I’m filling my head with tons of Jack the Ripper and Victoriana. I’ve noticed that my spoken language gets far more formal when I’m writing the sorceress and mentath, just like it gets a little more flowery when I’m writing fantasy. I wonder–other penmonkeys, do your verbal patterns change as a result of what you’re writing?
Also, I am thinking about the nature of connection versus consumption lately. Does a lamp spend its light, or does it just shine? *makes face at self*
Eh, my gaze keeps straying away from the screen to the current stack of Jack the Ripper books. I suppose it’s a sign. I don’t even know where The Ripper Affair begins. And there’s some Springheel Jack I should look into, as well as the things that might live under Londinium. Why are we always down in the shite?, Ludovico the assassin grumbles, and I simply grin and inform him that as long as he survives in my books, it’s not going to be pleasant. This isn’t a tea party, you know. It’s a clockwork hell.
Time to start carving and see what peels away from the bone. Over and out.
I can breathe a sigh of relief and those little muscles at the base of my skull have loosened. Why, you ask? What possesses that power, the power to soothe the angreh Lili?
I’ll tell you. Simple. It’s raining!
It started while I was walking Miss B, a spattering of drops and the firs sending up a glorious gout of celebratory balsam-smell. Then there was a fine silver curtain of drizzle while I stood on the deck out back, not caring if it was acid rain washing all the particles out of air that’s been dry for weeks. Now it’s a steady tapping on the roof, and I am so, so glad.
I’m a winter writer, I guess. I’m at my most productive when the weather is filthy outside. I love rain, it’s one of the reasons I live in this part of the country. And now the proper season has started, and I no longer feel so parched and shriveled.
Now of course there will be mud and running in the cold wet, and damp dogs, and more mud, and baking and soup-making, and did I mention the mud? I’ve been dancing around whistling Gene Kelly, getting up to check the size and health of the puddles, and I’ve been more productive this afternoon than I have in WEEKS. The Cinderella book (shhh! you’re not supposed to know about that yet) is coming along nicely in revision. It doesn’t suck as hard as I thought it did (though plenty hard enough, thanks, ha, I went there, YOU KNEW I WOULD) and there are even passages where…well, it might not be all bad.
I’m not sayin’ it’s good, I’m just sayin’ it can possibly be fixed.
Thank heaven for the rain.
Over and out.
I always laugh when anyone tells me how glamourous it must be to be a writer.
The sight of me, unwashed and furious, staring at a glowing screen for hours while the people inside my head refuse to make sense, occasionally taking a break to pace furiously up and down the hall while the dogs trot behind me inquisitively, running into me when I stop and change direction, me throwing myself on the floor in the living room and snarling “BUT THAT DOESN’T MAKE SENSE” and Miss B gamely trying to make it make sense by licking my face…you know, “glamour” is not the word that comes to mind. “Hysterically funny to watch Lili suffer” is what comes to mind.
My dears, I have a confession to make.
I’ve written through every other move and upheaval in my life. And by that, I mean I wrote in the hospital after C-sections (don’t ask), I wrote when the electricity got shut off because someone hadn’t paid the bill (roommates, oh, I could write a book about them sucking), I’ve written through two divorces, the death of a soulmate, and various other Fun and UnFun Events. Write during a move? Sure, no problem. Make my deadlines while buying a house? Pshaw, I’ve eaten better stress than this for breakfast.
I was wrong.
I did not understand (I was warned, though, I really was) about the level of stress involved in the legal albeit temporary possession (because really, the bank owns everything, and what the bank doesn’t own eminent domain can be invoked to make the state own) of a wooden structure on a lot that one pours money into. I did not understand that stress would play merry hob with deadlines, and I did not understand that the move would drain my emotional energy so badly I can barely force myself out of bed in the morning.
Hyperbole? Only a little.
Never before has the discipline of forcing myself to sit and chip words out of the folds of my cerebellum been so critical. Never before have I sat and looked at the screen and at my hands, and thought I know how to do this, I know what happens next, I just cannot find the goddamn words. For someone who has built her life on the power and magic of the written word, it’s a wee bit, oh, what’s the term, hmmm…
…terrifying? Yes, that applies.
As Julia Cameron often pointed out, it takes fuel to burn hard enough to create art. I’m scraping the bottom of my cupboard, and for the first time, the words are not just under the surface. The little bastards are cowering in deep caves, delighting in my agonized screams as I claw them out one by one and throw them onto the page, where I must nail them in and listen to them shriek as they writhe.
*clears throat*
Well. Now that I have that out of my system…
…okay, I have dished out hard advice here before. Now, dear chickadees, dear Readers, dish me some. I know I’m going to keep writing–after all, I have no choice–but turnabout’s fair play. Lay it on me. Zadie Smith’s ten rules can only take me so far. Be cruel to be kind, dear Readers. You’ll likely never get another chance.
And now, excuse me while I go grubbing for more screaming little word-bastards. I will read every piece of advice you give me, dear ones. Tomorrow.
So…I am having thoughts of writing serial fiction over at the Deadline Dames site.
And so, I thought I would invite you, darling readers, into the process.
Here’s what I want: something you’d like to see me write in serial fiction. Don’t pitch me your novel. Do please understand that whatever I write, I retain all rights to. (You want to take the idea in another direction, do it, spend the work on it, and submit it. ‘Nuff said.) Do understand that I reserve the right to write what I please. Do please understand that I will take everything you’ve said and go in my own direction. And don’t tell me what a hack I am to even be contemplating this.
With those codicils in place, the floor is open. Let’s do some serial wonder, my dears. Give me your suggestions…
So this morning my writing partner send me this link. And I thought of a story I started a long time ago–and so I’ll share the beginning with you. This is one of those stories that probably won’t go anywhere, but the beginning was thought-provoking, to say the least. Enjoy!
***
So yesterday, in a blaze of something suspiciously like glory, I finished the zero draft[1] of the next Bannon & Clare, The Red Plague Affair. There are holes and sloppy bits and it needs serious atmosphere poured into the chinks between dialogue and action, but it’s done. It is no longer a terrible unfinished book.
Which means that today will be spent collapsed on the floor and drooling, while my throbbing head (seriously, the zero clocks in at 60K words, 8 of which forced their way through my tender cranium yesterday in a skidding slide for the finish) slowly cools. I may take myself to lunch somewhere, if the annoyance of driving doesn’t seem an insurmountable difficulty. I have to power-wash the inside of my skull today, for tomorrow I go back to line-edits on the all-new YA. I suppose I should talk about that…
…but not quite yet. I have a breakfast to accomplish, a schoolbus to get the Little Prince on, and some drooling to do. Oh, the glory of this writing life.
Over and out.
[1]The “zero draft” is the initial finished corpse of a story. It’s not perfect, it’s messy as hell, but it’s DONE. It gets set aside to rest for two weeks to a month, then I go back and revise it to make it a “first” draft that someone else–my beta or my editor–can read.
