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!

I’m in Revision Hell at the moment, chopping up and messing with the first Bannon & Clare book to get it from zero to first draft status. So I have the map of Dickens’s London out, a sneezing cat on my shoulder, a dog flopped at my feet with several long-suffering sighs whenever I move in the slightest, and a head stuffed full of story structure, plot arc, character cross-references, and things to look for in the zero draft.

As you might suspect, this makes for some exotic thoughts when I’m not actively revising. Like the peculiar, highly-colored, anxiety-ridden dreams I’ve come to expect during revisions. They rarely involve the story; instead, they’re some version or another of the old “here I am in class, naked and missing my homework” dreams. Last night’s featured Martians.

Seriously, you don’t want to know. In any case, here’s a selection of Things I Think While Revising, different than the normal oddness inside my head only in that the anxiety makes them much more vivid than usual ho-hum “how would I do a shootout in this stairwell” thoughts.

* “I have a tumor. I’m going to die.” This morning while running I had an amazing bolt of pain lance through my head. Wednesdays are my easy days, only three miles and no double in the afternoon. So there I was, trucking along at about two miles, and I had to stop and screw my eyes shut. The dog was confused, and as soon as the bolt passed I wondered if I had a brain tumor and I was going to be felled by it in a matter of weeks. Then I realized I was being ridiculous, and started running again.

* “Pancakes and watermelon are an acceptable dinner, right?” The kids agreed enthusiastically. However, I don’t really like watermelon, so it was grapes, pita chips, and Brie for me. That was when I realized I had grabbed “light” Brie. Let me tell you, such a thing is an abomination unto the gods, and shall ever be, world without end, amen.

* “A hansom only needs one clockhorse, thanks.” Said to the nice lady checking my groceries at the supermarket. She knows me–I’ve been shopping there for a decade now–so she just said, “Another book, huh? I’m gonna give you this coupon, honey. Go home and get some rest.”

* “Armored squirrels. With red eyes. Can I fit them into this draft?” Sadly, I could not. Altered rats, sure. But not squirrels. I’m sure there were squirrels in Victorian London, but I don’t want to dig them up. Let them rest in peace, for Chrissake.

* “I can climb tha–THUD.” It’s not that I overestimate my abilities. It’s that I throw myself at the wall and see what sticks, and while I’m in revision I’m tempted to do the craziest things because they sound good at the time.

* “Oh, God, if I just had a submachine gun right now…” Pretty standard, right? But when in revision hell, the ensuing mental dwelling upon the likely consequences are Technicolor vivid. I…won’t say more.

* “Could I teach the dog to bring me a glass of wine?” I actually spent a good ten minutes contemplating this. Then I ran up against the fact that Miss B doesn’t have thumbs. And decided it was time to go to bed, for I was getting silly.

* “What if it was an alien driving that car…?” One of the things about revision is that new stories start crowding the brain, the what-if muscle working overtime, begging to be used. I have not decided if this is a method of procrastination or a natural result of the creative faculties chewing on the bone and gristle of a zero draft, looking for something a little more tender. Who knows? In any case, I lose myself in little what-ifs like this an awful lot during revision. Even more than I normally do, which is saying something.

I could go on and on, but you get the idea. Here, have a trailer for a movie about the invention of the vibrator. Hat tip to the Selkie for that one. See, there’s a taste of the random that happens when it’s revision time.

Speaking of which, I’ve got to go back. I’m trying to find chapter names that don’t sound like coffee brands. *headdesk*

Over and out.

Crossposted to the Deadline Dames, where there’s tons more writing advice, contests, and pie! (Okay, maybe no pie.) Check us out!

Every once in a while, I like to sit down and think of about five things to make a post. Since I’m exhausted and stare-eyed after a long, very busy week that went straight through the weekend without even pausing to nod, I see this as a very good strategy for today. So, without further ado, here’s Five Things Writing Will Teach You, Or, Valuable Skills Learned By Telling Lies For A Living.

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First, a couple things: the Little Prince is bright and perky again. That’s the thing with kid stomach bugs–they show up in the middle of the night and are gone pretty much right after dawn, and the kid is all energetic again while the adult feels like she’s been hit by a bus. Yesterday was…well, pretty stabby. But he’s doing all right.

Plus, I’ll be participating in a Book Country Twitter chat tonight. (The hashtag will be #bookcountry.) The topic is: “Author blogs & websites: what works, what doesn’t, how to maintain a balance of personal and professional, and how not to become an annoying book marketing machine.” I’ll be there with Colleen Lindsay and Dan Blank; it promises to be fun.

So. You’ve made it through the process of writing a novel, and your brain feels like three-day-rotted cheese. What does the recovery process look like?

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So the new YA is gathering steam. I’ve reached the point of excavating the world instead of feeling my way around in the dark, and I can tell the long dark slump of picking at the book like it’s a scab is just around the corner.

I have, over the course of writing a few books, become pretty comfortable with how that process usually works for me. Familiarity, while not getting rid of the frustration factor OR the sheer amount of work necessary, does help one plan, and it does help one get through the more uncomfortable parts of writing a book with something resembling grace. (Or at least, you can stumble through without stubbing your toes too much.) Being able to say, “Oh, this is the slump part of the project, I can just keep chipping and eventually I’ll get to the dead heat phase,” is a lot easier than saying “OMFG this book is going to kill me WHY AM I DOING THIS?” Note, however, that one can say both at the same time, and the former does help to ameliorate some of the sheer ARGH of the latter.

For me, writing a book goes somewhat like this:

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