Lilith Saintcrow

Good morning! It’s a rainy, windy day here. I like wind and I like rain, especially if I’m snuggled up nice and safe inside. My writing location has shifted to an office chair and a tiny laptop holder situated where I can see out my front windows. The street is endlessly interesting, and I can see a good chunk of sky and trees. Most of this move has been made necessary by some hip irritation I’ve been experiencing. For some reason, losing seventy pounds through diet and exercise has aggravated a small piriformis issue; I’m using my body differently and I’m sure both the piriformis and my iliotibial bands are unhappy with me. Nothing will solve it but rest, stretching, and taking care of how I use my body. Grrr.

I also need a massage. Dayum. Anyway.

Sean Ferrell has a great post up about his writing process. Being who I am, this little chunk of it particularly stood out to me:

I write every day. Especially when I don’t feel like it. Especially when it’s not working. I can always choose to not use something that I wrote and that I realize later is the wrong tone, doesn’t fit, contradicts other parts. I can’t decide to use something that isn’t written. I can’t use something that is still in my head. Better to have something come out half right than have all of it perfectly in my skull.

I’m glad Sean mentioned this. I happen to think disciplining oneself to write every day, even if it is in very small chunks some day, is critical. (But we all know how I feel about that.) You can’t edit when you don’t have raw material, and better half right than not done at all. True, true words.

The other half of the coin is taking care of one’s sustainability, filling the well inside your head and making sure you have enough emotional and physical energy to run on. This is the difficult part for me. I tend to mortgage bits of myself and run until I hit a breakdown, which is not healthy. I’ve learned several tricks to compensate for that little tendency of mine, all of them directed at making me take care of myself. I felt bad about this until someone said, “Why? They’re strategies for self-survival, and they sound like workable ones. Quit wasting time feeling bad about them and focus on bolstering them. Self-care means you’ll write longer.”

Amen.

Anyway. Enough of my lecturing. I had my first rock climbing class this weekend. It was a belay certification, and I have my belay card now. Part of the class was climbing so everyone else could get practice belaying. We each took several climbs and “falls”, some intentional and some not, to learn to trust the rope and our belayers.

It was awesome.

I don’t like heights. They don’t terrify me the way small airless spaces do (if you ever meet me in an elevator, just be prepared for the fact that I’m not going to talk until I’m outside the metal cube. There’s no AIR in there.) but I still don’t like them a whole hell of a lot. Yet when I’m clinging to a rock wall, I don’t think about the space underneath me. I think solely about the next hold and how to hug the face of the rock. My concentration narrows to a single physical point, and for someone who tends to chew mental leather until the flavor’s all gone, that is a relief. I can tell that climbing, for me, is going to be one of those blessed activities like running, where my brain stops eating its own tail and focuses outward.

I can’t wait for the next climbing session. There’s also a bouldering class; after you take it you can go in and boulder on the bottom of the rock wall anytime there isn’t a class. I hear this gets you into great shape for climbing. I can already tell I’m going to be working out plot problems while clinging to holds. Awesome.

After the belaying class, one of my classmates looked at me. “You know, for someone who’s so nervous about climbing, you sure didn’t hesitate much.”

I thought about it for a second. “I don’t tend to hesitate.” At least, I thought, not when I’ve got a bunch of people looking at me and a wall to climb. All my hesitation comes before, while I’m looking at the wall and wondering whether or not I should do this. “Ive got two speeds,” I finally said. “Full stop or dead ahead. Mostly dead ahead.” And it’s true. Once I put my hand to the first hold, it’s like drawing the sword. You make your cut. You commit fully. Once your hand grasps the hilt, it’s too late to back out. You’d better be ready to tango.

Writing taught me that. I’m not sure it’s good for climbing, but in the interim, I’ll take it.

First, the links: I did the Page 69 Test for Flesh Circus. Here’s James Scott Bell on What, Writers Worry? and Nathan Bransford on how to respond to an editorial letter. The inimitable Gillian Spraggs has more on the Google Books Settlement and Monica Valentinelli on Plagiarism and Too Much Free. I’ve been saving some of those links for a bit, things are crazy.

I was on the treadmill this morning (big surprise, I’m up to six days a week on that damn thing and wishing I could do more) and Van Morrison came on in my headphones. Singing The Philosopher’s Stone.

Even my best friends, even my best friends they don’t know
That my job is turning lead into gold
When you hear that engine, when you hear that engine drone
I’m on the road again and I’m searching for the Philosopher’s Stone.

This particular version is from the Wonder Boys soundtrack, which I happen to like a great deal. (The Bob Dylan track that opens the album is Rose’s theme song in smoke, as a matter of fact.) The movie itself, based on a Chabon book, is about a writer who’s kept hammering at a manuscript to follow up his award-winning first novel…but that’s like saying Seven Samurai is about loyalty. There’s a lot more involved.

Anyway. So there I am on the treadmill, and I realize why I like this song so much.

It’s because it’s damn right I’m looking for the philosopher’s stone. My job is to write, yes. But an artist’s job–even a hack like myself–is to transform the world. I write because I must. The world demands it. Pain and joy both demand it. I take the things that could fester and destroy me, the things I scream against, and I write to perform one of the oldest magics known. I name a thing, and that name alters the essence of the thing. I write because it’s the magic I was made to work.

Lead and gold are different things for each traveler, and the method of transmutation is different too. It’s different for each bloody pebble and chunk of lead you find. It is a most personal magic, arrived at through trial and error. One size definitely does not fit all. My lead isn’t yours. The stones I drop in the water to make soup are different from the stones you’ll use. It’s cold out on the road, and fellow travelers may not even see you–because they’re searching for their own method of transformation.

Still, it’s nice to know there are fellow travelers. And it’s good to feel a piercing joy, so sweet it makes the tears start, when you realize a fellow traveler is putting words on your own journey.

Up in the morning, up in the morning out on the road
And my head is aching and my hands are cold
And I’m looking for the silver lining, silver lining in the clouds
And I’m searching for and
I’m searching for the philosophers stone

Yeah, Van. Me too.

Me too.

There’s an interview with me over at A Good Addictions, where I talk more about process and what Graves’s original name was. I have a couple other interviews to finish and send off today. I have a cup of tea from the bagel shop, my handwarmers are on, and I’m wearing two sweaters. I sincerely hope I don’t have to go anywhere else today. I’ve frozen and thawed about four times already today.

Now, if you’re the squeamish sort, or if you feel threatened by the female body, this post is not for you. *settles into Librarian Mode* We’ll be talking about menstruation and half-vampires. You’ve been warned.

Reader Kayle A. sent me this question not too long ago:

Hi a couple of us just got done reading Betrayls and we loved it but we have a big question. In the book you said that Dru’s blood is like amazing and it drives the djamphir crazy well we were wondering what happens when Aunt Flo visits Dru ya know like when she gets her period?

This is an interesting question, and one I’ve given a fair amount of thought to. Because a half-vampire girl in a school full of half-vampire boys is going to have to solve this problem somehow, or at least the writer of this zany little series is going to have to consider this question and whether to address it.

So far the timeline’s been pretty compressed and Dru hasn’t had to worry about her period–she’s very irregular until she blooms, although I don’t know that anyone has ever come out and told her that. In the book I’m writing now, a werwulfen girl (provisionally named Nathalie and very loosely based on my hairdresser friend C.) answers some of Dru’s questions. This might be one of them, because it amuses me mightily to think of the comic value in such a scene.

Yes, I am a very odd person with a macabre, ironic, and very odd sense of humor.

Basically, when Dru’s on the rag, she absolutely has to use tampons instead of pads. If you consider that djamphir (and wulfen) have very acute senses, including smell, the problem is going to be when blood hits the air. Keeping it from doing so as much as possible is a Good Idea. Of course they’re going to be able to smell her hormonal drift when she’s menstruating, too. So Dru’s just going to have to be a little careful. Since she was supposed to be in classes with individual tutors instead of in the general population with a crowd of boys, it’s not a huge deal. Other than the embarrassment factor of having everyone KNOWING you’re on your rag; but (here I’m going to be honest) when I was her age I felt like everyone could tell anyway. That may or may not have been the case, which raises some interesting questions of perception vs. reality in high school.

I know. This isn’t fair. Biology isn’t fair. Oh well.

However, for Dru and her fellow djamphir, the real problem only comes during combat, when there’s already heightened emotions and a less control for all concerned. Bleeding during a fight is not the same as bleeding once a month.

One of the “rules” of the world I’ve built is that “blooming” is a marker of maturity, the last physical “gate” before the half-vampire’s body settles into the form it will take until “the night hunts them down”, as Bruce (you haven’t met him yet) so memorably puts it. An irregular menstruation while some of the initial biochemical changes are taking place is reasonable, and certain other physical changes will become evident as Dru blooms. Boys get to accomplish their blooming (for them it’s called “hitting the drift”) all at once, and generally earlier than girls. They’re built to be fighters, and the earlier, quicker drift helps them. Svetocha, well…they do have to think about breeding, so their bodies are a little different. Nature gives them an evolutionary edge–becoming toxic to nosferat–at the same time it gives them a sometimes-fitful blooming, the capacity to breed, and all its attendant problems.

Again, biology isn’t fair. And this is a fine metaphor for the stew of hormones kids find themselves in, as well as the difficulty of negotiating the terrain of approaching maturity in our society. It’s less fair for girls than it is for boys. Temptation abounds, many adults won’t answer reasonable questions or try to stop schools from educating teens about their bodies and hormones. The risks of pregnancy and disease, the double standard, social confusion…these are things that are borne more heavily by girls than boys. No, biology is not fair, and life isn’t either.

This brings up something kind of important. When you build a world, it needs to be internally consistent. If you don’t have reasons for things you at least need to think about how you’re going to approach the question. I actually thought a great deal about how Dru was going to approach the problem of her period in a school full of boys who can smell blood. The potential for social disaster is huge. This sort of thing is something every girl in middle to high school has to face, albeit not to the same degree, and it’s rarely talked about without embarrassment and blushing.

Even if I hadn’t planned on putting some sort of discussion of this into the books, I still need to think about it and know it. Worldbuilding is very important, even if the reader only sees the tip of the iceberg. For example, Dante Valentine’s world lives and breathes for me. So much of what I have in my head for that world never made it onto paper. A tiny fraction, less than one percent, made it out. But the bulk of those worldbuilding problems I solved and thought about was the rest of the iceberg underwater, supporting that tiny bit everyone else could see.

So, Kayle, I hope that answers your question. Yes, I do think about these things when it comes to building worlds and characters. I can’t help myself. I want the worlds to be as tight and as internally consistent as possible. I don’t know if I achieve that goal 100%, but it’s not for lack of trying.

Over and out.

Crossposted to the Deadline Dames, where there are contests, more writing advice, and occasionally giveaways. Go take a look!

It’s no use fighting it. I’m a winter writer.

I actually never thought about it until the Selkie looked at me over dinner one evening and said, “You didn’t know that? You get all your work done in the winter. It’s like you’re powered by rain.” (Or something to that effect.)

I’m not sure whether it is the rain and the fact that there’s nothing to do outside (except drown, of course, this being the Pacific Northwest and all) or whether it’s just that I’m physically so uncomfortable in the summer. I hate the heat, I dislike sweating, sunshine makes me feel odd. Plus there’s all that activity outside during the summer–the kids like playing, and I like being with them. It seems too busy to settle down.

In winter, however, I turn inward. Seeing the stories inside my head gets easier. The sound of rain on the roof makes me happy, and the chill outside makes me the perfect temperature inside. Plus, there’s the longer nights, and night-time is when the static of so many people doing their daytime thinking goes down. I have always functioned better at night. (Which makes the fact that at least one of my children is a morning person verreh ironic.) Of course I cram in the work whenever I can, it being the way I feed myself and the little darlings, but I’d be a fool if I didn’t notice what times were easiest for me. I try to arrange my life so I have the prime writing time open.

Which brings me to my point. My dear fellow writers, are you a winter or summer writer? Morning or night? Does temperature or weather matter to you? How do you arrange your writing schedule to take advantage of that, or do you?

I’m curious, you see. My besetting sin.

And now, it’s raining pretty heavily. Which means it’s primetime for me. Off I go to write…

I am teaching my son to read, from the same book I taught my daughter to read from. It’s amazing to watch the decoding skills strengthen, to see him making the connections.

I forget, because I’ve been doing it so long, that reading is not necessarily a “natural” skill, and neither is writing. It takes hard work and rewiring the brain a little to learn, and then lots of practice. Certainly it feels natural at this point, but so does riding a bicycle or driving a car.

I’m kind of wondering what will feel natural in another ten years.

For me, the act of writing is a magical one. It is transmuting the world, making sense of things. So much of the world seems senseless and inimical some days; putting a screen over it that makes things make sense is one of the great strengths of the human brain. I have always said the act of creation is transforming the world in some way, and that it’s crucial.

I’ve been reading a lot lately about how language is a virus, how the naming of the thing isn’t the thing itself, and how the abstract of reading/language shuts out direct experience. I am not sure I entirely agree–the act of reading is, for me, a very direct experience. There is a balance between that and the experience Out Here In Meatspace, if you’ll pardon the term. Both are wheels to balance on.

So, in lieu of an actual writing post, I’m actually just a little philosophical this morning. I’m thinking about how I derive so much genuine pleasure and comfort from this abstract thing that is, according to so many people, utterly divorced from “real” experience. I’m depending on writing to help me through a lot these days, from a broken heart to the mechanics of living day to day. It’s never let me down. Still, I examine the underpinnings and the mechanics, because I can’t help myself. I need to know it’s always going to be there.

The answer is always the same: as long as my commitment is there, so are the words. I am the necessary component.

It’s nice to feel necessary.

So, dear fellow wordsmiths: what is writing to you? Do you think it detracts from “experience of the real”? Weigh in, give me your .02. I’m listening.

And that’s another skill, too. *makes funny face*