Logjam Broken

I’ve written 30k+ since Monday and all I want to do is go back to it. The Sekrit Projekt is at 110k now, and I suppose it’s not really a secret what I’m working on but I needed to protect the work, keep it covered and safe from the cold breath of contempt, not to mention institutional neglect.

Anyway, I haven’t been around much, either blog-wise or social media-wise. I am at the point where I actively resent anything taking me away from the work, but since a few folk have expressed concern…I’m fine. There’s Stuff Going On, but I’m well-armed and laying about me with all the determination of those used to losing battles. If you’ve missed me, don’t fret, I’ll be back on my usual bullshit as soon as I tear the last few words from my quivering guts and have a zero draft.

See you then.

Monday, Avec Subtext

Recently, I was hanging out in my Discord server and someone asked, “How much thought do you give to the subtext of your novels? (With the knowledge that ~75% of people are there for a plot and won’t pick up on the subtext)”? Which was super interesting and I typed up a long reply, but the question’s been bouncing around in my head since.

I don’t think most people are reading for plot. I think most people are reading for an experience, an exercise in empathy; plot is often a component of that, and characterization is a very important overriding factor as well. But subtext, hmm. My answer boiled down to, “I don’t think about it at all in the zero and first draft. If there’s subtext, I only recognize it in revision–and most of the time the editor sees it, I don’t.”

A story is a living, breathing organic thing for me. In the zero and first draft my concern is only getting the damn thing out whole and undamaged as possible. Any subtext happens almost despite the writer; the story itself chooses what it’s about and its undercurrents. This is not an abdication of responsibility, just a feature of how creativity often works; many’s the time an editor has said, “I love how you put in X as a theme/subtext,” and I’ll go all shifty-eyed and reply, “Yes, haha, absolutely!” before digging frantically in a former draft to find out what the hell.

When I write, I’m concerned almost entirely with just getting the damn thing finished in as undamaged a fashion as possible, getting myself out of the way so the story can come through. Anything else is the Muse’s concern and purview, not mine.

Now, in revision, once I’m alerted to themes or subtexts (which is part of the advantages and services an effective editor provides), I made decisions about highlighting or redirecting, accentuating or burying. And of course, other writers no doubt have different processes; I’m sure there are those who naturally think about and handle the subtext as they’re drafting or even while outlining. So this is not a one-size-fits-all answer by any means, and if you have a different experience while building your own stories, awesome! Go with it. Do what works for you. That’s the entire point.

Moving on! The time change (Daylight Savings, for the curious) is highly unpleasant, as usual. There is a persistent myth that it was instituted for agricultural reasons, like summer vacations in American public schooling, but that just ain’t so. Factory owners wanted to squeeze more productivity out of their caged employees, so the time change was instituted, and proved a little profitable so there’s a great deal of resistance to scrapping the whole thing. It’s all about control and a few more cents squeezed from workers, like so much else. It’s deeply unpleasant and the sooner it’s abolished the better.

…I could also be cranky because the caffeine hasn’t hit yet and there’s a whole lot to do today. That’s a distinct possibility.

Said coffee has been finished but Boxnoggin hasn’t stirred from his first daily nap yet. He was thrilled to have dinner “early” yesterday, even though he’s largely a social eater and sometimes refuses his kibble unless someone will sit at the table and pretend to be snacking as well. Of all our dogs he’s the one who handles the time change best–though he does start lobbying for dinner an hour before the official moment–more out of duty than anything else, I think. He appears utterly convinced the humans will forget to eat if not reminded by their faithful canine supervisor.

Of course, going outside for his first bathroom break happened in predawn darkness, which meant Deathwish BunBun appeared in the ferns along the back fence, giving me a filthy look for invading what he considers as his domain. Amazingly, Boxnoggin was too concerned with peeing and getting back inside to the warm bed to even notice the snackable bit of rodentia nearby, a mercy I am devoutly grateful for.

I love this dog; also, “smart” and “observant” are two deeply inaccurate descriptors for him. He is loving, committed, sometimes cunning, goofy, and energetic, and it’s enough.

Onward to Monday. I’m in a bit of a mood, and unwilling to sugarcoat much if at all today. It’s oddly liberating, like trimming my own hair–another thing which happened this weekend, and it went as well as can be expected. The split ends are gone, I can throw it in a braid for sleep or exercise, and when it warms up a little more the bees will be able to hitch a ride. More doesn’t really concern me at this point.

I’ve got subtexting to do, after all.

Hellebore, In Rain

All vivid now…like hellebore in rain…

It’s been a strange, sometimes frustrating week. I had one–one!–very good working day, and it has given me a hunger for more. I should be content that the Sekrit Projekt has not been killed outright, and has indeed passed what I think is the middle of its curve. Well, not really, the true break-point is the death of a major character…but good enough.

I’m still deeply tired of all the bullshit that isn’t writing, and there are two books I want very badly to get to. I just have to finish the two I’m writing now, revise the half-a-dozen in the pipeline, get a great deal of administrative work out of the way, and and and…

No rest for the weary, the wicked, or the writers. Ever, world without end, amen. Thank the gods for coffee.

It’s hellebore season, and I love everything about these plants. I could be content with a mostly-hellebore garden, frankly, save for the irritating fact that slugs consider them a delicacy. And I’ve already got hostas and roses about so I might as well continue with those too. Still, maybe this is the year I’ll get a few more Lenten roses in. It’s nice to think about, as well as the prospect of a blueberry bush or two where there’s now a surfeit of sunlight since the cedars are gone. (Which irks me to no end even now; they were wonderful and someone else’s neglect did them in. Alas.)

At least it looks like we’ll be back to proper rainy weather after a bit of a freeze; I knew we were due for at least one more heavy frost if not a downright east-wind howler. Even the cherry trees are Getting Ideas now, and I can see hints of purple on a few magnolias. The season marches on, and today I have to write an Uncomfortable Declaration of Affection in the Sekrit Projekt.

There’s that to look forward to. And the weekend will see more incremental progress on the short-story anthology. Slow and steady will win my particular race, even if I near expire of annoyance.

See you next week…

Novel or Keyhole

This is the first time I’ve ever awakened with a Linkin Park song in my head, so…yeah. I mean, I usually have music playing in my head all the time, whether it’s earthly or otherwise, but that particular band’s never made an appearance before. (Yesterday it was Joesef, and that meant a good day. Today…well, let’s wait and see.)

It was so odd, in fact, that I rolled over and reached for an electronic device in order to find the goddamn track so I could put a name to it and go back to sleep. Unfortunately, while I was doing so my sunrise clock began to warm up, and I decided I might as well just stay awake. There’s a lot to do since I finished a bunch of fiddly faffing tasks yesterday–including figuring out the skeleton of the new novella, which may or may not end up anywhere but it’s fun to work on. (It has a robot donkey named Chicken, fa cry-eye, how could I not finish it?)

I like writing novels more than novellas or short stories, mostly because I’m better at long-term endurance efforts. For anything shorter than a novel, I generally have to have every part of the strike clear–including the return to the sheath–before my hand twitches for the hilt. A novel gives me time and space to explore the entire planet even if I crash with nothing; a novella or shorter means a sliptilting scream-race through broken, possibly enemy-infested territory with only my wits and possibly a stick for company.

I can do it, sure. I can even do it well. But do I prefer it? Not so much.

Still, some stories are too small, intense, or delicate for the novel treatment. Those are overwhelmingly what I call “keyholes”–pieces where the scope is extremely constrained and I only have a small slice of the action. Most of the time I have to fight my natural urge to stretch, extend, and add more. Every story is an entire universe unto itself (or set in one) and I can get lost in the underpinnings if I’m not careful. Readers tend to like that about my work (except for the few who get angry that I didn’t add more or answer their particular personal questions), as it provides the feeling of solidity and heft so often necessary for complete immersion.

How does one tell if a story is a novel or a keyhole? It varies. Sometimes I’m only after a particular vibe, sometimes there are wordcount constraints and I need to pick the one path through an infinity of thickets to provide something that particular size. (This is generally how I make short stories.) After a while I began to sense about how long a story wants to be within the first scene or so, or sometimes even during the initial stage of gathering influences and letting the damn thing bubble in my head. The experience gained by finishing multiple works–not to mention having exponentially more unfinished bits in the compost heap–gives me a sort of spidey-sense in that regard.

There really is no shortcut. One needs enough experience as a writer to figure out one’s own process and preferences. Then it becomes a matter of gaming oneself, as most if not all adulthood turns out to be. Of course, every so often a short story will fall out of my head (like Jolene, Jolene, still unsold but ah well) for no other reason than it wanted to be born, or a novella will present itself at my garden gate in response to the urge to gift a friend something nice (like Fool’s Assassin, which I may yet bring out for your delectation). In the end, each story only teaches one how to write itself, and one has to start almost from scratch on the next one. Sure, some of the processes and habits carry over, but not the other tools.

This is part of the reason why LLMs/”AI” will never be able to give readers what they crave. There’s simply too many lightning-fast intuitive choices to be made at each step of the process, and the acts of distinction are too excruciatingly personal to each complex human artist. But that’s a whole ‘nother blog post.

Today will include a weighty stakes-raising council in one book, the beginning of a pitched battle in another, and if I can get the first two scenes of the novella off the ground I’ll call it a good effort. Plus there’s the weekly/monthly subscription drop to get sorted as well. I don’t like to do those too far in advance, given how things change at a moment’s notice around here. But at least there’s plenty in the cannon for both the serial and everyone else.

January’s finally over (it’s been years) and I’m hopeful time will start to be a little less out of joint. Regardless, the work still has to get done–and Boxnoggin is beginning to stir, sensing that I just downed the coffee-dregs and will be shambling towards brekkie in a hot minute. Round and round and round she goes…

…and where I’ll stop nobody knows.

A Shoe, Any Shoe

The new year has started out with good news and the stove being fixed, yet I’m a little caddywumpus. I’m ever braced for disaster–all my life, really, but especially since 2016–but am hardly prepared for things to go well. So my nerves, while re-wrapped a bit from the time spent from Boxing Day to New Year’s, are fraying in an entirely different way. Just waiting for a shoe, any shoe, to drop.

I suspect this isn’t healthy. In any case, it’s a relief to get back to real work. There are sample chapters for House of the Fan to brush up and send to the agent, subscription stuff to get out the door (including the first bit of Tomb of Night for my subscribers’ delectation), Boxnoggin to walk (eternally), and yoga to do since I’m on a recovery break from running. Of course recovery is my least favourite part of the process, since I devoutly desire the endorphin hit from hauling my weary corpse along at just above a shamble, but needs must.

Fortunately, it’s raining. It feels like I spent forever in drought–all the way through last October–and have just now shaken off the parched sensation. Boxnoggin is irate every time he has to go outside, even if walkies are the joy of his existence, but after a while he settles down. I would hope he’s beginning to grasp that the weather does as it wills, but I know he considers it my fault and doing specifically.

I wish I had even a tenth of the power my dog attributes to me. So many things would be sorted in a right bloody hurry.

I also want to get the discovery of a few bodies written in Highlands War as well as an assassin’s practice with her shiny new weapon in House of the Fan. taking time away from actual writing to deal with Other Stuff is always upsetting. I just want to goddamn well create, for fucksake. I feel like yelling at the world to settle down so I can go back to telling my weird little stories, but alas, that’s on the same level as Boxnoggin wishing the weather would cooperate with his preference for dry paws.

At least the coffee tastes very fine this grey gloomy morn. Oh, and I should mention that the Battle of Crunchy Discord seems to have convinced Trashmouth!Squirrel that the way to gain access to a magical pile of peanuts is to play chicken with vehicles upon a specific piece of road.

I’ve seen him playing in traffic twice now. Boxnoggin has not lunged for him, seeming instead rather puzzled that a fuzzy, ambulatory snackable has taken it into its head to Frolic Upon the Road, which is a behavior Box himself gets scolded for. So he’ll peer past me as we walk along the fence and the boulder embankment, glancing up every few steps to check my expression like a toddler who sees another kid about to get in trouble.

Maybe he even misses ol’ Trash screaming from the top of the fence, who knows? I have not scattered any peanuts on that particular slice of paving since The Incident1; Mugshot and her crew now clock us before and after that part of walkies, hoping for the two-tone alert whistle and a handful of treats. I keep the rewards relatively random so they do not grow dependent or importunate, and the corvids have largely left off taunting Boxnoggin in the hopes that peaceable conduct will gain them more crunchy calories. Some of them, especially the Littlest, will even hop from one foot or the other, or do small fluttering tricks to catch my attention.

All in all, the year’s started out rather well. I’m hoping the trend continues, and taking deep breaths while I can. Now it’s time to get started on Thursday. There’s a lot to clear before I can get to what I really want to do today.

See you around.

Tricksy Hobbitses and Sweet Deals

Today will supposedly see the visit of an electrician for the outlet and switch running the garbage disposal; the problem (thankfully) doesn’t seem to be in the breaker. It’s taken nearly a month and several exquisitely polite phone calls and live chats with the home warranty company to get this sorted, and I look forward to it being over–if, in fact, it will be over. The gust of wind you just heard was probably an echo of my heavy sigh.

Cain’s Wife 1 continues apace. I knew I wanted to write this trilogy, and the first book’s definitely not disappointing. I had thought the explanation of just what the big vampire in Belgium is selling needed to go in the first few chapters, but the story felt otherwise. It needs to come after the revenge heist, part of the rising stakes but before the trip to desert sands. We’re gonna have so many The Mummy references in this bad boy, and as many Romancing the Stone ones as I can fit in. So, yesterday was good wordcount on that front. I’m doing at least the first 50k of it for NaNo, so if you’re doing it too, courage, my friend, we’ll get there together.

Highlands War was being shirty with me. I had to toss about 800 words or so of throat-clearing that will no doubt end up as a deleted scene for my subscribers. I finally figured out what the book wanted was Kaia spider-monkeying on a Skaialan giant’s back while trying to wrestling-choke him out of a berserker fit, which was hilarious enough, but then the whole shebang fell on top of poor Redfist. Who, truth be told, rather deserves it. He’s been a giant asshole since he returned home. The thing where going back to a parent’s house turns one into a kid again gets even worse when one is a seven-foot warlord with a grudge and a giant axe.

The storm seems to have mostly blown itself out. The yard is full of downed crap, but at least we aren’t in the position of some poor soul who was running a chainsaw in the cul-de-sac behind us last night. There was a concurrent half-hour of a car alarm going off; both saw and alarm halted at roughly the same time. I can only hope it wasn’t Mike (of Mike’s Deck fame, and if you guys remember that one you are long-term readers of mine indeed) because Pam (not her real name) really doesn’t need the stress.

Anyway, today I write a witch’s uncomfortable call to one of her mothers as well as some shopping for magical supplies, which will serve the dual purpose of worldbuilding, ramping up suspense with the news of just who else is after the thing our protagonist’s going to heist, and the ceremonial leavetaking. (For Belgium. Which makes me giggle.) Then I shift gears to yesterday’s berserker/wrestling combat scene, because I knew even while dumping out 2k of text that trimming would be needed.

Combat scenes, like sex scenes, are tricksy hobbits. The parts need to be in the right place, and the rising tension needs a payoff somewhere. Frankly, I was just so glad the story was moving again without throat-clearing I may have tossed every single detail into the pot and said fuck it, we’ll fix it in revise. Which is a sure way for Past Me to piss Present Me off to no end, but what am I going to do? Past Lili had her own problems.

The older I get, the more I can look back and say that bitch did the best she could, and I should maybe leave it at that. Now there’s some wisdom for a Tuesday.

Coffee’s almost done and Boxnoggin needs his walkies, especially if we’re going to have a tradie here today. Box will be desperate to make the electrician’s acquaintance, but will be barred from doing so because his enthusiasm can be rather…disturbing. And someone brought home two boxes of Pop Tarts last night, graciously dropping into house chat that they are for the delectation of all instead of just the buyer–this ‘having adult children with their own jobs’ thing is rather a sweet deal. (Get it? I’ve been on a real dad joke run lately…)

Off I go.

Luxury Before Winter

Life, ah, finds a way…

My wrists ache. Yesterday was 5k worth of portal fantasy, and I’m sure today will be similar. Sometimes a story just wants to be born and there’s nothing one can do. Of course, I’m also letting the Muse have her way because the weekend will be taken up with proofs and come Monday I must begin revision on Gamble, so said portal fantasy will have to take a back seat.

I’ll still moonlight with it, of course. Yet stolen time, while delicious, is not the same as being able to luxuriate in a whole day writing only what the Muse wants.

Also, the rains have moved in, so the torpor of late summer draught has been broken by a furious burst of activity. The squirrels are busy gorging themselves on fallen apples, the compost heap is sending up trails of steam on chill mornings as the damp makes life easier for beneficial rot inside, I am producing words at an astonishing rate…and the moss, not long ago dead-dry and brown on granite shoulders, has burst into luxuriant green.

We all spent a long time waiting. Now it’s the busy season before winter’s long dream. I’m ever so ready, and apparently the bryophyta are too.

Have a lovely weekend, my dears.