novel madness

Looking Up

Odd Trundles complained that he wanted his walk, complained that I was not moving quickly enough to get to his walk, complained that he had to go down stairs to get to his walk, complained that it was raining during his walk, complained that his walk was too long, complained that he had to go up the stairs at the end of his walk, and is now complaining that his walk is over and he has a mouthful of chew toy.

It’s hard being a bulldog. Especially when there’s an Australian shepherd nipping at your hind end to quiet you down or boss you around, and the human won’t throw the chew toy the precise amount of distance you require.

The rain was unexpectedly warm, though. Plum trees are beginning to wear their fleece decorations, cherry trees waking up in droves instead of just the odd sentinel here and there. The ones who woke early are whispering with contentment, the newcomers singing a beat late but full-throat. The crocuses have their yellow hearts on display, jonquils and daffodils nodding cheerfully…and the hellebore, as usual, is watching this with a great deal of amusement.

I am finally possessed of a day where I don’t have to leave the house, and plan to spend it right here, occasionally stretching or looking out the window to see the remaining cedars dance on a wet spring wind. I’m sure Miss B wants a run, but she’ll have to make do with walkies. I have the fallout from an incredibly emotional scene in Roadtrip Z to write, and last night’s prince-and-general conversation over drinks to look through, tweak, and layer description into. Hostage is now 50K, and I’m only halfway through what I need it to be. Plus I should get started on revisions for Steelflower’s Song if I intend to release it later this year. And there’s the little matter of Jozzie & Sugar Belle to revise, as well as edits for Rattlesnake Wind coming down the pike at some point. In short, there is more work than even I know what to do with, and that is my preferred state.

Still, I am going to take a few minutes to enjoy some well-earned, nourishing solitude. And the fact that I don’t have to leave the house today.

Things are looking up.

Hapless Fruit

News! There’s news! Season 3 of Roadtrip Z—Pocalypse Road–is now up for preorder. (Yes, there will be a paperback version, too.) Also, I hived off my editing, cover copy, and formatting services to a separate site. 1

I’m kind of waiting for that email address to start receiving the email equivalent of cold calls. There’s been a rash of them lately, people wanting me to stick links to something or another in one of my blog posts. I’d almost be willing to do so if their content was reasonable…except for the informality of their address. I’m much more likely to consider a request kindly (or at all) if the stranger making the request doesn’t start their email with “Hey Lili!” Or “Hey Lillith”, or “Hi Lilly”, or some other version of the same. Strike one is acting like you know me; strikes two and three are misspelling my name. 2 Some days the offers on tap even amuse me, like the “anti-piracy service” that wants me to give them my phone number.

Mostly, it’s the hapless and transparent that amuse me. There’s a line between that and insulting my intelligence, and some days my drawing of the line is dependent upon my mood.

Consequently I’ve been having fun consigning things to my spam folders. True to form, I have a little song I often sing when I have the time and the inclination and a few things to heave into the spam pile. It’s basically just me repeating “You’re dead, you’re dead, you’re dead to me,” to the tune of whatever music I heard last. (It gets really fun when I’ve been on an opera jag.) Since today is apparently all about Depeche Mode, you can well imagine.

Yesterday I also wrote 7K of a weird steampunk-y romance, but I don’t think it’ll go anywhere. I feel so bloody liberated at not having to keep forcing myself to write the one book that was prompting heaving and all sorts of internal damage, I’m just slopping over with creativity. Unfortunately, today I have a million things to do that do not involve wordcount. In between the grocer’s, baking, and paperwork, I’ll have to steal away for a few forbidden sentences.

That’s the most satisfying kind of writing, and sometimes I think I fill most of the day with trivia in order to make the writing feel like stolen fruit. Other times, I’m sure that it’s the trivia that provides grist, or that I simply amuse myself until my most creative time–from about 3pm to 10pm–rolls around. Interestingly enough, 3-4pm is the doldrums, that time during which i am most likely to feel that my life has no meaning and I might as well walk off a cliff, so I begin writing to force away the urge to find one.3 When I’m allowed to pursue the schedule my body wants–rising about noon, at work between 1-2pm, a long walk/run in the evening, more work and going to bed between 3-5am) the doldrums don’t occur, but my internal clock is at variance with the rest of the world, including children’s school hours and the dogs’ stomachs.

Adapt and make do.

Anyway, this has taken an hour, since I am distracted with lists of things to do today and dogs who need petting and cooing such a good girl, such a best boy. The coffee has soaked in, and it’s time to embark upon Monday.

Over and out.

Enforced Rest

I could finally run again this morning! It was chilly, nasty, and damp; Miss B kept trying to kill me, but I persevered. Taking a week off while my body fought a book I shouldn’t have been writing and a furious cold caught at a train station might have been good for healing, but I was tied in several knots by this morning.

I’m still tense, but not entirely murderous.

Over the weekend I used the enforced rest to finish revisions on Sparked–the first book of the YAs my agent wanted me to write just for her. I believe she has plans that involve shopping them to publishers, but that’s outside my field of vision right now. I’m still not sure I want to get involved with YA publishing again. But may gent knows best, and in any case, I wanted to write something just for her. My version of a gift, since I find present-giving (and receiving) utterly charged circumstances unless my children are recipients. Anyone else, anxiety kicks in. So I write books for people I love, and it doesn’t seem to turn out half bad.

Anyway, Miss B is finally calm, with all her week’s worth of fidgets worked out. I am not nearly as calm, but I can tell I’ll sleep tonight. What I’ll do when may body decides it can no longer run, who can tell? I might expire of insomnia and sheer irritation at that point. Today, though, the plan is red sauce (the beginnings of said sauce are beginning to smell divine) and laundry–and moonlighting with the nutless kangaroo story. Said story choked up 2K yesterday, while I was supposed to be resting in a post-revision blur.

They never do what you want, stories. They twist and turn and sometimes bite. I swear I will NOT turn this story into a book, it’s a novella at most. (The characters trying to crowd in to get their POVs heard are laughing at me.)

Odd Trundles is exhausted from his weekend too. It involved a thorough washing, never one of his favorite things. It also involved irrigating his sore paw with hydrogen peroxide. If it takes bathing his toes in that shit daily, that’s what I’ll do. It’s a good thing I love his cranky, creaky, snoring little self.

So. I have a tankard of hot Earl Grey, my favorite sweater, and the smell of oregano-heavy tomatoes is wafting through the house.

Over and out.

Refill Time

It started on Friday, a marvelous late-morning coffee session with Curtis Chen (read his Kangaroo books, they are AWESOME); then I went home and pushed to get the rest of Sparked finished and sent off to the agent. (That’s the YA she wanted me to write, the one I found out needed another character arc jammed into its structure.) Both good things, but together they turned me into a quivering mass of nerves. Then, Saturday rolled around, and while I was twitching a friend texted, “YOU HAVE THE DAY OFF. COME PLAY.”

So we went…out. There was even window-shopping clothes, which was oddly soothing. Socializing for hours kept my brain busy so the usual post-book eating-itself was relegated to a thin, exhausting background mutter. Then Sunday came around, full of household chores and turning the earth in the most southerly garden boxes. We may still get a cold snap, but I planted hardy things like Alaska peas and fava beans. Hopefully I got enough of them in the ground that the squirrels and their buffet habits won’t wipe out the entire crop before it can sprout.

All of that was good, but I ached all over by evening, and spent a restless night with blisters and a headache. Now it’s Monday…and all I want to do is sit and stare. The massive flywheel of Finishing A Book has wound down, but I’m hollowed out, scraped dry, and need a chance to refill.

I have a slightly longer run today, but still within Miss B’s range. She’ll enjoy the chance to get out and work–she spent yesterday’s gardening time chasing squirrels, digging in her approved spots–I’m glad I bought a house so I don’t have to worry when she digs–and attempting to help me plant favas and radishes. Her attempts to help are mostly “Mum, you dropped this and it got covered with dirt, but I found it for you! I are good dog!”

Meanwhile, Odd wanted to stay inside, since his nails got clipped and he got his long walk of the week, which meant he was exhausted by all the activity. Not too exhausted, though, to moan-mumble at me when I came back inside, piqued that I had dared to do things without his supervision. Had it been a wee bit warmer, he would have wished to sunbathe in one of his Particular Spots, but I’m kind of glad he was achieving a liquid state inside. There was enough squirrel action that Miss B threw clods of dirt everywhere. Thankfully, she didn’t run head-on into any trees, but it was a close call. I believe the furry arboreal menaces were enjoying the game. At least they didn’t bomb me with pinecones, though I’m sure they marked each spot I planted something with extreme interest.

…I had another post planned, about infrastructure, ubiquity, and privilege, but I’m far too snarky today. I have very little patience left, and my give-a-fuck-o-meter is pretty well busted. My forties are gonna be the decade of rolling my eyes and deciding not to sugar-coat, I guess. A couple times lately I’ve had spoons and time enough to call a few people in my mentions on bullshit instead of just muting and moving on, and visibly doing so feels like a Good Deed. It’s no substitute for direct action in other ways, but an addendum.

Anyway, I have crossed the Sparked revise off my master to-do list. Up next is prepping Roadtrip Z‘s Season Three for release when the serial reaches that point and working ahead on the fourth and final season, not to mention giving Harmony a hard revise. It’s about time for a new master list as well, since I’ve crossed off five of the eight things on the current one.

But first, a run–and I’m going ahead with my Lovecraft re-read. I might spend the entire day curled up on the couch reading about Cthulhu with gallons of hot tea. It’s not quite a vacation…but close enough for me.

Over and out.

Somewhat Cranky

Of course, the instant I step out the door to take both dogs for Odd Trundles’s constitutional, EVERYONE has to come down our street, from the rattling delivery trucks Miss B lunges at to schoolchildren she and Odd both desperately want to make acquaintance of, and bicyclists Miss B wishes to herd as well. And then there’s the guy walking his Rottweiler who sees me retreat into my driveway with both my dogs, OBVIOUSLY not wanting to interact, but crosses the street with his dog anyway and walks at the edge of my driveway while Miss B barks and lunges and Odd, excited now that Someone Is Making Noise, does everything possible to get in on the action. Then, once he was past my house, he went back to the other side of the street. He just could have stayed on that side to begin with and saved us all trouble.

Thanks, Creepy Dude. That was a beautiful fucking start to my morning.

Anyway, we persevered, and now Odd has been walked and is settled for his morning nap. As soon as I absorb some coffee and am relatively sure it will stay down, it’s out the door for a run, and I’m seriously considering not taking B. I’m not sure I have the patience to cut traffic for her today; both of us are somewhat cranky. I might simply make a circuit, take her for half my planned distance then bring her home and finish the other half on my own.

My subscribers get a fresh new chapter of Pocalypse Road today, and I aim to get at least 5k of wordcount in between Atlanta Bound–which is season four of Roadtrip Z–and the not-really-YA. It’s the latter that will really make me grit my teeth, probably because I’m worried my agent wants to sell the not-YA as YA despite me telling her it’s not. And…well, I have feelings about YA publishing. Not writing books with teenage protagonists, which I like doing well enough when there’s a story that wants me to tell it. But the constant pushback from institutions scared of Bible Belt buckle-idiots clutching their pearls if a teen character says “fuck” or thinks about sex or drugs or any of the normal things teens sometimes do think about is exhausting, and was the thing that drove me away from YA. I still read it when I can, and I write stories with teen protagonists, I just…really don’t want to have to fight those uphill battles anymore. I do not have the energy.

Regardless, my agent asked for this book, and I promised, so it’s going to be as good as I can make it before it goes out the door to her. Which means serious wordcount, and putting in that POV I had no idea needed to be inserted until the zero draft was done, and which gave me a vertiginous feeling of telling the story from the wrong point of view anyway…but not really, because we need the other main POVs to understand just why this one is so compelling.

All in all, never a dull moment a la Chez Saintcrow. Also, this morning, I went down a side-road involving telepathic dogmen and frontier myth-making. So yeah, I can tell today’s going to be fun.

Over and out.

A Dead Book

Mist hangs between the trees today. Our morning run will no doubt turn Miss B into a crinkle-puffy floof–her fur acquires zigzags when wet. Today’s run will be very gentle, very easy, recovery instead of pushing. It will frustrate us both, but pushing myself today will only lead to an injury, I can just tell.

I had to make a very difficult decision this past weekend. A book is dead in the water, with no hope of revival. Part of the murder was a series of unfortunate events at the publisher, a perfect storm I’ve never encountered in my professional life and will likely never encounter again. Nobody was a douche, nobody was ultimately responsible, it was just a collection of bad luck. The bad luck was fatal to the book, and admitting as much to myself and others was…difficult, to say the least.

But that’s why I have a writing partner, and friends, and an agent–so that when a series of complete disasters hits a book, I have outside measures by which to measure the scale of the disaster and my response. Often, my response is emotionally disproportionate, and the triad of objective feedback sources tells me so in no uncertain terms so I don’t go off the rails. (Or, at least, I don’t go very far off the rails.) This time, while my decision is not precisely optimal–I could phone in a spiritual corpse of a book, I suppose, if forced to; I could cause myself lasting damage by beating this dead book, if I forced myself to–it’s the only one I can take, and the triad agrees. While I am the kind of writer who will rip out her own entrails in bloody handfuls for a book because that’s the way it has to be, I am not the kind of writer capable of just phoning it in.

And tearing out my own entrails is only acceptable if there’s a recovery path afterward. Mixed metaphor, I know, but accounting for the emotional toll a book takes on you is good self-care.

It’s never easy when a book dies. I’ve had two die on me, and one was only resuscitated after years of patient care and a few unpopular decisions. This one…will not be resuscitated. I just can’t. Maybe I’m too old to keep throwing effort down a well, maybe I’m too tired and the world is too aflame for me to perform a necromancer’s trick when I could be writing other stories.

Either way, I have mourned, and now I’m moving on.

‘Nuff said.

Zero Drafts

I finished the zero draft of the first Combine’s Shadow book last night. So today is kind of an off-day, though I still have to get out the door for a run. God knows I’m feeling the pressure to get a whole chunk of Beast of Wonder out of my head today, too.

Every once in a while I get a rash of people asking “what’s a zero draft?” so I thought I might as well do a whole post on it, since I just finished one and I’m pretty sure I’m going to have another soon. (Beast of Wonder really, really wants to be written now, and I need it out of my head.)

It’s been said that all good writing is rewriting, and like all old chestnuts, it contains a grain of truth. Certainly there are occasions when a chunk of text falls out of my head and needs only minimal polishing before it’s ready for primetime, when I fall into a fugue state and churn out something beautiful. (The Muse does have to give me random rewards in order to keep me addicted, after all.) Those gifts are Easter-egg sprinkled through every draft, hidden hinges and visible ones for the story to hang on.

Zero draft means the work is done. It has the beginning, middle, end, there aren’t any places saying [[shit happens here]] or [[why isn’t this working, figure out the muppet here]] or [[jesus christ I have to kill this character soon]] or, one of my favorites, [[sex scene here?]]. It’s in recognizable book/short story/novella form; the corpse is whole and laid on the table. Celebrate, get a beverage of your choice, soak up the congrats of all your writer friends. You’ve given birth!

Now comes the hard part. Nobody else sees this draft. Oh, no. Are you kidding? It’s not even ready for my writing partner or beta readers yet.

The zero draft is the raw steaming lump of creativity. I set it aside, for at least a week. More difficult works sometimes have to marinate for longer. This serves two purposes: it helps ease the snapback, and it gives some slight but critical emotional distance from the big, messy word-baby you’ve just laid. You need that distance in order to make the word-baby better, prettier, more appealing, truer to its shape and intention.

Once it’s marinated for a little bit, you can go back and do the initial revision pass. You can fix typos, you can trim and craft better sentences, do continuity checks–basically, the initial pass is for arranging the corpse prettily on the table, embalming it, fixing structural problems, changing your dialogue tags to action or description tags, and the like. After that pass, it becomes a first draft.

Now other people–writing partner, beta readers, etc.–can see it. Now you can let it marinate for a little while longer before another revision pass if you can tell it needs more. A zero draft is the skeleton; a first draft is that skeleton with padding and clothing added. (Yes, I’m gleefully abusing metaphors here to make a point. You’d think I was a writer.) Work doesn’t stop at a first draft–I know writers who get to at least the third before they even consider letting an agent or editor near it. I tend to work hot and lean even in my first drafts, so I need agent/editor feedback on where the lacunae are, those things I can see so clearly in my head I forget the reader doesn’t have that image as well. It’s rare that I keep a book until the second or third draft.

Why don’t I call a zero a first draft? Because it’s finished, yes, but it’s not quite arranged, painted, or aesthetically where I want it. The brute work of typing is done, but it’s the cut and polish that makes it better. Still, the zero is a thing to celebrate. You’ve got to give yourself a break and a reward or two for finishing the damn story before you can gather the energy to make the corpse ready for the viewing.

It doesn’t mean the work is over, but you’ve got to take the good things where you find them.