AFTERWAR Hangover

Last night I typed “finis” at the end of the Afterwar zero draft. It weighs in at 94K words and will only get longer because most of it is so, so lean. Some scenes are full of dialogue that needs trimming and plenty of physical and action tags put in so the reader can see an approximation of the movie in my head.

It may be a horrid, stupid, ungainly mess, but it is no longer a horrid, stupid, ungainly, unfinished mess. True to form, though, I woke up this morning knowing where at least two more scenes need to be shoehorned in. I’ll write those on a 3×5 card and set them aside, because if I have to look at that book ONE MORE TIME right now I will throw something at my desktop, and that’s not good for anyone.

So I have a massive book hangover today. I honestly thought I’d never finish the damn thing, it would be a millstone around my neck for the rest of my short-uncomfortable life. The fact that early March is full of social obligations (birthdays, family visits, and the like) meant I could feel the book itching to be born, swelling like a giant tumor under the surface of my brain, but I was physically unable to get to the bloody keyboard and get as much typing done as it needed. That required a deathgrip on my temper, too. I am downright cranky when prevented from finishing a story-birth.

But yesterday I coughed up a 5K+ chunk, around the daily round of (almost-adult-but-not-quite) child care and a ticklish, complex, mind-numbing project I wanted to get done at my weekly volunteering. It was kind of a relief to just put my earbuds in and concentrate on something that wasn’t the book begging to be born, but when I finished the glow of satisfied accomplishment was marred by the scratchy-itchy-bugs-under-the-skin of NEEEEEEDING to write.

So, I went home and got to work. Dinner was leftover pizza for the Prince (the Princess was at work) and toast for me. I dove back in…and god damn it, but the book would not die. I stabbed and I stabbed, and when it expired…well, I was surprised, to put it mildly.

I typed finis, centered it, and stared at the screen. And then I burst into tears. The sobbing was mostly relief but partly the rubber-band snap of frustrated rage.

So, long story short, I’m pretty useless today. Book hangover is in full swing. A long run in the sunshine might help; it will at least exhaust me enough to make sure I sleep tonight. My dreams will be full of inchoate anxiety, and I now have two projects hanging fire that I should catch up on since I shifted all my resources to finishing this one.

That’s a battle for another day. Today, I rest. I won’t quite call it good, but I’ll certainly call it done.

Over and out.

Run, Write, Knit

Peekaboo.
Rain, and rain, and more rain. With a side of rain, and rain sauce, and a dessert of rain, too.

I love it.

I’m at my most productive when there’s water falling from the sky. I’ve often said that the PNW specializes in caffeine, writers, and serial killers for one reason: the weather.

I’m playing with knitting a new shawl. It’s the same as the stripey-patterned one, only in Fishermen’s Wool; instead of the stripes being dyed into the fiber I’m doing blocks of garter and stockingette. I wanted wool, and texture, and lots of warmth. Probably, by the time I finish this beast, the weather will have warmed to the point I won’t need it. It’s meditative work, though, and I think it’s hauled me through a couple plot tangles. As a perseveration or a coping mechanism, it’s pretty good. I do need to stretch out my hands a lot more, though, and take care of my wrists.

Getting older sucks.

On the bright side, soon I’ll take Miss B out and run in the rain. I didn’t take her on my long run a couple days ago, and her fidgets are almost as bad as mine on days when I can’t get in as much writing as I want. (In short, just about unbearable.) On the bright side, the entire afternoon will be forging ahead on Afterwar, and if all goes well, I may even have an ugly, lumpy zero draft soon.

Won’t that be a relief. I know I’ll probably start crying as soon as I type finis.

Then the Veil Knights book will need detailed attention, and Roadtrip Z will need to get into the hills and several planned characters introduce. Poor Lee, he’s all mixed up, just when he most needs to be cool-headed. And Ginny is beginning to show her true grit; it’s about time, but she’s still at heart a very compassionate person. That’s a handicap in the types of situations she’s going to find herself in.

So I have my work cut out for me. Running. Stretching. Writing. Knitting another row on this shawl, which won’t end anytime soon because I want it larger than the others. I have one-and-half more skeins to go, and Imma use them all. Then, if I feel like it, I’ll do up the Menstrual Fury hats. I have three skeins of red just waaaaaiting, and the leftovers will probably make a fourth for some lucky person.

…yeah, I never do things by halves. It’s full speed ahead, or dead stop. I much prefer the former.

Over and out.

AFTERWAR Proceeds Apace

Getting together tax stuff and four scenes to write. It’s kind of cheating to put “two scenes in X book, two scenes in Y book” on my Three Things list to get done today, but I have them, they’re burning in my head, so why not?

Afterwar is taking turns I didn’t expect, which is usual. The problem lies in the very nature of the story I’m excavating. One of the things in tis book is the fact that combat trauma marks people, and warfare doesn’t stop when the surrender is signed. There are refugees to feed and shelter, there’s post-traumatic stress reverberating through an entire society, there’s mopping up to do, there’s rationing, there’s criminal activity either from desperation or simple greed. And that’s just the beginning. The process of cleaning up after a war is a messy one, and long-term.

This is nothing new to any student of history, but part of the genesis of Afterwar is my frustration with military history that ends with the signing of papers. Of course going through the aftereffects would double the size of any textbook covering a war. I understand the exigencies of limited space, I really do, but each time I watch a war movie and something explodes all I can think is, Jesus, that took forever to build, it will take forever to rebuild, and yet it’s blown up in a matter of seconds.

To me, the real story starts when the rebuilding begins. Which is part of why this particular book is fucking with me so badly, because it’s a way more complex project than any I’ve undertaken before, ever. I’m waking up in the morning and thinking, Lili, you are such an idiot for not only asking but demanding to take this on. I’m sure my new but long-suffering editor will have similar things to say, too.

I’m committed now, as they say. There’s no way out but through, as happens so often with books and indeed life itself. So it’s time to go for a run in the rain, marinating the scenes I’ve got to write, and come home to do them. The tax paperwork, in comparison, is easy-peasy.

Of course, now that I’ve said that, I’m sure there are multiple snarls waiting there to trip me up. If it’s not one thing, it’s another.

*puts on goggles*

*they do nothing*

Snow, Work, Spring

It was snowing this morning, but too warm for it to stick. I’m thinking the hyacinths, daffodils, and crocuses are glad about the last. I’m trying to plant enough favas to outpace the squirrels digging them up, but I suspect it’s a lost cause.

If the squirrels were grateful, it might be different, but they remain tiny tree-swinging assholes.

Afterwar has almost, aaaaaalmost reached the boiling point. When it does, I’ll lunge for the end and call it a zero. And probably try to spend a day in bed to recover, but get up several times to work on the Veil Knights book and Roadtrip Z, because I can’t stop while there’s still a deadline looming. I knew juggling three projects at once would get hairy when one of them reached the gallop-for-the-end stage, but Mama’s got a mortgage to feed, so it’s full speed ahead, damn the torpedoes, and Cerberus take the hindmost.

Except I’m struggling with the old familiar “this book is awful, nobody will like it” blues for Afterwar. And since it’s a book I fought to get a publisher’s decision on, the pressure has intensified. It’s hard to loosen up enough to tell myself “get the whole corpse out, THEN you can revise and make it a beautiful one.” Birth is always messy, and this book is no exception. It’s like Cormorant broke something loose inside me, and now I’m doing much, much more complex works, with correspondingly higher stakes and smaller margin for error. I’m thrilled and scared to death all at once, whenever I sit down to find the next handhold in Afterwar.

Other than that, there are dogs to feed, children to get over the last few speed bumps into adulthood, friends to check in on, sisters to support, and shawls to knit. I’m currently doing a blue version of the Stripey YarnOver Shawl of Doom, for a friend’s wife. Then there will be more Menstrual Fury hats for the Etsy shop, and I’ll finally knit myself a shawl. I should be finished with that just in time for the weather to warm up and it to become unnecessary. *eyeroll*

So that’s my Monday. I have to go run off some of the cake I had for breakfast and work Miss B’s fidgets out. It doesn’t look like any more snow will show up. We ran in hail on Saturday, and Miss B was not very fond of that. Fortunately it was very small hail, and did not sting, but still.

Back to the grindstone.

Time to Run

It’s not a monsoon. It’s steady, penetrating sheets of small drops, coming in waves, tiptapping the roof. It’s a warm rain, as things go. Not jungle-warm, but it’s not coating everything with ice and it has no particles of sleet in its many beating hearts. Mud’s collecting in every corner, grass is a sludge with a thin green hat, your shoes sink in, the cedars are bathing like naiads.

Down in the mud, the crocuses bloom. Snowdrops, too. The hyacinths are coming up, and the daffodils are raising green spears. I saw the crocuses yesterday, and a wave of hot, acid relief went through me right at the solar plexus. I’ve never been a springtime person–winter is when I’m most productive, especially in a damp, temperate clime. It’s a good thing we only have ice and snow here every once in a while. It kills off the slug overstock and keeps some of the other pestiferous populations down, but it’s not my favourite.

In a little bit, I have a long run. In the rain. I won’t be taking Miss B–she’s getting older, and this distance isn’t for her. She will no doubt be pissy with me for the rest of the day, until I give her some trick training to exhaust her doggy brain. Her separation anxiety is intense, even when someone else is home while I’m not. I’m not sure why, it’s not like she’s ever left alone for long, and there’s the cats and Odd Trundles to herd as well, but every time I leave, the kids tell me she mopes. SO MUCH MOPING.

There’s wordcount to chip free today, but Afterwar is in that funny fallow phase right before it breaks free and I race for the end. I can feel it gathering itself, bubbling and boiling under a cauldron lid, but whenever I go to peek, it rattles warningly. This particular book has been an education in submission to the process, yet again. I just keep repeating, it’s my job to show up, don’t worry about the rest.

Some days I even believe it. Most days, though, my entire body is a mass of exposed nerve-wires. I’m also in the Slough of Despond on the other two projects: Nobody will like it. The publisher will hate it. They’ll decide you’re not worth publishing. You’ll starve to death, your kids will starve, the sun will go out and everyone will hate you hate you hate you. That’s the big problem with juggling multiple books; when they all hit that moment of paralyzing doubt, it’s exponentially worse for each project added to the pile.

Ritual and habit are going to get me through this, just like they’ve gotten me through *mumblemumble* other books. It’s just a little painful right now.

Time to run.

Cheerful Muffin

GOOD MORNING, EVERYONE. Not going running until my phone charges–the weekend was a busy, busy cupcake.

Oh, who am I kidding? It was busy because, undaunted by the fact that I have three deadlines happening at once (and another round of edits for Desires, Known just landed this morning, whee!), my brain decided to hork up 5K on a book I’m not supposed to be working on. Oh, I’d planned on doing other things, sure, but the story took over. Stolen time to write is the most enjoyable, of course, and I could feel the pressure of the Slough of Despond bleeding away.

That’s one thing I didn’t plan for when I realized I had three projects going at once: hitting the Slough on all three of them at the same time. Fortunately the Veil Knights project is still mostly in the new-shiny phase, but I’ve been thinking about it for soooooo long that when I flip to the file and take a breath to re-insert myself, I find myself staring at it going, wait, I know I wrote more than this, where’s that chapter? Then I realize I didn’t write it, I just THOUGHT REALLY HARD about it, and the urge to weep and drink rises a notch. Afterwar, of course, is deep in the weeds, but at least the disembodied hand is in a jar now. That’s one thing.

As for Roadtrip Z, I’m cogitating on the current scene, which is Ginny’s insomnia and a few realizations about just how fucked the current situation is. She’s sort of the only one who fully grasps as much, what with everyone else being concerned with survival first and deep analysis later. And poor Juju, wracked with guilt and grief, is not having a good time of it. Maybe they can help each other.

Anyway, my day’s work is all mapped out for me, including going for a run to work off Miss B’s fidgets. Bad weather and depression put a dent in my training schedule, but there’s no way around it, I’ve got to get back. It’s a vicious cycle–the more the depression mounts, the less I want to exercise, but exercise is one thing that interrupts the depression and pushes it back. It’s really hard right now, with so many trash fires going on. I keep reminding myself to keep swinging, to just put one foot in front of the other, but…yeah. It’s difficult. If not for the meds, I’d probably still be in bed, curled into a small ball and staring.

As it is, well, it’s hard to pry myself out from under the covers. So far I’ve managed it only because the dogs and the kids need me upright. Giri: the net that keeps one from the abyss. Left to myself, I’d probably withdraw until I erased myself from existence, but I have others to care for, and that forces me outward.

*looks over last paragraph* WELL. AREN’T I A CHEERFUL MUFFIN. Time to check my phone’s charge and get out the damn door. I’ll feel better after a run, I always do.

Over and out.

Agility Stats

This morning I dragged Odd Trundles out for walkies right after his brekkie. He was quite put out, not only because this represented a Change in Routine, but also because it cut into his morning “I’m bored, let’s do something!” bitching. So he hung back and tried to wrap the leash around my legs, which meant Miss B got her nose down and started heeeeerding him, which tangled her leash around my legs, and…yeah. Fortunately my agility stats are still going strong.

I also used 5calls and actually got through to a very nice staffer in my Congresscritter’s office. Said Congresscritter is a Republican I’ve voted against every. damn. time., but she’s working for me and I might as well make my voice heard. Please, if you’re calling, be kind to the staffers on the phone! They’re usually unpaid interns doing a shit job with grace and patience, so be polite. It helps to have a script, too. Even if you don’t use it, having a flowchart script of what to say can get you over the bump.

Now that the dogs are relatively calm (Miss B will need an afternoon ramble, just to be safe) I can focus on Afterwar. And Roadtrip Z. And bonus wordcount for a Sekrit Projekt I’m aaaaaaalmost ready to announce. ALMOST. Stay tuned for that.

Here’s your usual daily reminder to hydrate, make sure you get something to eat, and take a few deep breaths. It feels like the world is burning down, it’s okay to feel like screaming, none of what’s going on politically now is “normal” or “sane” except the resistance to der Turmper. You’ve got to take care of yourself and keep yourself human, you have a right to do that. I offer you a hug, and the knowledge that you’re not alone.

Also, schnorgles from Odd. Just look at that face. (And that seasonal alopecia!)