National Novel Writing Month starts in November, and I am spending #preptober (October where you plan for NaNo) getting my life in order more than outlining or thinking about characters or world building for the story I'm going to write.
I got revisions on my Firebird novel back from my agent. (Possibly the penultimate round of revisions, because an editor will want another round too!) And I'd like to have that in shape by November so I can set it aside and not have it looming. I want to came back to it in December, read through it with fresh eyes, and then see what I missed or didn't hit hard enough or what I can do even better. But in order to do this I have to get these revisions done. I let my agent's notes stew for a while, then I printed the manuscript and went through it with a blue pen for stuff I could correct right that second and an orange pen with stuff I needed to come back to later, because I needed to give it some thought or doing some research or rewrite a huge section. Then I went through and put all the notes I made on the printed out manuscript into the latest version of my novel in a Word file, changing the stuff in blue as I came to it and putting the stuff in orange in comments. Turns out these orange things can be grouped into larger categories, from low-hanging fruit like "Find a more violent word" (in the synonyms category) and "Is it 'Forest Service' or 'Forestry Service'?" (in the quick research category) to pretty serious re-writes like "Re-do the climax" (its own category). Then I pulled up my October white board calendar and scheduled when I was going to do these groups of revisions. Some days I'm tackling two categories, sometimes I'm taking several days (and always including the days when my kid goes to grandma's) to do some serious rewrites. I gave myself the weekends off because I know I don't work much on the weekends, and I knew I'd need some wiggle room in case something turned out to be way harder than I anticipated.
Or in case my kid developed hives all over his body and was sent home from school, blowing my schedule to shreds. That happened on Tuesday.
The other thing I'm doing is getting Season 5 of The Twenty Percent True Podcast all queued up and ready to go. The last episode of the season will go up in November, and I don't want to have to think about it while I think about NaNo. So I want the stories revised, the audio recorded and edited with music cues and everything by the end of the month. This shouldn't be a problem, but I've felt pretty lazy this season.
Finally, in addition to writing a new first draft in November, I'll also be doing a podcast about National Novel Writing Month called *drum roll!* NaNo-It-All. My friend Jim used to have a podcast called NaNoWriPod, where he and his co-host or guests talked about their NaNo experience. I was a guest a couple of times. He eventually concluded the show after not winning NaNo for several years. I want to do a similar thing, but I'm going to have a new guest come in every episode (with probably a few repeats at the end) so the show will cover different strategies and points of view along with an array of projects. I also want to go in with an idea about what we're going to talk about, and then limit the show to around half an hour. It's National Novel Writing Month! No one has time to listen to an hour long podcast twice a week!
So I'm getting things set for that: scheduling guests, setting up a website. (The website looks so good!) I need cover art for Apple Podcasts and to find a theme song. I have a list of punny episode titles that I'm excited to use. I need to make sure I can record with two microphones, and figure out how to record a Skype call. I'll have a teaser trailer air sometime later this month so I can make sure Apple Podcasts and Sticher will have the show approved in time. It's kind of a lot, but I'm also pretty excited about it.
Wish me luck doing all this while also getting the not-for-profit I work for's 2020 budget ready to go!
Showing posts with label Firebird. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Firebird. Show all posts
October 15, 2019
October 8, 2019
Link's Awakening and Player Buy-in
Spoilers for Link's Awakening, a game that first came out in 1993. And if you're wanting to play it for the plot...I'm happy to offer up some suggestions for different Zelda games that will scratch that itch for you.
So, Legend of Zelda: Links Awakening was first released on the Game Boy. The big Game Boy. The one where I had a power adapter that plugged into the wall, because my mom refused to buy any more AA batteries. The one where I had a designated Game Boy playing chair with a lamp (because the Game Boy was hard to see) and my power outlet. And--not to brag, but--I had the fun magnifying glass attachment that I thought would make people want to talk to me.
Recently, they re-released it for the Switch and updated the graphics and the music and everything. So I recently bought a Switch to play this game again. (I know, okay. I know.)
Now, if you haven't played this game, it's a weird one. At the beginning, Link is sailing a tiny boat alone through a storm, when the ship is destroyed and he washes up on an island. In order to escape the island (according to a random owl), he must wake the Wind Fish, and he must do this by gathering the eight fancy instruments (each at the end of a dungeon) and playing a song in front of the Wind Fish's egg. None of the recurring cast appears in this game. There's no Zelda. No Impa. Not a single reference to Ruto. And there are weirdly a bunch of enemies from the Mario games. But the weirdest part of all is that about half way through the game, it becomes clear that the sleeping Wind Fish is dreaming the whole island. All the dungeons and monsters are part of his dream. But so are all the people who live there, along with all their histories and hopes and dreams. Waking the Wind Fish will cause the island to vanish and everyone who lives there to disappear.
And yet, the designers of this game intended for me to keep playing. I continue to collect instruments and interact with people who are going to cease to exist because of my actions. And I just keep on going. But I feel bad knowing that the "right" thing to do would be to stop collecting instruments and live a nice, quiet life on this fairly nice island.
Why doesn't he just...not? Why don't I just stop playing?
In part, I kept playing in hopes that maybe there had been a mistake. Maybe they've changed it so after I beat the final boss, it turns out that that owl giving me directions is evil and I have to fight him to save the island. Maybe there's not going to be a cut scene at the end where I see every character that was kind to me go up in a flash, and then I'm left floating in the ocean on the few pieces of driftwood while the Wind Fish sails away. Or maybe I've forgotten that the Wind Fish gives me a ride back to Hyrule...
Oh...No? Okay...Bye, Wind Fish! See ya in hell, I guess.
These dilemmas actually pop up a lot in Zelda games. The most glaring being if you ever play through Ocarina of Time for a second time (or eighth time). In that one, Zelda has this great idea to gather up these magic stones to open a door to the spirit realm, and Link goes and does that, but when he opens the door to the spirit realm half way through the game, it unleashes unspeakable horrors and the second half of the game takes place in a post-apocalyptic environment. So on the second play through, you think "...Wait a second. If I just did nothing, there would be no problem and the world would not need saving."
There's another part like this in Skyward Sword when you finish up a dungeon and right as you get to the end, Impa pops up and yells at you for taking so long, and thank goodness she was here to handle everything, and if you're not going to do better, why don't you just go home? And, chastised, I wondered...why don't I just go home? I mean...Impa looks like she's got this, and who am I anyway?
And the answer here for why I don't just stop playing is that there is more game to play, and it's still enjoyable even if I ought not be doing it.
The real problem comes when this happens in a novel, and I start to question, "Why don't you just go home?" "Why don't you just not try to date this dude?" "Why don't you just use that magic mirror Sirius gave you to talk to him in case of emergencies?" It's not a plot hole; it's a failure of motivation. And it's the worst.
I worked really hard in my last novel to make sure my main character's motivation made sense, that the reader bought into why he NEEDED to do all this nonsense. I wanted the reader to understand it was a bad idea, but also understand that it needed to be done. I worked so hard on it. And I succeeded, by which I mean no one has called me on the beginning since I worked on it so hard.
They called me on it at the 2/3 mark.
The nonsense escalates, and it gets to the point where the reader asks, "Why is anyone else letting him keep doing this? Why don't they just stop him?"
And I banged my head against a table. Because they're right, and I need to devote a big chunk of time to working on that.
I forget where I first heard the best piece of parenting advice I've ever received. It's this: If anyone ever starts their advice that starts with "Why don't you just..." that advice is bad. That word "just" implies that the solution is easy, and I'm just too wrapped up in my own drama to see that simple solution, that I'd rather complain about how my life is so difficult than do something easy that will fix my problem.
And when I was new at this parenting thing and doing everything wrong, that implication that it was easy for everyone else just made me feel worse. Is there a simple answer, and I'm just too stupid to make it work? Clearly no one else has this problem, and I am a disaster. But being able to recognize--to have a key word like an alarm that would go off--made it so I could say, "Wait. No. This is bad advice." It would stop that spiraling before it could get started.
In writing it's the opposite. When a reader asks, "Why doesn't he just..." it means there is an easy answer to the problem, and the reason the writer doesn't have the characters do that is because they want the book to keep going. If the characters don't answer a call to adventure, there's no story, and the writer wants there to be a story. If I stop playing Link's Awakening because I don't want to destroy the island, then I'm not playing the game. If Harry Potter calls Sirius on his mirror phone and Sirius picks up and says he's fine, the whole last act doesn't happen.
When someone says, "Why doesn't the character just..." that's when you, as a writer, need to pay attention. That's when you have a horrible problem and a big revision in the future.
When they say, "Why don't you just..." and then they suggest some way to fix something that's broken in your story...that maybe you can ignore.
So, Legend of Zelda: Links Awakening was first released on the Game Boy. The big Game Boy. The one where I had a power adapter that plugged into the wall, because my mom refused to buy any more AA batteries. The one where I had a designated Game Boy playing chair with a lamp (because the Game Boy was hard to see) and my power outlet. And--not to brag, but--I had the fun magnifying glass attachment that I thought would make people want to talk to me.
Recently, they re-released it for the Switch and updated the graphics and the music and everything. So I recently bought a Switch to play this game again. (I know, okay. I know.)
Now, if you haven't played this game, it's a weird one. At the beginning, Link is sailing a tiny boat alone through a storm, when the ship is destroyed and he washes up on an island. In order to escape the island (according to a random owl), he must wake the Wind Fish, and he must do this by gathering the eight fancy instruments (each at the end of a dungeon) and playing a song in front of the Wind Fish's egg. None of the recurring cast appears in this game. There's no Zelda. No Impa. Not a single reference to Ruto. And there are weirdly a bunch of enemies from the Mario games. But the weirdest part of all is that about half way through the game, it becomes clear that the sleeping Wind Fish is dreaming the whole island. All the dungeons and monsters are part of his dream. But so are all the people who live there, along with all their histories and hopes and dreams. Waking the Wind Fish will cause the island to vanish and everyone who lives there to disappear.
And yet, the designers of this game intended for me to keep playing. I continue to collect instruments and interact with people who are going to cease to exist because of my actions. And I just keep on going. But I feel bad knowing that the "right" thing to do would be to stop collecting instruments and live a nice, quiet life on this fairly nice island.
Why doesn't he just...not? Why don't I just stop playing?
In part, I kept playing in hopes that maybe there had been a mistake. Maybe they've changed it so after I beat the final boss, it turns out that that owl giving me directions is evil and I have to fight him to save the island. Maybe there's not going to be a cut scene at the end where I see every character that was kind to me go up in a flash, and then I'm left floating in the ocean on the few pieces of driftwood while the Wind Fish sails away. Or maybe I've forgotten that the Wind Fish gives me a ride back to Hyrule...
Oh...No? Okay...Bye, Wind Fish! See ya in hell, I guess.
These dilemmas actually pop up a lot in Zelda games. The most glaring being if you ever play through Ocarina of Time for a second time (or eighth time). In that one, Zelda has this great idea to gather up these magic stones to open a door to the spirit realm, and Link goes and does that, but when he opens the door to the spirit realm half way through the game, it unleashes unspeakable horrors and the second half of the game takes place in a post-apocalyptic environment. So on the second play through, you think "...Wait a second. If I just did nothing, there would be no problem and the world would not need saving."
There's another part like this in Skyward Sword when you finish up a dungeon and right as you get to the end, Impa pops up and yells at you for taking so long, and thank goodness she was here to handle everything, and if you're not going to do better, why don't you just go home? And, chastised, I wondered...why don't I just go home? I mean...Impa looks like she's got this, and who am I anyway?
And the answer here for why I don't just stop playing is that there is more game to play, and it's still enjoyable even if I ought not be doing it.
The real problem comes when this happens in a novel, and I start to question, "Why don't you just go home?" "Why don't you just not try to date this dude?" "Why don't you just use that magic mirror Sirius gave you to talk to him in case of emergencies?" It's not a plot hole; it's a failure of motivation. And it's the worst.
I worked really hard in my last novel to make sure my main character's motivation made sense, that the reader bought into why he NEEDED to do all this nonsense. I wanted the reader to understand it was a bad idea, but also understand that it needed to be done. I worked so hard on it. And I succeeded, by which I mean no one has called me on the beginning since I worked on it so hard.
They called me on it at the 2/3 mark.
The nonsense escalates, and it gets to the point where the reader asks, "Why is anyone else letting him keep doing this? Why don't they just stop him?"
And I banged my head against a table. Because they're right, and I need to devote a big chunk of time to working on that.
I forget where I first heard the best piece of parenting advice I've ever received. It's this: If anyone ever starts their advice that starts with "Why don't you just..." that advice is bad. That word "just" implies that the solution is easy, and I'm just too wrapped up in my own drama to see that simple solution, that I'd rather complain about how my life is so difficult than do something easy that will fix my problem.
And when I was new at this parenting thing and doing everything wrong, that implication that it was easy for everyone else just made me feel worse. Is there a simple answer, and I'm just too stupid to make it work? Clearly no one else has this problem, and I am a disaster. But being able to recognize--to have a key word like an alarm that would go off--made it so I could say, "Wait. No. This is bad advice." It would stop that spiraling before it could get started.
In writing it's the opposite. When a reader asks, "Why doesn't he just..." it means there is an easy answer to the problem, and the reason the writer doesn't have the characters do that is because they want the book to keep going. If the characters don't answer a call to adventure, there's no story, and the writer wants there to be a story. If I stop playing Link's Awakening because I don't want to destroy the island, then I'm not playing the game. If Harry Potter calls Sirius on his mirror phone and Sirius picks up and says he's fine, the whole last act doesn't happen.
When someone says, "Why doesn't the character just..." that's when you, as a writer, need to pay attention. That's when you have a horrible problem and a big revision in the future.
When they say, "Why don't you just..." and then they suggest some way to fix something that's broken in your story...that maybe you can ignore.
April 9, 2017
Camp NaNo Letter to Home
This week I hit a scene that sets up the stakes and the main character's motivations. It turned out to be a delicate balance to have his motivations seem justified and his actions not seem like he's making a really stupid decision because he's a stupid guy. The whole novel falls apart if this initial buy in falls flat. There would be little reason to continue if I can't get this part. So I ended up working it and reworking it over the course of the week, and I've got it where I'm pleased with it (for a first draft). The down side of this is that I'm way behind my word count goal, but I don't feel terribly bad about that.
Today, April 9th: I have 8,156 words
Next week, April 16th, I will have 19,818 words for a first goal
26,666 words for a second goal
In other news, the first episode of the The Twenty Percent True podcast went up on Thursday. The sad news with that is that while it went up here on the blog on time, I underestimated how long it would take to get it approved by iTunes and Stitcher. It is now up on Stitcher (where I'm having formatting problems that should be fixed shortly), so you can subscribe, rate and review there. But I'm still waiting on iTunes. All in all, kind of a deflated opening.
I was also a guest host on my friend, Jim's, podcast NaNoWriPod. We talked about Camp NaNo and our projects. Check it out if you have time.
Today, April 9th: I have 8,156 words
Next week, April 16th, I will have 19,818 words for a first goal
26,666 words for a second goal
In other news, the first episode of the The Twenty Percent True podcast went up on Thursday. The sad news with that is that while it went up here on the blog on time, I underestimated how long it would take to get it approved by iTunes and Stitcher. It is now up on Stitcher (where I'm having formatting problems that should be fixed shortly), so you can subscribe, rate and review there. But I'm still waiting on iTunes. All in all, kind of a deflated opening.
I was also a guest host on my friend, Jim's, podcast NaNoWriPod. We talked about Camp NaNo and our projects. Check it out if you have time.
April 1, 2017
Camp NaNo Begins
Today is the first day of Camp NaNo. For those of you that don't know, NaNo (or NaNoWriMo) is short for National Novel Writing Month, a writing challenge to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. Camp NaNo is similar in that it's a writing challenge to write a novel in a month, but you can set your own word goal and it's camp themed. It was originally made for kids to do NaNo over the summer, so it's more lax, the forums are less extensive, and people get less dramatically enthusiastic about it.
I'm keeping my word goal at 50,000 and giving the Firebird story a re-write. I'm giving it one more shot and if I don't like where it's heading at the end of the month, I give myself permission to let it go and move on to something else. That said, I have some ideas for how to fix it--ideas where the clouds parted and the sun shone down on me and my eyes widened as I said, "Yessss. That will solve that problem. And that problem. And that problem!" I'm condensing the time frame a great deal, and piling the complications on top of one another, overlapping and never letting up. I'm giving it less room to breathe to keep the main character's anxiety high, and so his revelations come out in explosive spurts instead of ruminations while cooking. I think this piling on will also allow for the many different strands happening in this story to feel more like this guy has a lot going on at once and it's wearing on him, instead of that I have too many ideas. That said, I'm also giving myself permission to drop unnecessary threads. If they don't fit in this re-write, I'm not married to them and they can get lost. This has dropped some of the themes that I was leaning on heavily in earlier attempts, and dropping them has been shockingly freeing.
I managed to have good timing, because I have Modern Monsters in good shape, and I'm ready to turn to something different and ready to write.
Yesterday, I spent a few hours getting a sketchy outline together. Scene will set up the emotion for scene Y, so scene Y makes sense. And since scene X is part of story thread 1 and scene Y is part of story thread 2, their interactions will connect the two threads. That kind of thing. In a few places I have blank boxes where I need an event to set wheels in motion and get everyone where they need to be in their character arcs, but I'm not too concerned right this second that I don't have those pinned down yet. They'll come to me when I get closer, and the important part is that I have a sense that something needs to be there.
Today, I cleaned up the first chapter and a half of what I wrote for the last iteration, which is all still usable as long as I shift the emphasis. It's sort of cheating, because I didn't write a lot of new words today, but 1. the next scene that I write will be all new and 2. it's Camp NaNo and cheating is relative. I'm getting work done.
On day 1, I'm at 4,486 words
On day 8, I should be at 13,333 words as a low-level goal
and 16,153 words as a mid-level goal
I'm keeping my word goal at 50,000 and giving the Firebird story a re-write. I'm giving it one more shot and if I don't like where it's heading at the end of the month, I give myself permission to let it go and move on to something else. That said, I have some ideas for how to fix it--ideas where the clouds parted and the sun shone down on me and my eyes widened as I said, "Yessss. That will solve that problem. And that problem. And that problem!" I'm condensing the time frame a great deal, and piling the complications on top of one another, overlapping and never letting up. I'm giving it less room to breathe to keep the main character's anxiety high, and so his revelations come out in explosive spurts instead of ruminations while cooking. I think this piling on will also allow for the many different strands happening in this story to feel more like this guy has a lot going on at once and it's wearing on him, instead of that I have too many ideas. That said, I'm also giving myself permission to drop unnecessary threads. If they don't fit in this re-write, I'm not married to them and they can get lost. This has dropped some of the themes that I was leaning on heavily in earlier attempts, and dropping them has been shockingly freeing.
I managed to have good timing, because I have Modern Monsters in good shape, and I'm ready to turn to something different and ready to write.
Yesterday, I spent a few hours getting a sketchy outline together. Scene will set up the emotion for scene Y, so scene Y makes sense. And since scene X is part of story thread 1 and scene Y is part of story thread 2, their interactions will connect the two threads. That kind of thing. In a few places I have blank boxes where I need an event to set wheels in motion and get everyone where they need to be in their character arcs, but I'm not too concerned right this second that I don't have those pinned down yet. They'll come to me when I get closer, and the important part is that I have a sense that something needs to be there.
Today, I cleaned up the first chapter and a half of what I wrote for the last iteration, which is all still usable as long as I shift the emphasis. It's sort of cheating, because I didn't write a lot of new words today, but 1. the next scene that I write will be all new and 2. it's Camp NaNo and cheating is relative. I'm getting work done.
On day 1, I'm at 4,486 words
On day 8, I should be at 13,333 words as a low-level goal
and 16,153 words as a mid-level goal
November 17, 2016
NaNo: week ???
It is a complete failure on my part that I've yet to tell you about my exciting National Novel Writing Month project.
There's a challenge out there called The 30 Day Monster Girl Challenge. It's an art challenge with a list of thirty kinds of monsters, and the challenge is to draw a different monster girl every day for thirty days. I'm doing this challenge a bit differently, and I'm writing a short story about a different monster girl every day for thirty days. I did change the list a little bit because the last handful of days don't specify a particular monster, so I've replaced those with monsters from The 30 Day Monster Girl Challenge 2. This also means that for the first time (excluding Camp NaNos) I'm going full rebel and not writing part of a first draft of a novel, but rather first drafts of short stories.
I have many reasons for this, and I hope to get a few things out of it:
However!
You may notice that I am amazingly far behind on this project. It's embarrassing. The reason is that the last month has hit me with blow after blow, and I've yet to be able to recover before it smacks me down again. I started off November in the hospital, where I stayed for a few days when I had big plans to get a tumblr up and running to do a daily blog of my progress and possibly post the stories as I went along. I also had plans to make myself (for lack of a better term) a NaNo advent calendar: a new, brief, funny thing about writing every day for motivation. Alas! There's always next year.
When I got out of the hospital, my family ganged up on me to make me nap instead of write. This is a real thing that happened. The month continued on, being rude to me, until finally (and I've had it, so it is finally, or so help me God) Lennard Cohen died, and as well as I'd been holding it together, that was the last straw and I turned into a blubbering ball of tears.
Come on, life. I'm already down. Stop kicking me.
In terms of NaNo, I'm likening it to a marathon. Let's say I trained for a marathon and I was in great shape, then suddenly broke my leg. The cast came off the day before the race and I was technically all healed up, but when I went to go run, I mostly hobbled along, winded and sweaty, chanting, "No, no, I got this. I got this. I got this."
I've also let the blog get away from me, if you hadn't noticed. I've eaten up all the book reviews that I'd written ahead of time and scheduled to go up. So I have a plan now to every day do some work on the blog and write 500 words of my NaNo project until I build up my endurance and get the blog under control and can write 1,000 words a day of my NaNo project. Then when December starts, I'm going to pretend it's my own personal NaNo (Solitary Novel Writing Month, or SoNo) and buckle down and fly.
It's a bummer missing out on all the community and enthusiasm of real NaNo, but on the scale of things that have been bummers this month, it's pretty low.
There's a challenge out there called The 30 Day Monster Girl Challenge. It's an art challenge with a list of thirty kinds of monsters, and the challenge is to draw a different monster girl every day for thirty days. I'm doing this challenge a bit differently, and I'm writing a short story about a different monster girl every day for thirty days. I did change the list a little bit because the last handful of days don't specify a particular monster, so I've replaced those with monsters from The 30 Day Monster Girl Challenge 2. This also means that for the first time (excluding Camp NaNos) I'm going full rebel and not writing part of a first draft of a novel, but rather first drafts of short stories.
I have many reasons for this, and I hope to get a few things out of it:
- Plotting. Although world building and characterization come easily to me, plotting is and always has been a weak point. I want to force myself to write stories with a beginning, middle, and end for practice and to make myself feel better about my abilities.
- Back to writing as opposed to editing. Sometimes I'm in the mood to edit. Right now is not that time. It's been so long since I just wrote something new and it's freeing.
- Back to short story beginnings. The Firebird story was an experiment for me. It's about six story ideas mushed together and it's not how I usually go about writing a novel. All but one of my novel length stories have started as short stories that I later expanded into a novel, either making the short story the first chapter or using the structure of the short story as an outline. I want to go back to this tried and true method in hopes that
- One of the stories will spark something in me and become my next novel length project.
- Back to writing as opposed to editing
However!
You may notice that I am amazingly far behind on this project. It's embarrassing. The reason is that the last month has hit me with blow after blow, and I've yet to be able to recover before it smacks me down again. I started off November in the hospital, where I stayed for a few days when I had big plans to get a tumblr up and running to do a daily blog of my progress and possibly post the stories as I went along. I also had plans to make myself (for lack of a better term) a NaNo advent calendar: a new, brief, funny thing about writing every day for motivation. Alas! There's always next year.
When I got out of the hospital, my family ganged up on me to make me nap instead of write. This is a real thing that happened. The month continued on, being rude to me, until finally (and I've had it, so it is finally, or so help me God) Lennard Cohen died, and as well as I'd been holding it together, that was the last straw and I turned into a blubbering ball of tears.
Come on, life. I'm already down. Stop kicking me.
In terms of NaNo, I'm likening it to a marathon. Let's say I trained for a marathon and I was in great shape, then suddenly broke my leg. The cast came off the day before the race and I was technically all healed up, but when I went to go run, I mostly hobbled along, winded and sweaty, chanting, "No, no, I got this. I got this. I got this."
I've also let the blog get away from me, if you hadn't noticed. I've eaten up all the book reviews that I'd written ahead of time and scheduled to go up. So I have a plan now to every day do some work on the blog and write 500 words of my NaNo project until I build up my endurance and get the blog under control and can write 1,000 words a day of my NaNo project. Then when December starts, I'm going to pretend it's my own personal NaNo (Solitary Novel Writing Month, or SoNo) and buckle down and fly.
It's a bummer missing out on all the community and enthusiasm of real NaNo, but on the scale of things that have been bummers this month, it's pretty low.
October 15, 2016
My Critique Partner Saves the Day Again
I've been down about the Firebird story lately. I've been in the part of the creative cycle where everything is awful and pointless. I've been unenthusiastic about it and even less enthusiastic about working on it.
So This week I sent my critique partner and best friend for life an e-mail asking for a pep talk, and then asking if she'd read some of what I have and tell me if it was worth salvaging. Her response was extremely helpful and reignited my excitement for this project.
First, she pointed out what she liked and what was working, which helped me because I could focus on the good aspects. Then she pointed out some things that weren't working, all of which were easy changes--such easy changes that I was pumped to go and change them.
Then there was the problem she pointed out without knowing she'd pointed it out. On page five she says, "oh, well, they can just do X to fix this." X being, of course, the secret climax. OOPS! That won't work. So I figured that she had answered my question of whether this was salvageable.
Then I got to thinking: this wouldn't work with a secret climax. X needed to be overt and discussed by everyone, which means conflict would have to come from elsewhere and characters' motivations would have to change. Like if So-and-so was pushing for this, and What's-his-face wants to do that...Oh wait, that will totally work.
So!
This requires another rewrite. My plan at this point is to spend the next two weeks planning out the rewrite in excruciating detail, just figuring out exactly what needs to happen. Then I'll be able to step back from it, write a first draft of another project in November, then come back to the Firebird story without losing my place. That's the plan.
So This week I sent my critique partner and best friend for life an e-mail asking for a pep talk, and then asking if she'd read some of what I have and tell me if it was worth salvaging. Her response was extremely helpful and reignited my excitement for this project.
First, she pointed out what she liked and what was working, which helped me because I could focus on the good aspects. Then she pointed out some things that weren't working, all of which were easy changes--such easy changes that I was pumped to go and change them.
Then there was the problem she pointed out without knowing she'd pointed it out. On page five she says, "oh, well, they can just do X to fix this." X being, of course, the secret climax. OOPS! That won't work. So I figured that she had answered my question of whether this was salvageable.
Then I got to thinking: this wouldn't work with a secret climax. X needed to be overt and discussed by everyone, which means conflict would have to come from elsewhere and characters' motivations would have to change. Like if So-and-so was pushing for this, and What's-his-face wants to do that...Oh wait, that will totally work.
So!
This requires another rewrite. My plan at this point is to spend the next two weeks planning out the rewrite in excruciating detail, just figuring out exactly what needs to happen. Then I'll be able to step back from it, write a first draft of another project in November, then come back to the Firebird story without losing my place. That's the plan.
September 24, 2016
Firebird Mix Tape
I belong to the school of thought that mix tapes are very important. I used to make actual cassette tapes by rummaging through my parents' and friends' tapes and CDs and calling into radio stations and requesting deep cuts, then sitting by my stereo and waiting.
My latest tape is for the Firebird story. Lately I've been working on switching between not-writing-brain and writing-brain and making that transition time between them as small as possible. I don't have a lot of time and I need to make the most of it.
So this is what I've been playing to get in the right mindset. There's some overlap with my Necromancer mix tape, which makes sense since the Necromancer story was eaten by the Firebird story.
Listen Here!
*I'm using a live version that is not on YouTube
My latest tape is for the Firebird story. Lately I've been working on switching between not-writing-brain and writing-brain and making that transition time between them as small as possible. I don't have a lot of time and I need to make the most of it.
So this is what I've been playing to get in the right mindset. There's some overlap with my Necromancer mix tape, which makes sense since the Necromancer story was eaten by the Firebird story.
Listen Here!
1. What She Came For -- Franz Ferdinand
2. Gravedigger -- Dave Mathews Band*
3. Put Your Lights on -- Santana
4. My Mathematical Mind -- Spoon
5. If I Wanted Someone -- Dawes
6. 24 Frames -- Jason Isbell
7. Hurt -- Johnny Cash
8. Just Like Heaven --The Cure
9. Things Happen -- Dawes
*I'm using a live version that is not on YouTube
September 17, 2016
Mill's Mess
I'm researching juggling for the firebird novel. Here's a peek.
Mill's Mess
Not as fluid as I want it yet, but a good start.
Mill's Mess
Not as fluid as I want it yet, but a good start.
September 3, 2016
The Best Research Ever: Pie
While I was pregnant, my focus and attention span shrunk to the size of a walnut, and it seemed the only thing I was able to write about was food. I wrote long descriptive passages about smell and texture, flaky baked goods and tender meats and tart cherries and salted butter. An emphasis on food made its way into the firebird story, and for the first draft depictions of smells and taste and color worked fine. But now in the second draft, I'm shifting toward how it feels to prepare the food: the texture of pie filling before it sets and the strain in your shoulders as you roll out dough. I didn't know about these things first hand.
That meant it was time for The Best Research Ever.
I started making pie from scratch.
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This is the fruit pie phase of my research, where I learned to make pie dough, tried a couple of different top crusts, and learned about fruit filling.
Making and rolling out pie dough was not that bad once I knew what I was doing. You can make dough with lots of different kinds of fat: butter, shortening, straight up lard, or a combination of those. Butter is delicious, but shortening makes the dough easier to work with, so people usually go for a combination of the two. However, I don't know where they keep the shortening at the grocery store, so I just used two sticks of butter. The first attempt (the apple pie) was a mess of trying to roll it out, starting over and pressing it back into a ball, trying to roll it out, and starting over and pressing it back into a ball, but when I finally got it, it was amazing. Oh my God! I can make pie crust and it's really good!
The second attempt (the cherry pie) I got on the first try.
- The King Arthur Flour cookbook (which is great) told me that I needed to roll the dough out, rolling "in the same direction," so as not to confuse the yeast...WHAT DOES THAT MEAN??? How do you get a circle rolling all in one direction? How does yeast get confused? I figured out that it meant not to roll back and forth (roll it one direction, pick up the rolling pin and put it back at the start and roll again), and it's okay to roll up, then roll to the left, then roll down, then roll to the right to get a circle. But I still don't know what they're talking about with the yeast.
- "Lightly flour" is bullshit. I also think the concept of putting just enough water into the dough so it's almost falling apart is bullshit. I'm doing it wrong and grandmothers everywhere are waving rolling pins at me. But, these two changes to the instructions work together, because the massive amount of flour I dump everywhere probably evens out the extra tablespoon of water I put in.
- The King Arthur Flour cookbook also says to fold your pie crust into quarters, for easier transfer from the kitchen counter where you rolled it out, to the pie tin. That sounded like a great idea, but it went horribly wrong. There were big creases in my dough and then a quarter of it fell off and I had to patch it back together. Instead, if I roll the pie crust around the rolling pin, I can roll it out straight into the pie tin without threatening the crust's structural integrity.
Then there's the filling
- The worst part of making apple pie is peeling the apples. I used the biggest knife I could find to make myself feel better.
- When the instructions say to spoon the filling into the pie, they know what they're talking about. I just poured the cherry filling into the pie tin, and all the juice and sauce escaped down the sides and made a huge mess.
- If you don't know what a rhubarb is, it's tart so the strawberry and the ice cream we added mellow it out. It looks like celery except it's red and you even cut it an peel it the same way. It's available frozen at most grocery stores. I didn't know what to do with frozen rhubarb, so I called around to likely places and asked if they had fresh rhubarb. Those were fun conversations. Whole Foods had both organic rhubarb and regular rhubarb. This pie was unanimously voted the best pie.
- I thought I had this down and went to make a mixed berry pie because the baby loves strawberries and I feel the need to mix it up a bit for him instead of giving him an adult sized plate of chopped strawberries for lunch every day. But then they threw me a curve ball. For the cherry and the rhubarb pie, you mix the filling and then let it sit for a half hour for to thicken from the presence of the tapioca. I was expecting the same thing for the berries, but no. Now I had to simmer the mixture until it thickened even though I'd put the tapioca in. WTF? Why is it different? Aww, Geez, did I do this right? Ack.
Then there's the top crust. I didn't get fancy on the first attempt. I put down a regular old top crust on the apple pie, cutting plain slits in it to vent it. For the cherry pie, I tried a lattice, which looked wonderful, but was not nearly enough crust for my crust loving family. So for the strawberry rhubarb pie, I tried a tighter weave, and also tried a plaid design. For the mixed berry pie, I dove into the realm of cookie cutters. The top crust is made of a hundred or so stars that I cut out of the dough.
- Beaten egg yolk gets the two crusts to stick together. I learned that I should brush it on the edge of the bottom crust BEFORE I put down the lattice. I had to peel up the edges of the lattice and brush underneath and tempt fate that my lattice wouldn't crumble apart.
- Keeping the bars of the lattice even is tricky. I got out a pizza cutter about half way through the cherry pie top, but my strips ended up thicker on one end than the other. I saw people on the internet using a ruler and scoffed. For the strawberry rhubarb, I got out a ruler.
- There's a point after you mix the dough where you pat it into two disks and stick it in the refrigerator for a half hour so that it will stay round when you roll it out. The book said "at least a half hour" so I figured I could mix the dough during the baby's morning nap, then stick it in the fridge and roll it out during his afternoon nap. No. That is not how it works. It got way too hard and cold in the fridge and it had to thaw for about an hour before I could roll it out, and when I did it had a lot of trouble staying round and kept falling apart. This was the strawberry rhubarb pie where I attempted a fancy top crust because I'd had such luck with my previous attempts and I was feeling good about myself. It did not go well. If that picture looks like a Pintrest Fail, that's because it is! It still tasted good though, and I totally think I could pull it off next time.
- Apparently, you are supposed to inherit cookie cutters from your grandmother or something, because I looked all over the place for little cookie cutters and couldn't find them. We had to make a trip to a fancy kitchen store on the north side. There they told me that pies are an autumn thing, so all the cookie cutters for pies are autumn leaves and pumpkin shaped and and themed for holidays. I was trying to make a mixed berry pie and looking ahead to the key lime and lemon meringue I want to make later, so this autumn thing didn't make a lot of sense to me. Oh well, I got some mini cutters that have stars and hearts and moons, and a set of autumn leaves, one of which could pass as a lime leaf, so we're all good.
More research is necessary.
July 31, 2016
Outlook for August
This week, my productivity tapered off to the point where I did not hit my original goal of editing for 50 hours. I worked for 44 hours and some change though, and that's not too shabby.
We're moving, which is a three-ring circus, and I've been packing, which because of the three-ring circus has to be done with painful specificity and care. My writing time has suffered, and will continue to suffer for the next few weeks as we move and get settled. My goal for this month, instead of time based, is goal based: I want to get through half of the global edits I've laid out for myself. That leaves the second half of the edits for September, the ending for October, and then this draft will be done just in time for Nano, where I can give this a break and write a first draft of something else.
That's the plan anyway. It's good to have plans.
The work I did do this week went well. I'm restructuring the first chapter I've written, adding a new first chapter and breaking the old one up into chapters two and four. It's a lot of new writing. The last time I wrote instead of edited was November, and everything I slapped down then felt like the most awful thing anyone has ever bothered to save in a text file. Writing this week was a world of difference. My groove is back. My enthusiasm is back. I'm going to chalk it up to the way this book has found its direction in the second draft.
We're moving, which is a three-ring circus, and I've been packing, which because of the three-ring circus has to be done with painful specificity and care. My writing time has suffered, and will continue to suffer for the next few weeks as we move and get settled. My goal for this month, instead of time based, is goal based: I want to get through half of the global edits I've laid out for myself. That leaves the second half of the edits for September, the ending for October, and then this draft will be done just in time for Nano, where I can give this a break and write a first draft of something else.
That's the plan anyway. It's good to have plans.
The work I did do this week went well. I'm restructuring the first chapter I've written, adding a new first chapter and breaking the old one up into chapters two and four. It's a lot of new writing. The last time I wrote instead of edited was November, and everything I slapped down then felt like the most awful thing anyone has ever bothered to save in a text file. Writing this week was a world of difference. My groove is back. My enthusiasm is back. I'm going to chalk it up to the way this book has found its direction in the second draft.
July 23, 2016
Building an Iceberg
This week was about knuckling down and getting my world building sorted. You'd think this would be something that should have been worked out long ago, and you would be right.
I recently read some advice on world building by N.K. Jemisin. (It's a powerpoint and well worth the read.) She mentioned that world building is like an iceberg, and you only see the tip of it in the text of the story. That feels like solid, resonating advice to me, and it nailed home that my shoddy world building here needs to pull itself together.
More specifically, I was having problems with how non-magic people view magic in the world I've created. It was inconsistent throughout the story, ranging from unimpressed to confused, to anger and fear, to flat out disbelief and rejection. This problem stems from how this is a million story ideas mooshed together, each with their own take on the situation, and I'd yet to commit to one over another. Even though I've known this was a problem for a while and I've put off thinking about it because I couldn't come up with a quick answer.
But this edit is about cohesiveness.
So this week, I sat down and wrote "A brief history of magic in the United States" as written by the main character.
It worked surprisingly well. It fit together like a history should, with swings in opinion and rises and falls in popularity. I thought I would have to go in and change the behavior of some characters, but I surprised myself and found justification for everyone's reactions. Now I just need to change the framing around their reactions. I also got everything I needed under a shared history, tying things together.
Themes started to appear. I solidified that there are several different groups of magicians, who are influenced by different events and influence each other. These different groups are split along class lines, education levels, and North/South and East/West lines. Second, I clarified that there's a history of both people lying about being magicians and of magicians lying about their capabilities. They can fool people because no one really understands how magic works and people expect magicians to look and act a certain way. But people have figured out that magicians lie, so now that's part of what they expect to see. Finally, I saw that it's messy. There's a lot of groups with a lot of agendas and values and opinions about each other. The public doesn't understand that they're as different as they see themselves, so the public's opinion of one group affects their view of all magicians. I kind of like that it's messy because it feels real. I just need to embrace the mess in the text.
The other cool part was that now I have dozens of little side stories that amuse me and might go into the novel, but might not.
I recently read some advice on world building by N.K. Jemisin. (It's a powerpoint and well worth the read.) She mentioned that world building is like an iceberg, and you only see the tip of it in the text of the story. That feels like solid, resonating advice to me, and it nailed home that my shoddy world building here needs to pull itself together.
More specifically, I was having problems with how non-magic people view magic in the world I've created. It was inconsistent throughout the story, ranging from unimpressed to confused, to anger and fear, to flat out disbelief and rejection. This problem stems from how this is a million story ideas mooshed together, each with their own take on the situation, and I'd yet to commit to one over another. Even though I've known this was a problem for a while and I've put off thinking about it because I couldn't come up with a quick answer.
But this edit is about cohesiveness.
So this week, I sat down and wrote "A brief history of magic in the United States" as written by the main character.
It worked surprisingly well. It fit together like a history should, with swings in opinion and rises and falls in popularity. I thought I would have to go in and change the behavior of some characters, but I surprised myself and found justification for everyone's reactions. Now I just need to change the framing around their reactions. I also got everything I needed under a shared history, tying things together.
Themes started to appear. I solidified that there are several different groups of magicians, who are influenced by different events and influence each other. These different groups are split along class lines, education levels, and North/South and East/West lines. Second, I clarified that there's a history of both people lying about being magicians and of magicians lying about their capabilities. They can fool people because no one really understands how magic works and people expect magicians to look and act a certain way. But people have figured out that magicians lie, so now that's part of what they expect to see. Finally, I saw that it's messy. There's a lot of groups with a lot of agendas and values and opinions about each other. The public doesn't understand that they're as different as they see themselves, so the public's opinion of one group affects their view of all magicians. I kind of like that it's messy because it feels real. I just need to embrace the mess in the text.
The other cool part was that now I have dozens of little side stories that amuse me and might go into the novel, but might not.
July 16, 2016
Nitpicky Jerkface
This week's edits were pretty easy and mostly along the lines of adjusting concepts that I didn't like. Most of them reoccurred again and again throughout the book, so it took some time, but once I had the concepts solidified in my head, the changes weren't hard. They felt more like corrections. Like if I decided to change a parade route. Which streets would need to close would change, along with what businesses the parade passed and who came out to see it and when and where it ended. Maybe since it ends in a new place, there would be room for a little fair with BBQ and face painting and music and a bounce house.
I spent the first day doing even easier edits. I did Find/Replace edits, where I changed names and standardized all the various spellings of those names. What am I going to call this spell that gets used repeatedly? What about this other spell, because in the first draft everything had names like "Magic Missile." Turns out even though this is a Find/Replace edit, and therefore the easiest thing ever, I got snagged on what I was going to change these things to.
One of the big things I got snagged on is a street name where most of the story takes place. The story is set in alternate-universe Austin on Pecan Street. Now, there is not a Pecan Street in Austin, as is common knowledge to most Austinites because there used to be a Pecan Street that is now 6th Street, and 6th St is not only a popular street, but also likes to boast about how back in the day it was called Pecan Street.
So. If the story is set on Pecan Street, that might throw someone out of the story when they shout, "That street doesn't exist!" and slap my book on the table. If the story is set on a street that does exist, like Congress Ave, that might throw someone out of the story when they shout, "That store's not on Congress!" and light my book on fire.
I've been grappling with this very minor detail for days, trying to convince myself that it I'm the only person who would ever be upset about this, or trying to come up with a third option that makes the problem disappear. I've been struggling with it because I'm the kind of reader who gets hung up on things like this, especially when they're set in cities I love. Like how I will never let go of the fact that in Divergent, the Erudite's evil headquarters is really a Panera Bread. Because I am an asshole.
Then I heard this interesting interview with Chris Claremont (who wrote the X-Men for years and years and years), where he talked about setting fantastical stories in the real world and how the familiar elements are not just little treats, but make the characters more real and relatable. It makes it so you can see yourself in them, and it makes them so they aren't unreachable superheroes, but actual people.
I spent the first day doing even easier edits. I did Find/Replace edits, where I changed names and standardized all the various spellings of those names. What am I going to call this spell that gets used repeatedly? What about this other spell, because in the first draft everything had names like "Magic Missile." Turns out even though this is a Find/Replace edit, and therefore the easiest thing ever, I got snagged on what I was going to change these things to.
One of the big things I got snagged on is a street name where most of the story takes place. The story is set in alternate-universe Austin on Pecan Street. Now, there is not a Pecan Street in Austin, as is common knowledge to most Austinites because there used to be a Pecan Street that is now 6th Street, and 6th St is not only a popular street, but also likes to boast about how back in the day it was called Pecan Street.
So. If the story is set on Pecan Street, that might throw someone out of the story when they shout, "That street doesn't exist!" and slap my book on the table. If the story is set on a street that does exist, like Congress Ave, that might throw someone out of the story when they shout, "That store's not on Congress!" and light my book on fire.
I've been grappling with this very minor detail for days, trying to convince myself that it I'm the only person who would ever be upset about this, or trying to come up with a third option that makes the problem disappear. I've been struggling with it because I'm the kind of reader who gets hung up on things like this, especially when they're set in cities I love. Like how I will never let go of the fact that in Divergent, the Erudite's evil headquarters is really a Panera Bread. Because I am an asshole.
Then I heard this interesting interview with Chris Claremont (who wrote the X-Men for years and years and years), where he talked about setting fantastical stories in the real world and how the familiar elements are not just little treats, but make the characters more real and relatable. It makes it so you can see yourself in them, and it makes them so they aren't unreachable superheroes, but actual people.
That's the coolness of watching a show that's filmed on location. "Elementary," for example, last year had a wonderful scene where Holmes and Watson and the police captain are walking down the street, and I'm looking at a Manhattan street that I know, and I remember that snowstorm because I'd been out in it three weeks earlier...That's the ideal thing. It's that real touchstones make the fiction, the fantasy, that much more embraceable. And for those who live in the neighborhood that much more enjoyable.So that's helping to sooth my internal battle.
July 9, 2016
Camp Nano Week One
Daily results were mixed this week, from finding twenty minutes to write at a downtown Starbucks before a doctor's appointment, to finding two and a half hours while the baby napped when the dishes were under control. I'm still chugging along, still feeling good about my edits, I'm not so far behind my goal that I couldn't reasonably catch up, and I managed to keep my house from burning down and my son from climbing out a window on a week when my husband was desperately ill and I had a boatload of doctor's appointments for self-care things I've been neglecting, like the eye doctor and the dentist. I call that a win.
Even more of a win is that I finished Phase Two of my edits on the Firebird story. In this round of edits, there are four phases. The first was line edits and fixing typos. The second was massaging the language, smoothing out awkwardness and fixing instances where the word I used was not quite right. This was where I worked on cadence and scanning. This was where I had whole paragraphs blocked off in orange highlighter with the word "gross" written in the margin. This is the one that cleaned up most of the sludge that resulted from blazing through the first draft during National Novel Month while I had a napping baby strapped to my chest. It was a time consuming edit, but the story is so much better. I can read it now without wanting to gorge out my own eyes.
The next two phases in this edit are the edits marked in lime green (the sections that need research and the sections that need specificity) and the edits marked in pink (global edits). I'm going to tackle these simultaneously, since some of the research requires waiting for books to come in at the library and the fact that I don't want to hold myself to just doing research for however long that takes. Doing these two phases at the same time will also help because the global edits are going to be head scratchers and it'll be nice to build a break from that (or some thinking time) into my schedule. Global edits include, but are not limited to: smoothing the passage of time, handling flashbacks, focusing more on certain characters, upping the romance, and solidifying the themes that have risen up after the first draft.
Good luck to everyone else doing Camp NaNo! Keep at it.
Even more of a win is that I finished Phase Two of my edits on the Firebird story. In this round of edits, there are four phases. The first was line edits and fixing typos. The second was massaging the language, smoothing out awkwardness and fixing instances where the word I used was not quite right. This was where I worked on cadence and scanning. This was where I had whole paragraphs blocked off in orange highlighter with the word "gross" written in the margin. This is the one that cleaned up most of the sludge that resulted from blazing through the first draft during National Novel Month while I had a napping baby strapped to my chest. It was a time consuming edit, but the story is so much better. I can read it now without wanting to gorge out my own eyes.
The next two phases in this edit are the edits marked in lime green (the sections that need research and the sections that need specificity) and the edits marked in pink (global edits). I'm going to tackle these simultaneously, since some of the research requires waiting for books to come in at the library and the fact that I don't want to hold myself to just doing research for however long that takes. Doing these two phases at the same time will also help because the global edits are going to be head scratchers and it'll be nice to build a break from that (or some thinking time) into my schedule. Global edits include, but are not limited to: smoothing the passage of time, handling flashbacks, focusing more on certain characters, upping the romance, and solidifying the themes that have risen up after the first draft.
Good luck to everyone else doing Camp NaNo! Keep at it.
July 3, 2016
Outlook for July
Camp Nano strikes again. I didn't do so hot last go around, but I have confidence that this month will go well. For one thing, I've opted out of a cabin. My cabin last time was painfully inactive, and seeing how many people had a word count of zero fooled me into complacency when I hadn't hit my goals. I'm also so close to getting this section of my edits done, and it's embarrassing how long I've already let it laze around.
Once again I'm going to spend Nano editing, and I've set my rebel challenge for working for 50 hours. I'll pretend 1 hour=1,000 words and keep track on the website like that. I'm aiming to work an hour and forty minutes every day: an hour editing the Firebird story, a half hour on the blog, and ten minutes writing on a couple short things I have in mind. Why not just do the full hour and forty minutes on the Firebird story? Because the blog and the writing projects ought to get done too, and I just know if I don't make space for them, I'm going to do them first and then not do my edits, or I'll do my edits and be too tired for the other things. Kind of against the point of Nano, but I honestly don't care at this point in my life.
(This week I had to start telling my baby "no," as he's figured out how to climb onto the chair, the onto the table, and from there turn up the volume on the stereo to deafening levels. Rock! Also this week, he figured out that he doesn't like not being able to do exactly what he wants whenever he wants it, and started shrieking whenever I told him "no." Too bad, because that's a lesson he's going to learn early.)
Why am I spending a half hour every day on the blog? Geez, does it really take that long to write these posts? No. I have a backlog of books I've read but have yet to review, so I have quite a few posts to write.
As for the short things I'm working on, you'll have to stay tuned.
Anyone else doing Camp Nano? What's your goal? What's your favorite camp activity?
Once again I'm going to spend Nano editing, and I've set my rebel challenge for working for 50 hours. I'll pretend 1 hour=1,000 words and keep track on the website like that. I'm aiming to work an hour and forty minutes every day: an hour editing the Firebird story, a half hour on the blog, and ten minutes writing on a couple short things I have in mind. Why not just do the full hour and forty minutes on the Firebird story? Because the blog and the writing projects ought to get done too, and I just know if I don't make space for them, I'm going to do them first and then not do my edits, or I'll do my edits and be too tired for the other things. Kind of against the point of Nano, but I honestly don't care at this point in my life.
(This week I had to start telling my baby "no," as he's figured out how to climb onto the chair, the onto the table, and from there turn up the volume on the stereo to deafening levels. Rock! Also this week, he figured out that he doesn't like not being able to do exactly what he wants whenever he wants it, and started shrieking whenever I told him "no." Too bad, because that's a lesson he's going to learn early.)
Why am I spending a half hour every day on the blog? Geez, does it really take that long to write these posts? No. I have a backlog of books I've read but have yet to review, so I have quite a few posts to write.
As for the short things I'm working on, you'll have to stay tuned.
Anyone else doing Camp Nano? What's your goal? What's your favorite camp activity?
June 13, 2016
Knots research
I've done a bunch of research about knots over the past few weeks for use in the the firebird story. It's way too much research considering I'm doing it for at most four paragraphs in a chapter that I've been considering cutting. It's probably a sign that I've been procrastinating on other things.
Oh well! I learned some cool things and I'm here today to share them with you.
Turk's Head Knots
A Turk's Head Knot is a decorative knot tied around a stake or flattened out into a mat. It gets its name from how it looks like a turban if you don't understand how turbans work. The boy scouts use it as a woggle, a knot that holds their bandanna-neckerchiefs in place, and people will often put it on either end of their larger decorative knot pieces to hide the loose ends.
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| mat 3 lead-7 bight doubled |
The neat thing about Turk's Head Knots is that they can be expanded to suit your needs. By changing the number of bights (the number of arcs in the top or around the outside in mat form) you can change the circumference. By increasing the number of leads (the number of strands around the circumference) you can make the knot thicker or taller depending on how you want to think about it.
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The real kicker for me (math incoming) is that you can't just have any combination of leads and bights. If you're working with one rope, the knot will only work if the number of leads and the number of bights are co-prime, meaning that their greatest common factor is 1. So you can make a 3 lead-5 bight or a 7 lead-4 bight or a 9 lead-16 bight, but you can't make a 4 lead-6 bight (with a greatest common factor of 2) or a 3 lead-9 bight (with a greatest common factor of 3). If you want to make those knots you need to work with multiple strands of rope (2 strands for the 4 lead-6 bight where the greatest common factor is 2, or 3 strands for the 3 lead-9 bight where the greatest common factor is 3.)
Braids and Sennits
Braids and sennits are basically interchangeable words. A sennit is a series of knots repeated to make a pattern, which is what a braid is. I set out in my survey of sennits to find something in particular. I wanted a braid that used 3 strands, isn't the same old standard braid I've seen eighty million times, and uses all three strands equally, or in other words doesn't have a knot-bearing cord. Turns out that this is a difficult set of criteria.
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| Basic three strand braid, Chain Sennit, four strand French Sennit, four strand Square Sennit |
The fancier the braid, the more strands it uses, so a bunch of cool looking ones have four strands or five strands or eight strands. I was looking for something with three strands because a three-strand rope--you guessed it--has three strands, and this kind of rope can easily be unlayed into three separate strands then layed back into one.
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| Diamond Braid, Crown Sennit, four strand sennit |
Here are more that use four strands. These stitches are often used when making lanyards at summer camp, so this was pretty fun, even if my knots look pretty crummy made out of yarn.
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| braid with knot-bearing cord, Solomon Bar, Half-hitch Sennit |
These use a knot-bearing cords, witch is a strand that stays straight as you tie your knot around it. They are the red strings in the picture. Since the knot-bearing cord doesn't get knotted, you end up using a lot less length than you do for the knotting cords. My issue with this is that if you send a bolt of magic down all three strands at once, it's going to move a lot faster down the knot-bearing cord while it lags behind running through all the twists of the knotting cords.
However, I do research not just to get specific vocabulary, but also to find out if what I have in mind will work. With the lack of three strand braids, I think I need to change what I had in mind and use a Solomon Bar. These are pretty cool. They're also called Cobra Knots or a Square Knot Sennit.
February 28, 2016
Sixty Thousand Words
Like every Wednesday, we took a family trip to our local comic store to pick up this week's offerings from my husband's pull list. The guys that work there greet us with "Hello, Rahamans!" and "How's the littlest Rahaman?" They know that instead of following characters, my husband follows creative teams, like Matt Fraction and Kieron Gillen and Nick Spencer. They know I was burned getting too involved in the X-Men during the 90s and then reading too much manga to fill the Fullmetal Alchemist shaped hole in my heart, and so they don't seem to mind that I never buy anything.
"Do you want paper or plastic?" James asked.
My husband said, "We really like the new paper bags you've got." They're very nice bags. Plain brown paper and just the right size to fit too many comic books.
Then, because my husband likes to brag: "Carolyn's using one to hold the manuscript for her novel."
I actually need a new one, because mine has a tear in it, I've been carrying it around for so long.
"Oh really?" James asked. "How long's your novel?"
I appreciated this question, because it's kind of like we were still talking about the paper bags and how much paper could fit in one. This was a professional question about packaging material instead of asking about my novel. "Only sixty thousand words right now."
He scoffed. "Only sixty thousand."
I didn't tell him the second draft would probably double, then the third would be something manageable, or that it was sixty thousand words of garbage that I regularly want to light on fire, amazing paper bag and all.
Sam slipped into the conversation. "You should dedicate it to us, since we gave you the bag that you use to carry it around."
"You'll be in the acknowledgements for sure."
My husband had that anxious bouncing, his mouth open like he wanted to say more about my novel or wanted me to take a more active part in this conversation. Make friends. Talk about my interests. Stuff that I assume those mysterious normal people do. But no. The conversation was over and I shuffled him and the stroller out of the store before anyone could ask, "What's it about?"
Because then I'd have two choices then. I'd either have to say something vague and by extension boring. "There's a dog? There's this magician guy, who's under a curse that makes him have anger management issues. He brings people back to life? He's got a not-girlfriend. She's a monster. And then there's a second dog. And a serial killer." Or, I'd have to tell the truth. "I don't know. It's a first draft. I'm still feeling it out."
Which is kind of like admitting what I didn't say earlier: I have sixty thousand words, but they're garbage. Someday it'll be better, but now it's a mess without definite themes or purpose. And there's no way I've thought about my pitch enough to express succinctly what it's about.
This week's reading gave me some vocabulary to think about this interaction (or lack of interaction). Since my story is still in the fetal stages, I have the door closed and I don't want to talk about it. In the next draft, I'm going to bring out the themes and find my story's purpose. I'm going to find what it's about.
"Do you want paper or plastic?" James asked.
My husband said, "We really like the new paper bags you've got." They're very nice bags. Plain brown paper and just the right size to fit too many comic books.
Then, because my husband likes to brag: "Carolyn's using one to hold the manuscript for her novel."
I actually need a new one, because mine has a tear in it, I've been carrying it around for so long.
"Oh really?" James asked. "How long's your novel?"
I appreciated this question, because it's kind of like we were still talking about the paper bags and how much paper could fit in one. This was a professional question about packaging material instead of asking about my novel. "Only sixty thousand words right now."
He scoffed. "Only sixty thousand."
I didn't tell him the second draft would probably double, then the third would be something manageable, or that it was sixty thousand words of garbage that I regularly want to light on fire, amazing paper bag and all.
Sam slipped into the conversation. "You should dedicate it to us, since we gave you the bag that you use to carry it around."
"You'll be in the acknowledgements for sure."
My husband had that anxious bouncing, his mouth open like he wanted to say more about my novel or wanted me to take a more active part in this conversation. Make friends. Talk about my interests. Stuff that I assume those mysterious normal people do. But no. The conversation was over and I shuffled him and the stroller out of the store before anyone could ask, "What's it about?"
Because then I'd have two choices then. I'd either have to say something vague and by extension boring. "There's a dog? There's this magician guy, who's under a curse that makes him have anger management issues. He brings people back to life? He's got a not-girlfriend. She's a monster. And then there's a second dog. And a serial killer." Or, I'd have to tell the truth. "I don't know. It's a first draft. I'm still feeling it out."
Which is kind of like admitting what I didn't say earlier: I have sixty thousand words, but they're garbage. Someday it'll be better, but now it's a mess without definite themes or purpose. And there's no way I've thought about my pitch enough to express succinctly what it's about.
This week's reading gave me some vocabulary to think about this interaction (or lack of interaction). Since my story is still in the fetal stages, I have the door closed and I don't want to talk about it. In the next draft, I'm going to bring out the themes and find my story's purpose. I'm going to find what it's about.
February 9, 2016
Edit Check In
Editing check in time! Here's an incomplete list of some of the goofy things I've written on the print out of my first draft.
- "fiancé" is French. Is there a masculine and feminine version? Does it matter?
- Is there a way to make it clear that "fiancé" is pronounced with an amazing Texan accent?
- Then I have written "More accents!" By which I mean embracing the spirit rather than writing things phonetically. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but that's it's own blog post.
- Find the origin of "the jig is up." It sounds like something you don't realize is racist.
- How do you bake fruit pie from scratch?
- hands on research is important
- also chicken with mushrooms in cheese sauce? Is that a thing?
- there's a word for cheese sauce. Find it.
- Research muscles
- suck it up and just don't look at the gross pictures.
- Research knots
- and braiding
- in the margin is written "friendship bracelets made by sailors."
January 10, 2016
Let's Talk about Reading Challenges
I have returned from my holiday trip full of perilous flooding and pet drama, and I am beyond ready to be back in the thick of things.
Let's start with my writing projects. That's right. There are two now. I'm easing my way back up to full speed. I re-read my dragon story, to get myself pumped about it before taking another crack at querying. I braced myself for hating it, which would have been completely unhelpful while trying to get excited enough to sell it. But no. I really liked it. Maybe even more than the last time I looked at it. Distance does wonders. So does reading something that spent a year in editing.
That went well, but now I think it was at the detriment of the Firebird draft. I'd read a few chapters, then start writing on my draft...then slow down in my typing...then re-read what I wrote and make a face...then force myself to finish off my thought...then go back and read another chapter of the dragon story to make myself feel better. One was so good and the other was so bad. But the good news is that I'm done with my re-read and I can go back to writing my terrible first draft without having to deal with the comparison.
Let's start with my writing projects. That's right. There are two now. I'm easing my way back up to full speed. I re-read my dragon story, to get myself pumped about it before taking another crack at querying. I braced myself for hating it, which would have been completely unhelpful while trying to get excited enough to sell it. But no. I really liked it. Maybe even more than the last time I looked at it. Distance does wonders. So does reading something that spent a year in editing.
That went well, but now I think it was at the detriment of the Firebird draft. I'd read a few chapters, then start writing on my draft...then slow down in my typing...then re-read what I wrote and make a face...then force myself to finish off my thought...then go back and read another chapter of the dragon story to make myself feel better. One was so good and the other was so bad. But the good news is that I'm done with my re-read and I can go back to writing my terrible first draft without having to deal with the comparison.
The other half of all this, of course, are my reading projects. It's fun to call them projects. I've singed up for the 2016 Reading Challenge on Goodreads, with the goal to read 50 books this year. This is a low estimate for me, but my challenges here are to (A) mark that I did read things on Goodreads, which I completely forgot to do last year, and (B) review 50 books here on the blog. So this Thursday book review schedule is going to stick around. I'm already ahead of the game with a few reviews scheduled to go up over the next few weeks. This gives me a cushion of time during which I'm going to try a longer book. As you may know (or may not know because I don't talk about books I don't finish) I have an embarrassingly terrible track record finishing long books. On my Kindle, there are a bunch of unstarted novels on the first few screens, and then the last screen is full of books, the dots showing their lengths stretching the width of the screen. Those dots are filled in and heavy to the half way point, and then stretching thin and unfulfilled, marking the moment where I'd abandoned them. But it's a new year and in this time of wild declarations of change and growth: I can finish that whole gross backlog! I can and I will! I know it!
The second challenge is just fun and pointless. It's Reading Bingo!
More specifically, it's "Retreat's Reading Bingo Challenge 2014," which was posted along with a YA board. (You can check out mine in progress here so you can gloat over how much better you're doing than me.) There are other reading bingo cards out there, but this one looks the most professional, so I set out to find "Retreat's Reading Bingo Challenge 2016." A Google search produced Penguin Random House's Romance Book Bingo, posted in April of 2015. This card comes with the unfulfilled promise, "We’ll be featuring printable, themed Bingo cards seasonally." Now, I should point out that seasonal reading bingo cards excite me the
way monthly writing challenges excite me, in that they make me want to
put together a Tumblr or a Podcast and get a bunch of people to do it
with me, except I don't have the time to do that kind of thing. So I'm
bummed there's not a series of seasonal bingo cards readily available
for my use.
I then had a Google-fu breakthrough and found the "Reading Bingo Challenge 2015," which--you guessed it!--is Canadian themed!
...
...
At this point I decided no bingo board could ever top that and (just like Random House Canada stopped making them) I stopped looking.
Has anyone else signed up for the Goodreads challenge? What did you set as your goal? Does anyone else now want to do this reading bingo and all other reading bingos ever?
December 20, 2015
Plan for the Postponed Holiday Trip and Onward to 2016
This week has been chaos with a drawn out illness for our cat resulting in tears and questioned priorities and a postponed holiday trip. Last night while making a pro/con list of two options I had with respect to the postponed holiday trip, I thought, "At least if we stay here to feed the cat through a tube, the baby can play Jesus in the Christmas pageant." I can say with certainty that this is a thought I have never had before. I think if there was a dark humor story in all this, that would be the jumping off point.
In other writing news, one of my New Year's resolutions (which are more Things To Do In January, just like I had Things To Do In December) is to get back to querying.
So I have a few prerequisite steps to take before jumping back into querying. First, I want to re-read my novel and get hyped about it again. Second, I want a better title. I have one in mind, but I want to focus in on it and run it past some people. Third, I want to take another look at my query letter and see how I can make it better. With this much time away from it, I'm sure something will jump out.
Our holiday trip will be a great time to do these. It's mostly reading, not a huge time commitment, and I can do them instead of working on my draft of the Firebird story and still make progress.
In other writing news, one of my New Year's resolutions (which are more Things To Do In January, just like I had Things To Do In December) is to get back to querying.
Sleep Training, for those of you that don't know, is training the baby to sleep consistently, teaching him to soothe himself back to sleep instead of needing me to sing him progressively questionable lullabies, and breaking him of all the bad habits he's picked up about sleeping on me and sleeping in a swaddler and needing to eat to sleep. When I think about how much of a nightmare this is going to be, it makes the first two bullet points look easy. I'm in control of both of those. I just need to buckle down and do it.
The complete list looks like this:
- Query
- Finish Draft of Firebird Story
- Sleep Training
So I have a few prerequisite steps to take before jumping back into querying. First, I want to re-read my novel and get hyped about it again. Second, I want a better title. I have one in mind, but I want to focus in on it and run it past some people. Third, I want to take another look at my query letter and see how I can make it better. With this much time away from it, I'm sure something will jump out.
Our holiday trip will be a great time to do these. It's mostly reading, not a huge time commitment, and I can do them instead of working on my draft of the Firebird story and still make progress.
December 13, 2015
This point of view is cramping my style
I'm still chipping away at this story. It's like digging for freedom with a spoon.
Since I've been writing on my phone so much, and since the Google Docs app on my phone doesn't have the capacity to tell me my word count, I've been setting goal based on the content of what I'll write as opposed to the quantity I'll write. Mostly I've been writing a scene every day. Strangely, the few times I've checked on my computer, I've been writing more than 1,000 words a day this way without really noticing or stressing about it. The end is clear, and I don't have to ask myself, "Have I hit my quota today? Let's check...Blarg! I need 37 more words."
This adjusts the accountability plan I came up with last week. Instead, I'm back to using HabitRPG, which has changed its name to Habatica in my absence. There's a lot going on with Habatica, but basically you get gold for doing the things you're supposed to do every day, and you can use that gold to buy armor and weapons that have stats and stuff, but mostly the armor and weapons make you feel more accomplished as your avatar looks cooler and cooler. When you don't do the things you're supposed to do, you lose health points and eventually die unless you level up first. Losing health makes me sad, and that's enough accountability for me. Right now the only things I have to do are write a scene every day and make a blog post on Sunday and Thursday. I also get some points for reading and listening to podcasts, and lose points if I read too much or listen to too many episodes to the point where I don't write my scene for the day or write my blog post. Eventually, I'm going to expand this list.
Since I've been writing on my phone so much, and since the Google Docs app on my phone doesn't have the capacity to tell me my word count, I've been setting goal based on the content of what I'll write as opposed to the quantity I'll write. Mostly I've been writing a scene every day. Strangely, the few times I've checked on my computer, I've been writing more than 1,000 words a day this way without really noticing or stressing about it. The end is clear, and I don't have to ask myself, "Have I hit my quota today? Let's check...Blarg! I need 37 more words."
This adjusts the accountability plan I came up with last week. Instead, I'm back to using HabitRPG, which has changed its name to Habatica in my absence. There's a lot going on with Habatica, but basically you get gold for doing the things you're supposed to do every day, and you can use that gold to buy armor and weapons that have stats and stuff, but mostly the armor and weapons make you feel more accomplished as your avatar looks cooler and cooler. When you don't do the things you're supposed to do, you lose health points and eventually die unless you level up first. Losing health makes me sad, and that's enough accountability for me. Right now the only things I have to do are write a scene every day and make a blog post on Sunday and Thursday. I also get some points for reading and listening to podcasts, and lose points if I read too much or listen to too many episodes to the point where I don't write my scene for the day or write my blog post. Eventually, I'm going to expand this list.
A problem with this story has been stewing for a while, and it raised it's ugly head again yesterday when I got to the scene where the problem becomes a serious issue. To understand, here's a few fun facts about this story as it exists now. 1. It is from the limited perspective of a single main character. 2. This main character has blackouts, during which he does things, which are progressively more awful. He doesn't know what he gets up to until people tell him about it later. The problem is that these summaries of the awful things he did are not nearly as satisfying as it would be to see the events play out. Not only do I suspect it'll be boring or frustrating for the reader, but I'm also sad that I'm not writing those awesome fight scenes.
So I have a puzzle. I know I'm going to end up writing fight scenes because I always end up writing fight scenes. The struggle here is how to include them without jumping into someone else's point of view (which would be weird) or making it kinda cheesy (What if they mind meld and he gets to relive the memories of someone watching him be awful!)
You know, now that I've written it out, it doesn't sound as bad as it did in my head. The truth is, however I decide to fix this, it's all going to live or die in the execution.
You know, now that I've written it out, it doesn't sound as bad as it did in my head. The truth is, however I decide to fix this, it's all going to live or die in the execution.
Again, this is not a problem to fix now, because I'm still just drafting at this point. But I know it's something I'll need to go back and give special attention. I'll think on it and see if I can find some examples of stories that also encounter this problem.
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