Thinking Aloud

I think I mentioned that I had been writing and re-writing the opening to my work in progress. At the time, I was worried that I would end up stuck on that section, always re-writing and never getting past that scene. It could happen. It was happening. I don't know how many times I have re-written it now, taking more or less the same information and rearranging it over and over again. The fear of stalling out led me to my bookshelves; I wanted to see how other people went about it.

The first thing I realized was that I don't have many books set in the present, and no urban fantasy (well, it might be a stretch to call what I am doing urban fantasy, but I am using it for want of a better term).

The next thing I realized was that not only does the opening set the stage for the rest of the work, it also sets the tone. I'll try to explain what I mean by that: opening Mark Haddon's novel A Spot of Bother, I read

It began when George was trying on a black suit in Allders the week before Bob Green’s funeral.

At first, I thought this sentence was rather dull, the subject rather prosaic. But I kept reading. And then it struck me that it reflected the personality of the character George, who is a little dull and prosaic. In this particular novel, Haddon later switches the point of view to the different members of this family, and the narrative prose changes as well to reflect their personalities.

I realized that I had been describing my character's actions without really setting her tone. She's deeply cynical and a little bitter, and she will take some major hits, but she will also continue to hold close the few people she is close to and hopefully add another one to the mix.

Editing

No one, and I mean *no one*, should love the colon as much as this author. He's not even German! (It is used more frequently, more legitimately in German than in English.)

*sigh*

Banished

I am sitting at my computer, banished upstairs--or is it a voluntary withdrawal--while Hannah has a belated birthday sleepover. Five 13-ish year-olds. Oi. I don't remember many of the specifics of sleepovers at the age of 13, but the hyper, loud, trash-talking--that I remember.

But anaway...

The last few nights, I have worked on my opening to LNR, and 3 attempts later, I have something I am fairly pleased with. Of course, that is not set in stone, either. I have already erased one sentence of it, and the last sentence is still a fragment. But it is progress, and that is a good feeling.

Now I am going to think about it some more while I wait to be summoned downstairs for birthday cake. Then I am going to bed.

Gah!

Translating and revising today--"inquire into" no longer looks like English. grrr...

Checking in

I am trying to build more writing habits, one of which is to not neglect my blogs. After I had a bout of logorrhea here the other night, I went bed with my notepad and jotted quite a few new notes about LNR. I am not certain I am satisfied with that, but it is something.

Then last night I spent the evening trying to get rid of a Trojan that was lurking on my laptop. I think I was successful, but it really sucked up my time and mental energy. Surprisingly, I have had a really good day, work-wise (editing), and am just using this little entry as a chance to take a brain break before embarking on some translating.

You know, I haven't missed the web sites I deleted like a Biblical plague, at all. And of the 9 that remain, I haven't gone and read all the new entries, despite them being marked as new!new!new! I have a heady feeling of control, and I like it, much as Katie Perry likes macking on chicks.

Ok, I don't think my brain is going to get any more broken than that, so time to get to translating!

Not too rambling, I hope

Kee and I have been awol for various reasons since--hoo boy--November, I see. Time to see if this thing can't be saved from the junk heap of the Internet.

I have been going back and forth on whether I even want to write. I had convinced myself that I just don't have what it takes, whether I actually wanted to write or not, and my short story "Late Night Radio" walked up and hit me in the head with a bag of lead pipes and said, "Hey! I'm actually a novel, dummy!" Way to be decisive, Nee. So that is something I have been working on in my own particular idiom, which means daydreaming while in the shower or washing dishes or doing the occasional craft project, but not really writing much. Yes, yes, I am on the fast track to success, you see.

Last night, I was reading online, as is my wont, and I came across this essay by Roger Ebert. Yes, Roger Ebert the film critic. He has a blog on the Chicago Sun Times web site, and I have thoroughly enjoyed reading his writing there. He writes with conviction but politeness on topics that would reduce others to snark and name-calling. Anyhow, the essay I read last night was about his online reading practices, and how he worries that it is affecting the way his brain works. If you look at the essay, he even cites a study that shows physical changes in the brain as a result of regular Internet use. He is concerned that his online search for that little charge you get--the frisson mentioned in the title of the piece--is resulting in an inability to engage with longer or deeper material. I recognize this frisson he speaks of--I realize that I have been looking for it in the 2-column-long list of RSS feeds I have found myself scanning multiple times a day. One day recently, I kept going back and refreshing it, over and over, as if suddenly a few dozen people would have hopped onto their computers to provide fresh fodder for my reading pleasure.

It also occurred to me, beyond Mr. Ebert's points, that the sites I was frequenting were themselves not very informative or deep. I like snark, but a steady diet of it is probably not too good for one's soul. Or mind. Last night in bed, I made a mental list of the sites on my feed, and it wasn't pretty. So this evening, I went through and weeded out the majority of feeds. I now have less than 10, and none are of the same type. Only 2 or 3 of them post regularly, so I won't be wading through a lot of updates. They are a mix of entertainment and information, but those that fall squarely under the heading "entertainment" must also have a certain something extra: sparkling wit (not just snark), engaging writing, or a perspective I wouldn't normally get. If I am going to spend my time and attention on something, it should be worth my while. (And if I decide I want to read the other stuff, I have a brain that contains the names of the other sites and can certainly find them on the Internet. I just won't have them piped into my home computer.)

In another blog essay I read recently from the science fiction author Jay Lake, he discussed deciding that the 2 most important things in his life were his daughter and his writing, and everything else would either have to fit around those or go away. TV? Bye-bye. Video games? Never got a foothold. (I seem to remember that he has talked about this before, but I decided that going back into his archives to look for it would probably be such a time suck that I wouldn't get around to finishing this entry. Score! for the rational mind.) And I realized that there are plenty of things even beyond my growing RSS feed that I allow to encroach on my time, without thinking about whether they are going to bring me closer to my goals. (Not that I am a goal-setter by nature. Maybe I should think about that.) Anyhow, I decided that Animal Crossing could get on without me for a while longer. Whenever I play, *whoosh!* there goes an hour, easy. So I gave Hannah my permission and blessing to play as me and send all my money to her character. It was enough to pay off the mortgage on her house and let her get a basement room. That's a lot of digital peaches picked and fish caught and shells collected and bugs netted and trees shaken.

Basically, this post is me saying that I have decided to not be so passive, to take an active approach to apportioning my time and giving myself the best chances to sit down and write. And that in turn entails acknowledging my fears (that is probably a post in itself) and not letting them dictate my actions. I can't decide if succeeding or failing is scarier, but doing nothing is saddest of all.

?

peck...peck...peck,peck...peck

Write, Edit, Delete, Write, Undelete

It's not a pretty process. I seem to change my mind every time I pick this up. Gotta make some decisions and stick to them. Write, edit, delete...

I can't type as fast as I can think

If I could type faster, it wouldn't take me so long to finish a chapter. But the reality of how fast I type to how fast I *think* I can type are two different things.

I do what?

I never realized how many cliches I use when I write. It's a really bad habit. What I am working on right now doesn't have any cliches. It is very straightforward, active writing. Word's grammer check puts it a 5th grade level. I think that's great since my mindset has been to make it something I would be comfortable letting my kids read. But I will be honest, I catch myself trying to put in cliches all the time. It's either that or adding in adjectives when I don't need them.

Better get to it for the night.

Might as well

I thought I might as well keep track of my new project here since writing is the whole point of this blog. My project will be called PURE here. I will only give general info so I won't bore you to death. I have finished chapter one and have made good headway into chapter two. I left a few leading points when I quit last night so I should be able to get a lot done in my time tonight. We'll see.

By the way, I am such a proud parent. The eldest asked me tonight if I would help him write a book. So now I have to show him that I can actually finish what I start.

Oh, so slowly...

I have been working on something new. I think I mentioned a wee bit about it earlier. It's kinda different than what I've done before, but I like it.

The biggest difference in working on this project is that I am not "in love" with it. That means: I love it so much I can't bear to hack away at it to make it better. I think I have been too "in love" with my characters or the idea of writing that I have feared the final product. This time I have a clear structure of what I want to accomplish. I wouldn't call it an outline, exactly, because at least I can see an "end" to the story. That's a big change for me.

Another change this time is that I don't dread the witching hour when I'm done with everything else and it's time to sit at the computer and put in my time. I have found this time that more often than not I have more than an hour's worth of staying power. There have only been a few times when it's felt like I have to peck out each letter. I usually try to hang in a little longer, then go read something in the same vein. I do need to beef up that part of my library since I only have a couple of that type.

Anyways, I better get at it. Slow but steady.

The Misadventures Of Super Librarian

That figures...I want a link and my girl moves!

She's now at:

The Misadventures Of Super Librarian

I love this gal!

I have wanted to put this blog as a link, but haven't got around to asking Nee.

Maybe she'll read this one post (10/28) and agree it is most worthy!

The Misadventures of Super_Librarian


The Misadventures of Super_Librarian

Weird

I have been thinking for a while about taking down a short story I put up here a while back, but today I finally got around to it. When I looked at it, I saw that I posted it exactly 2 years ago to the day. Strange.

quote for today

My mother drew a distinction between achievement and success.
She said that achievement is the knowledge that you have
studied and worked hard and done the best that is in you.
Success is being praised by others. That is nice but not as
important or satisfying. Always aim for achievement and
forget about success.

-Helen Hayes, 1900 - 1993

Funny you should mention it...

It is funny that Kee had posted a short story about her job, because I had just read this short story by MoonRat about *her* job as an editor.

For those who don't know...

In my real job, I have very strict standards for myself. I am organized. I keep deadlines. I leave my work so that any person could pick it up at a moment's notice and follow where I am at and what needs to be done next...say, like if I got hit by a bus or got *the* call that an agent wants everything I have ever written and I'm an overnight author success story. Well, the likelihood of me not showing up for work because of either of those is slim to none, but still I do my part to always be prepared.

The chick that came before me, well let's just say that all of her work has been sanitized. There is no evidence that this information lived a normal accounting life. It just appeared out of nowhere. It was not born of supporting documentation. It was not loved and nutured by a family of cross references. It has no friendships of tickmarks, ten-key tapes, or smudged pencil marks. No, this ugly step-child still bears the cleaniness it could have only known by being jerked fresh from the printer and shoved directly into a file folder. What absurd treatment of perfectly innocent financial information.

I have spent almost half of the last 48 hours sitting at my desk attempting to read, interpret, and make sense of the lack of information left for me. I have been doing this because it is my turn to produce the end result. I can't do that when I have no idea what the starting point is. I will brag enough to say that, with time, I could do it. I'm just that good. But I don't have time. My deadline is tomorrow. I would still be sitting there now if I didn't need a few things like food or sleep. And it's pissing me off right now that I can't make myself to do without those.

So we'll see what I can accomplish by the end of tomorrow. Maybe I can pull it off. Who knows. Both of my bosses realize the the trail I was left couldn't have been followed by a hardened sherpa. It's at least adding to my credit (and hopefully future paychecks) that I have gotten this far.

(In case you were wondering why this is posted on a writing blog, I thought I could use the practice at short story telling. I sometimes ramble and lose my point. For the record, I thought this one was good. Grade for me: A)

I don't have a problem with coming up with ideas to write. It's the follow through to the end that leaves me drowning in a sea of words that seems to get bigger the more I wade into it. I do my best(I think) writing when I just sit at the computer and type. There seems to be less back and forth editing that way. I don't think it has anything to do with my typing skills vs hand writing it out. I actually suck pretty hard at typing...when I took accounting in high school instead of typing I said that I would rather be an accountant who couldn't type than a typist who couldn't account. (hee hee hee...I have always thought that was rather funny since I turned into a damn fine accountant.)

But I digress. I consider the time between being able to sit down and get my words out as "brewing" time. It's when I let myself get so into the setting of the scene in my head that when I do write I can almost feel what's happening, almost like I am right there with my characters. It's kinda cool, but it's also a little freaky if I have to wait a while to get to a computer. It's like I have these people in my head talking to me. I know, I know; my family has thought I've heard voices in my head for years. I will admit to one rather strange instance that is what brought all of this up.

A couple of months ago I had the worst migraine of my life. And that is not an exaggeration. It was bad enough that when I went to the doctor a week later, her immediate reaction to my specifics had her scheduling me for an MRI. The MRI was okay and the neurologist cleared me of anything serious. I have never had one that had me wishing I would just pass out to get it over with. In the middle of the pain, throwing up, dizziness, etc, etc, I had an idea for a book. If I concentrated on the idea, the migraine didn't feel as if it was sucking the life out of me at that moment. I focused on the characters, setting, AND THE ENDING, then when I got through all of it my medicine put me to sleep. It was so strange.

When I got up the next day (like 18 hours later), I could still remember it. The whole thing was laid out for me. I could see how I could write it in sections and be done. So that's what I have been doing. Now, it's not like what I have been doing before, well, not exactly like it. Yes, it is a romance. But, no, it is not an explicit romance. It would probably be called a christian romance. Maybe it had something to do with me calling to my maker while my head throbbed, I don't really know why it has to be that way, but it does. And I'm good with that. It will be shorter than other stuff I tried so maybe that will also help it get done. Anyways I just thought I'd post what I was up to.

May the writing bug bite you, too!

Writing Process

From an article about Comic Con in the NYTimes:

Asked by Mr. Lasseter ... about how he goes about creating his stories, the silver-haired Mr. Miyazaki, who appeared both bewildered and mildly amused by the encounter, said: “My process is thinking, thinking and thinking about my stories for a long time. If you have a better way, please let me know.”