By word count alone, I ended up negative today in NSR. I wrote the next new section in Quinn’s POV — braving Melville to do so — and then axed the only section in Dr. Charles Merritt’s POV in the second major draft, which was longer. I also did some shuffling around of character placement. A character needed to die a bit earlier than I planned. Good work, even if the word count doesn’t reflect it.
Then tonight my Amazon order arrived containing The Complete I Ching. I’d bought this book as research for my hero in 7Crows, and whoa, it’s so interesting! I’ve been trying to plot it out, but couldn’t seem to get the pieces to fall into the right order in my mind. So I decided to play out a toss of the coins and see if I could get a plot. I got so many good ideas, it was freaky. I ended up plotting the whole thing tonight.
For example: Tian’s, the hero’s, static trait is that he always consults the coins. The first scene shows him doing this. So naturally, in his darkest moment of betrayal, he checks the coins, and rightfully gets the hexagram 36 – Ming Yi – Brilliance Injured or Darkening of the Light. I was getting ready to move on to the Masquerade, when one line from the description caught my eye: “Hunting in the south, captured the great chief.”
Hmmm. Interesting, I thought. I ended up adding a scene where they do just that — capture the Queen’s right hand man.
This static trait comes back in the first climax, where he distracts someone who knows him well by doing the casting again before “making a decision” when he’s really just buying time. There, he casts 18 – Gu – Worm or Decay. I just love the whole idea of it.
I’m sure I’ll need to do more tweaking, but the outline of plot is here. I still need to think of one crucial item that ties Morghan’s father to the theme, and I need to spend a bit more time making sure her dark moment is appropriately hopeless. Anyway, here is the first draft of the block outline for 7Crows.
Section
Title
POV
001
Tea with the Stars
Morghan
002
Dragon Hid in the Deep
Tian
003
At the Captain’s Table
Morghan
004
Sage Advice
Morghan
005
Promenade
Tian
006
Winged Dance
Morghan
007
Scaled Mask
Tian
008
Fallen Crow
Morghan
009
Lost
Morghan
010
The Crow Queen
Tian
011
Flying in Darkness
Morghan
012
Trap is Sprung
Morghan
013
Dragon Flying Low
Tian
014
Black Feathers
Morghan
015
Bedraggled Crow
Tian
016
Wing to Wing
Morghan
017
Suspicion on the Wing
Morghan
018
Darkening Light
Tian
019
The Queen’s Right Hand
Morghan
020
Masquerade
Tian
021
Tower of Crow
Morghan
022
Consult the Oracle
Tian
023
As the Crow Flies
Morghan
024
Seven Crows
Morghan
My typical section averages around 1K, so this will be right in line for the size requirements. Assuming it doesn’t grow too much in draft…
My number one goal for this month is to continue Revision Xibalba. I looked at the first draft, and I have about 28K remaining. Less if I decide I don’t need to keep Dr. Charles Merritt’s POV (which would be 5 POVs–I tend to think that’s too many, although I love the perspective he gives of Xibalba). I will also add 5-10K for the other subplots that I’ve added, specifically the corresponding Dallas threads.
If this was all I were working on, I’m sure I could finish it this month. However, I’d like to not only write but also polish a new novella this month (7 Crows) for a deadline. I have what I think is a really cool world with characters ready to go. It could be the start of a brand new series. I guess I’ll see how it goes. It’s only 20K or so.
My primary priority will continue to be Revision Xibalba. The project is too close to completion to be derailed by a new project, no matter how bright and shiny. Balance. I need balance this month. If you’ve read long, you know that’s not exactly my strongest trait.
I tend to get just a little obsessed.
For now, I’m going to try to go to bed earlier, get up earlier, and see if Dark & Early can help me hit both goals. To make this even more exciting, I might have some editor revisions this month — which will take immediate top priority.
Also, come back around Valentine’s Day for a Characterization Clinic. I’ll post details this week.
February is shaping up to be a wild and crazy month!
I hope to have some news I can share in the next few days. Stay tuned.
With the Superbowl tonight and basketball yesterday, I wasn’t sure if I’d even come close to my goals.
Last week’s goals:
Character interview at Ginger Simpson’s blog for “Bring a Character to Blog Week” starting today. My post (the interview with Ruin, The Rock) is set to post Tuesday morning. DONE.
Write up some kind of intriguing post for the first Drollerie Press blog tour on 1/31/2009. DONE.
Grow NSR by 13K to make up for shortfall last week. So close: 12,758! I’ll take it.
Plot 7Crows to position myself for a novella month in February. FAIL. I’ve got tons of good characterization done, but haven’t worked any more on the plot.
Goals for this week:
Take a look at my NSR day sheet and decide if I’m going to keep Dr. Charles Merritt’s POV or not. I can’t remember how many scenes of his I kept in the previous 200 pages or so. I also have a timing problem with another character. I planned to have him in Dallas for the final showdown, but events are spinning out faster than I anticipated in revision. He might not make it out of Guatemala, and maybe that’s okay. Dark & Early this morning, I reviewed my day sheet and looked at the revision draft. I’ve only included one section in Charlie’s POV so far. Easy to axe. So for now, I won’t add any more in his POV. If I get to a scene that is missing something because of that, I can always go back and add him later. I may offer those Xibalba scenes later as “DVD extras” or something. Now to figure out Rafe’s timing. I have a feeling he’ll stay put in Guatemala and the story won’t care one way or the other.
NSR: at least another 10K in revision.
Plot 7Crows.
Begin first draft of 7Crows.
I’ll post February goals shortly.
Snippet: Tonight, I edited the midpoint reversal. In fact, my protagonist dies. Sort of. Almost.
Warmth gushed down Jaid’s chest. It took her a moment to realize it was blood. Her blood. There was no pain, just this fountain of red splashing against the black glassy rock. She fought the weariness suffusing her limbs. The knife came down again and she braced for pain, but with a tug, the leather strap of her carryall fell down.
Her notes. He was taking her research, her life’s work.
She struggled to chase him, but she couldn’t control her limbs. Her arms and legs refused to move, as though the puppet strings had been sliced. Madelyn fell to her knees beside her, but Jaid couldn’t make sense of her words. She didn’t hear anything over the roaring in her ears.
Gone. Her research was gone. Too much blood. Dad was trapped. Demons were free because of her research, which was now in the hands of a deranged man willing to do anything to end his torment. Darkness closed in. She fought to keep her eyes open, her mind working, her heart beating. She couldn’t go. Not yet. She still had too much to do.
Hands rolled her over. She blinked hard, forcing her eyes to focus. Ruin leaned over her, his eyes blazing. His lips moved, but she couldn’t hear him. She remembered his mouth, the taste of him, the solid press of his body against hers. He would have rocked her world. Devastated her resolve. Ruined her careful attempts to protect her heart.
Welcome, gentle reader, to the first round of the Drollerie Press Blog Tour, and thank you, Joely Sue, for making me welcome on your beautifully-titled blog. It’s been a while since I dreamed in rhyme, but I did have a serious case of iambic pentameter some years ago. Since escaping from academia, I dream mostly in character.
My second book, Atlantis Cranks Need Not Apply, is about to be released in mid-February. Our editor Deena Fisher, She Who Wears Many Hats, has done a gorgeous job of designing the PDF version. While I was looking it over one more time, rounding up the last of the questionable commas, I was struck by how polished, how real the advance review copy looked. You’d never guess, seeing it now, what the creative process was like for that book. It’s tempting to say I’m about to tell you a tale about the glorious e-publishing revolution, but really, if there’s a moral of the story, it’s one William Blake told us a long time ago: If the fool will persist in his folly, he will become wise.
Not for the first time in my writing life, I began by doing everything wrong.
Some magazine I’d never heard of, which specialized in a genre I don’t read, posted a call for submissions for a kind of story I don’t write. Psychological horror? Not my thing. Usually my eye just passes over a call like that. I’m a partisan for fantasy–epic, urban, sword and sorcery, whatever, as long as fantasy is in there somewhere, but I don’t like being fed fear for fear’s sake.
But the call for submissions asked for “tales of the life interrupted.” The editor didn’t care whether the protagonist’s daily life was normal by anyone else’s standards, they just wanted the protagonist’s ordinary experience to be turned abruptly upside down by something that he or she would find especially horrifying.
What would a modern-day Neo-Pagan, a practicing witch, find more horrifying than anything else, my brain asked itself. And before I could stop it, my brain answered itself by cooking up a character. Why, for any right-thinking, skeptical Wiccan who hates being mistaken for a New Age fluff-bunny white-lighter, there would be nothing more awful than finding out that Atlantis actually existed.
Oh, no you don’t, I said to my brain, we’re in the middle of a rollicking sword and sorcery manuscript. We are not going to wander off and write an urban fantasy with a comic twist.
But it won’t be urban, said my brain. See? We’ll set it on the Jersey Shore. Here’s a snarky divorced accountant who needs to pull her life back together. Now she’s on the beach watching a hurricane blow in. Just you try to resist her!
There was no resisting Jane.
I began by writing pages and pages of dialogue between Jane and her roommate Sophie, who’s also her coven sister, her landlady, her gadfly, an aspiring hippie chick born a generation too late for peace and love. Three days of writing Jane and Sophie convinced me I had to write the story. In another week, they’d introduced me to the rest of Rugosa Coven, and I knew I wouldn’t be getting back to that sword and sorcery novel any time soon.
Jane’s Atlantis story wasn’t going to fit most of the guidelines that inspired it. It wasn’t going to be a horror story, it wasn’t going to suit the temperament of the editor whose call for submissions called it into being. It certainly wouldn’t fit the tiny word count the horror magazine wanted. That’s what I mean when I say I started by doing everything wrong. But the story was going to kick ass.
That’s what I kept telling myself–It’s going to kick ass, Sarah–while I watched the mounting word count.
I always seem to write to the wrong length for market conditions. My first-ever novel, my first trunk manuscript, was an epic fantasy family saga about a democratizing revolution, and it was about the length of the entire Lord of the Rings series. I love that book, but there’s nowhere for a first novel of that length to go. So I got to experience my own bit of psychological horror as Atlantis Cranks Need Not Apply grew past the length that’s (sort of) easy to sell to magazines, then past the length that’s extremely hard to sell to magazines, and then solidly into novella range. Magazines are getting out of the novella business. Big publishing houses have been almost entirely out of the novella business for a long time. I have a sneaking suspicion that the only reason any new science fiction and fantasy novellas still get into print at all is that the Hugo and Nebula Awards have novella categories. Just when I began to hope Atlantis Cranks would grow past the novella stage and expand into a full-fledged novel, the story…how can I describe this?…it took a breath and lived. It was itself, it was no other story but itself, and tripling or halving its length for marketability’s sake would have done it a violence it would not have survived.
Oh, well, I told my brain. Another trunk manuscript. I guess now we pick ourselves up and go back to that sword and sorcery project. Can we make it a nice, round 100,000 words? Everybody loves to see a number like that in the query letter.
My brain promptly responded by cooking up a second Rugosa Coven story, equally irresistible, that weighed in at an even more market-awkward length than the first one. As I had for Atlantis Cranks, I buffed Closing Arguments to a fine polish, even though I was certain I would never find it a home. When I’d dutifully collected rejection slips from every market in the genre that considers novellas, I decided I’d record both pieces as serial podcasts and give them away for free.
Before I made it to the end of the manual for my shiny new podcasting microphone, my wonderful critique partner David Sklar told me about this new small press he’d discovered, one that would consider novellas. David had been wrestled to the ground by a gorgeous novella that refused to get any longer, so he knew what I’d been up against with the Rugosa Coven stories. We ended up getting our acceptances for Closing Arguments and The Shadow of the Antlered Bird from Drollerie Press on the same day.
It’s been an adventure since then, trying to figure out how the new world of e-publishing works when nobody else, not even the big players in the business, not even Amazon, seems to know for sure what rules to play by. It’s been a struggle to work on the third novella in the series, the one that will complete the three-novella print volume that Drollerie Press will release in late 2009, while learning how to be a mother for the first time. It’s been, in the best Blakean sense, folly. I’m persisting. I like to think I’ll be wise sometime soon.
I started waking up at 2:30 a.m. Was wide awake by 3:30 a.m. Finally gave up and decided to be productive. Yeah, I’ve got a few things weighing heavily on my mind, but I had some incredible breakthroughs.
One thing that’s always bothered me about Mama Connagher in Letters to an English Professor: I didn’t have a clear picture of her in my mind. I’ve mentioned doing casting calls before, and if you’ve been reading here long, you know that Conn was always inspired by Clive Owen. In fact, my writing laptop’s desktop is still an image of him from Shoot ‘Em Up. It’s totally the badass Conn, the one revealed when his careful professor veneer peels back, the one that Rae fears–and desires.
Miss Belle and Colonel Healy were always played by Maureen O’Hara and John Wayne in my mind.
Victor, Conn’s older brother, would be perfectly cast as Adrian Paul.
Vicky, I’m not sure yet, but I’ve got a little time to figure her out.
Who, though, was Mama Connagher?
I didn’t know. I also wasn’t sure about her husband. While he’s been dead quite some time, I needed to be able to SEE them together in my mind. I needed to build a history for them beyond the hints that MIss Belle dropped in Letters, and I couldn’t, because I couldn’t see them. WHO was she?
For Mr. Connagher (and you know what, I don’t think I ever decided on his name–I need to fix that), I’d been leaning toward Sean Connery. Or maybe Sam Elliott, because it was his movie Conagher that inspired the family name. I could totally see him as a hard-bitten Texan rancher who could sire the kind of men that Conn and Victor turned out to be (although, to be honest, their mother’s steely core of strength played just as big a role).
Mama remained blurred and indistinct. I need her. I believe she’ll be on page in Victor’s story, and I’d like to weave the family threads together tightly across all three books that I know about. To do it, I need to KNOW her.
Lying awake around 4 a.m., I finally saw her. I can’t find the exact image online (without searching longer than I care to right now) but I don’t need it. It’s etched in my mind. Remember in Gone with the Wind, near the beginning, when Scarlett is dressing for the picnic at Twelve Oaks? She refuses to eat and marches toward the door. Mammy makes a comment about Ashley Wilkes and how a lady can’t go eating like a pig. Certainly Melanie would never do that, right?
Scarlett turns her head and gives THE LOOK to Mammy.
That, my friends, is Virginia Connagher to a T…or rather a “V”.
Most of the night was spent working on my Drollerie Press blog tour post. I wanted to show why I call this blog “dreaming in rhyme” — but I wasn’t feeling particularly poetic.
My favorite thing to do is parody. Take a famous poem, song, even a Bible passage, and change it into something else (like Story Genesis, which I’m going to have to repost since it’s currently gone after the domain transfer last fall). Yet tonight, I couldn’t find the RIGHT poem to warp.
I turned to Gregar, my wicked Shadowed Blood Muse, but he was no help at all. Poetry, after all, is Conn’s area of expertise. He reminded me of a particularly smoldering rendition of “She walks in beauty like the night,” and viola, I had my poem to warp into a “bio” or introduction. It should go up 1/31/2009. I’ll post a link here when it’s up.
I also typed in hardcopy edits in NSR through Chapter Six while watching Tivo’d Hell’s Kitchen and American Idol. Not sure how many pages that is, exactly, since I printed it single-space to save paper. Still have a good 40 pages or so to input.
I also revised the page navigation on the website slightly, consolidating the multiple “Series” pages into a single Bookshelf page. I needed to make room! Let’s see, I have the Connaghers (don’t know if that’s the “series” name, exactly, but it was a starting point). As soon as I finish Revision Xibalba, I’ll have a Maya series. Then there’s the new 7Crows world I’m building. I can’t have a tab in the navigation for each or it’ll get too cluttered. I hate putzing around with html tables, though. I’m never happy with the end result, but the Bookshelf page will do for now.
I’m dreading the Evil Day Job tomorrow. Loooooong phone meeting. I’ll be taking Aleve beforehand to help mitigate the headache of straining to listen and track voices of a rather large group (some strangers, so I won’t be able to recognize their voices as easily) through up to six hours of discussion.
Oh, and if possible, I have a COLD. Yes, I just finished antibiotics for bronchitis, and now the right side of my nose is like concrete and I’m sneezing my ass off! I tried Bethanie’s suggestion of Airborne, and promptly gave myself a mouthful of canker sores (not kidding, 5 on my bottom lip alone) from the high vitamin C dose. Sigh. I guess I’ll have to do it every other day or so until my body gets used to it. Off to blow my nose and early bed to make up for staying up until after 1 AM last night.
Sorry, I ended up getting absorbed in reading an old work last night, and stayed up waaaaay too late. It’s a pleasure to read something from last year that I’ve written, and I have no desire to change yet. Usually I want to grab the red pen and shift sentences around, eliminate words, etc. but I didn’t feel that urge. I’m sure I’ll feel differently once the editor gets ahold of it.
On the other hand, I did do some heavy editing earlier, both yesterday before work and early evening after dinner. I printed out the 52+K version of NSR and made an entire hardcopy pass. I’ve got half of those edits made back in the main file. It was a good opportunity for me to put the threads all back in my head. Sometimes, I can’t see the big picture like I need to. I can’t see if I’m using too much green, or not enough orange, or if the red has been entirely forgotten for 50+ pages. I’m very pleased with this revision so far. It’s tight, the plots weave well, and I left myself itching to hurry up with the next scene already, which is a good thing.
I still need to write something for the Drollerie Press blog tour 1/31. I haven’t been inspired yet. Part of me thinks I should use the opportunity to “dream in rhyme” but the right poem hasn’t hit me yet. I don’t know whether to do a parody, or a hidey-hidey-ho song, or what. We’ll see what I come up with. I’m running out of time!
Watch here for some kind of “characterization clinic.” Details are whirling around in my head. If it works for your schedule, I’m thinking possibly the week of Valentine’s Day? Some kind of “101 Ways to Make Lovable Characters” or something equally cheesy. Even if you just have a few links to share about how to build a living, breathing character, I’d love for you to participate. I’m especially looking forward to anything involving tarot, astrology, numerology, etc. Don’t be intimidated. Published or not, reader, writer, all are welcome to post thoughts, even if you simply want to talk about your all-time favorite character.
I know who my all-time favorite character is. Yeah, he’s one of mine–I’m a writer, I can’t help but choose one of my own. You all know who he is, too. ::cough:: Gregar ::cough::
Although it may surprise you that Conn from Letters to an English Professor is in the running, and not just for his car.
If you have thoughts, ideas, etc. about the characterization clinic, feel free to shout them out!
And great rejoicing was heard all across the land!
At least here in the house when I *finally* finished the scene from Xibalba. Gah. I think those were the hardest 1,158 words in the entire story, and I still have no idea why. Maybe it’s because this scene acts as a wheel hub. It brings in one new sub-thread that wasn’t there before, and must spin it into something new with the old thread that’s still there.
In the end, it was like making gold from hay.
Anyway, moving on, the next scene is existing and only required editing, with some shifting around of chess pieces on the board. The last line in that scene is a killer, and new, so I’m rather pleased with it.
A whopping 602 words to finish off that new scene. FINALLY!
Revisions to 1,230 words. I’d better pick up the pace in a hurry–I’m waaay behind for the week.
Still need to write up something for the blog tour on 1/31. I wrote a poem but it was stupid. Need more thinking.
Snippet:
“Where is [the White Dagger]?”
Ruin shook his head mutely.
She cupped his cheek, her fingers gentle on his face, and she might as well have reached her hand into his chest and stroked his heart. His gaze locked on her smooth, dark cacao eyes. “You can trust me with this knowledge.”
Could he? Staring into her eyes, he wanted to trust her. Every bone in his body ached to believe in her.
Jaid nibbled her lip in thought, her hand still on his face, and every muscle in his body tightened with longing, shocking him. He had not felt such fierce desire for a woman since…
Since his brother had wed the woman he loved, forcing Ruin to watch her as the powerful but unloved Queen until she died in childbirth.
Jaid’s muscles tensed sharply, and then she relaxed so fully she leaned against him as though her knees couldn’t hold her weight. Her eyes met his and he saw the knowledge gleaming in those depths. Ah, what a delight this woman proved to be when she contemplated a puzzle. Gently, he placed his finger across her lips and willed his eyes to speak.
Don’t forget, Gregar and the Rock are over at Ginger Simpson’s blog today. Lots of characters have taken over Ginger’s blog this week for “Bring a Character to Blog” Week!
