And Now for Something Completely Different

I do have regular blogging to catch up on, I know this. And I should be back in the swing of things starting sometime this week, but definitely picking it back up by Monday.

In the meantime, I have to offer up the following as a public service announcement:

The Prisoner is quite possibly the best red wine I have ever had the pleasure of drinking. For those of you who like to imbibe, I cannot recommend this wine enough. It's a steal at $32, really. For those of you who are under age or allergic to sulfites, I weep for you.

Some history: On Valentine's Day in 2004, Mark and I splurged went to the Boulder Cork as we had just earned some unexpected winnings on a weekend gambling trip in the Rockies. We had a bottle of The Prisoner (2003 vintage) that night and were delighted to discover that the local liquor mega store was one of the few places in the country that stocked this label. We indulged as often as we could spare the money from then on. Then on Saturday as we were buying wine and cheese and other vittles for our delayed Valentine's Day dinner this year, Mark said, "Ohmigod, Kellie, look behind you." I turned and saw The Prisoner on display. Yes, it put as a bit above what we had intended to spend on the meal, but neither of us complained a single bit. We finished the bottle last night and were quite sad that we didn't have another to uncork. But now that we know we can get it regularly again, we'll be budgeting for it and drooling until we can pick up another bottle.

Seriously, if you like red wine, you've gotta try this stuff.

Permission Slip

I, Kellie Hazell, do hereby give myself permission to write complete and utter crap in the composition of any and all first drafts of any and all works of fiction I commit to digital space, notebooks, looseleaf paper (wide and college ruled), note cards, sticky notes, and any other surface deemed suitable for the purpose of writing from this point forward until such time as I decide to revoke said permission or until the end of the world.

Crap shall be defined as any or all of the following:

1. Prose that contains any or all of the following: poor word choice, spelling mistakes, grammar mistakes, passive voice, repetition, cliches, and any other wince-inducing construction of words not listed herein.


2. Characters who are inconsistent, stereotypical, annoying, angst-ridden, whiny, and behave in any manner that is readily conducive to acting out the story that is playing in my head.


3. Plot points that are obvious, overdone, unimaginative, boring, repetitive, and in any other way shorthand for the story trying to make its way out of my thick skull.


4. Descriptions of scenery, machinery, technology and job expertise that are sketched or heavily reliant on hasty googling or wiki, or that are completely lacking in anything but the barest of bones.


5. Narratives that do not adhere to any traditional or uncoventional means of logically laying out a story.


6. Any other crime against the English language and art of storytelling that in any way assists with the translation of the story in my head to a draft that can be improved into a saleable novel.

Signed digitally by the author, one Kellie Hazell of http://khazell1.blogspot.com.

Witnessed by The Internet this Fifteenth day of February in the year Two Thousand and Eight.

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Feel free to replicate this, add to it, detract from it, rail against it, and comment on this permission slip as you see fit. You can even forge your muse's signature if you are not the responsible party in your writing process.

Random Thoughts Make a Less Insane Post

Lots of rest and quasi-relaxation (more on this below) on top of surviving the DDJ and RWA insanity of last week went a long way toward making things feel more normal this week. Of course, I still haven't written any fiction yet, but that will change tonight. (Actually it could have changed last night, but I decided to take one night just for me as the quasi-relaxation didn't count.) So, on with the randomness.

Potty training is a strange road. Right now Drew thinks it's all a game and hasn't quite figured out that he can do his business in the potty in addition to sitting on it and playing with toilet paper.

After years of working with Celeron processors and above, Pentium 4 feels like moving through molasses, especially when trying to use Office 2007. I miss my old laptop.

I read 9 books in 10 days as a judge in a romance contest. I didn't have to read them so quick, but I found that reading for a contest feels more like a responsibility than fun and didn't like having all those books hanging over my head. Plus, romances tend to read very fast for me, so it was just easier this way. That being said, it was fun to get 9 free books and breeze through them all in the name of service to a writing organization. I signed up to do this again next year.

Related to the above, it is apparently a Bad Thing to have a heroine utter "Shit!" The preferred expletive is "Crap!" I find this word wholly unsatisfying as a single utterrance to express any emotion beyond a desire not to seem coarse. In fact, the only context in which I use the word crap is in full sentence, usually along the lines of "this is a piece of crap" and even then I tend to opt for the much more satisfying substitute of shit. But I have noticed that I am in the minority of women in this word usage preference (at least based on the books we choose to read). This is not the only word choice difference I seem to have with the female majority, but that is another post and one that requires a certain amount of bravery on my part as the words are rather loaded and my grandmothers read this blog.

February Hasn't Magically Wiped the Slate Clean

Life continues in the mad, frenetic swirl that was SOP in January. I have discovered exciting new technical problems such as my LCD monitor suddenly not working and my DDJ applications on the new work laptop suddenly not working. I've spent several hours today working with my IT department via phone, email, and them hijacking my system to get the latter one resolved.

Meanwhile, Drew and I both picked up some sort of cold during the recent travel, the ortho specialist is re-ordering an MRI (like we couldn't see that one coming) and telling me to see a PT, diagnosing me with, essentially, a lack of abdominal muscles. (C-section killed 'em, motherhood prevented me from getting 'em back in shape, and the rest of my body started compensating to try and protect my back and spine; the hips finally decided to get pissed at this arrangement.) I've been slaving away to my RWA responsibilities this week, fighting a new computer environment as I do it, realizing my learning curve is steeper than I had thought. Oh, and I haven't written a word of fiction since January 13th.

Me? Cranky? No. I'm unraveling at this point.

The Thigh Bone's Connected to the Hip Bone

Back in September/October, I started getting very bad hip pain every now and then in the evenings. Over a period of three weeks or so, I realized the pain showed up every time I carried the Drew Monster for more than a couple of minutes during the day or if I stood or walked a lot. So I made a conscious effort to limit my Drew carrying time and take more breaks during walks and long periods of standing. The pain mostly went away, flaring up much less often and only as a dull ache as I went to bed.

Then in late December/early January, that dull ache turned into something more pronounced at night and started happening every night and made it very hard to get to sleep. I decided it was time to go see the doctor. She did some poking and prodding and determined I likely had bursitis. She took some X-rays, gave me a steroid injection in my hip to get to work on the inflammation and put me on some NSAIDs. By that night, the pain was gone, having been replaced by a creeping numbness along my legs. Nothing too startling, just a bit of that "pins and needles" thing you get after a a limb's "gone to sleep". Still, it didn't seem normal, and the last time I had numbness like that, I had to have surgery on my knee, so back I went to the doctor. She muttered something about sciatica, ordered an MRI, and decided it was time to hand me off to an orthopedic specialist.

My insurance first approved the MRI and the specialist, so I got everything arranged for me to take my Happy Pills and get stuffed into the terrifying tube this past Friday. The day before my appointment, my insurance suddenly decided to deny my claim. I'm fairly certain they only nixed the MRI at this point, but I haven't heard anything back from the orthopedics guy, so they might have pulled the plug there too.

Meanwhile, my hip is feeling weaker and I'm compensating for it by using my quads more and more (not necessarily a bad thing; my thighs could use some toning), and straining my other hip. That's right, now my other hip is starting on the same journey the problematic one began last year. Sigh. I really miss the health insurance I had back in Colorado. And I'm beginning to regret trying to get this resolved as at least before I knew exactly how the pain worked and how to live around it, even if it did disrupt my sleep. That pain was easier to manage than this weak leg phenomenon. Drew and I are going back to Colorado for the DDJ tomorrow and I'm a bit worried that my hip will choose a very inopportune time to give out while we're there.

The last I knew, I was scheduled to see the ortho guy in a week and a half. Here's hoping my body holds itself together until then.

Another Reason January Can't End Fast Enough

Just heard back about PPR. Rejected. In standard from letter fashion.

Sigh.

Now to figure out where to send it next and get back on track with THUMB.

Actually, I'm going to get to that tomorrow or Sunday. Tonight, I think I might just let myself wallow a bit by acting like a slug in front of the TV with my Friday night shows and the bag of Hershey's Chocolate Truffle Kisses Mark got for me yesterday after frustrations with health insurance (a bit of fun from this month that I have not mentioned at all on the blog, actually; more later). Oh, and a glass or two of Bailey's might be involved.

Then I'll start figuring out where to ship PPR next and start progress on THUMB again.

Is It February Yet?

Gah, this month has been nuts. Some of it great, some of it utter crap, most of it hitting fast and furious to know the difference. And the reprieves I've gotten have come in the form of adding more aggravation with delays and extra paperwork and whatnot. My downtime doesn't feel like it and the busy times get eclipsed by the new twists that come after I finally get something accomplished.

Add to this the fact that the only computer in the house is in the family room surrounded by, well, family and distractions and I can't seem to summon up the energy to do anything computer related, even simply answering email. This will change when I get my work computer back and can set up my office again. Of course, I have to go back to Colorado with the Drew Monster in tow to get said work computer fixed, which is just par for the course this month.

So. Not so much with the posting until February, assuming things settle a bit. To entertain you while I struggle with Interesting Times, I direct you to my sidebar and it's bountiful links to writers who are great fun to read no matter the medium. In particular, I'd like to point out a new addition to the link list: Carol Berg's solo blog effort, Text Crumbs. She's just landed a three-book deal with Roc for a new fantasy world series, and it sounds very interesting. She's detailing her process for the very early-going of a book in a new universe, and it makes for great reading.

Go forth and read!

In Lieu of Actual Content

Because I am deep in IT Hell trying to replace the laptop I oh-so-stupidly spilled water on (no data was lost; gotta love external hard drives and file servers), and the only working computer in the hosue now is the Frankenputer that my mom's boyfriend resurrected from three non-functional computers, blogging is going to be light. Great timing on the writing front: a story out on submission and the next project in the throes of "hmm, maybe it'll work better if I switch it to first person POV" analysis. Not so great timing with the DDJ, but what can you do.

So, here are some neat takes on the whole Cassie Edwards plaigarism scandal because I certainly don't want to spend any time rehashing it in a clever fashion.

One of the plaigarized authors in question responds. (Warning: Tolme is understandably miffed and suffering form a case of cognitive dissonance as to the context of appropriated words. He dumps on the entire romance genre in addition to his warranted snark at Ms. Edwards. I can't really fault him for it. If that sort of attitude toward romance in general ruffles your feathers, you might want to read with caution.)

Another romance writer got tired of having to explain the hoopla to others and resorted to putting everything in context of a Greek tragedy (complete with wailing chorus!).

It's a bit more serious, but a really neat essay on admiring someone else's work and using it to improve your own writing rather than just taking the words and grafting them.

On an interesting related note, I once read a book in which the author plaigarized one of her pseudonyms. The author was a friend of a friend, so I looked up her books at the used book store so I could tell my friend that I had read the author. I found two books: one a regency and one a western and each under a different pseudonym. I read the regency first, thought it good enough to warrant reading the western, and started on the second book. The plot was lifted pretty much wholesale. Entire scenes were copied between one book and the other with just a search and destroy for details like character & place names and hair color, etc. This was over five years ago, just as I was getting started in my own writing endeavors. I was disgusted but didn't really think about anything beyond getting rid of the books and never reading anything by that author again. I've since forgotten the author's names and the titles of the books. If I had encountered this today, knowing what I know now about publishing, I would've certainly written to the publisher. I might've written to the author and/or agent, too. I can't imagine putting it on the internet, but then it's not like I'm a poster for a very popular romance review site. Maybe one day I'll do some research into the books and author and see if I can get the particulars again, but it's a bit of an odd situation: she recycled her own words, not someone else's.

Greater than the Sum of the Parts

The Drew Monster loves to take things apart. He'll dump puzzles and his bag of blocks onto the floor. Then he'll mix all the parts together. He's not very interested in sorting through the mess. He just likes to stir it up. This could be another side of his fascination with cooking, or it could be some other neat quirk of his personality showing itself.

No matter why he does this, it makes for messy living rooms and very long cleanup times. But, hey, with all the puzzles he dismantles and abandons for me to put back together, I certainly have brushed up on my ABCs, my shapes, my animals....

Wiped Out

I'm toast for the weekend, I think. I do want to get back into THUMB and make sure I've put together some sort of plan of attack for the thing, but I need a break. So I'm going to take a nice long hot shower, curl up in a warm fuzzy robe, and fall into Carol Berg's latest, Breath and Bone. I might let myself take off tomorrow as well.

Deadline Vanquished

I can't do anything the stress-free way. I was drafting up my email to the publisher in which I introduced myself and my story and would attach my synopsis and novella. A strange series of funky keystrokes sent my email on its way after I had only sketched out two sentences and before I had attached anything. I damn near had a heart attack. So I had to hurry my way through the full email and the last few reviews of things I wanted to do to send a complete submission off as soon as possible after my stupid incomplete thing.

I feel like such an idiot.

I'm really trying not to let this mar the high I've been on with this story this week, but it's very hard. Mostly because it just seems like a bad omen.

Grr. Stupid technology.

Bright side: PPR is off on submission and I am free to return to sanity and THUMB. And there was much rejoicing.

Synopsis is Done

Well, it's just squeaked in the 3 page limit. In the course of getting it from 5+ pages down to those 3, I'm not sure there's much more editing I could do to the thing. But I'll set it aside and give it a look-see tomorrow during Drew's nap.

Now I've got those last few bits of revisions to do, which I should be able to finish up tonight. I'm hoping that everything will be off to the publisher before the day ends tomorrow. That's two days before the deadline, hoo-rah. Then I have to wait three weeks for the verdict. My hopes are really running strong with this one, and the comments from both Mark and my critique partner have been very positive. This story feels like it is The One. And if it isn't (at least not for this publisher), then I'm still going to be very happy with my effort. I've really come far with my process with PPR, and I'm looking forward to applying what I've learned to my other projects.

Thank You, Scalzi

Inadvertently I'm sure, John Scalzi reminds me why I'm writing THUMB with all of that hair metal stuff. He and many others who recall (often with pain) those big hits will, I think, enjoy my book. Now to finish the damn thing.

*Eyes PPR deadline*

Almost free of it.

Process Examination #17: Stepping Around the Steaming Infodump

I've become allergic to infodumps. Nothing makes me feel more patronized as a reader than an infodump. "See here," the author is saying, "this is how this bit of worldbuilding works and connects with the story." I'd rather figure it out from context, thankyouverymuch.

I'm not sure when the allergy started, but I stopped using infodumps in my writing very early on. Unfortunately, I didn't learn a decent replacement technique to get vital character backstory and/or worldbuilding information across to the reader. Thus, the most consistent complaint I get in the first chapter or two deals with not understanding the odd references characters are making to each other about something that happened in the past or being perplexed by whatever geewhiz element of worldbuilding I shoved into the early going.

Yes, of course I ran into this with PPR. My frist critique contained several "Huh, wha?" reactions to my protagonist's job and to the broader world I established and to the basic rudiments of the paranormal element central to the story. I'm happy to report that, with just a sentence or two in dialog that did not in anyway resemble "as you know, Bob," questions about my protag's job became a non-issue for Mark. Alas, the paranormal element and the broader world details were still fuzzy for him. For the former, Mark and I figured out exactly where he got fuzzy and that adding a mere two words solved the problem. For the latter, Mark kept saying, "you need to explain that" and I kept saying "no" because I will not knowingly commit infodump. I quickly figured out a way around the problem in general but then had to struggle with the specifics.

Well, I figured out the specifics in a way that shouldn't add more than 100 words to the story and enhances the connection to the worldbuilding in a very nice way. Also, the fix is a nice segue into PPR: Novella the Second, which, if PPR sells, will be nice to have either well-outlined or underway should I happen to nab a multi-project contract out of the sale. I also have broad outlines for three other stories in this same universe (one is the third story in the current PPR timeline to complete a little trilogy, one is a prequel to this trilogy, and one--which I have rather a bit more outlined as I was working on it in a completely different capacity until I realized it hooks up well with this universe--is the backstory to how the paranormal element PPR universe came to be). So, success with the informing without infodumping, at least in theory.

Pantsless Drew

The boy is trying to start a fashion trend. For his nap time, we've been taking off his pants to make sleeping more comfortable for him. Lately, he doesn't feel the need to put his pants back on when he wakes up from his nap. Unless we have to leave the house, he spends many the afternoons running around in his diaper and a shirt. The house is usually warm enough (or he's usually active enough) that it's not a big deal.

Last week, Drew decided that his new PM outfit needed a twist. He demanded he wear socks and shoes without pants. He's quite taken with his New Clothes. As if the removal of his pants made walking a whole new experience, the Drew Monster will clomp around in his socks and shoes, staring at his feet. He walks backwards, he walks in circles. He steps with great care and precision, watching the movement of his legs without those pesky pants.

Even more amusing is how he handles the clothing requirements for going out of the house. In Pantsless Mode, he'll come up to me and say, "Car!" or "Out!" I then explain that he has to put his pants on if he wants to go in the car or outside. Drew considers this and says, "No," and finds something more amusing in the house to entertain him.

Of course, because I'm such a loving mother, I will be getting a picture of this attempt at influencing fashion for that Special Album of similiar photos to show Drew's special someone later in life.

Done and Done

I actually finished the type-in about 2.5 hours ago, but then it was right on to dinner and time with the fam and getting Drew to bed, so I didn't get my update posted right at the end.

I even went through and did a search and destroy for my junk words like even, just, really, much, etc. Trimmed a good 100 words that way. My story's word count is 28K, which is closer to the 30K upper limit of the subopp than I would like, but not egregiously so. And, dammit, I just remembered that I didn't run spell check on the stupid thing. Grrr.

Mark is reading the thing now while watching the Amazing Race. I need to update my outline to take into account the Brand New Shiny Ending and do a couple of scene analyses to make sure I didn't shoot myself in the foot with the new stuff. I actually enjoy this, usually, and I think my brain still has enough juice in it to manage. I'd really like to get this last little bit done tonight so my muse can munch and chew on the new stuff and make sure I haven't missed any holes or such.

Here's hoping Mark gives it a thumbs up, or at least gives me helpful feedback so I can fix the broken bits by the end of the week.

I am still a little stunned that the first week of 2008 has been this nuts with the deadlines.

Progress

I've been typing away for about two hours now, and I have gotten about a third of the way through the manuscript. Yay! Of course, as I go through my changes, I'm swinging back to "gee, doesn't this stink" and that's not a fun place to be. Just gotta push through, get this done and see what Mark thinks about it, since I don't have enough distance from this thing to assess it anymore.

Onward to the next two-thirds of the MS.

Nuts.

Because I always try to get a five minute internet procrastination out of my system before I sit down to a document, I checked my email before I began the type-in. And, because Murphy is just such a swell guy, there was the last item I needed for my RWA chapter's newsletter. So I had to work on that, which I just finished. Seeing as how I've been sick and tomorrow it's my turn to wake up with El Boyo Diablo, I'm not going to push my way through a type-in tonight.

I'll lock myself in my office tomorrow and do it.

And then on Monday I will knock the stuffing out of a synopsis. Boo-yah.

Huzzah!

I have finished the last word of my revised ending. Now for the type-in, which will be extensive as the last forty pages of the original draft contain many many many revisions and directions to hand-written text in a notebook and on backs of pages and keep this bit of dialog but not that one and this little snippet goes over here now and the one that was there goes on this page. And so on.

After the Drew Monster is in bed, I will sit down to type it all up. Hopefully I will get rid of the suck that sneaked its way into the hand-written stuff as I type it up. I shall post my progress on that tonight. I'm planning on the post going along these lines: "Type-in finished. Suck mostly dead. Off to bed now."

Bleh

This shouldn't surprise me, seeing as how Murphy's Law lately has had greater applications in my life than Newton's law of universal gravitation.

Staying up until 2AM the other night to finish a book as a way to assert my control over life's little insanities was not a good idea. Life dished it right back to me: I've had a low-grade fever ever since. I felt mostly OK, just a little tired, until yesterday when tired snowballed into "leave me a lone, a freight train just hit me" exhausted. And I seem to be working up to that level again today. Meanwhile, I have a deadline for my RWA chapter today/tomorrow and, oh yeah, there's that silly novella I'd like to finish revising so I can beat my head against a wall about the synopsis sometime before that project's Jan 13th deadline.

I'm off to see if a shower with one of my perkier scented body washes can invigorate me a tad more. Then I shall bury myself in my office and finish PPR and type in my changes. I will be working on the synopsis tomorrow. So take that, Life.

Four Things Make a Post

It's not quite a meme but a commonly used frame I've seen a lot recently, and as my brain is somewhat mushy (see below), it seemed a good concept to explore.

1. Sometimes when life hands you a lot of tiny stresses, a couple of big ones (including watching someone you care about spiral), some unexpected deadlines and a few bits of internal wonkiness, the brain needs a night to say, "OK, screw this. Give me a book to fall into and let's finish it." So I stayed up until 2AM reading a book. It was a very absorbing read (even given that because I'm deep in revision mode with PPR, I was tightening prose and cutting words and looking for ways around infodumps and such) and I still managed to get four solid hours of deep sleep. Overall, I'm actually feeling somewhat refreshed. Certainly a little less overwhelmed by life's current level of insanity.

2. I went to the local Social Security Administration office today (for why, see below), and just with catching random snippets of the stories of the other folks there, I was reminded of just how much I couldn't handle a job like that. Which got me thinking about my very short stint as a public school teacher. I may have eased up on what used to be obsessive perfectionism, but I still haven't managed to deal with my empathy. Not having a tight reign on empathy in a job like that will suck you dry very quickly.

3. It's a long-standing joke in my family that my mother can never remember my birthday. Usually this manifests in not sending a card or calling (or, as happened once, forgetting when she did actually call on my birthday that it was my birthday and talking of other things). It's very funny when she tries to tell other people when my birthday is or if my brother the prankster decides to needle her and ask. She's gotten the day, the month, and the year wrong (sometimes all at once) during those instances. We all assumed this was something that started when she completely forgot to pick up me and my brother on my 15th birthday. (We were abandoned without money in the pre-cellphone era in a donut shop; when we finally managed to call, her reaction was comical: "Hi, honey. Why are you--oh.") So imagine my surprise when, after learning that we can't file taxes on-line because my birthdate didn't match what we entered, I examined a recent SSA mailing and saw that I was apparently born 3 days earlier than I had thought on June 12th. (This is actually the birthday of one of my mother's brothers.) See, when my mother applied for my Social Security card back in the mid-80s, she listed my birthday incorrectly. I'm surprised that it's taken over twenty years for this to affect me, but it's all fixed now. Now we have proof that, as early as 1986, my mother couldn't remember the date she gave birth to me. I have ribbed her well for this. Sadly, though, this could be a genetic phenomenon as I have managed to completely space her birthday (and it was the big 5-0, even). And I wasn't trying to give as good as I got, honestly.

4. I managed a most excellent pork roast last night by dumping a can of beef broth into a 9x13 baking dish, splashing a bit of Worchestershire sauce in there, tossing in a few cloves of garlic and some potatoes and onions and carrots and celery, and plunking a pork roast into the mix. I should've basted the thing, but I wasn't really expecting it to take 80 minutes to cook; thankfully it didn't dry out all that much. I made a very nice gravy by pouring the resulting broth/juice mixture into a roue. Apparently, I can cook things other than pasta sauce from a jar without a recipe.

2008: Goals for Me

As 2008 kicks off today, it's probably a good idea to get my goals for the year posted. Gets things started on the right note. I tend to have one-word goals for each year that aim at encapsulating the essence of my longer-winded ones. For 2007, the word was "focus." I promptly forgot about this noble idea during the first month of the year, but, looking back, I somehow kept that word with me. I did manage to focus on improving myself and my writing by actually getting to and trying to correct the stuff that was keeping me scatterbrained and three steps behind.

That being said, I came nowhere near to meeting the goals I actually detailed for the year. For the sake of my mental well-being--and to keep from derailing this post into a pat on the back for all that I did accomplish in 2007--I'm not going to analyze those specific goals and rate my success and failure.

So, onward to what I plan to accomplish in 2008, with my one-word theme being "open-minded."

Health:
Mark and I are both on a health kick to lose some of our excess weight and tone up the flab. We have been inspired by our svelt and spry son who isn't going to take kindly to our wheezing and moaning when he wants to run and climb and hike and swim and bike and whatever fool activity he takes a shine to. I've managed to find about 2-3 mornings every week (though the holidays derailed it recently) when I could do a Denise Austin workout from the always replenished 5 episode stash in my DVR. Drew has enjoyed working out along side me or simply watching the way I contort myself. Mark is going to get back into running. And we're both cutting out the junk food snacks as much as possible (with the exception of those holiday candies and cookies that are still hanging around, calling to us with their delicious caloric content).

If I can lose 10 pounds, great. If I can get the flab to stop dripping over my C-section scar, sweet. If all I manage is to do the workouts more often than not, I'll be happy with that. Spare time is a bit too precious a commodity at the moment to guilt myself into running myself ragged with demanding diet and exercise regimens. Once Drew is a little older, maybe.

As for the mental health, I managed to obsess my way into a breakthrough. That is, I got all hot and bothered about something for a month or so and really drove myself and Mark nuts about it. Then I sat down and forced myself to figure out why I was obsessing, the real deep-seeded reason. Figuring that out made the obsession laughable and dismissable and cleared away much of the other looniness I decided to exhibit in the months before. (Also, there might have been some interesting hormonal shenanigans involved; women's health, ain't it grand?) Since then, I've felt like a new person, being mostly sane or at least fully aware of the bits of me that aren't and able to deal accordingly. My goal here to just keep this trend going.

Motherhood:
This is the year for potty-training the Drew Monster. And watching his speech patterns closely to figure out if he's going to be a late talker or if he might need assistance with that whole talking thing. Also, I want to find better ways to keep him occupied during my work hours.

Reading:
I read at least 35 books this year. (I didn't think to start tracking them until June, so I had to rely on a spotty memory of the early part of the year to count what I read before June.) I'd like to read at least that many next year, though I'm not going to push myself to do it. Most of my reading time depends on whether the Drew Monster is keen on letting me bury my nose in a book while he plays. He very understandably doesn't care to let me do this but once or twice a month, particularly as he already has to play without me while I'm home working.

I'm glad I started tracking my book totals and my impressions of the books I read. It's just a simple spiral-bound notebook with quick little half-pages about what I think worked or didn't work and why. But, as I discovered with notebooking for my writing process, it does keep things better organized in my mind and cement some details that are worth noting for my own writing improvement. And it allows me to confidently report this:

Best 3 Reads of 2007 (in no particular order): Flesh and Spirit by Carol Berg, Survival by Julie Czerneda, and Territory by Emma Bull.

Most Interesting Reading Discovery of 2007: There is a publishing house that consistently disappoints me, no matter the line/genre. Of the dozen books of theirs I've read over the past couple of years, I've only really enjoyed 2, thought 4 were flawed but mostly OK, and wanted to write "what were you thinking" letters to the authors, agents, and editors regarding the remaining 6.

Books in my To Be Read Pile That I Will Definitely, Absolutely, No Excuses Read in 2008: Poison Study by Maria V Snyder, Maelstrom by Peter Watts, Blind Lake by Robert Charles Wilson, Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A Heinlein, Old Twentieth by Joe Haldeman, and Lost Discoveries: The Ancient Roots of Modern Science--from the Babylonians to the Maya by Dick Teresi. I hope to read more than that, but I always end up adding to my TBR pile and picking the new and shiny or developing odd quirks in what I want to read at any given moment, so I think 6 is a good goal. (This is sad, given that I have over 80 books to go through in the pile.)

Writing:
Now we come to the real heart of the goals. I really do want to finish a book this year, but I'm hesitant to make a push for it and list it as a concrete goal. Why? Because I've never met this goal since I finished Human Dignity several years ago. It's starting to get me twitchy and depressed. Having said that, though, I think I've figured out enough of my process and ticks that I can finish a draft of THUMB by the end of the year. I think I can also finish revisions, too, but I don't want to jinx myself. At any rate, that's going to be the book I focus on finishing this year.

Unless, of course, I sell PPR and the editor loves it so much that she requests the other 4-5 stories I've got on tap for that universe and/or expresses interest in that odd zombie romance that's brewing. Then I'll have to sit down and examine my time and my goals and figure out how much I can give to The Pseudonym without derailing my science fiction and fantasy. Wouldn't that be an interesting pickle?

Seriously, all of my writing goals beyond finishing a draft of THUMB have to wait until I hear back about PPR in February. Because I don't want to work on any assumptions there, and there are several different ways it could pan out to impact my writing. So I'm going to post my actual, official goals sometime in February. That being said, there's a science fiction short (total word count could go as high as 20K) that I've been kicking around for a while and really want to write as it's a fun, unique idea and I think very saleable to several excellent SF markets. I would like to get that done and submitted somewhere by the end of the year.

And, no matter what happens with PPR in February, I can state one very concrete and acheivable goal. I want to continue the process examination and keep applying what I learn about myself from that. I hope that by the end of the year, I'll know even more about how I write that I can craft goals and establish a more disciplined routine in 2009 to increase my writing output without sacrifcing quality.

2007: The Blog In Review

I had fun putting together some of my fave posts of the year in 2006, so I figured why not do it again, even if it does smack of the severest form of navel-gazing? Then I actually started with January and was reminded that 2007 contained a good deal of sadness and unpleasantness. So be warned: it's bumpy in the early-going.

It's a Bitter Pill to Swallow:
My grandfather loses his three-year-long battle with cancer.

Mark loses his job, then he gets it back, then I have a work hiccup, then everyone else at Mark's company loses their jobs, then Mark's company wins an award for small-business growth and one for bringing biotech to the Phoenix area, then Mark's company moves to San Diego. (I don't think I ever blogged about it, but Mark did get another job without any downtime. He's now in an industry-academia hybrid at ASU and loving it. Much more stable with awesome bennies, which includes nearly free courses for the both of us and substantially reduced tuition for Drewbie.)

When It Comes to the Breaks, Look to the Reason You Keep at It:
Drew the Climber, Drew the Poison Taster, Drew the Escape Artist, Drew the Kisser, Drew the Amphibian, Drew the Digger, Drew the Two-Year-Old, Drew the Candy-giver, Drew the Chef

When the Going Gets Tough, Figure Out Where You Went Wrong:
This year, I began to examine why I struggled with certain things in life and writing and reading, being sure to take the time to snark and explain and warn and laugh heartily along the way.

I'm curious as to what narratives will frame next year's best posts. Here's to an exciting journey toward figuring that out.

Season's Greetings!

I've got a few precious hours to see about steamrolling my way through the rest of the PPR revisions before we have to pack and then it's on to my mother's for an early Christmas dinner. We'll get back, send Drewbie to bed, and Mark and I will snuggle up together to watch Love Actually, which has somehow become our holiday movie of choice. And tomorrow we're off to the airport in the morning to work our way to Buffalo. We'll get back just in time next weekend for me to do a year in review and throw together my goals for 2008. Oh, and write that intro letter and synopsis for PPR so I can send it off for mad praise and publication.

If you're traveling as well, be safe. If you're not, stay warm and cozy with those you love--or their hearts and voices, if you won't be with them. I hope 2007 finishes well for you and that you are ready to tackle another year with all your hopes and dreams.

Pushed Past the Block

For a night, at least. I've been struggling to get back into a groove with revisions even though I've mapped out a whole bunch of things that will guide me through to the last page. Every time I sat down to hack and slash my way through the draft, I would look at the first line in the next scene I had to tackle and freeze, if it was during Drew's nap. Or my brain would decide that was a good time to liquefy if it was at night. The mushy brain happened three nights in a row, which really pissed me off. What is mushy brain? Well, usually, when I prod some higher thought processes from my brain, I have a mental conversation that goes roughly like this:

ME: Ping.

MY BRAIN: Currently left on your to do list for the day: clean up table, wash dishes, tidy Drew's toys, sit at desk and work on revisions. The scene you'll work on first involves the first turning point for your protagonist, so you want to make sure you tighten the conflict and connect better it with her decision that propells her into a new direction for Act 2, and in Act 2, you've made the supporting characters a bit too cooperative with that new direction, so you'll have to work on that as those scenes come at you. Also, you're feeling a bit chilly in general this evening, so be sure to grab your fuzzy slippers when you put on your pajamas.

What a lovely response to my ping. A quick rundown of things that some part of my brain is always monitoring and tracking so the rest of it doesn't have to. Now, when I have mushy brain, the conversation goes a little like this:

ME: Ping.

MY BRAIN: Uh, wha? Is dinner done already? Did we eat meatloaf or chicken soup? Soup is yummy, and warm, and tasty, and...

ME: Ping!

MY BRAIN: Oh, right. Dinner is done. Um. Dishes? No, table looks to be cleared. How the hell did that happen? Maybe Mark did it? Is he putting Drew to bed, or are they in the shower? You need a shower too, get all warm. Use that Winter Candy Apple body wash and lotion and...

ME: PING!

MY BRAIN:...and after you smell all clean and Christmas-y, there's that dungeon chapter in Final Fantasy X-2 that you want to beat, level up all those dresspheres, though maybe you should just start all over from the beginning because that's a fun story, especially when you get to the chasing Chocobos part. Was there a better ending than the one you saw?

ME: PING! PING! PING! PING!

MY BRAIN: OK. Revisions. There's a scene that needs some work.

Long Pause.

ME: Ping?

MY BRAIN: You know, that scene. You should fix it. Make it tie in with the rest of the arc better.

Another Long Pause.

ME: Ping.

MY BRAIN: What are you bothering me for? You're the one who figured a few things out this afternoon. Didn't you write them down?

ME: Ping!

MY BRAIN: Come on! It was the thing with the arc with the conflict. You know, and then the love interest said the bit that tied into the first scene. And it all comes together and viola! A complete, fabulous revision!

ME: PING! DAMMIT, PING!

MY BRAIN: Isn't that what you wanted?

ME: ...

MY BRAIN: Maybe you should just curl up in bed and put on a Firefly episode. Oooh! Maybe the one where Simon takes his shirt off?

But, finally, last night, I conquered this loop. For one scene. Now I'm going to tackle the revisions again, and hopefully I can carry on with the momentum from last night. At any rate, it feels good not to be stuck in the same place.

THUMBonsai

In composing another post, I happily reminded myself about the Bonsai Story Generator. I had fun with it for SoZ, and I figured it would be good for THUMB. Here are the highlights:

Thematic Goodness:
Vin's gone.
That had to deal with Sela.
Let's hope they grieved in the first place.
Elzie reached out of denial.
She turned away the possibility of death.

A Healthy Dose of WTF:
Anger made it with a mechanic.
Her simple black dress had distracted her head.
The woman shook her own ears.
Elzie opened her body.
The woman shook her tone dry and turned to Vincent Merror's wishes, the solar flare warning system wouldn't have been trampled in the first place.
Then she turned to face flushed with SamCon, denial all over lunch?
He hadn't liked her head.

Simply Intriguing:
Muted was only appropriate for access to the appropriately compassionate woman.
Let's hope they don't mind the possibility of curvy, sultry beauty. Next to touch the woman behind her.
You're going to want to give them as they don't mind the break in.
Cremated, yes, the power of our business.
Forget a venue for word to examine the bones.

Stalling? Me?

It's hard to tell if today's distraction is part of my insanity regarding PPR or my outright terror over what to do with THUMB. However, it did make for an entertaining morning.

It started with a dream, as a good amount of writing inspiration is wont to do. My dream was about zombies (represented by Lurch, for some reason) and how a friend and I were holed up in an abandoned hotel room as our food supply (represented by a bar of chocolate) dwindled. Coworkers (nobody I know, actually) joined us, and there was much rejoicing in discovering we were not the last non-zombies left on Earth (represented by gathering around the Xbox that the room's previous occupant had left behind, no doubt as part of his zombie-fugue). Then one of the coworkers and I decided to scavenge through the hotel to see if we could find any more cool things (like a Wii or maybe, I dunno, food other than chocolate). Surprisingly, we found a terrified father and son hiding out in another room. The son, a teenager, donned an angsty attitude right quick, which the coworker felt compelled to rectify. This left me to check out the lobby area nearby, whereupon I discovered Lurch trying to nonchalantly get some towels. I called out to him, and suddenly the hotel went black. Cue sound of mass zombie attack.

It wasn't a particularly scary dream, but I had it toward the end of my sleep, and that's usually when I can exert a little narrative power on my dreams. These scenes were coming at me with some backstory, with links to related imagery that enhance the story, and with possibilities for conflict between the characters running around in the hotel. So I sketched everything out after I woke up, developing the story and characters in places as I went.

What made this so much fun and unique enough that I would sacrifice much-needed revising time on PPR? For some reason, this zombie tale framed itself to me in the form of a paranormal romance. Because nothing is sexier than a reanimated corpse, let me tell you. I shouldn't be surprised as my romantic elements in the stories that I'm thinking about for the pseudonym are fairly dark and not exactly in-line with that whole Happily Ever After thing. This, apparently, is the sort of career I'm trying to create for my pseudonym. It's gonna be hella fun, but maybe not so much with the success. Is it possible to subvert the romance genre from within?

When Neuroses Collide

My deadline for PPR is under a month away, and I still have to write a 2-3 page synopsis and introductory letter in addition to finishing the revisions. And an entire week of the upcoming month is going to be "lost" to the holidays. (I say "lost" because it's not like I mind spending time with the in-laws and family, it's just that I won't have that time to write and must accomodate that in my writing schedule.)

Welcome to Kellie's Crunch Time Neuroticisms. Surely you remember them from before? Here's the pattern they follow:

1. Early in revisions, start thinking that my story is pure gold and that it will launch my writing career in many improbable ways, but launch it nonetheless.

2. Shortly thereafter, I fear the launching of my writing career and suffer a hit in productivity levels, crooning to the whimpering parts of myself that really, change is good, particularly this change, it'll be all right, you'll just keep writing only you'll get paid and isn't that what you've always wanted.

3. Revisions resume with a vengeance, if only to keep the beautiful and terrible images of success at bay one night at a time.

4. Approach the middle or end of revisions and suddenly become aware of the Vast Quantities of Suck in the manuscript. There's no arc! There's no conflict! My characters are stooopid! Logic took a vacation in this chapter and that one! The climax is broken!

5. Progress grinds to a halt as I curl into the fetal position and wonder just how in the hell I ever could have considered myself a writer.

6. Mark, utterly perplexed by the sudden morph of one insanity into another that seems so opposite that he cannot comprehend how my brain can possibly contain both at the same time, gives me a look.

7. My muse, realizing that her writer will not have any company in her misery, mutters, "Oh. Just. Hell," and starts trying to find the narrative thread and the pieces that work and sits down to stitch something together, by God.

8. I am somehow able to view the Suck without wanting to burn the manuscript, instead looking at how it can be adjusted into NotSuck for a killer story.

9. I resume revisions, knowing the story is gold that will get me in the door...assuming I can hack it together out of the junk in front of me.

I am somewhat nervous to find myself in this same pattern again because, you might recall, when I went back to the manuscript that jerked me around like this before, I realized that the work in question was not just bad but horribly broken, and I had tried to get it published in that state. I've been trying to bolster my confidence by outlining just how much I've learned in the past year and a half, how I've got such a better grip on this story and what it needs to get fixed. I understand so much more about how I write and can find the potholes quicker and know how to fill them.

Or not. Ask me what I think about this story in 6-10 months.

Drew the Chef

The Drew Monster has been big into utensils and measuring cups and bowls for a while now. It likely started when he discovered how much fun it was to take out all the tupperware from the lower cupboards in my mother's house, grab a spoon, and stir just like Momma. We put child safety latches on our cupboards, though, so Drew opted for dragging a chair up to the counter so he could rummage through the cooking utensil drawer (we have long since removed anything sharper than a butterknife from that drawer). He knows the word "hot" very well, not because he's burned himself, but because Momma and Daddy are so freaked about that chance given his predilection for cooking that we've drilled it into him.

He's added a new twist to his cooking fixation. In the past week, I've had to set up a cutting board for him and give him either a piece of celery or a carrot to work on with a butterknife. The kid's learned a lot by watching me, and his fingers haven't once come close to getting in the way. El Boyo Diablo appears to be a natural. Once he cuts up the carrot or celery into a number of pieces, he'll then load up a measuring cup with them. A couple of times, he's tried to toss the contents into whatever pot or pan I'm toiling over. He also tastes his diced vegetable at least once, discovering regularly that, no, indeed he doesn't like raw carrots.

I always try to give him something he can add safely to the pot or pan with dinner in it, usually it's a can of broth to add to the soup pot or something. But he's clearly learning and wanting to do more. I had just started getting items out for dinner and hadn't turned on the stove top when I turned away to take care of something (probably answer the phone). When I turned back around, Drew had climbed up onto the counter and opened the cupboard with all the spices and started rooting around for the perfect mixture.

Mark and I have known for a while that we'd be getting our son planning menus and cooking as early as possible as one of his "chores", but we hadn't realized that he would 1) take so well to it and 2) get a head start on things. Ironically, he's not all that interested in Ratatouille.

Seven Years Ago Today...

...Mark and I decided to give that whole relationship thing a whirl. It didn't take us long to realize that it was a done deal. While I was the one who made the first move seven years ago, it was Mark who, about a month later (maybe less) said something about coordinating careers after graduation (still five or six years away at that point) in the first bold step towards, "Hey, this is rather serious, this thing between us."

Process Examination #16: Zooming Ahead to Revisions (In Another Project)

I'm not entirely sure why I've needed so much off-time from writing THUMB, but my brain keeps asking for another day or another week whenever I try to organize my thoughts on that topic. So I've shifted focus back to PPR, trying to really dig into the text for revisions and learn more about that part of my writing process.

What I've done in the past is just read the completed manuscript of whatever piece I had just finished, marking, deleting, and adding stuff as I go. It's a good way to get a sense of what's working and what isn't and apply some fixes, but I've come to realize that it's not quite effective for actually improving the whole of the text. That is, larger scope issues like arcs and story structure and theme and such didn't get the attention they needed. Not to say that I wasn't thinking about those things as I revised, but that I kept all of those concepts in my head as I read through the manuscript, expecting problems with those topics to pop out at me in much the same way I can find errors in spelling and sentence flow and character portrayal. Not so much, apparently.

I've been suspecting this for a while now, so I've been developing a plan for a couple of months. Or the notion that I ought to have a plan, at least. That doesn't sound like much, but it means that, in the course of my regular reading of blogs and books on writerly topics, I've been looking for methods to help me. And I found some. Rather, I found addtional tips that helped bring some older ones into focus as well as giving me new ideas.

In the past, via Holly Lisle's One-Pass Revision and some other places, I realized it was important to have a scene outline handy while doing revisions. However, I didn't know what to do with that thing. Hence, I just extrapolated from how I do basic edits and tried to keep everything in my head. After working through Jenny Crusie and Bob Mayer's He Wrote, She Wrote Writing Course, I found a way to use the outline much more effectively. Specifically via the concept of scene analysis Jenny outlines here and the critical questions she dumps out here. Now I have a better sense what I'm looking for when I do my initial read-through (which I used to flag scenes that needed scene analysis for tightening and general fix-it stuff).

I completed my first scene anlaysis yesterday and was delighted to discover two things: 1) At least for this first scene, I had a natural rhythym for beats in the scene that kept the conflict going and accomplished a bit for the story, and 2) I have a much better sense of how I can improve a few bits and lines in the scene to reinforce all the big scope concepts I've lost before without derailing those beats. Awesome.

We'll see what Mark things. I've decide he is going to be a beta-reader of my "I've done all I can on my own with this thing" version without any previous exposure to this piece. He'll be my barometer of how well I've revised with the new techniques. No pressure, honey. :)

Let's Go To The Movies, Andrew

The Drew Monster has discovered the wonder of animated movies. He had watched bits of movies before, usually while on a long-distance trek in the car, but a month or so ago, he realized that it was fun to watch an entire story unfold from start to finish. His three favorites are Curious George, Finding Nemo, and Ice Age, and Monsters, Inc. seems to be rated highly as well.

The problem (other than the fact that we don't want him to sit and stare at the TV for long periods of time; we're working on this) for me with this arrangements is how often I have to see these movies now. Don't get me wrong, I love pretty much everything Pixar has done (haven't seen Cars), and I can usually enjoy any children's animated feature for it's "Aw, what a cute story" value. But repeated viewing is forcing me to look at all the story elements that unravel, all the small little conceits and all the themes and messages that, intentional or not, are lingering in the background to cast a nasty pall over things. The latter is a big deal for me with every time I see Curious George--theft of another culture's icon and dismissal of its indigenous value and heritage, father/son issues that color a child negatively because his father favored a smarter kid with similar interests over the son, and on and on. Had I only seen the darn movie once, I wouldn't have bothered with all this analysis and critique because the movie's not meant for that.

Of course, El Boyo Diablo hasn't been interested in Ratatouille since his first vieweing, and that's the one I wouldn't mind seeing a few more times since I missed quite a bit (watching movies with kids isn't the way to comprehend a good portion of what you're seeing). It's like Andrew knows this.

It's funny, though. When I was about 11, I would come home from school every day, plop myself in front of the TV and watch The Little Mermaid. Sometimes twice. I guess it's a phase?

Not Quite Coherent, Apparently

My brain's all mushy. Mostly I'm still not getting the sleep I need, it seems. But also, I did finish tweaking the ending to PPR last night, so that could have something to do with it. I'm also somewhat afeared of restarting THUMB, which has sat untouched on my hard-drive for two and a half weeks now, so I think part of my brain is resisting full consciousness. And the weather's all weird today. I was supposed to crit someone's writing today while the Drew Monster napped, but I'm thinking I might need a nap myself instead.

Next week. Yeah. Next week is when I'll get back on the horse.

Momma Downtime

El Boyo Diablo decided to wake up, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and ready for the day at 3:45 this morning. Add this to the fact that I've been taking between 1.5-2 hours to fall asleep every night this past week or so, and I'm quite the zombie at the moment. I had meant for today to be the day that I got back on the horse, but, well, now I'm more interested in sleep than trying to prove to myself I'm not a lazy, pathetic excuse for a writer.

So. Tomorrow. Tomorrow I shall crank out the adjusted ending to PPR (even though I recognize that, while the adjusted ending is generally what I want for the story, it's not quite right in its execution just yet) so I can ship this off to a critique partner and Mark for comments. Tomorrow I shall confront my writing demons and figure out just how exactly to move forward with THUMB when demanding a specific word count at this stage of the game freezes me. (I'm thinking "Finish Act 2, get into Act 3 by the end of the year" might work, though it's a bit terrifying in its vagueness.)

For some reason, 2008 feels like a nice, giant clean slate coming toward me just as I've reached the point where I've mucked things up this year. I can't remember the last time I was so eager to start a year with a new set of goals. But it wouldn't be too swell of me to laze around the rest of the year to get to that clean slate, now, would it?

By the way, one of the things I did while I was lazing around the past two weeks was beat Kingdom Hearts II. My reaction: Meh. The game had its fun spots and neat battle commands, but the story arc really really sucked and got mired in re-hashing all of the Disney flicks. Very much a disappointment after the first game. I wish I could find another game like FFX or FFX-2 to suck me into another world and a compelling storyline along with fun spells and weapons. But that stuff seems to be on PS3 or Xbox, and we're not down with shelling out $500 for a new platform just yet. So I'll content myself to max out all the outfits on FFX-2 and beat the special bosses and finish a first go-round of Ratchet & Clank: Dreadlocked, though it's not quite what I want. I suppose it's for the best, though, as I really don't have time for gaming at this particular juncture in my life.

OK, I think I'm going to ramble on about the odds and ends of my life if I don't end this now and hit the sack. Hopefully regular posting will resume for the next couple of weeks until Christmas.

Drewbie Downtime

We learned this weekend that the Drew Monster can handle two guests in our guestroom but as soon as additional guests take up space my office, he gets a bit off. Of course, we didn't figure out he was not dealing well with this until we couldn't calm him down for lunch on Friday. He'd been fussing a lot every time we had to stop playing somewhere outdoors and go back home. And usually we could get him calmed down within 15 minutes of getting home and he would go back to being his chipper self. Not so on Friday. Finally, at a loss, I took my father, stepmother, and grandmother out and abandoned Mark to El Boyo Diablo. Seconds after we left the house, Andrew calmed down to ate a good lunch and took an OK nap. Dinner on Saturday was very similar. We were a bit squished into a booth, and Drew could not settle down--he even swiped napkins and silverware off of the table and tried to dump a glass of water. Mark took him out for dinner and romping at the McDonalds across the street, and he was fine after that.

It was so strange to see Drew act out in this way. Yesterday after everyone left and today, though, Drew has been fully back to normal. It's interesting that just one extra person and one other room being occupied did him in, though. Next time we have that many guests, Mark and I will be sure to schedule in some Drewbie downtime with either one of us alone in the house at least for an hour. And we'll look for similar signs of overstimulation when we have any overnight guests in the house in the future (which will be this weekend, actually; Mark's brother John is staying with us so he can run a marathon down in Tucson on Sunday).

Given Mark's introvertedness, I shouldn't be surprised that three guests and two rooms off-limits at once rubbed Drew wrong. Hell, it's probably a tall order for any toddler used to it being just him and Momma most of the time in the house. Mostly I'm just happy that the bouts of cryfests and crankiness and acting out so unusual for him (or at least, unusual for how long they went on) seemed to be unique to the stress of the situation, and not a sign of the coming norms.

Eat Well. Be Safe. And Shop!!

My dad, stepmother, and grandmother are due in any minute now, so I'm going to sign off for the Turkey Day weekend. I might be back on Sunday. Or not.

While I'm gone, take a look at these fine new products from Holly Lisle. This is a great time to work through a writing block or to stock up on products to help you nail your 2008 writing goals.

Just the How to Beat Writers Block course:



Just the 21 Ways to Get Yourself Writing When Your Life Just Exploded book:



The bundle of both above items as well as all of the "Create A" Clinics (a seriously good deal):



Holly's got a lot of great new things in the works, and the How to Beat Writer's Block audio course (plus bundled goodies) is the first of those. Her clinics have been great writing tools for me (I can't speak highly enough of the Create a Language Clinic), so check these out and maybe tell people where to shop for Christmas (if you do that, have them go through an affiliate--not necessarily me--so you can give someone else a holiday bonus; I recommend Lazette Gifford, click on either Ruins or Muse in her sidebar to take you to the shop through her link).

Process Examination #15: In Which I Finally Hack My Brain (Or a Portion of It, Anyway)

There's more going on here than just looking back at the mess of Act One and realizing why it's 40K long and mostly pretty dry stuff (that would be the logic stranglehold). Now I'm trying to figure out why I can't seem to drag myself on with the novel. I think I pieced together some of it last night.

I fear letting a first draft of a novel be really, really rough. I can't let myself write full-on crap just to get to the end and have a complete story unit to look at, analyze, and perfect into an actual novel. Not at 100K words a pop, at least. With short fiction, this isn't a problem. Take PPR: the original draft of that story was 8K words, and I kept only 2K of them in the revised story, which ended up being 29K total (yes, I finished it Monday night; now to let it alone for a couple of weeks before I tackle the next round of revisions). That's 25% of the original story that stayed, and it comprises only 7% of the current draft. Translate those percentages into the 100K words of a novel's first draft, and yikes! That's a lot of words that get cut and take a while to create in the first place. It doesn't sit right with me to be so wasteful and inefficient with something I have so little time for in as it is.

But I looked closer at the comparison to PPR. Those original 8K were quite rough indeed, in the sense that my big reveal at the end was 2-3 pages of infodump that would have been much more satisfying revealed in the course of the story with my MC getting enough pieces of the puzzle to put some of it together herself. Also, the central conflict needed a good deal of work to make sense beyond my initial sketch. And the two characters in conflict were neither of them likeable, though they were interesting. While it was fun to write that way and part of me wants to see if I can tweak those 8K into a different interpretation than the one I went with, I overhauled the story into something with a good arc, with good character tension each step of the way, with a logical though not transparent plot and narrative flow, and with a complicated ending that didn't make things overly nice and tidy like I'm beginning to hate in some books. For some reason, just because it's a novel, I'm expecting the first draft of THUMB to deliver all of that already. I'm not giving myself permission to fail in order to see how to succeed with this story because that means risking a lot of words and time in creating those words.

How to fix this? I've started this a little. The past 2K of THUMB that I have dragged kicking and screaming out of my fingertips are definitely not going to stay in their present form. It's pretty much all infodumping on my gee-whiz tech in the story, but I wrote it because it provided a chance to get my MC showing her stuff, it led to some fun dialog and character action, and I know I'm going to end up keeping snippets in some fashion because at some point, I'm going to need a "Here's Where I Geek on Future Tech" scene. Today, I'm hoping to grit my teeth and summarize a bunch of activity as my characters get the ship ready to roll so I can finally write the fun piece that officially kicks off the conflict of Act 2. Hopefully I will keep giving myself permission to write outlines and sketches and distillations to keep me moving along.

I think part of the problem has been in trying to hit a word count goal in the first draft of a novel. It keeps me tied into the concept of "this is a lot of words, and I may lose a lot of them." Short fiction has shown me that my first drafts are very exploratory and take as much or as little as they need. And I find it very interesting that THUMB gummed up right around the 35K mark. I think I lasted to about 45K in SoZ before I came up against this wall. That time I forced myself through it, not thinking about the story or what the block could be telling me, and I got thoroughly off-track. There may be a very good reason that my first novel, HD, is told in three parts of about 30-35K a piece over the course of thirty or so years and many critiquers have complained that each part feels like it's trying to be a novel on its own and not part of a whole. A draft beyond 35-45K is outside of my natural comfort zone, apparently. And a draft that actually gets the novel out of Act 1 is problematic, as well, it seems.

I would find this more fascinating and helpful were it not for the fact that it took one complete but very broken novel (100K words) and three aborted attempts at novels (135K words) and myriad pieces of short fiction (hmmm, maybe a total of 100 or 150K?) spread out over five and half years (actually, seven if you count the very first 10K I wrote in HD before I considered myself serious about this writing thing). I don't like taking this long to figure something out, especially if it's about myself (though I have taken longer, and will likely take longer still in the future), and especially if not knowing the piece of information delays events that will get me closer to the dream of writing full-time.

Ah, well. I'm just going to have to get over that, aren't I? At least I did figure it out. Isn't that why I'm doing this series of posts anyway?

Sing Along, Sleep Along

The Drew Monster has started to sing. It's usually when the Backyardigans theme is on, and the singing is mostly in the vowel of "Ah" and the same note, but he is singing. He's pretty intense with it, too, as if he can tell that the sound he's producing isn't quite up to par with what he's hearing and he's trying to match the two better.

This warms my heart to have Andrew doing something that is clearly in alignment with my interests. I don't know if he's just mimicking the TV or if I've done enough random singing around him that he connects singing with me as well, but it's nice to know that, even if only for the next month or so, we'll have this little thing in common and laugh about hitting bad notes together.

As for another thing we've discovered he had in common with his father, I am less than thrilled about it. Drewbie suffers from occasional night terrors. Actually, he's more prone to them when waking up from a nap than during the night. We had somewhat suspected this after a few episodes over the course of the past year, but yesterday's nap made it very clear.

This wouldn't bother me nearly so much if I didn't have firsthand experience of what his father's sleepwalking is like. What I wouldn't give for the sedate getting up and shuffling to the kitchen and then shuffling back that seems to be the general consciousness regarding sleepwalking. No, as I've detailed here before, Mark likes to bolt upright out of bed, spring to his feet, vault over furniture, and run screaming through the house during his episodes. And I've recently learned that night terrors is often a genetic thing and will evolve into sleepwalking in the preteen years.

Meep.

The good news is that keeping a regular schedule with plenty of time for sleep seems to keep the night terror episodes at bay. And staying low on the Stress-O-Meter seems to stave off the full body antics of the sleepwalking episodes. Life doesn't always let you keep a consistent schedule with good sleep hours or keep the stresses low. I'm just going to keep my fingers crossed that High School Drew and 15 Years Older Mark don't have simultaneous bouts of high stress, low sleep periods. I might have to lock them into separate, well-padded rooms.

WGA Strike

Just in case you aren't aware, the screenwriters of America are on strike. I could try to sum up the reasons for it, but, really, just watch this lovely YouTube video brought to you by the folks who write for the Daily Show. If you already know about the strike, then you've likely seen this. I know I've seen it linked to in about five different places today alone. I've watched it most of those times. It's funny. It's informative. It puts things into a great perspective. As someone who gets her news from the Daily Show, I can only hope the matter gets resolved soon.



One thing I'm curious about (and wondering why the corporations pushing against the writers aren't talking about) is how profit from DVD sales and internet downloads breaks down to pay the production costs. I mean, asking for 2.5% of the profits to go back to the writers sounds ridiculously low. But if 95% of the profits has to go back into production costs, then maybe, just maybe, I might understand reluctance to part with that 2.5%. Of course, then I would also wonder about their business model.

It would be very amusing if, during the court battles Viacom and other coporations are bringing against YouTube, their language to justify yanking residuals from writings is used against them to tank their piracy case. I wonder what whether the lawyers involved are sweating this possibility. That might be what gets this strike resolved.

Convenient Lacks

I had meant to post this a good two weeks ago, but I got distracted halfway through composing, then decided I wanted to answer the Global Warming Debate with my response, then I realized that I just wanted a quick sketch of my reactions to this article. So here's the post, at long last.

Via Holly Lisle, I read this interesting article about inaccuracies in Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. Given that this article comes from an organization "dedicated to sound public policy based on sound science" that strives to separate reality from rhetoric, I found the following three things very interesting.

1) The author chastises Gore's rep for saying "[Global Warming is] a complex issue" but not referencing all of the scientific papers on which they based their 90-minute video on the movie's website on the page devoted to the science behind the movie. The author of the article then proceeds to only reference one of the two articles the site referenced and doesn't bother to back up its refutations that cannot be found in that one source. If you're going to accuse someone of sloppy scientific arguments, it's best not to make their same mistake. Especially for this loaded topic, it makes you look really bad.

2) Many times the article explains that the environmental impacts the movie attributes to global warming are actually caused by some other way in which humans have destroyed a part of the local environment. The fact that the article mentions those impacts at all is a mark in the author's favor, but the fact that those impacts are left to stand as refutations of Gore rather than exhortations (or even just links, dammit) for policies (or even just their opinions on policies) that can stop such damage makes me wonder about what I'm reading.

3) Several of the inaccuracies listed after the first nine that were upheld by a British court are just repeats. For example, Error #7 is that the movie claims Hurricane Katrina is manmade, and Error #11 is that the movie claims that Hurricane Caterina is manmade. (By the way, for an institute that claims to eschew politics and rhetoric, the explanation of Error #7 is remarkably political, and also wrong. Wrong in the sense that the Democrats didn't cause Hurricane Katrina. The author is clearly trying to say that the Democrats were responsible for the levees breaking and inflates the rhetoric severely in doing so.) Also, Error #28 is that the movie blames global warming for the spread of tropical diseases and Error #29 is that the movie blames global warming for the spread of West Nile. Conflating the number of errors with cheap word tricks or refuting a point in such a way that all similar points of that nature are clearly covered by that refutation (i.e. if someone consistently misspelled words that a spell-check would have caught, I wouldn't say, "I found 22 misspelled words in this document." I would say "This document was not spellchecked." I think the latter is more damning, actually.) again makes me think you have an axe to grind rather than a cogent scientific argument to make.

It's too bad, really. I get so steamed with all this talk about global warming because, looking at the matter from a geological perspective, I think we've got a lot more data to collect before we go blaming anyone other than nature for causing it. In the meantime, science has already shown without a doubt how much damage we our doing to our environment on a more micro scale that may or may not stretch to a macro scale in the future if left unchecked. Why is it OK to dismiss smog and acid rain and local water pollution in favor of fear-mongering over water world? We've got enough environmental problems that we know for sure we've brought upon the world ourselves. Let's get back to those, please, and start where we can actually prove we can make a difference. Seriously, I'm beginning to suspect that global warming was a concept invented by Big Oil and such specifically because it distracts from the reality of the problems in our backyards that they've already been shown to be causing.

By the way, I'm getting really sick of these car commercials from, IIRC, Mercedes and Lexus that show these super environmentally friendly, alternative fueled cars, with the voiceover something along the lines of "Ready for the world, when the world is ready." Idiots, we're clearly ready for it, unless by "ready" you mean that you need a certain demographic willing to drop 1,000,000 for that car so as to make the car profitable. But I have a feeling "ready" means something more along the lines of "when Big Oil isn't going to crush us for daring to mass produce cars that don't require their product."

Process Examination #14: It Seems Cruel That Logic Should Let Me Down

I hadn't intended to take a day off from writing today. The easiest source of blame is Emma Bull's Territory, a story that absolutely sucked me in and refused to let go until I read the last page not an hour ago. But I have to be honest and admit I was looking for an excuse to step away from writing today. I didn't really need to, at least, not where PPR is concerned. It's just that the stutters and stalls and hiccups of THUMB have me all twisted and turned, trying to figure out where things went wrong this time.

As I mentioned yesterday, logic is what did me in. Or, rather, strict adherence to a logical flow of time and events and patterns. I've been writing THUMB in such a way as to cover just about every single waking minutes in these characters' lives, highlighting the dialog and character interactions and downplaying the action. Finally, in the past two days, I figured out why: I had set up a POV rotation pattern that I slavishly followed, forcing events to unfold in this step-by-step way, revealing what happened as the clock ticked on because that's exactly what that POV pattern demanded I do unless I wanted to pass too many important things by. For example, I couldn't skip ahead a couple of days in Jasper's POV because that would mean having to summarize and infodump on important things that had happened during those days in Elzie's and Rafe's POV. And I couldn't not have the Jasper POV scene because I had set up a structure based on it being there.

Logic has been my friend for a very, very long time. I suspect it still is, but it's laughing at me for taking it so literal. The laughter wouldn't hurt so much were it not for the fact that literal logic would get me to a completed draft, but it would take a good deal more than 100,000 words and a couple of months. And the revision process would be murder. Literal logic is not the way to write novels. Rather, it's not the way to write this novel.

So I'm trying to shift gears and ease the POV pattern and loosen my stranglehold on logic for Act 2. And I'm trying to do it without going back to rewrite Act 1. And I'm trying not to think about the fact that writing short fiction, even a novella, seems to be easier for my brain to parse. I want to write novels. I have tons of novel-length stories in me to tell, and I have to tell them. And I'd rather not take years to get each one out of me.

Part of the reason I started this series of posts was to, obviously, examine my writing process in frequent, honest terms that would help me navigate my way from the beginning of a story idea through to the point that I decided to cut the cord and send it out into the world. I can think of a number of different ways to interpret this crossroads I feel is before me and, in so doing, pick a direction. All of them, if I wrote them out here, would likely sound extremely plausible. All of them would point in different directions.

So why don't I cut right to the chase? Any falter now feels like it's admitting I can't finish a novel. That was the Awful Troof I feared back when I set aside SoZ for this crusade. And here I am, roundabouts the end of Act 1, with 40K words in the story, hitting a speedbump that has me looking back at the starting line and wondering if maybe I should try this race over again.

Damn. It. To. Hell.

No. Screw this. I'm going to finish this damn book. And I'm going to do it by the end of January, as I know I can. I'm going to take the ideas I've got to get me to the end and, by golly, use them to get me there. They may not be perfect, they may not work as well as something I'll figure out later, but they will get me to a completed draft and then I'll fix the stupid thing, no matter how painful that process is going to be.

Take that, logic.

This Period of Silence Brought to You by...

Errand Friday, TusCon 34 Saturday, Christmas Shopping Sunday, and Tired Monday. And I almost didn't post this today because I've been so rigidly locked into schedules and pattern and logic in so many aspects of my writing life that I had a hard time not posting a Process Examination post even though I have stuff to talk about (regarding that rigidity of pattern, actually). So I'm going to break the confinement of the blog schedule and post on that tomorrow. Maybe it will help me break the confinement in my writing tonight.

TusCon 34, by the way, was a fun day. The Con is smaller than my only other fan con experience, Mile Hi Con, but fun nonetheless. I tried on a corset for the first time at a booth in the dealer's room. A very interesting experience, and if I had had $500 to spare, I would have bought an absolutely gorgeous corset/skirt combo that I wisely didn't even try on out of fear I would whip out the credit card before I could stop myself. Also, Emma Bull is great fun to hang around. I'm looking forward to starting Territory tonight, which she graciously signed for me (I used my lunch break to wander to a Borders in town to pick it up after I learned that they didn't have copies for purchase at the con; that's what I get for confusing a writing conference with a fan convention--one day I'll learn, but I've only got a couple of each under my belt at the moment).

Christmas shopping on Veterans Day weekend, however, was not fun. We did hit a lot of great sales and got the gifts we wanted for everyone on our list (except for each other and most of Drew's stuff), but the crowds were thick and the mall had chosen this week to renovate the play area, thus taking the wind out of Drewbie's sails.

It feels very weird that we are only nine days away from Thanksgiving. I've got family coming in town for it, so I'm eager for the holidays. But we're still flirting with the low 90s here. I can count on one hand the times I've worn jeans in the past two months. The only time I've put on a long-sleeved anything since March has been during early morning camping or hiking excursions. I even ordered a peppermint mocha at Starbucks the other day and was disappointed that, while yummy, it didn't taste as good as I remembered from a nippy winter day in Colorado. I will get adjusted to the weather. It's just going to take longer than I had thought.

The Onion Makes My Day, Part # 1397

My only gripe is that it's a short piece. More, please! I eagerly await the installment titled "First Person Narrator Witholds Evidence from Self" or somesuch.

A New BPAL Discovery

After realizing that putting the BPAL fragrances on my wrists led the scents to rub off onto my keyboard and back onto my wrist in an odd, not entirely unpleasant olfactory experience daily, I began refraining from putting the stuff on my wrists at all. Instead, I swiped it on my neck and dipped a little in my decolletage, such as it is.

The difference in smell is remarkable. It's much more "pure"--as in it smells more like what is in the bottle. It also lasts longer and stays "intact" as a cohesive fragrance longer. Namaste is still my favorite, but the others improved dramatically by leaving my wrists alone.

I am curious to try this simple experiment with the other perfumes I have. It could be an odiferous stretch of days for the men in the house.

Process Examination #13: It's All a Placeholder for the Real Thing

Sigh. I'm trudging my way through the first draft of THUMB, and I've realized that there is so much I have to fix. Just about every scene has something that is my shorthand for "make this not suck in revision." It was not a shiny happy moment when I took stock of Act One and realized most of it fits into that category. But still I keep slogging, although it's harder to do so when you're staring at a scene that is just mired in Suck, when you're having characters talk about conflict and action rather than actually putting them in conflict and action.

Of course, it's not all bad. Even in the "slime, filth, putresence" stage, I see the gems still, which means that there are likely more of them than I'm letting myself see at the moment. And all this talking head phenomenon I've got going on and the punches I'm pulling so my characters aren't cut too low too soon (I know where they're going to end up by Acts 3 and 4, so I'm trying to be a little nice to them right now; Bad Author! Bad!) is helping me see where the story's lacking, what I need to fix. I even managed to figure out a better way to do a certain plot and character point last night because of all the vast amounts of suck surrounding me. (By then, though, it was my bed time, so I only managed to choke out about 150 words in that new direction. Thank God PPR is going well so I'm not feeling completely stupid in writing.)

I think I might have even mastered part of the trick of changing plot or characters in mid-story and not having to go back and revise. We'll see as I keep moving forward, though. I feel driven to finish this draft without getting stuck in loops, so I'm going to keep pushing on, asking questions when I stumble to make sure I don't get too far away from the story and the characters that I have to scrap 82K like I did with SoZ. (I know I've said that before. Writers pay attention to refrains, sometimes we even figure out what they mean before our readers do. I'm pretty sure the essence of this motif is this: Me want finish book! Now!)

One thing that might help me through this is to actually track the Things That Suck as I notice them in a document so I can have a revision guide. Of course, that also runs the risk of starting out my revisions in a very negative light. Must ponder.

Drewbie Goes to the Beach

We went camping on Lake Havasu this weekend. It's yet another beautiful area of the state. In fact, most of the drive from Casa Grande to the western border and along it was gorgeous. (The part that wasn't was a stretch of the Phoenix bypass route and a bit of I-10 getting out of Maricopa county. Come to think of it, a good chunk of I-10 treks through one of the ugliest bits of the state that I've seen. I-10 from the westernmost reach of Phoenix through to central Tucson is not the best way to see the beauty of the Arizona desert, though it does have its nice spots even there. Picacho Peak and the distant mountains of the central valley come to mind.)

Most of the state parks over along the Colorado River and Lake Havasu are focused on boating and water activities and are designed primarily with RVs in mind, but we did manage to find a nice shady secluded spot in one park to pitch our tent. The Colorado River valley had some very fascinating mountains around it, mostly on the California side. It was still fairly warm, barely dipping into the 50s at night, but it was just cool enough that we were able to get a fire going without feeling too ridiculous. The Drew Monster thought it was cool.

But the best part of the trip was watching Drewbie go nuts in the lake and along the shore. The water was cold but warm enough that he was able to play in it for about an hour, taking breaks on the warm sand in the sun to warm up for stretches. He went nuts with the little waves, splashing his hands in them, trying to figure them out. Then he would have fun digging up wet sand and carrying it over to where Momma was sitting to proudly deposit it in front of me.

Of course, nothing could quite top his discovery of the ducks in the lake and on the beach. He chased them all over the place, trying to herd them into the water if they weren't there, getting somewhat alarmed when they took off into the air.

We'd like to go back when the water is warmer so the Drew Monster can really go nuts in the lake and river, but it's quite clear that the warmer months will mean very large crowds and lots of boats and jetskis and such. We'd have to pick our travel time very carefully.

Still, it was a great trip and a real treat to watch El Boyo Diablo cavort on a beach. Pictures will likely be posted soon.

Maybe I Should Wait to Watch This...

Via Jacquandor, I read this fangirlsquee about a new Joss Whedon show on FOX. And it sounds really awesome. Like the kind of thing I wish I had come up with first so I could play around in this universe without stepping on someone's copyright toes. I just might fully understand writing fanfiction with this show (assuming it lives up to this killer premise). Here's the show blurb:

Echo (Eliza Dushku) [is] a young woman who is literally everybody's fantasy. She is one of a group of men and women who can be imprinted with personality packages, including memories, skills, language—even muscle memory—for different assignments. The assignments can be romantic, adventurous, outlandish, uplifting, sexual and/or very illegal. When not imprinted with a personality package, Echo and the others are basically mind-wiped, living like children in a futuristic dorm/lab dubbed the Dollhouse, with no memory of their assignments—or of much else. The show revolves around the childlike Echo's burgeoning self-awareness, and her desire to know who she was before, a desire that begins to seep into her various imprinted personalities and puts her in danger both in the field and in the closely monitored confines of the Dollhouse.

Exciting, no? But there's that whole "it's on FOX" thing, which means that seven-episode committment could be all they give us, and we might not even be able to FIND all seven episodes because the timeslot is going to be like playing hot potato, and they certainly aren't going to air those seven in order or anything. And I'm sure they're going to promo to the sex quotient ad nauseum and drive away non-Whedonhead viewers. And there's the added issue that I just don't really like Eliza Dushku very much--I think she clunked on Tru Calling, but that show had a lot of other problems, so I might be giving her bad taint by association.

Anyway, I'll watch the premiere, but I'm going to have to unhook the "gimme good SF" fangirl in me to do so cuz I don't want to get too attached to a show that doesn't have good odds of surviving.

Hey! You! Take This Candy!

I thought about saving this for my usual Monday Drew Monster post, but it's just too much fun to wait to share this. Plus, we're going camping this weekend, so I'll likely have lots of new material for a Monday post.

Being new to this neighborhood (and far removed from the concept of trick-or-treating; we've been living in apartment housing that didn't get any of that for the past seven years), we decided not to take Drewbie out for Halloween, opting to stay at home and have him help us hand out candy as we gauged the time window and the age ranges and such. Turned out to be a good choice.

Drew absolutely had a blast handing out candy. He helped Momma pour the candy bags into the plastic jack-o-lantern he's been carrying around since his birthday. Then he demanded I let him sample one of each type. Then he discovered he LOVED the lollipops and had to fish them out of the jack-o-lantern and keep those separate.

When the doorbell rang, he would do his half-dance, half-run thing to the door and open it himself. Using his non-favorite candy, he quickly picked up on the concept of dropping a piece into each bag that got shoved under his nose. Then he'd wave and say, "Bye!" and shut the door as the trick-or-treaters walked away.

The real fun was when there was a lull in between visitors earlier on in the evening. He got tired of waiting for someone to ring the doorbell, so he ran to the door, flung the door open, saw an unsuspecting three-year-old and her parents down by our driveway and went tearing out to them, holding a prized lollipop aloft. Also enjoyable were the times when the trick-or-treaters would be turning to leave with their loot, but Drewbie decided he wanted to give out more candy. He would stand in the doorway and hold out a piece of candy and say, "More? More? More?"

The entire night, he had such a look of purpose and order. There was a process, by golly, and he was going to do his part. He wasn't very interested in the costumes as he mostly zeroed in on the candy bags. He had so much fun dishing out candy that we might have a hard time convincing him that its actually more fun to go trick-or-treating next year.