Something Borrowed

They always tell you to write what you know, don't they? I was just thinking about that yesterday and today, as I seem to have got a bee in my bonnet about baking. I'm a lousy cook in general, but I can handle baking to a certain point. Of course I shouldn't really be baking right at the moment as I am on a restricted diet and cannot eat anything that I bake...meaning anyone who tries these things is going in a bit blind, the poor sods. But what does this have to do with writing? Well...

One of my characters rather unexpectedly ended up being something of a foodie. I don't really go into any detail because I don't know anything about cuisine aside from the fact it goes in my belly, but I was thinking as I attempted to make leavened bread yesterday "Hey, this is something Aleks would do!" Because he totally would. To the best of my knowledge, Aleksandr would be rather a dab hand at most things of that nature. It's a bit of an odd thing for him to be good at, actually, as when I first created him (when I was thirteen, would you believe), it certainly never crossed my mind that he would end up as a bit of an amateur chef. I doubt it crossed his mind, either! But as his character and the story evolved, Aleksandr went from being the very sheltered -- and very unwanted -- son of a Duke to the constant companion of a wandering hierophant of broken faith, and...well. Araben, for all he's a very smart man, is not a very practical one. Which isn't to say he'd let Aleksandr starve, exactly, but....well. By hobby Aleksandr was a horticulturalist and a botanist, and it seemed natural enough for him to learn how to cook and to bake as they lived their nomadic existence, and...well, apparently he decided he liked it.

I just found it interesting because this evening I decided to make scones. I've never made scones in my life -- or at least, never alone. My mother or grandmothers would always have been supervising me. For some reason I had it in my head that it was very difficult to make scones. Quite why this stopped me I don't know, considering I once made pavlova just to prove I could (pavlova's not actually hard to make, it's just extremely finicky and is at least half luck; I had more issues with the bloody tiramisu I made earlier this year, come to think of it). But I made scones, and they appear to be fine (as I said, I can't eat them, and my brother is yet to risk one). But the story I was working on the other night that has since flitted off into the competition ether? Involved Aleksandr rather randomly making scones for Jeramie. I imagine they weren't like mine, being that Jeramie isn't really the kind of person to have cinnamon and dates lying around the pantry -- frankly it's probably a miracle he even had flour and baking powder -- but...yeah.

So, they say write what you know, but I rather suspect in my case I write what I wish I knew. I'm the same about music and dance and art and higher mathematics; I can do all of these things to some degree, but not enough to make me happy. It frustrates me, in that I can aesthetically appreciate the inherent beauty of all of these things, and yet...I can't quite reach them myself. It's like I'm watching from the outside of the ballroom; I can get all the way up to the window in my best dress and press my nose against the glass, but...I'm still on the outside. Somehow, in my writing, I get to push through that glass. It's only as a shadow, and my presence there is as ephermeral as a mayfly, but...my words get me in. Because I can make the words dance for me in a way I cannot with these other disciplines. So...yes. Writing is a part of me, but it lets me borrow from other things that are not. And for that, I will be forever glad.

Something Like Hysteria

So, I've had a bit of a strange experience this morning. I woke up this morning to be rather surprised by an unexpected email. You see, I hadn't really expected to be doing any writing today; I was up a bit later than intended last night working on a short story. The other day I remembered a call for submissions I had seen for an e-zine by the name of Crossed Genres, and this month's theme? Tragedy. Being that most things I write are tragic, I did clock it and thought I should look into it further. Of course I then forgot about it, but the other day I found it in my tabs and...well. Even though I rather suspect the vast majority of my works are not tragedy so much as emo teenage angst-fests, I came up with three options: Raw Canvas Remaining, Edit The Sad Parts, and Of An Orrery.

Raw Canvas Remaining is the one that won out, in the end, though I did decide to rename it as Blank Canvas. The really interesting thing about this story, though, is that I originally wrote it in 2004 or 2005. And it's...well, it's not terrible. Not exactly. But my god I wrote very badly, didn't I? Ha. Of course it wasn't quite as bad as going back to some of the original manuscripts involving this character written in 1999/2000, which I also did in the early hours of this morning. Good Lord, that was a terrifying experience. I mean, when I was younger, I wrote...all right. Better than most kids my age, I suppose, but...yeah. Too much Anne Rice and V.C. Andrews influence, not to mention I was also rather a fan of Christopher Pike and Stephen King. Er. So, basically flowery prose with distinct hints of bloodlust and horror? ...oh, god.

So, anyway, this short story: the original story was really intended as a character study so I could get into the miserable head and life of Inciseth della Morraine. To that end, I decided to rework the story to give it a real purpose and ending (involving a palette knife, no less; thank you again, Mr. King!). Now, this character comes from a novel called Newton's Cradle, which is something I have been trying to construct properly for years. I started writing it when I was seventeen, which was the age of the kids in the story, and I'm now twenty-eight and still haven't worked out where I am going wrong. Thing is, though, that the longer of the two stories I submitted to The Long and the Short of It is Jeramie's story...ten years later. And I am starting to really think that that? Is how the actual novel should be. Because even when I was myself seventeen I wondered what it would be like, years after the fact. Saving the world, I mean. So many shows for younger audiences are all about kids and teenagers saving the world...but what happens when you grow up, having done something like that?

Not that it really applies to Seth, as such; he takes a dive out a window of the conservatory atop Radeen Dam before he ever gets to grow up. Poor soul. But the interesting thing, for me, is that in giving the story a definite ending -- a sense of purpose arising from the tragedy of his life, I mean -- meant that I figured I was making it an AU sort of thing. But the more I consider it...no. Maybe I can work this into the story. It would certainly make it richer, and would also make Seth a far more interesting character.

So, apparently one of the novel projects for 2011 will be yet another attempt at Newton's Cradle. Hmm.

Still, what does all this have to do with the email of this morning? Well, after my burn out last night -- at one a.m. I was about three hundred words out from the first reworked draft of Blank Canvas, but I just couldn't bring myself to do one more word on it -- I figured today would be a no-writing day. I'd basically planned to watch the rest of the first season of True Blood and then begin my baking experiments (I've never made leavened bread before in my entire life; quite why I thought now that I'd be able to do so, we may never know). However, I had two emails that caught my eye, both from Mitzi. The first I figured would just be an acknowledgement of her receipt of Tea For Two; the second I was not so keen to read. I figured it would be the inevitable rejection. It just...seemed too soon, you know? I'd have liked a few days to live the dream of having something in the submission ether! So, I dragged my heels as I ate my yoghurt, then opened her up.

I've read your story - I really like it, the writing is lovely, and you can really feel the atmosphere.



...whoa. I did a little happy dance there, I can tell you. First time I've had some real positive feedback on a submission. I still figured we were seguing into a rejection, but instead? She asked if I would consider tweaking some things and having a "minor redraft," in order to make it more suitable for what she needs it for (being that it was light on the erotic side). So...I accepted the challenge. It's not any sort of promise on her part, of course; she just wants to see if I can make it more suitable for the anthology she is editing. But...my god, it's something. Mostly not an outright rejection, but it's something. So, happy dance now aside, I have to go back to work tomorrow, so today, inbetween watching my bread rise with fretful ignorance, I shall be rewriting Tea For Two and talking more with Seth about the potential murderous uses of palette knives.

...yes, so far, it's a good day indeed. ^__^

Submission: The Last Frontier

It's been a while since my last blog entry, whoops. Of course I can blame Christmas, and to be honest though I had intended to spend today writing my Boxing Day Sale Orgy and then just in general feeling really exhausted after yesterday...meant that not very much was accomplished today. And the next couple of days won't be any better, as tomorrow I intend to mainline True Blood's first season, and on Tuesday I am going to amuse myself with Baking Experiments. On Wednesday I'll be back at work! But never mind; even though the food I ate yesterday has left me quite ill today (I slept very badly last night), I have got something done.

So, the scary thing for me at the moment is actually submitting things. The local competition closed entries on Christmas Eve, so I submitted the two pieces on the 23rd to be safe. I won't hear about it for ages and I fully expect to hear nothing for either, but...I actually submitted comething. \o/ That's...a pretty big deal, for me. Then, on Christmas Day, I got a couple emails from people who'd been reading Tea For Two for me, so the writing I've done today involved reworking that. I've since formatted and spell-checked it in American English, so...it's basically ready to be submitted. I think I'll do it tomorrow. Just...bite the bullet and go for it. Again, I don't expect anything from it, but submitting anything is a terrifying experience for me. The rejection's really the least of it, but...yes.

Otherwise, I have been trying to finish the prologue of the forevergirl since Christmas Eve, being that it was a sort of pseudo-Christmas thing, being set during the Sarinian mid-winter festival. I failed at finishing it until about half an hour ago. Now it is done! ...rough as hell, of course, but it exists and that's always something. I really need to go back to editing The Neverboy now, but...yeah. My wordcount, writing-wise, has been right down the last couple of weeks. But then...Christmas, yeah? I am thinking I will do some more proper writing over New Year, but even before then I have a couple of stories I dug out today with the intention of re-jigging slightly so I can do two or three more submissions before the end of the year. One is a very curious story I wrote years ago, and I don't know that it will work at all, being that it's essentially about sexual abuse. Not that it's graphic, or anything, because the character in question dissociates himself from the entire experience, but...yeah. It made me cry when I wrote it. Which was about six years ago, now. A quick re-read shows it up for being quite rough and amateur in places, but I'd like to tidy it up a little. There's also a funny little Aidan Jannock story, and Aidan...showed up during NaNo, so I think it would be worth a re-work, too. The third is a prequel of sorts to The Neverboy, and is about Leyen's marriage to Eleni, so...we'll see, I guess. I was going to mess about with them tonight, but I seriously got about five hours sleep last night so I think a shower and an early night is in order.

I had also contemplated colouring with my Copics today, as when I was writing the bulk of this prologue the other day I got quite distracted by Eleni's chosen headdress. She wears varying forms of what is essentially a lace mantilla, which is by society's standards desperately old-fashioned. But she's fiercely proud of her Fynastran heritage and forces her daughter to do the same, even though Tara doesn't much care to be used in that way. I started looking up pictures of mantillas for visual stimulation, and then I ended up drawing a quick sketch of Tara and then Eleni in their veils. I considered colouring them today, but...I've barely managed to keep up with the writing as it is, ha. Maybe over New Year, then? Hee. But yes, this coming year...I need to keep making the effort to finish, and to submit. And if I can tame The Neverboy into a proper novel, then...it's time to start bothering agents. That's scary.

But for now...I need to write. Here's a little of what I was working on, anyway. It's...different to how I usually write, in that it's supposed to be a bit more succinct, but even then...I still do go on and on. ^_~

*****

Sighing, she shook her head, the fine lace of her veil falling across one cheek. She pushed it impatiently back. “I don’t want to go anyway. I’ll just stay here. Tell Mama I’ll be fine.”

In the silence that followed, for a moment Tara dared to believe that he’d actually listened to her. Then she turned and saw his dark eyes staring at her, incredulous.

“I can’t leave you here by yourself!” he said, and she sighed, impatient.

“Why not? I’m almost eleven. I’ll be fine.” Drawing the long veil back over her shoulders so he couldn’t see her face, she scowled fiercely. “I can look after myself.”

“Mama would kill me!” No, she wouldn’t, Tara thought sourly, but he didn’t stop. “And it would be rude; Lady Waleran’s expecting us, and we’re already so late!”

“You don’t care about being rude anymore than I do, no matter what Mama thinks,” Tara replied, and she looked down at the fine weave of her lace mantilla. She hated wearing them, they were so old-fashioned and made her look like a little china doll. But her mother insisted, and before he left, her father always made her promise to mind your mother, won’t you, Tara? “Besides, it’s not like she’s really royalty anymore anyway. Why do we have to keep pretending like she is? It’s just blood, and old blood at that. The kings and queens have been gone for hundreds of years. Why should we pretend like it still matters?”

“Do I have to drag you?”

“You couldn’t do it.” But Tara was certain she’d lost anyway. There was no real reason to stay here in the artisan’s alley of the marketplace, but still she sighed. The bustle and the crush of the marketplace was infinitely preferable over the thought of the dreary high-ceiled parlour that awaited them at Lady Waleran’s townhouse. Though it would be decorated for the mid-winter festival, with great boughs of berries and fragrant leaves, the whole house scented with delicious spices and herbs, and scattered with lamps made of jewels and gold, it didn’t really appeal. Tara had always preferred the Sun-Bear’s Awakening festival, at the end of winter. No gifts would be given nor received then, of course, but it signalled the turn of the seasons. Tara couldn’t wait. She was sick of winter. When it ended, her father would be home, if only for a little while.

Take me with you, Papa, she thought as she let her brother wind an arm definitely though hers, locking them together. I know I’m just a girl, but in the South, the girls are warrior-born. They do what they want. If you let me, I could, too.

Without another word Calden began to expertly weave through the crowds, unerring and fleetfooted. She let herself be pulled in his wake, her mantilla fluttering behind her like the delicate feathers of a baby bird. There were so many people, and she looked around in half-curiosity as her brother pulled her along. The scents of holiday food were strong in the air, sharing space with the vague panic of last minute shopping. The festival’s greatest height would occur the next day, though today there were still shows already on the raised stages and platforms about the plazas. Her feet picked up the rhythm of one song, lost it as Calden pulled her along, and away.

They wouldn’t see any of those shows tomorrow, either in the morning, the afternoon, or during the great shadow-raising of the evening. Their family always kept to the house, for they would have a steady stream of guests and tenants all day. Much as she liked the people here, Tara hated Winter’s Heart at Tiarenna, whether or father was there or not. Her mother always dressed her like a doll in silver and white. Hidden beneath her veil, she always felt that while her mother looked a queen, she only looked like death. As far as she was concerned she never needed to be there. She was just the daughter of the Lord and Lady of Tiarenna: too young to be part of adult conversations, and too young to be courted. She was just a doll, pretty and useless, and suddenly she had never been so very tired of it all.

*****

A Strange Form of Sequelitis

Wow, it's half-past four in the afternoon on Saturday, and I haven't managed to do any writing all weekend. I spent Friday night watching television, which is quite unusual for me...not least because I was watching Gordon Ramsay making delicious Christmas food, and rather wanted to try doing so myself. I am not a cook by any stretch of the imagination, let me assure you! But between having to go into work this morning and then spending a good chunk of the early afternoon shopping and then digging through a goodie bag that arrived in the post from my favourite store in the UK, well...writing has fallen by the wayside so far. I think it's time to get back into it!

Still, one interesting little problem I've encountered this week is to do with sequels. I realised I've never written one before. Funny, that, considering all my novels reference one another and have cross-over characters and generally are the history of another world entwined with our own. But a direct sequel...has never been written. Perhaps because I never finish anything first. Ha. But yes, last week I discovered the sequel to The Neverboy is called The forevergirl and is something to do with Tara Larmenret. As I said in my last entry, considering the fact she's dead and has been the whole time I've known her, well...this will be tricky. But Christmas is coming, and the prologue of this novel is asking me to write it. Because, like the short story I wrote last week, it deals with the winter holiday equivalent, and...yeah. Dammit.

Still, watching this novel birth itself is quite charming, in its own little frustrating fashion. Like I said I have no idea how the novel could even work, let alone what's going to happen in it. But the prologue is already there and the first few scenes are coming alive, and it's all in my head. Scarcely a word is on the page. But then, if I discovered anything thanks to the terrible compulsory English paper I did this year as part of my distance studies for Japanese, it is that I write things in my head long before I put them on paper. (This being very hard for my essay tutor to understand.) So...yes. I think I might keep tabs on these developments as they come to hand, it will be an interesting little study in how I actually develop a story.

In other news, I should be revising Tea for Two because Lori gave me some fantastic advice and I need to work that in, and I also need to revise entr'acte and Sin of Seven again so I can enter them in the competition by next Friday. I don't expect anything from either, but...Tea For Two, maybe? Oh, well, it's all practise in the end. And right now, I need to go tidy my room and have an apple while reading. I need my energy before I get writing, after all! ^_~

Distraction

I always get really agitated when I want to write, but can't seem to concentrate on doing so. But then it's been One Of Those Days at work today, and I've been finishing a few things over the last few days. It must be partly the Magic of NaNo, and then just December in general; it's the time for things to finish, isn't it? And then, a time for things to begin...and as it stands right now, I am hoping next year will finally be the year I start doing something serious with my writing.

With that said, here I am procrastinating. Yet again. <g> I have achieved a few things over the last couple of days, mind you; I finished the short story Tea For Two and then I reworked and edited Sin of Seven slightly. Tea For Two is now away for sense-checking with a rather peculiar array of fellow writers and/or long term friends, so we'll see how that pans out. I'm horribly afraid that it's a terrible story, but I suppose we'll see? Rachel has inherited Sin of Seven, because she's the one who reminded me that it even existed, so...yeah. I also picked up another very short story to rework -- it's barely eight hundred words, which for me is a small miracle. It's just a vignette about memory and moving on, I think; I called it Entr'acte for lack of anything better (or less pretentious), but we'll see how that pans out. But all of these have destinations in mind, which is...scary stuff.

But then again...I dug up two other stories, also in the hopes of doing something with them. Of An Orrery is about five thousand words long and is technically finished, I just need to edit the hell out of it. Lies In The Land is a story I started writing at the beginning of the year for an anthology entry and never finished. But the concept fascinates me even now, so I am going to try and finish it over the next week or so and then maybe try it for submission along with Orrery to a local ezine and see how that goes. One of my infamous "101 in 1001" goals was to publish a short story, and time's a-tickin' on that countdown clock. I mean, people have been telling me since I was five years old that I am a good writer. So why is it that I am almost thirty and have published nothing? Damn you anyway, Inner Editor.

I should also be editing Neverboy, which I will possibly get to in a minute. But I've been distracted, as I said -- and not just by this motley crew of short stories. The Neverboy has two antagonists, and Ryennkar Vassidenel is the one we'll see again. ...actually, I just realised the other day what the title of the sequel is, and who's going to be a major player -- Tara. The Forevergirl. This is considerably complicated for any number of reasons, not least of all that Tara is dead. She was dead before Neverboy even started. Go bloody figure. Apparently the voices in my head have every faith that I will somehow be able to work around this. O_o

Still, back to Ryenn -- Kit, the protagonist, mostly knows him as the Magistrate-General, and he's a bit of a prick. He basically wants the world to burn. But while Kit, Círa and Otho tend to garner the (understandable) impression that this is simply because Ryenn is a force of chaos (think the Joker in The Dark Knight), I've always known that Ryenn's got a reason. I was just never entirely sure of the circumstances of it.


Which brings me to Arosek.


I've known Arosek and Ryenn for some time. They were childhood "friends," and then ended up both working in the higher echelons of Sarinian bureaucracy. Ryenn's on the justice side, Arosek is in what sort of amounts to the Home Office, or the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Their paths would cross, but not that often. But they...still had a sort of obsession with each other, even though they rarely met after they left school. I also know of their very bad ending, mostly because Aleksandr sat Araben down one day and told him what I thought was almost all of the sad story. But...I just realised that while I knew Ryenn quite well, I was no better than my characters. Because I, too, mostly knew Arosek through rumour and legend, and not through himself. I have the horrible suspicion that I am going to have to write a short story about him from his POV...partly it's because I need to understand what Ryenn is trying to do in order to have The Neverboy pick up resonant pieces of the tune he's got everyone dancing to, but also because I have the sneaking suspicion Arosek is going to wander into The Forevergirl.

...not that he's any good at raising the dead, mind you. That would just make this all too easy...

And on that note? I rather think I need to sleep. If I'm too exhausted to write, you'd think I've be too exhausted to plot, yeah? Too bad it never stops, even when I desperately need to. ^__^

Evolution

For someone who was absolutely convinced she was going to do some serious editing this weekend, I have done...very little editing. Ha. Which isn't to say I haven't done any, because I went through the first three chapters of Neverboy. The first two are nothing to be excited about, as they've previously been edited anyway; aside from a latter snip about Kit's first meeting with the infamous Magistrate-General, the first two chapters are the only parts of the novel I've shown to people. One of my local writing groups -- Scribes -- had expressed interest in seeing more beyond the second chapter, but I never got to it because the third chapter is a bit clunky and I wasn't really sure what was going on. I knew it had to be changed. And yesterday I finally made some of those changes, so while I still don't like it, exactly, it fits better with the story as a whole. And it means I can start sharing it again, ha. Only twenty-two more chapters to go...? With that said, some of those chapters are ridiculously over-long and need to be broken up differently. That's going to be fun...

So, if I wasn't editing, what was I doing? Being December, I've been distracted by the auspices of Real Life; I ended up having to work for a couple of hours, I needed to do some shopping, I had to wrap gifts, and I got a bee in my bonnet about vacuuming (mostly thanks to the glitter all over the floor). Today promises Adventures In Glue-Gunning. But if I am to make anything of this writing malarkey, I need to make time for writing. I think I said the other day that Scribes is having their last meeting for the year on Wednesday, and it involves writing a Christmas story. I'm not so hot with those. I think I've written three that I can remember? One was just a sob-fest because it was written the Christmas Day that followed the Christmas Eve when my grandfather died; it makes no real sense, it was just catharsis. Another one was about D'Arcy and Wills spending an odd Christmas with Elaine and Damien; I honestly don't remember well, which likely means it was crap. The other one I know of was about D'Arcy and Tess a year and a half after Wills' death, and was...ambitious? Ha. I don't even know anymore. I quite liked it, but I'm not sure anyone else ever did...

At any rate, I wrote a Christmas story yesterday -- I aimed for three thousand words, got almost four. Oops. But considering I started with no actual plot, just the idea of "Luchandra and Kavaan talk about the Nylurean winter holiday," it came out...rather nicely? I'm not sure. But yeah, it's certainly no traditional Christmas story. It was probably more a world-building exercise, than anything else. I'm not really built for short stories, but when I was in high school I learned to write them with a friend of mine; she lived in the States, I lived in New Zealand, and we were writing a massive pseudo-fanfiction epic monster THING. The cast of (mostly original) characters got way out of hand, and we ended up writing lots of short stories sent in the past, the present and the future in order to get background and perspective on each of them. Ever since then, I've kept the habit, as I find it useful for both character and world development. So the point of this story, for me, was finding out a little something about Nylurean culture, as opposed to Sarinian (as Luchandra and Kavaan at this point live in Deseran, an academic city in the Sarinian province of Lonan).

The thing is, though, I ended up learning a bit more about Kavaan, too. And that's where the idea of evolution comes into this entry. Some of my characters have been in my head for a long time. The other day, actually, I was commissioning a drawing of Luchandra and Zurin, and it occured to me that I've known them both since I was fourteen. That's...over half my life, just. Which is a bit scary, and just a little bit wonderful too. But while Luchandra and Zurin have stayed pretty much the same, Kavaan? Kavaan keeps evolving. He's the third apex of their love triangle. When I first drew this triangle I assumed that Luchandra and Zurin were The One True Pairing and that Kavaan was just a bump on the road, but these days...I just can't work that one out. Luchandra and Zurin are certainly the Star Crossed Lovers trope, but does that entitle them to be the One True Pairing? I think I've finally come to realise that one does not necessarily equal the other. And so, that brings me to Kavaan.

He actually did the bulk of his evolving last year, during NaNo 2009 when I wrote fifty thousand words on the Hibernaculum draft that still languishes unfinished on my harddrive. Back when I was fourteen years old Kavaan was the stereotypical elf archer warrior thing, and when he developed a personality he became...a bit of a dick, in all honesty. He loved Luchandra, but it was a possessive love that led to him murdering one incarnation of Zurin and raping a girl for reasons I still don't understand (!). I think it was a teen angst thing on my part, I don't know; certainly these days the Rape Is Love trope really pisses me off whenever I see it (because of course the girl he "raped" was in love with him anyway, wtf). I suppose I should just be glad I got it out of my system when I did? But...yeah. When I began to reimagine the story of Hibernaculum in order to put it in the history of this entire world -- because all my stories are linked to one another -- Kavaan really started to change quite dramatically. Some things are the same, sure. But instead of an arrogant possessive SOB, he's become a mildly clumsy, eternally cheerful diplomat with a talent for both music and conversational callisthenics. He's just...a much happier person, though in some ways he's less confident and...more submissive, almost. But then he's not really submissive, he's just more...thoughtful, I guess? Actually, I really liked something that came to Luchandra while I was writing What The Fire Said, the Christmas story for next week:

She had to love him for that. While others might have thought from his ridiculous conversational habits that he had no idea of what went on around him, she knew he was very observant. In fact, he was intuitive to a fault. Sometimes she thought that was why he talked so much. Perhaps he just hoped that the sound of his external voice would drown out all that he didn’t want to hear from the internal.

 So...yes. When I was NaNo-ing last year, I fell in love with the newly evolved Kavaan. I hadn't really written much of him since, but now...I am falling in love with him all over again. And wondering. I often find that my characters do what they want, especially when it comes to love (I learned in Mexico that Eliot and Morgan, certainly, have very odd ideas both about each other and then love in general). It's a little bit scary to think that when it comes to the Zurin-Luchandra-Kavaan love triangle that I really don't know what's actually going to result from it. But then, I suppose that's half the fun...

Slash and Burn

For those of you interested in such things, unfortunately the title is not referring to slash fiction. ^_~ No, I'm going to complain a little bit about editing, mostly as a means of procrastinating from doing that very thing. Although with that said, I've been having little fits of GLEE all week because I commissioned a lovely English girl to do me a little drawing of Araben and Aleksandr, and she's been sending me sketches and whatnot and...yes. Niiiiice, is all I have to say for myself. <3

But the fact that I am speaking of editing at all means that yes, I finished the first draft of The Neverboy on Wednesday night. It's almost been a little anti-climatic, but that's likely because I've been away from it for a while now and therefore the thought of going back and rereading from the beginning properly isn't at all anaethema to me right now. In fact, I will be doing that shortly, as I need to really start tidying up the story in order to have it sing the way I know it can. It stumbles along fine the way it is, of course, but...it could be so much more.

But yes, it's quite odd, having something semi-finished that I can now seriously consider in a more critical light. I mean, with The Juniper Bones, even when I have a first draft I have no real belief that anyone would ever publish it. I have a similar problem with For What We Drown, though it is more palatable; it's just set in New Zealand, which seems to kill a story dead when it comes to the international market. And Hibernaculum is a pseudo-fantasy story without all the things most fantasy writers seem to want, so...I don't know. I can't write anything anyone would want to publish. The Neverboy is probably the closest thing I have to a "marketable" manuscript, so...editing it? It's a giddying, sobering, and terrifying thought.

It did strike me, though, that it's almost like writing an essay. I've always been an intuitive writer, essays or otherwise, but most of the other stories I've finished over the years were pretty solid the way they were. My writings these days...aren't. I don't know if it's that I am a worse writer (which I doubt) or if things are just more complex, but...looking at The Neverboy, I know that I have to go back over my introductory stages in order to strengthen the end, I have to cut out the chaff and emphasise the main points in the body chapters, and then I have to really sum things up and end with a bang at the end. The elements of all these things are there, I just...have to start smoothing out the rough edges. I'm not quite sure how this is going to work, but I'm actually excited about it instead of just terrified, so I figure that's what sane people would call "progress."

I also need to start communicating more with other writers. One of my fellow local writers is all for accountability week by week, which I think would be fantastic. I need to start swapping chapters with another writer again. And I need to spend more time getting involved on the CompuServe forums. And somehow, in amongst all that, I have to write. Ha.

In the meantime, my other local writing group is having a Christmas gathering on Wednesday night and I need to write a tiny Christmas story to share aloud. Being contrary, I now want to write something about the equivalent holiday in Nylurea. But told by Kavaan, who would be living at that point with Luchandra in Sarin. It's going to be so complicated, particularly as I decided to limit myself to three thousand words (!). How I am going to achieve anything in that space, I have no idea. But then...slashing and burning a manuscript means one needs to be concise and selective. I suppose there's no time like the present to get started...

Tangentism

...I love making up words. No, really. Hadn't you noticed? <g> But this is just a little entry I'm writing mostly because I'm procrastinating. I currently have The Neverboy half a chapter and one epilogue away from the so-called Shitty First Draft, and naturally that terrifies me. So naturally here I am, blogging instead of writing. And in that vein, I want to say something about tangents.

Why am I so afraid of finishing things? A large chunk of that fear is because throughout my adult life, I've never published a thing. I haven't tried very hard, admittedly, but I've entered several competitions and had zero back from it. I've submitted to a couple of anthologies, been politely but firmly turned down. I also belonged to New Zealand's romance writers collective for a year or so, and all the feedback I had back from them was basically negative. I coped with that by trying to take some of their advice while recognising I was there for all the wrong reasons (it's not my genre, I just thought it would be an easy way in to the published world; in hindsight, I wasn't giving them the credit they deserve). But yes, I am terrified of submitting something I actually care about to a publisher. Because what I have submitted in the past? Was written to formulas and requests and other ephemeral things I just didn't get. And maybe that's why they sucked. Because I didn't care about what I was writing.

But I do care about these stories, and that's why I am afraid.

So, there's that major fear. The other fears are just around the fact that I often get distracted when I am writing. As a reader -- or as a watcher of movies and television -- I am fairly well-known amongst my friends for looking right past the main characters and focusing upon the minor or supporting cast. I've always done it. Hell, at work today I baffled a colleague who recently started reading Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series; I told her fairly early on that my favourite character was one Lord John Grey, and I preferred him over the male protagonist, one Jamie Fraser. John Grey doesn't really turn up until the third book, and as she was out sick last week she managed to get from book two to book four, and she was saying to me today that she had met Lord John and couldn't understand why I was so utterly in love with him. You could repeat this scenario ad nauseum with every book, movie or television series I've loved. Side characters are my one true passion.

So, is it any surprise that when I write my own stories, the side characters mutate and embiggen themselves to the point where I can't even find the main story any longer?

This is one of my major problems with endings -- the main plotline has fragmented so much that I can't really bring it back together. Fortunately this is not the case with The Neverboy, as Kit has remained the firm protagonist the whole way through. Cal and Círa, his main companions, clearly have their own storylines and subplots, but they feed into Kit's and do not devour him alive (which, considering Kit's default reactive state, is rather fortunate; it's a slight miracle of literary alchemy that he hasn't been transmogrified by either, and in fact finally managed to transcend even himself). My problems with the ending of that novel are mostly to do with my crippling self-loathing and a fear of the wordcount. I'm verbose -- no, really; you can stop laughing, y'all sitting up there in the peanut gallery -- and although I don't seem to care much about that early on in proceedings, when I get to the end and have a hundred thousand words to a young adult manuscript, for some reason I decide to be frugal. At the worst possible time. This is how many a clunky deus ex machina ending evolves into a terribly deformed living being, people. But after almost a year apart from this WIP, I've got over that. Or maybe it's the lingering sorcery of NaNoWriMo, I don't know. But there it is.


So, tonight I will go plunge back into the muddy waters of the end of The Neverboy. I was daydreaming so much about it on the way home I parked my car in its old spot in the driveway instead of in the garage where it now fits. And I'm too distracted to actually go and put it away. The time for tangents is over. We're going for the apex of the triangle, the point of the story. It's come full circle. The chords are in tune. And my god, I can make more bad geometry puns than is really healthy for someone who should have had a degree in fine arts.


But as a closing remark, speaking of art -- the other day I realised for the first time (slow learner that I am) that I could have a couple of the commissions I've ordered in the past printed on nice glossy photo paper in poster form. I asked for Círa, Kit and Cal's drawing (the one on this blog), and then the infamous "facebook" shot of Eliot and Morgan (and Morgan's meat cleaver). They arrived today, along with a random beautiful photo I took in Palenque, and thus now...my three Neverboy children are staring at me from my wall, demanding that SFD. Now. So...no more tangents. To the point! It's just waiting to jab me in the back, I know, but...I have the feeling I'll enjoy it.


...yeah. I'm a masochist. But in a place like this, I'll tell you what...it sure helps. <3

Things Wot I Learned Yesterday

...ah, bad grammar and spelling, you do start off the day well. <g> Not that this entry is my first writing effort for this morning, even though it's only nine-thirty; I've been a busy little bee and have been catching up on the CompuServe NaNo wrap-up thread. It's been an absolute pleasure, discovering and then being absorbed into that place, and I am really glad and grateful that I found it. I started flagging halfway through the month with NaNo, not out of a lack of motivation, but more of...loneliness? I had some friends who were doing NaNo too, but strangely? No-one seemed very interested in just talking about it. So, the NaNo threads at the Books and Writers Community became a real godsend...though I was completely behind on commenting on posts and snips by the end of it! So, I've spent an hour or so this morning catching up. It's been fantastic. There are so many talented and wonderful and generous writers there to share the ups and downs with, and I am really hoping to keep stealing their energy so I can keep writing through December and into the new year. <g> I'm also slightly embarrassed to admit that I've been cutting and pasting some of the kind comments on my own work into a little .doc file for when my Inner Editor's ranting and raving about how terrible my work is. We all need a little jar of sunshine we can open when the rain is beating the windows of our little writing cottages, and this will be mine. <3

In the meantime, what on earth was the badly-crafted title of this entry referring to? Well, as I said, I'm on hiatus from The Juniper Bones in the meantime. I just need to let it sit and simmer a bit before I can really go back and finish the draft (which is a bit sad, as Ico really wants to read it but won't until it's finished; I can understand that, as she knows all too well how long I can leave things unfinished!). But I have my other projects, and right now The Neverboy feels like it will be finished by the end of the year (!). After much procrastination last night, I finally forced myself to sit down in front of chapter ten and just got writing.

My relationship with this particular novel is an odd one. It disturbs me, somewhat, in that I can't remember quite how it even got started. I mean, I had decided to write a novel dedicated to my nephew, who was about one at the time, so this must have been in late 2007 or early 2008, as I only met him when I returned from the UK in November 2007. I figured that because he was so young I could safely take years writing it, because it wasn't like he could even read yet. <g> Although he's just turned four now, so he's catching up to me. With that said, the book's aimed at twelve/thirteen year olds, I think? It was originally a bit younger than that, but the sheer length of it, combined with the thematic tilt, means I aimed it a bit higher and increased the ages of both Kit and Calden to account for it. But yeah, I can't remember when I wrote most of it, or when the idea even hit me. Tagged on the end of my current .doc is a peculiar note:

01/11/08: 29,641

 I believe that I may have intended to do it for NaNo in 2008 and this was the count of the original .doc? The wordcount is now 107,340. So definitely too long, but that's standard in my work. It'll lose at least twenty thousand words of padding by the time it's fully readable and integrated. But I must have written most of it in 2009, because I don't remember doing anything much to it this year. But basically I had seen it through almost to the end; the manuscript I started playing with the other day had every chapter laid out, the last five save two in dialogue, and there was a huge chunk missing from chapter ten. This is because of how I constructed the story; the first ten chapters are a mini-story that eventually comes back to haunt Kit at the end of the novel, and for some reason I just couldn't finish it. (There's a theme here, of me not being able to finish a damn thing.) So, the last three nights, I have forced myself to come back to this chapter and just...write. Last night I was rewarded, and it was finished.

What was amazing to me, though, was what I needed to realise in order to write it. I understand Kit, my protagonist, a lot better now -- because what had stopped me short originally was the fact Kit was doing very little for himself. And if the hours of my life I have wasted at tvtropes.org have taught me anything (aside from the fact I have no self-control on wikis), it is that main characters? Have to be the fulcrum on which the story turns. Kit's been very reactive throughout the whole story, mostly because of the situation but partly because of his personality, but to really progress as a character...he needed to act. And in chapter ten, he finally did. It sets up the ending, which I now understand a bit better. Before I had disliked it and refused to write it further because it sounded so weak. But I think...I know how to strengthen it. There are two antagonists in this story, and I hadn't realised until I reworked chapter ten and finished it that Lady Moon is the primary one. I always thought it was Ryenn. But Ryenn...is the prelude antagonist. He'll be back. Lady Moon won't be (or at least, I hope she won't be). So, knowing and understanding this? Is what is going to push me over the finish line at last.

I also found that I started linking the tenth chapter back to how Kit and Cal met in the first, and the circularity of it all make it resonate and sing for me as I wrote. This was an incredible feeling, and I was hitting the Zone. I had planned to work on Tea For Two today, one of my short stories, but I think I might just stick with rereading some of the preceding chapters of Neverboy before really getting into the dread chapter twenty-one (there's a weird monster in that, I'm not so hot with monsters!). What amazes me, though, is that even though I said I wouldn't write The Juniper Bones? Last night, while doing my reflection on NaNo for compuserve, I decided to post Morgan's entry in the Menhir journal, and...I had to fix up the gaps in it first. It wasn't painful at all, and the Inner Editor had nothing to say. I'm looking forward to getting back to Morgan and Eliot and Tess and the rest later, but for now...Kit wants me to find him his name. And I am off to do it. <3