Recently in the writing process Category

(On the administrative side, I'm changing comment authentication on this blog. I can't deal with the thousands of spam comments anymore.)

I recently wrapped up Slip Point and have sent it sailing off into submission land. I sat on what I thought was a mostly-complete draft of this one for an entire year (I actually ended up adding 40% more in word count from that point, but conceptually the major bones were in place). So there's a bit of that dusting-off-hands feeling in having really finished this one. Why was I stuck for so long? Because it was originally envisioned as space opera — not my typical fare.

My brother, who often deals with literary science fiction but rarely romance (pretty much only when I force him to read my work), handed me Star Hero, a guide for RPG gamemasters who want to set up a science fiction campaign. It helped to have common options laid out in an organized manner for exactly the purpose I intended: world-building. This is instinctual for me with fantasy, but I needed the extra help outside of my usual genre. One hopes that with practice, this shall improve.

Secondary props go to TV Tropes for confirming when I should mock an aspect of my setting.

My latest romance read: Bound and Determined by Jane Davitt and Alexa Snow. I was warned about the sado-masochism aspects of this, but found it far more focused on the psychology behind becoming a submissive. I can't begin to say how much I appreciated the way characters talked things out and had families and friends; and the writing is good, smooth and easy without ever being drab or stealing the show. The arc felt a little oddly shaped to me, perhaps because of its length, but it's a worthwhile BSDM m/m read.

And I should belatedly mention that the Deviant Divas ran a spotlight feature on me. For someone without a particularly interesting life, I have too much fun coming up with different bios everytime I'm asked for one.

I went to a talk by Alice Walker, and questions for her ranged through the topics of slavery, sexism, dance, technology, inspiration, and feedback on writing.

She talked about how we've gotten used to the immediacy of feedback. Put up a blog post, collect comments. Join a writing group, garner critiques. She thought that a writer would be able to realize the potential of her own work if she just gave it time, without any external input.

I was just discussing this the other day — about how no one else read the full manuscript for Summer-set or Demon's Fall before I submitted them and they were accepted. (Some people did offer comments on the first chapter of each.) This is partially because I was fighting to make anthology deadlines, which sort of destroys Ms. Walker's point, but I do want to say that it's possible to write a publishable work on your own. Like all writing advice, "Get a critique partner" is not an absolute, lead-lined necessity.

My editors definitely did help improve those stories (and the point that one of them made is cropping up fairly regularly in reviews — no more slapdash minimalist revisions for me). I mean, these are professionals and they know what they're doing for their publisher's particular audience, and without the varied, dissenting voices that tend to crop up in critique groups.

But imagine if I had sat on these stories a little longer before handing them in. When I was in school, my mother used to wake me 10 or 15 minutes before I actually would have to get up, so that I could just lie in bed and adjust to consciousness. There's a Korean verb that describes leaving rice in the warm cooker for a little while after the rice cooker claims it's done, which is supposed to improve taste. (I believe in this so whole-heartedly that I've never run a comparison test.) My mom liked to apply this word to me on school day mornings. And I think it works for finished drafts too, although of course I would suggest a period rather longer than 10-15 minutes.

So with improved flavor, the story could head off to the editor, and turn out even better. (The tastier it starts out, the even more delicious it'll be after a good editor takes her turn.)

I wonder if there's a minimum period I should wait. A friend once told me that the rule of thumb for recovering from relationship break-ups was half the length of the relationship. Perhaps there's a similar calculation for stories?

Anyway, I suspect that this food analogy is being provoked by my stomach. Off to dinner I go.

I find having to write a synopsis annoying but particularly evil; the worst part for me is that it's difficult to infuse a synopsis with a more lyrical writing style. But even back in high school, when computer programming projects demanded pseudocode as part of the planning process, I simply wrote the real code first, then went back and faked how I'd gotten there. I even planted little artistic differences in algorithms so as to make it seem like a genuinely separate draft.

Synopses are rather similar in my mind. I tend to write them immediately before submission, so the story's already complete and need only be summarized — much simpler than writing it. And my philosophy is that as long as the synopsis is competent and the first page of your actual manuscript rocks, you'll be fine in the editor's eyes.

I got a bit stuck with Slip Point (after I promised an editor that I'd be submitting it soon, of course) when a subplot rose all unexpectedly and bopped me on the nose. Fitting it in was necessary but clashed with other parts I'd already written. (The same person can only get kidnapped so many times before it starts getting old.) I don't think I've ever done a major rewrite for anything novella length or shorter; most of the shape of the story comes to me naturally. So this was awkward. "What am I going to do with you?" I asked my subplot, which, cat-like, sat squarely on my manuscript and ignored me to preen.

I retreated to the synopsis to sort things out there and was happy to discover that it was much easier to cut and reshuffle mere lines there, which translated into entire scenes in the actual story. But once I had a clear idea of what needed to change, it went much more easily. And since I insist on having a fairly balanced ratio between the development of the romance and the plot driven by external conflict, it was nice to be able to see the major events for each of those explicitly laid out. When I write, sometimes I get caught up in the current scene when I should be giving my starry-eyed couple a little time to themselves.

I fear I may become an outlining sort of writer.

I was once lucky enough to attend a talk by Craig Childs, who wrote The Animal Dialogues — it's a read that after a year still lingers in my memory like the smell of rain, with a lyrical writing style and a deep appreciation of wildlife. In his talk, he told the story of a sparrow he had noticed flitting high in the rafters of an airport while he was traveling. It was just a common bird, and yet he felt this sort of glow at having encountered an animal even in this most technological of places. He felt proud for actually bothering to look up and catch sight of it. Everyone else, he was sure, was lying across benches and napping, or nose-deep in a magazine, or rushing toward their gate with their heads down and arms churning. But he had his secret sparrow.

Once he boarded the plane, he struck up a friendly conversation with the fellow seated next to him. And that guy said, "Man, did you see that there was a crazy sparrow trapped in the airport?" And Mr. Childs reflected to our laughter that there had been some hubris involved in claiming this creature for his own personal satisfaction.

I think writers need their own secret sparrows, though. We move through life much like any other, but we catch little glimpses or facts that we trap and nurse in our minds, pearl to oyster-like. Other people see and read and hear all the same things, but for them it's something to mention it in passing, or ignore altogether. Writers see something valuable enough to clutch to themselves and weave into something greater. We offer magnitude and connections to our sparrows.

I've never understood the question "Where do you get your ideas?" From the same places where anyone else could. But I let myself get quietly excited about these little things. And because I see them as something special, they can flourish into full-fledged stories and fly free someday.

There are a couple of marvelous short story opportunities out there right now — and these aren't common for romance — but I'm pretending that they don't exist. I'm determined to polish up my sf romance novella for submission before I head out of the country. And any shorter works I should be working on are the Demon's Fall tie-in and the interactive fiction piece. No time for distractions! Eyes ahead! March!

I used to think that any increase in word count was a good thing. But if I want to learn a professional writer's habits, I can't casually flit among projects. I will never be a purely monogamous writer, but I need to develop a mode where I'll focus on finishing a work before a deadline.

It's at the point where I'm turning down social invitations so that I can stay home and write. This is not an excuse friends take kindly to; they barely tolerate it during the month of NaNoWriMo. So yes, on a Saturday afternoon, I am at home in front of my computer...blogging.

Actually, while my Internet connection cut out in the middle of my writing this blog post (there is no better way to get a writer writing), I just realized what I needed to do to get my demon story going. Off I traipse.

I love it when I finish a story that I began years ago. The oldest draft of this one that I can find dates back to 2002, and I'm pleasantly surprised by how much of the prose still rings true to me. I made a few tweaks, but the bulk of what I did was addition: filling in the gap scenes, instead of editing what was already there.

I even knew the ending back then, and I'm still utterly in love with one of the characters — ah, that's why it took so long. This favored character is not, alas, the protagonist, and I think I went into a snit about it and couldn't make myself focus on the right character. So I suppose the story needed a more mature writer, not in terms of writing skill, but in accepting the shape of the story.

I wonder what I'll do once all these ancient story ideas are all finally fulfilled. I suppose at that point, it'll be another eight years in the future and all the abandoned nuggets I'm writing these days will be prime for mining then.

After I clean it up a bit, I think I'm going to send "Unsilenced" over to the Trafficking in Magic anthology at Drollerie Press, since it's too awkward a length for most fantasy short story markets.

She moved through the marble and alabaster halls of the palace as softly as any spirit: as though she had died, Veillen thought resentfully, instead of her father. But the One-Eyed Emperor's body had been placed within its tomb with all the proper rituals a full moon ago, and his daughter, in turn, was trapped in the palace. Empress, the courtiers and servants murmured when she passed them in the hallways, and they would make obeisance, but their eyes were full of bright, hard smiles, and the echoes of their laughter would come to her once she turned the corner. They would give her an appellation soon, either the Ghost Empress or the Silent Empress. Veillen possessed the dry, utter certainty that more than her father's memory remained, and it was his presence that still ruled here, as heavy as his jewelled crown.

I managed to scribble out a short story that has nothing to do with my upcoming release. I think the point of this short story was to promote said release. Using some of the characters or even just the setting might have helped with that. Oh well.

I had trouble with the theme — I did hammer my head against an idea set in Summer-set's world, but it didn't end up flowing for me. Obviously, the next setting to try was alternate history fantasy Venice! (Think of, say, the way Guy Gavriel Kay borrows from history without slavishly following it.)

Maybe there's enough of my writing voice evident in 2,500 words to interest people in completely unrelated works? We'll see.

I forgot to bring my notebook home from the office, so the words I painstakingly bled out are lying abandoned and forlorn in a building a refuse to step into once I've left for the day, just out of principle. I could try to write the same gist from memory. Actually, I did use a lot of brackets, which is something I do when the word choice isn't quite right but I can't be bothered to stop and figure out a better alternative right then. So having the exact words wouldn't be helpful anyway.

My mind's already skipping ahead to the next story I want to work on, but I'll exercise some discipline and buckle down on this one. Notebooks are good for writerly monogamy. I used to mix up multiple stories on a single page, but when the time came to type it up, I'd be horribly confused. So now I always feel committed to a story for at least an entire page. (Never min that I only use small notebooks.)

I guess I'll poke at a different scene and see if I can tickle it into submission.

I got some great comments on the first chapter of "Gutter-wing," and now I'm caught between going back and rewriting that, or chugging on and actually finishing it all before I start doing the heavy lifting.

If there were structural or foundational issues — say I didn't want the heroine to be an angel anymore (that won't happen) — I would definitely do the revisions now. It doesn't make sense to keep writing along lines that I've decided to discard. But I just might be able to squeeze by with additions and very minor edits, and keep any ripples farther down the story to a minimum. So I'm dithering.

Sometimes there's such a thing as momentum, and you have to keep moving forward. (I think this is what NaNoWriMo depends on. Or, say, stories almost due for an anthology deadline.) But sometimes you tinker with one bit, and it clicks into place, and then everything else in the story makes glorious sense. That little click is worth worlds.

I think I'll be optimistic and wait to go back over Chapter One during the weekend, in case it does spur a creative spurt, and I'll want the free time to take advantage of it.

I went back to the online critique group I'd left before, because despite the frustration I'd experienced last time, there was a single comment on the first chapter of Summer-set that helped me rewrite it into something that could sell. (I would thank the critiquer, except I had the impression that she disliked the story. See how negative criticism can be more helpful?) I'm hoping for something similar for "Gutter-wing" — all it might need is just one person's throwaway remark to trigger some blinding authorly insight.

I think my earlier mistake was in expecting something similar to an in-person or static membership critique group, where you can depend on getting the same level and quality of feedback each round. It seems this site might be better suited for what I think are called beta reads: gathering first impressions instead of in-depth lookovers.

I've got the first chapter up now — in fact, this spurred me to fill in a few holes that my non-linear writing method had left — and we'll see what comes.