Did anyone see where August went?

I love it when stories refuse to obey me. Okay, let me rephrase. I love it when there's actually nothing written yet, and the story is still in formation phase. When reworking it doesn't involve trashing 100 pages of story and starting over.

My new novel (working title of P.O.W. cuz I gotta call it something), which I do believe I will give a shot at for nano this year, is in that lovely formation phase where there is nothing but beautiful discovery after beautiful discovery. The whole thing kicked off from a what-if branch off of an unsatisfying tv episode I watched, and it's now so far removed from that, I can barely recognize its origins. But the casting of the lead was one of the driving forces. Only he won't stay who I want him to be. The lead has turned into a totally different guy, and the guy I wanted has taken over the other lead character.

You know, the bad guy.

Who now that I watch my subconscious shift and change this story around, know that this takeover means I've got my heroes mixed up. Again. Must be another sign you're reading one of my books. Yeah, the characters aren't who you think they are. Didn't realize quite how grey I was on the borders of good and evil where my lead men are concerned. Okay, I knew, I've always known, but it still surprises me when it pops up in a book. Weird how I can still be surprised by such things.

Some serious blog neglect

Boy, I haven't been around here lately. Blame it on buying a new house, trying to sell the old one. Really did a number on my creative brain cells. They did not want to function. They're coming around now that escrow has closed, the move is pending, and the next phase of my life is about to begin.

So I was catching up on Storytellers Unplugged, and the following section from an essay by Brian Knight caught my eye:

(rant alert – most of the so-called envelope-pushers who self publish their work via Publish America and Lulu like to call their abuse of the rules of grammar Experimental, but leaving the “Speech Tags” out of the dialog in your novel isn’t innovative, it’s just dumb).

Which quite cracked me up because I know at least one writer who that would apply to. The annoyingly conspicuous absence of dialogue tags, that is.

Rather interested to see what project I get into as soon as the move is out of the way and I'm settled. Revisions on DTD? Or starting the new POW novel? Or should I save the latter for Nano, even though I promised myself I wasn't going to do nano this year. And I'm curious to see how revisions go on DTD, because when I started it, I had specific actors in mind to play the leads (not that "casting" lasts beyond the conceptual period -- the characters rapidly come into their own shortly into the writing process). But now, one of those could/should be played by someone else, and I'm quite curious to know if that will subconsciously color the re-write a bit, and if so, how.

Not there...

Okay, I admit. I can't write anything serious right now while life is full of other things. Trying to commit to a revision of DTD, but brain is too distracted to do it. Sticking with flash fiction and short things, but they're not satisfying. Having trouble reading too. I think I've started probably five books in the last month, and all sit languishing on the shelf, unfinished.

I'm oddly cool with this huge chunk of downtime. I'm not feeling like I can't ever write again, it's just feeling like necessary time off while some big changes occur. I think if I started to work on a bigger project that's important to me, I would resent the Real Life things for intruding on my valuable writing time.

So, opting to stick with very short things that won't engage the better part of my brain.

Ain't that the truth?

favorite phrase of the day...

"Multi-tasking means that you can do a lot of nothing at once."

from one of matociquala's journal entries today. She also wrote this, which cracked me up.

@$()*@(#)$*)(*#&$@#*

Stupid blogger. Stupid "upgrade" changes. Stupid Google account whatever.

I. Hate. This.

Why yes, of course I just love change, why do you ask?

all play and no work...

Been neglecting this blog in favor of LJ, ah well. And it looks like it's going to force me to switch to this google accounts thing. Lovely. One more login and password to set up and remember.

Writing has been unproductive of late. My own fault. Simply a lack of concentration. Novel edits were going well until I hit a wall. Have to shift a few things around and am not quite sure how I want to go about it just yet. And so it sits while I figure it out. Two new fanfic pieces are going considerably better, but they're not hopping either, merely plugging along. And how exactly does it all work out so prolifically during nano, anyway? Sigh.

New words!

I've been editing novel and working with established storylines for so long, that it felt positively refreshing to write the beginnings to not one, but two new stories today. Got about 800 words on each. And on the second story, another large chunk of plot fell in place, one that's perfectly tragically horrible, but it explains all sorts of things I had planned for later in the story, but couldn't figure out exactly how to get there. Now, I know. It will not make readers happy, it doesn't make me happy, but of course, it all delights me no end anyway.

famous last words

They say you don't remember the pain of writing a story after it's over. And it's true. You don't. The pain fades quickly and all you're left with is a shiny spread of words to savor. How long or how hard it took to get them no longer matters.

But that knowledge is not helping during the writing of this particular story.

I'll take that one, over there

So, I've been sort of working on all three novels, kind of alternating one then the other, waiting for the "this one NOW!" spark to hit, and, as expected, it's DTD. So, started getting seriously into the edits on it last night.

I'm on the first pass, which is namely: yanking all excess wordage, flagging sections that need to go, and putting notes in on new stuff that needs to go in. Pass two will be writing the new material. Pass three will be making the whole thing shiny. Then it'll need a beta reader or two to make sure I didn't break anything new, then it is declared done. I'm figuring two months, maybe less, with March 15th my current deadline to polished final draft.

off and running

So, I started editing one of my novels today. It's nearly 145,000 words long, and 45,000 of those words need to go. Yanking the unnecessary stuff is actually way easier on this particular work than I thought it'd be, mostly because this draft has been completed for over five years, and I'm a very different writer nowadays than I was then. The story's still sound, but can you say bloated prose? I didn't touch it in all that time either, which makes it about as fresh as this one can get.

This is a novel that I've struggled with the beginning, because I originally felt I couldn't jump into the action without setting a few things up first. The beta readers all said once they hit chapter two, they couldn't put it down from there, but chapter one, that all important chapter one, bored them. So, there's the "swap chapter one and chapter two" theory, which I toyed with and don't like (or haven't figured out how to make work). There's the "throw out chapter one entirely and just let her rip" approach. Or there's something between those two. But on that subject, I read number 5 of this post today, which made me rethink what I need to do to the beginning. Again.

And I really liked this consise post from Elizabeth Bear today on narrative tension. I was talking recently with a non-writer friend on why they can't put down some books, and wish I'd read her post first. Then I would have had words (dilemma, escalation, resolution) and an easy example to explain it properly. My take was much more long-winded.

So, I've been wondering how much writing I want to push myself to do right now. The year ahead originally looked to be more of a editing year, but now it looks like it's shaping up to be editing AND new stuff too. I've committed to writing a story a month for my sister, due on or about the 15th of each month. So that'll be 12 new flash or short stories this year.

I briefly thought about doing this too. It's only 750 words a day, it's a deadline, I've got a bunch of friends doing it, so there's that peer pressure thing to help keep things on track.... The only thing holding me back is that I tend to devote heavily to projects, and I'm not sure how much I want to split my brain up into a new project while I edit the older ones. I'm not the best writing multi-tasker in the world. And I don't exactly need a new project when I've got three others needing editing and a fourth that needs to be finished. Still, going to spend tonight contemplating which project I would write for the new novel, or if I'd rather just focus on editing.

Plans

So, today I cleared the nano-chart off my whiteboard (where I kept track of daily word totals) and wrote down the writing projects I want to finish instead. Helps to look at their titles every time I walk into the kitchen. They're running constantly around in my head, but this gives me focus, and I can give them deadlines and keep track of progress.

Since nano, I've been mostly reading. Reading reading reading. Three novels down, working on a fourth now, a bunch of short stories, some biographical non-fiction. And, as usual, with so many words floating around in it, my brain is coming up with new stuff. And, as usual, the new stuff is little bits and images, a bunch of unconnected bubbles floating around, waiting for the links that will turn them into stories.