Carolyn's Blog

Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Sheesh!

There's a lot I like about the new blogger, but I have to say it now takes freaking FOREVER to login. And sometimes it just doesn't at all. I just wasted almost 10 minutes trying to get logged in. grumble!

I've been reading my son Philip Pullman's Golden Compass books, we're on Book 2, The Subtle Knife. Brilliantly original. And today, as I was reading I came across a line that made me just stop. It took my breath. The two women talking are powerful, far-seeing witches pledged to watch over the protagonist, Lyra. Lord Asriel is Lyra's father and he's already changed the world, possibly not for the better. The two witches are talking about Lyra's companion, a 12 yo boy...

"He's strange," said Ruta Skadi, "He is the same kind as Lord Asriel. Have you looked into his eyes?"

"To tell the truth," said Serafina Pekkala, "I haven't dared."

To me, that's an amazing exchange on so many levels it just defies trying to convey it. But talk about making your words work for you!

I'm still working though paper copy of Magellan's Witch and making some important deletion, notes and tweaks. More at it tomorrow.

Labels: great books, Magellan's Witch, writing

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Sunday, February 25, 2007

Best laid plans and all that

So, I had the awesome intention of getting a boatload of work done today. I did the Mom thing in the morning, got the kid fed, ran a few errands. Then I printed out my Work In Progress (WIP) and started reading, red pen in hand. The specific plan was to fix the chapters so I know where the heck I'm going next. Things are feeling a little gooshy, with some chapters that rock and others that are possibly off track and need to be moved or deleted or something.

I fell asleep for three hours. This is one of the problems with sleep deprivation. Rats.

It's a darn good thing I set my alarm because gosh knows how long I'd have slept. My son had soccer tryouts at 5:30 so I got up just in time to get us ready for that plus dash outside to get some daffodils. They're in bloom at last. Now I have a bouquet in my room and two others elsewhere in the house. Lovely.

After I dropped him off at the tryouts and got his number pinned to his back I realized that I had my laptop and my manuscript (MS) with me but NOT my purse. Uh oh. That shot the two hours I was going to spend sitting at Starbucks... No money. No phone. Rats. So I went home and made cookies for his lunch, but I made them extra big so I had fewer batches, thus finishing in time to go pick him up and listen to the usual competitive soccer hoo-ha, which I've heard before now. Whatever.

I guess the MS is going to the gym with me tomorrow morning.

Labels: writing

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Saturday, February 24, 2007

You're not paranoid if...

Tess Gerrittsen has this post that's well worth reading. The comment trail is good, too. Romance authors are definitely not paranoid. Alas.

Labels: publishing, romance genre, writing

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Friday, February 23, 2007

It's the Weekend!!!!

Well. Yay. 37,660 for Magellan's witch. I wrote more than the total word count because I had to delete some stuff, too. Making progress. Right now the scenes are really rough, but I like it so far.

Oh, before I forget. I'm on My Space now, check it out at www.myspace.com/jewelwriter. Please be my friend? (insert whine)

And a last comment before I toddle off to bed. It's a familiar rant, actually, and that is the poor quality of so many writer's websites. Oh, the pain. Every time I see an author announce their website, new or redesigned, I think, maybe this time it will be decent. Alas, this is so rare that I think it's only happened once or twice. My site needs a face lift for sure, and I'm waiting to get back some quotes, because I just don't have time to do it myself.

Labels: Magellan's Witch, My Space

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Thursday, February 22, 2007

Progress, Sponge Bob and Murderous Pirates

36,917 so far for Magellan's Witch. I've made back the nearly 2000 words I deleted the other day. Had two pretty fab ideas which I've got now as rough chapters, and have a glimmer of where this thing is going. Could be awesome! I hope so. Tomorrow, I need to get my hero and heroine together. They've been apart too long, and that worries me. I have this idea though, and I'm just freaking going for it right now. If I crash and burn, so be it. One of my professors at Sonoma State, John Kunat, said he'd rather read a paper that crashed and burned than one that didn't take any risks. I loved his classes and I wrote some fun papers (to the extent any academic paper is fun). I once quoted Sponge Bob, and another time I started a paper with a scene set on a pirate ship. Someone's got murder on his mind. I got A's on both those papers.

Here's the opening of the Sponge Bob paper (Sorry, footnotes omitted):

Plankton: [To Patrick]: Look at him. He’s square and yellow.
He called you pink.
Mr. Krabs: [To SpongeBob] Go get him!

As everyone surely knows, SpongeBob Square Pants1 and Patrick the starfish live in the idyllic community of Bikini Bottom and are best friends. In the Fry Cook Games episode these best friends engage in a vicious battle for the glory of their respective sponsors, Mr. Krabs and Plankton. The problem is that SpongeBob and Patrick don’t want to fight each other. With all of Bikini Bottom watching will there be no games and no glory? Anxiety reaches a critical point and must be relieved. But how? SpongeBob and Patrick are best friends, after all. They aren’t going to engage in a brutal fight that can only end badly. Are they? Oh, yes they are. Their friendship springs a leak, and it isn’t pretty.2
What happened? It’s easy enough to spot, thanks to the dialogue provided herein3. Plankton and Mr. Krabs point out what neither sponge nor starfish noticed before; they’re different from each other. Those differences, invoked for the sake of Bikini Bottom (if only for about five minutes) focus the building anxiety of the situation and become the excuse by which they may act to relieve the community’s tension. It’s possible SpongeBob and Patrick might have lived their entire animated lives without ever noticing their differences. It’s also possible their differences might have come to light but simply never become a matter for anxiety. But, as we see, the differences did come into contention. Plankton made Patrick aware of SpongeBob’s “spongeness” just as Mr. Krabs make SpongeBob aware of Patrick’s “un-spongeness,” and thus, the community of their friendship dissolved into conflict and the Fry Cook Games go on.
Just as conflict arose in the community of Bikini Bottom, so conflict occurs in human communities.

And here's the opening to the Pirate Murder paper:

Of Human Bondage - A Cosmology of Love
April 30, 1615. A salmon flops on the deck of an English Man of War, gasping at the feet of the sailor who baited the hook. That selfsame salmon just the previous day flicked a tail past the body of the sailor’s drowned shipmate. The sailor, who doesn’t yet know anyone’s missing, let alone the unfortunate soul’s rank, kills, cleans, cooks and serves the salmon to the First Lieutenant who, after a fine supper, writes a poem to his affianced in which he compares her eyes to the gentleness of a midsummer’s night sky, her skin to the softness of a rose and claims his love knows no bounds. While so engaged, he does not notice the rat peering hungrily from a darkened corner, a rat that just the day before saw the lieutenant’s superior officer fall overboard.
This is a scene with too many characters– salmon, seamen living and dead, rats, an officer eating his supper and writing poetry – and minimal setting; a Renaissance ship sailing the ocean blue. On the surface, nothing of any great interest is going on. Or is there? Might there be, perhaps, a hint of malevolence beneath the surface? What if we were to discover that the eyes of the lieutenant’s beloved are not as soft as midnight, he’s been sleeping with the captain’s wife and the sad truth is his fiancee is a nearsighted shrew with chapped lips and a rich father? What is knowable about this scene is quite different from what is felt. But, I digress. In setting ink to paper, the First Lieutenant does something at once unique and inherent to his species.

Labels: Magellan's Witch, writing

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Tuesday, February 20, 2007

The dragon has been slayed -- slain? um, skewered or something

I completely redid the synopis for Scandal and tweaked the chapters and emailed them to my agent to see what she thinks.

In re Music and Lyrics (what a dumb title!) I still think there was no chemistry (the hot kind) between Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore, but I also laughed a lot during the movie and there is that naked torso to consider.

Labels: Scandal, Synopsis

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Monday, February 19, 2007

Igor, hand me that scalple

Today was Fix the Scandal Synopsis Day, if by fix I mean start completely over. Which is exactly what I mean. I'm about three quarters of the way through and I think it's way better so far. I just haven't worked out the scope thing, the extra scandal to add. I have some ideas, but I need to notebook at the gym tomorrow morning to get clear on it.

I went to see Music and Lyrics this afternoon. Totally cute movie. Lots of great lines for Hugh Grant, really funny ones. Very enjoyable movie. Drew Barrymore was good, too. I'm not sure yet because I'm still in that post-movie 24 hour period during which I love every movie I see (except the remake of Planet of the Apes which is the worst movie ever made). I think there was perhaps a lack of chemistry between Hugh and Drew. But I went to the movie fresh off of wrangling with my hero and heroine in Scandal, and those two are angsty-edgy-hot which this movie was not, so maybe I was projecting. But I think it's true. I feel compelled to note, however, that Hugh Grant has an awesome naked torso and I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks to whoever thought of leaving the camera on a medium-close shot of Hugh Grant's naked torso for a quite significant time. Thank you, also for his jeans during that scene, which were low riders. There was some female skin on view as well, but not Drew's, so gentlemen so inclined would also have reason to thank designers who feel compelled to save the environment by using very small amounts of sparkly cloth.

Anyway, I am happy with my progress on the Scandal synopsis and hope to have it finished by tomorrow.

Labels: movies, Scandal, Synopsis

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Sunday, February 18, 2007

Rant Alert! Reviews

Boy oh boy. I've been seeing a lot remarks lately about reviews. On loops, in blogs, on websites. Since I'm an author I have a fairly author-centric view of the issue. Here's a few of my views:

Any review that trashes a book because of the heroine's name is not a review that should be taken seriously. Such a review is not about the book, it's about the reviewer showing off her nasty chops. Hey, go for it, show off all you want, but readers and authors, don't confuse that with a review that has something to do with literary merit or the enjoyability of the read.

A review is not feedback for the author to take to heart for the next time around. A review is a response to a completed work of fiction. By the time the book is in the reviewer's hands it's too damn late for feedback. And any reviewer who thinks he's providing the author a free critique is too self-involved for polite words.

Authors do NOT have complete control over who reviews her book. Publishers send out ARCS without consulting the author. Please, don't assume that every reviewer got the book from the author.

Not all books are good. Some books are just plain bad. I have myself read books I thought were bad. The same is true of reviews. Not every review is based on a thorough reading of the book. That, my friends, is glaringly obvious. I have read reviews (of my own books and others) in which the characters names are misspelled, and sometimes not misspelled but just plain wrong. Some reviews are based on such a cursory read of the book that the reviewer has failed to grasp (or just didn't read?) key events in the story. Some reviewers confuse their books and review events that happened in some other book. And, I have also read reviews that have been written by someone lacking any knowledge or awareness of the rules of grammar or punctuation.

Authors are a highly neurotic group. They agonize over everything. And their books go out into a world where some readers are guaranteed not to like their book. And, authors don't get to rebut reviews. Don't be all-surprised and annoyed if authors do a little moaning about reviews.

For myself, I try not to read reviews anymore. Good or bad, they upset me and/or distract me from the work in progress. The absolute worst thing any author can do is write to please reviewers. That way lies a really bad book.

Labels: Authors, Book Reviews, Rants

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The other kind of organization plus Now vs. Now-Now

Today, after logging all my writing receipts, income and expenses for 2006 and getting everything read for my accountant (yay!!) I squished through Magellan's Witch for a while, feeling more and more like I should just go read a book by someone who doesn't have plotting issues. Instead, I decided I REALLY had to fix the structural issues that have cropped up. I hate when there are chapters that either don't have a home or possibly don't belong at all... Right now, MW is a big fat unfocused mess. I'm not panicking (much) because this always happens. Several weeks from now, I will look back and think wow, this started out so completely different from where I am now. The now-now, though, is a mess.

So, I printed out all my pages, but in an 8pt font. Then I changed the sheets on my bed, got everything all neat and tidy there and laid out my chapters, one chapter per pile and started re-organizing the chapters. The piles were handy because I could pick them up and thumb through them to make sure I was right about remembering what else happened in the chapter.

(By the way, I hope it's evident to everyone that this whole process would have failed miserably without the clean sheets and tidy bed.)

With assists from the cats (who did not appreciate being moved from the bed) I got things in a better order, wrote some notes on some of the top pages to indicate things this chapter gets deleted, but save the good bits for chapter x or Add in the pills here etc. Next I got a big purple marker and wrote the new chapters numbers on the front. Why a purple marker? Because that's what was in my drawer, but it beats yellow. Looked pretty good, too. Then, I assembled the chapters in the new order and used them to re-order my WordPerfect chapters for real. After that, I conformed my outline. That left me with 3 outstanding issues, some of which arose because of the re-ordering. I worked out those issues while I was at a diner with my son and a friend of his. I gave them quarters and they went off to play arcade games, leaving me the table free for notebooking. Question, can I deduct $5.00 in quarters for peace and notebooking-quiet at a diner?

So, I'm going to see about trying to get the chapters in read-through order. There's no point in writing anything more until I know what I have on my hands.

Tomorrow is Fix the Scandal Synopsis Day

Right after this post, though, I'm going to post a rant. Stay tuned.

Labels: Magellan's Witch, organization, Scandal, writing

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Saturday, February 17, 2007

Slow progress through a morass of distractions

Sigh. Writing has been like pulling teeth today. I wrote a lot of words but deleted a lot, too. I saw Pan's Labyrinth today. I really expected to like this movie a lot. But I didn't. It's a really good movie, interesting enough to recommend, particularly as a rental. But the trailers and reviews all suggested that the young protagonist falls in love with the faun. Um, no. They must have been thinking of some other movie. Because there is no love in this movie, I mean that in a very stark way. I was disappointed because the movie was not what I expected. But still, positively not a waste of time or money and the actors were all wonderful. I'd like to see more movies like this. The good news is that my son has agreed to see Music and Lies with me. Yay! I like Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore.

Word Count for Magellan's Witch: 36,019

Anyway. Back to get a few more words squeezed out. Tonight's goal is to get to 36,500 since that will give me over my minimum for the day. Depending on how things go I may have to put off the Scandal synopsis fix until Monday. Also, I'm tired and will be going to bed shortly.

Labels: Magellan's Witch, movies, writing

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Friday, February 16, 2007

On Friday, Carolyn's mood improved markedly

I'm driving home and I get an email from my agent, and at the next intersection all I see is the words mostly I in the text before the light changes. Well, shoot, I think, she hated Scandal. I am depressed the rest of the way home. In the garage, I read the email bits in order. (Postini, the world's greatest spam stopping program, also lets me forward emails to my phone. Naturally, my agent is on the list of emails I want forwarded.)

Oh. OK. This is much better,

She doesn't hate Scandal. She loves it. She's excited about it! What she has problems with is the synopsis. Well, those buggers are a challenge for me, no question about it. I've already addressed the comments she made in my chapters, nothing major at all. But the synopsis is a bigger beast, which I will tackle tomorrow because tonight Magellan's Witch is calling my name to the tune of as many dang words as I can bang out. MW is going very well. It's complexifying nicely.

Scandal is totally bitching since I fixed the crap out of it. But she's right, the synopsis needs help. Yesterday I met with my prof and we talked about Scandal as it happens and Prof. Jaffe and my agent made very similar suggestions about what to do with the story. Apparently I am a plotting idiot. Which is true. Sigh.

Off to work on Magellan's Witch and mentally process Scandal.

Also, Monday is a holiday, and the sign needs to go back on my door. Too little time, too many interruptions.

Labels: Magellan's Witch, Scandal, Synopsis

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Wednesday, February 14, 2007

XX OO XX OO

Happy Valentine's day to everyone, by the way. Tonight I am all aglow because I wrote pretty well over my secret minimum and it's not all that late. I'm going to bed as soon as I finish up this post. I'm exhausted. Sigh.

Word count so far: 35,160

Curmudgeon mode: when I was a kid, at school you were not obligated to give Valentines to anyone you didn't like. Horrible. Some kids didn't get any, and it was just so mean. So it's much better now that in primary school you have to do no one or everyone. But the last two years my son has come home with a bag of full of candy. It's bad enough most Valentines for kids are el cheapo tiny flimsy TV-tied in single sheets of paper hardly the size of maybe two postage stamps, but now it's a candy haul holiday? That's ridiculous. For Valentine's, we buy cards, real cards of real size with envelopes and everything and I make my son write Happy Valentine's Day inside and sign his name. Because, in fact, Valentine's is about giving of yourself to others. So that maybe, just maybe, when he has a girlfriend he will without thinking about it, actually do more than something crassly commercial for her. He will think to himself that Valentine's cards are supposed to be special, and maybe take a little work.

Me. Bed. Now.

Labels: Magellan's Witch

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Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Procrastination - Defined, Described and Nailed

Don't miss this. Ze positively nails this. Really.

the show with zefrank: 02-07-07

Warning: zefrank is addicting.

Most writers are, of course, advanced procrastinators, but resist the temptation to skip ahead to the more advanced techniques. Whenever he talks about the thing that you're trying to avoid feel free to mentally substitute writing. I watched this three times, bit then, I am a procrastination queen.

Labels: procrastination, writing

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Sunday, February 11, 2007

Weekends seem to go really fast

Well, once again, I didn't get as much done as I wanted. Saturday was a known wash word-wise since I was at my local chapter meeting and then the Dublin Barnes & Noble signing and listening to scenes being read from books. The actors were totally fabulously awesome. There is a a HUGE difference between listening to a good reader read and an actor reading those same lines. If you missed it, well, gosh. Next time don't! But get on down there because there are still some signed books to be had in time for valentine's day.

About the actors: Travis Poelle is even cuter than his photo. What a hunk. And when he read Candice Hern's scene in a perfect British accent, I tell you, there were swooning ladies all over. Totally and utterly hot. Melanee E. Nelson was just as amazing. She's gorgeous and I just loved the way she did my heroine from DX. The two of them got the exchange between my hero and heroine dead on the way I imagined it. And, judging from the reaction, people thought that scene was just as funny as I hoped it was.

My local chapter (San Francisco Bay Area Chapter of RWA) plans on doing this again. I hope they do, it was wonderful. We learned a few things to improve for next time and I heard some great ideas, so yay!

I didn't get home from Dublin until nearly seven, and I needed some face time with my son, so about all the writing I did was working on my chapter outline late last night. Things were seriously out of whack from where the chapters are and though that process doesn't produce new words, really I can't proceed without it. Maybe I'm a closet plotter. In the early stages, I need to keep the two fairly well in sync because I use the chapter outline to figure out where stuff needs to be moved etc.

Today, I got a bit done. Not much, though I hit the secret minimum. There were errands to run, and my son needed library books for his report on Poison Dart Frogs. We ended up going to the Sonoma State University library, and then we walked around the campus because he thinks the campus is pretty, which it is. So we had a nice walk and chat. Got home from that, after a stop for grocery shopping, about three and once the groceries were put away, I had to make cookies for his lunch, and then it was time for dinner. Yikes. But, as I said, I met my secret minimum. So far, I have 32,829 words. That's a third done, when you think about it. I wrote my Makeover With Temporary Tattoo scene. And tomorrow I will write the Proposition Goes Dangerously Bad Scene. Or maybe the Nighttime Visit scene, not sure which. I'll have to check the outline to see which comes next. Actually, I'll write which ever one seems more exciting, which is probably the PGDB scene.

Labels: DX, Magllan's Witch, signing, writing

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Friday, February 09, 2007

The North American Stealth Gopher

The North American Stealth Gopher is a rodent, a true pest and the bane of creative writers the world over. This pesky creature moves stealthily through time, geography and metaphysical reality. Razor sharp front teeth gnaw away at confidence while distorting the space time continuum so as to make the time required for non-writing matters take 2⁷ times longer than conceivably probable such that the time available for writing approaches zero. The Stealth Gopher is a known cause of ridiculous blog posts. Often confused with the pocket Gopher by distraught gardeners in mourning for their tomato plants, the Stealth Gopher is commonly thought to have appeared in the movie Caddyshack. This is an urban legend. As you can see from the below exclusive photo, the Slealth Gopher, which is overly fond of disguises, looks nothing like the Caddyshack imposter.

Labels: Stealth Gopher, writing

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Thursday, February 08, 2007

No Zebras today. Ninja Squirrels maybe?

Today I had to get my hair beautified. Had to! I have my author photo thingie all arranged for next week. And I'd already rescheduled the hair appt 3 times for soccer and illness. Let me tell you, 4:30 pm is a bad time for a hair cut. I got home, dropped off my kid, and rushed back to town. By the time I got back, it was 7:30 and I had to help Nathaniel with his homework. His Alexander the Great book report is due tomorrow and the kid cannot spell to save his life. Much erasing of creative spelling. Now I'm going to bed, even though I haven't written anything except at the gym -- that went well -- but I'm beat from last night's joy. Bed. Me. Now.

Labels: writing

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Wednesday, February 07, 2007

Zebras, I tell you!

Here's the conclusion first, so you don't have to read this whole post:

I got very little writing done, some, but not much. But the little I did was good. I have things planned out for the next chapter.

On to the zebras (things that are opposite)

I'm going back on my vow never to talk about work. I've decided that's dumb. For reason's I'll get to time permitting (sorry, it wasn't). Yesterday was a darn good day. I had to jet out to SSU to drop off copies of one of my forms for graduating. I need signatures from the grad advisor and the profs on my committee. I figured I'd have to get my signatures on separate pages. But no! ALL of them were there! I was able to get all my signatures on one page. Then I had to jet home to do the Mom thing etc so I didn't get much done, though I did meet my words per day target. So, yeah. Good day, I'd say.

Today, not so. I was at work until past 8:30pm for an urgent project implementation from 5 to 6:30 if things went slow. Ahem. OK, so people were discussing and testing until 5:45. My job should have been simple. Apply a SQL server hotfix, which installed flawlessly on test, no restart required, then backup the database, run a script and wait around until QA was sure we wouldn't roll back. I applied the hotfix and WTF? The server needed to restart. OK, that's annoying as heck, but I sent the restart command. The server is in a colo facility in So. Cal, by the way. The server does not come back up. Uh-oh. We call the colo facility to have a tech go hard boot the box. They say, OK. 20 minutes later still no server....

Now pretend the server name is something like SERVER9 (it isn't) and that you have previously told the tech the server name (SERVER9) and its location in the rack chassy.

We call back. The guy wants to call us back because he doesn't know where the tech is and he's really busy. Ooookay. I say, doesn't he have a cell phone? Can't you call him and ask him if he's lost (it's a BIG facility) or having trouble finding our racks or (urk) the server won't come up? We convince him he should do that. The tech, when contacted is heard to day, I can only see SERVER1 through SERVER9. Well, all righty. Press the button on SERVER9 would ya? (By the way, you count to 10 while pressing the button, then wait a bit for things to spin down and press the button again) They promise to call us if the server doesn't come up. We're constantly pinging the server. 15 minutes go by. No reply from the server yet. at 7pm I called my boss to discuss whether we should fail over to the warm server. In the middle of that conversation, the server FINALLY replies.

I swear I'm almost done. A drive failed some weeks ago, the hot spare failed over and the array got rebuilt no problem. Which we knew. But on the restart, the failed drive came back on line and the BIOS was waiting for a reply to its message that the known number of drives didn't match the current number of drives, which message we can't see from the tools at our disposal. When the COLO tech finally managed to restart us, that message went away because on this reboot now the number of drives matched the number from the previous time it counted up. So, we finally get started with our project at 7:30pm. The hotfix worked, because the server did not blow up while I was profiling it, scripts were run, stuff got tested and we all went home at 8:30 or so.

Now I'm going to bed.

Labels: day job, Magellan's Witch, writing

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Monday, February 05, 2007

On Being a Pantser

Last night I printed out the Work In Progress (WIP) so I could take it to the gym with me this morning to keep working on it. Since the MS is in a binder, I tucked my trusty notebook in the inside pocket of the binder, along with two red pens (in case one runs out). Good thing I stuck in the notebook. While I like the general direction the WIP is going, I've had some gut-level concerns that weren't getting addressed by looking at it on the computer and/or continuing to write and/or expand scenes. Now, none of what I'm about to say are rules. OK? Keep that in mind. I'm an anal-retentive pantser. You're warned. Proceed at your own risk.

For example, Chapter 1 is 14 pages. My gut knows that this is too long. And that dang chapter just keeps getting longer. But what to do about it? I haven't been sure. I do know that with rare exceptions in the interior of a book, my chapters are 8-11 manuscript pages. That lengthens during the polishing phase. But any chapter that's 14 pages this early in the writing typically means there's too much going on. It means I don't have the opening 3rd of the book right.

Another example: My gut keeps telling me Chapter 7 or 8, I forget which right now, is really an event that should happen MUCH later in the book. But I don't have anything written or plotted that would make this say, Chapter 15 or something. Or maybe even Chapter 20.

Example 3: One of the editors who passed on the proposal said she felt the heroine (Carson) trusted my hero too soon. Now, obviously, this wasn't a concern for the editors who didn't pass, but all this time my gut has been saying, ya know, that seems like a really valid criticism. I have attempted to address that without, for me, any feeling of success. I've been piling up words to fix it and for me, that is a classic sign that the scene is somehow inherently flawed.

Example 4: There's this scene I've been wanting to write but I can't find the right place to make it happen. Very frustrating. I was wrestling with everything back and forth on the rickety old bridge, saying, here, I'll put it here. No, here. Not there, here. Sheesh! The poor scene has been homeless a really long time.

Soooooo, last night as I was falling asleep, not very happy with Chapters 1 and 2, this little voice says, Carson should run away from the hero. And then I woke up just enough to say, yeah, that's right, Carolyn. Don't forget that in the morning. And then I fell asleep.

So, this morning as I'm reading Chapters 3 and 4 at the gym and not feeling very happy about those chapters either, I remembered the voice from last night and I thought, hey! That works!

If I were Archimedes, I'd have been in the bath shouting Eureka!

Yes. My heroine runs away from my hero at the end of chapter 2. She meets another character whose very nature exactly lends itself to the placement of my formerly homeless scene. This will put my heroine in contact with the story's antagonists, and make her think differently of the hero. Sections of chapter 3 will move to chapter 2 (which is too short) and parts of chapter 1 will move, too. It's a good thing I had my notebook with me because 1) there was no point in reading further and 2) I needed to brainstorm the idea so I'd know what to move here. Which I did. Then I was able to wield the red pen through the pages, marking what moved where. Pretty good for 45 minutes work.

Anyhow, off to work and all that. Then I had to go grocery shopping after I dropped my son off at Aikido because there wasn't anything for dinner or lunches tomorrow, then drop of said groceries, then pick up son, then make sure said son was, in fact, caught up with the homework he missed after being home ill for a week. Then dinner, etc.

Now I have to go make that happen...

Labels: Magellan's Witch, panster, writing craft

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Saturday, February 03, 2007

Casting Fate to the Winds

Today has been a low key day for me. Mostly because I think I'm coming down with whatever my son had. Uh-oh. I started off the morning by going for a run because I am not in the shape I want to be in. The good news is I went three miles. The bad news is how long it took me to run that far. The other bad news is I all ready feel it in my legs. Tomorrow should be interesting. Legs and arms. Oh my. Read on for why.

My son and I went to Sweeney's Sports in Napa for a fly fishing lesson. Every Saturday between 10 and 12, they give free casting lessons. My son desperately wants to go fishing and someone I work with fly fishes and offered to take him. But lessons first he said. So, there's arm action involved in the casting and tomorrow my back and arms will be sore, too. Good sore and all, but sore. All of which reminds me of a really great book:
David James Duncan's The River Why. A former boss told me about the book and, I confess when he said it was about fly fishing, I thought to myself I had no interest at all in the subject. But, he insisted it was a great book, so I went ahead and got it. Well, he was right. And, in the nature of great books, it's about a whole lot more than fly fishing. This belongs on the shelf of any serious reader. Highly recommended. I should mention that this is a highly amusing book. You won't even feel the pain of lit-traw-chure cuz it's just a great story, well told.

What else? After we got back from Napa, I fell asleep for 3 hours. Hard asleep, too. Anyway, I have Magellan's Witch open and I need to go back to work on it.

Labels: exercise, Fly Fishing, Magellan's Witch

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Friday, February 02, 2007

A Thankful Friday Here

Tonight was my son's end of season soccer party, held at the home of one of the parents. Plus, for once, hardly half a mile from me. Usually it's several miles. The kids had a great time playing and horsing around while the parents yakked in another room. One of the coaches put together a DVD montage-slide-show thing of his still photos from some of the games (He's a *really* good photographer). There were some great action shots.

As we were watching it I thought, you know, being a parent is really the greatest thing ever. It just is. Tonight, I had a moment of really pure happiness. I'm so very grateful.

Labels: Thankfulness

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Thursday, February 01, 2007

Switching Gears Is Hard to Do

Scandal is off to my agent. She's let me know she got it. (Writer's neurosis off to a running start Yadda yadda whatifitsucksstill blah blah.) Now I have to get my head back into Magellan's Witch. It's hard to switch. The two voices are completely different, and I have to be careful not to let one bleed into the other. Last night I wrote a little, but since I was up until midnight the night before, I was too tired to stay up, so I went to bed at eight. I feel remarkably good right now. Imagine that.

I'm reading Elmore Leonard's Hot Kid
and totally loving it. This is different from other books I've read by him (all of which I've loved). Carl Webster, the Hot Kid, is one sexy hero. Wow. And, of course, the writing is distinctly Leonard. If you haven't read Leonard before this is a great one to start with.

In other news, I had to come home from work early today because my son, who went back to school today after being sick since last Friday, nearly passed out this morning. So, I got him to the pediatrician because he's never ever ever been sick for this many days. Fortunately, he's fine (well, sort of fine, considering he shouldn't have gone to school today either). And, I found out his doctor, Prakash Devaskar, is doing this totally cool and worthy project as well as running his private medical practice. This combines Ocean conservation, kids, families, snorkling and scuba diving. Pretty awesome!

When I got home from the doc with my son, we made a book safe. This quarter's issue of 2600 has an article about how to make a book safe. You'll see the article title about 3/4 of the way down the index page I linked to there. For anyone geekishly inclined, this is a great little magazine. My heroine in A Darker Crimson made a lock pick out of her police badge and a ball point pen, the details of which came directly from a 2600 article.

Labels: 2600, Elmore Leonard, Magellan's Witch, Scandal, Scuba Diving, writing

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