For interest's sake. Below is a piece I wrote back in 2006:
All that summer our neighborhood echoed with the sound of trucks. West of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and north of the Alameda Ridge, cranes were pulling down buildings; bulldozers tore out foundations and filled in basements. Dump trucks rumbled along all the major eastbound streets, carting salvaged building materials, utility poles, and giant coils of wire to the temporary housing camps that were springing up on high ground in Gresham and Troutdale. Other trucks carried rubble and fill away to the new dikes that were rising along the Willamette and Columbia.
Downtown would be saved, but the neighborhoods of North Portland were being sacrificed. Most of the families were gone already, either to the refugee camps in the East County or to relatives elsewhere in the country. Still, every day I saw groups of people clutching bundles of belongings, stumbling along the sidewalk, dazed and dislocated. It was like the aftermath of a disaster, before the disaster itself.
Meanwhile, as if to mock us, the Willamette lay shrunken between its banks in the sweltering summer heat. Drought gripped the Northwest; fires raged in the Cascade forests, smudging the sky to the east even as cement dust plumed up to the west.
One evening, driving along the bluffs above Swan Island, I looked up and felt my heart stop: The St. Johns Bridge was being dismantled. The massive suspension cables were gone already, the graceful steel towers were being torn apart—next, I guessed, they would tear up the solid piers that supported the towers. Iron and stone, too valuable to lose to the hungry waters.
Dry weather lingered into the fall. As the Southern Hemisphere heated up, an uneasy quiet settled over the city. The north quarter (Portland had had five quarters, once upon a time) had been levelled, and only dust clouds moved over the desolate rubble. Even the rats had forsaken the area for better cover and feeding grounds. Seawalls built from the wreckage of Kenton and Portsmouth homes and Interstate Avenue businesses snaked along the banks of the river downtown, diverging to protect the endpoints of the Broadway Bridge, then widening out to meet the 200-foot contour line.
The Antarctic ice cap melted and flew apart in chunks. Satellite images limned rapidly melting areas in angry red; the South Pole looked like a drunkard’s eyeball, bloodshot and rimmed with crimson. (The Arctic ice had been gradually thinning for many years, like a cataract forming in reverse.) Giant icebergs steamed away north, with icy rivers cascading down their flanks.
There was no fanfare. Silently and stealthily, the river rose, reclaiming its winter dimensions and then expanding over its banks. One morning I looked out from the bottom of Prescott Street, west across the rubbly flats, and saw it: water, gleaming darkly in the distance. It was salt, or at least brackish; it was the new mouth of the Willamette. The ocean had risen high enough to swallow the Willamette/Columbia confluence—Sauvie Island was underwater—the Willamette was no longer a tributary but a river in her own right. Everything downstream was now a vast estuary framed by new wetlands that had once been part of the Coast Range.
Portland is a busy saltwater port these days. The new coastline is too steep for good harborage, and forests of skeletal treetops line the shallows. US 101 is long gone, the new coastal towns reachable only from the interior, by old passes over the Coast Range from I-5. So it’s here they come to load and unload, the giant deep-water freighters. Their wakes lash the dead beaches west of Martin Luther King, at the feet of Prescott, Alberta, Killingsworth.
North Portland is gone, gone. It’s the Vanport flood come again, but this time it’s forever.
Here's the same piece, cut down to 350 words for the 350 Words page. The original was 600+.
All summer our neighborhood echoed with trucks. West of MLK, north of the Alameda Ridge, cranes pulled down buildings; bulldozers filled basements and foundations. Dump trucks rumbled away, carting rubble and fill, salvaged building materials, utility poles, giant wire coils. Seawalls built from wreckage of Kenton and Portsmouth homes and Interstate Avenue businesses snaked south, diverging to protect the Broadway Bridge, then out to the 200-foot contour.
Downtown would be saved; North Portland neighborhoods, sacrificed. Most families were gone already, to East County refugee camps or relatives inland. Yet every day, groups of dislocated people stumbled along the sidewalk, clutching bundles of belongings as though a disaster had already happened.
From the bluffs above Swan Island, I looked up and felt my heart stop. The St. Johns Bridge was gone. The graceful suspension cables and steel towers were just a memory against the sky. Even the massive piers were being uprooted.
Drought gripped Oregon; fires ravaged the Cascades, streaking the sky as cement dust darkened the air. The Willamette lay shrunken in sweltering summer heat. Uneasy quiet settled over Portland's leveled north quarter. Only dust stirred above desolate rubble, forsaken even by rats.
The Arctic ice had thinned to nothing, like a cataract in reverse. As fall heated the Southern Hemisphere, satellite images limned rapidly melting areas in red, turning the Antarctic into a drunkard’s blood-rimmed eyeball. Giant icebergs steamed north, sweating icy rivers.
With no fanfare the river rose, drowning its winter banks. From the bottom of Prescott Street, I looked west across rubbly flats and saw distant water gleaming. It was salt. The ocean had swallowed the confluence-- Sauvie Island was underwater-- the Willamette was no longer a tributary, but a river. Downstream was a vast estuary framed by wetlands that had been part of the Coast Range.
Portland is a saltwater port now. Treacherous forests of skeletal treetops line new coastlines. US 101 is long gone, coastal towns reachable only by passes west from I-5. Wakes of giant deep-water freighters lash dead beaches west of MLK.
North Portland is gone. It’s the Vanport flood, again and forever.
It amazes me how much I was able to cut without sacrificing anything I thought was really important. Not to say the piece is unchanged: the short version has a much different texture, it's less expressive, it's a bit rough and abrupt in places.
Showing posts with label process. Show all posts
Showing posts with label process. Show all posts
Monday, October 12, 2009
Sunday, June 7, 2009
It's a wrap
So I finished the rough draft of Killing Time last night and put a few finishing touches on this morning. I'm still going to let it sit for a week and then go back and look-- but I truly don't think there'll be any substantial editing. It's an intense piece of prose.
It wasn't fun.
Less than a month from start to finish, and well over 3/4 of it in one weekend: Thursday evening, all day Friday, most of Saturday.
I'm going to send this one out to F&SF, if no joy there, Asimov's, then work my way through Duotrope's list of mags that take novella-length SF or fiction.
It wasn't fun.
Less than a month from start to finish, and well over 3/4 of it in one weekend: Thursday evening, all day Friday, most of Saturday.
I'm going to send this one out to F&SF, if no joy there, Asimov's, then work my way through Duotrope's list of mags that take novella-length SF or fiction.
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Progress report
Well, I was right about the productivity and wrong about the intensity. I took yesterday off from work and spent most of the day writing. Same today. I'm cruising. Inshallah tonight or tomorrow, the first draft will be finished.
Then I won't look at it for at least a week.
Then editing. Of course I've done some as I went along.
I realized that not working on this was preventing from writing poetry. There's no way out but through. But God, I really, really didn't want this one...
Then I won't look at it for at least a week.
Then editing. Of course I've done some as I went along.
I realized that not working on this was preventing from writing poetry. There's no way out but through. But God, I really, really didn't want this one...
Friday, June 5, 2009
Bad and Scary
Killing Time is not like anything else I've ever written. It's a bad, scary, evil piece of shit. It's so easy to imagine how a person would go about manipulating other people, especially when they're already in the grasp of some overwhelming, irrational fervor.
I'm not, obviously, doing the intensive, words-per-day thing with this story. I've let whole weeks go by without writing more than a few paragraphs. I think I'm about to kick into a more productive mode and inshallah finish it up by the end of the month. But I'll never get up to anything like the 2000+ WPD I did on Drumheart.
There are a couple of reasons for that. One, the prose is much more intense, in fact more like poetry. That means I can't produce it nearly as fast. With simple expository prose, which is what Drumheart was mostly written in (there were a few spots of descriptive prose that rose above that level), the translation of idea to prose is pretty straightforward and tends to occur at a more-or-less fixed base rate. (It might be slower if I was tired, faster if I'd had extra coffee. But it seemed to me that those were physiological conditions independent of the creative process.)
The kind of prose I'm using for Killing Time takes longer to produce and requires a lot more... something per word. Energy. Creative effort. I want the text to come out spiky and brilliant, seductive yet uncomfortable to read. Disturbing. It's a matter of much more than just getting the idea across.
Overstylish? Maybe. But that's not uncharacteristic of clockpunk/steampunk/cyberpunk: always a very style-conscious genre, in a way that I think repudiated the style-neutral or even anti-style esthetic of earlier SF. Way back in the Campbell era, the Idea was the thing: niceties like plot and character development, let alone prose style, were actively denigrated. (There were exceptions, like the immortal Ray Bradbury, but Campbell's editorial influence pretty effectively marginalized newer writers with pretension to style. Look up Manly Wade Wellman's attempt to publish his novel about Leonardo da Vinci.)
New Wave authors like Zelazny, Delaney, and Davidson broke the style barrier, but the idea that style is important, that the form is part of the message, is still far from universally acknowledged in the field. Gene Wolfe and the aforementioned Bradbury (if you don't have Farewell Summer, the sequel to Dandelion Wine, go out and get it) are probably the pre-eminent (living) senior stylists around; John Crowley turns out amazing stuff; China Mieville and Jay Lake are some of the newer writers with style to burn and things to say.
(I guess that's what offends me the most about the Campbell philosophy, as a writer; the idea that there's a necessary trade-off between having things to say and saying them well. Put that way, it makes no sense at all.)
All of which is a long digression to keep me from mentioning the second reason Killing Time proceeds slowly.
I hate living inside that character's head. It scares me.
What to do with it? As I mentioned earlier, it's going to be an awkward length, probably unpublishable by normal means. I'm thinking seriously about selling it off my blog, for a fairly nominal amount, as a Word or pdf file. We'll see about that after I finish the damn thing.
I'm not, obviously, doing the intensive, words-per-day thing with this story. I've let whole weeks go by without writing more than a few paragraphs. I think I'm about to kick into a more productive mode and inshallah finish it up by the end of the month. But I'll never get up to anything like the 2000+ WPD I did on Drumheart.
There are a couple of reasons for that. One, the prose is much more intense, in fact more like poetry. That means I can't produce it nearly as fast. With simple expository prose, which is what Drumheart was mostly written in (there were a few spots of descriptive prose that rose above that level), the translation of idea to prose is pretty straightforward and tends to occur at a more-or-less fixed base rate. (It might be slower if I was tired, faster if I'd had extra coffee. But it seemed to me that those were physiological conditions independent of the creative process.)
The kind of prose I'm using for Killing Time takes longer to produce and requires a lot more... something per word. Energy. Creative effort. I want the text to come out spiky and brilliant, seductive yet uncomfortable to read. Disturbing. It's a matter of much more than just getting the idea across.
Overstylish? Maybe. But that's not uncharacteristic of clockpunk/steampunk/cyberpunk: always a very style-conscious genre, in a way that I think repudiated the style-neutral or even anti-style esthetic of earlier SF. Way back in the Campbell era, the Idea was the thing: niceties like plot and character development, let alone prose style, were actively denigrated. (There were exceptions, like the immortal Ray Bradbury, but Campbell's editorial influence pretty effectively marginalized newer writers with pretension to style. Look up Manly Wade Wellman's attempt to publish his novel about Leonardo da Vinci.)
New Wave authors like Zelazny, Delaney, and Davidson broke the style barrier, but the idea that style is important, that the form is part of the message, is still far from universally acknowledged in the field. Gene Wolfe and the aforementioned Bradbury (if you don't have Farewell Summer, the sequel to Dandelion Wine, go out and get it) are probably the pre-eminent (living) senior stylists around; John Crowley turns out amazing stuff; China Mieville and Jay Lake are some of the newer writers with style to burn and things to say.
(I guess that's what offends me the most about the Campbell philosophy, as a writer; the idea that there's a necessary trade-off between having things to say and saying them well. Put that way, it makes no sense at all.)
All of which is a long digression to keep me from mentioning the second reason Killing Time proceeds slowly.
I hate living inside that character's head. It scares me.
What to do with it? As I mentioned earlier, it's going to be an awkward length, probably unpublishable by normal means. I'm thinking seriously about selling it off my blog, for a fairly nominal amount, as a Word or pdf file. We'll see about that after I finish the damn thing.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
It's Just Not The Same
I think I've figured out one of the reasons people are averse to rewriting. It's because it's much harder to access that flow state when you're rewriting (editing, polishing, call it what you will). And make no mistake, flow state is addictive. It's a high. It'll turn you into a junkie same as any other drug.
This has a couple of consequences. First, it means rewriting isn't fun. It's not necessarily harder work than the original writing, but it feels like much harder work because I'm not getting the high. When I write in flow state, I get up from the keyboard just as tired as when I don't write in flow state. But as long as I'm sitting there hammering away and pouring out words, I don't notice it.
Second, and I think this is behind a lot of the blather about spontaneity and freshness that people employ against revising: The writing I generate in flow state always seems better to me than the writing I generate at other times.
I'm not sure why that is. I suspect that when I reread such a piece of writing, I remember what it felt like: I actually get the high (in an attenuated form) all over again. Maybe a year from now, when those memories have faded, I'll reread Drumheart and that won't happen. In the meantime I have to take it on faith that the scenes I've struggled with, where I had to force out the words according to my best judgment rather than just letting them pour through my fingertips, can look like just as good writing to other people. 'Cause they sure don't look that good to me.
This is one of the reasons it's important to have other people read your MS. It's hard, at least it's hard for me, to look at Drumheart and figure out which are the "good" bits. To me the "good" bits are the ones that came easily. But, personal preferences aside, the fact that I worked harder on the other bits may actually translate into a higher quality of prose. At least, I have to take it on faith that that' spossible.
This has a couple of consequences. First, it means rewriting isn't fun. It's not necessarily harder work than the original writing, but it feels like much harder work because I'm not getting the high. When I write in flow state, I get up from the keyboard just as tired as when I don't write in flow state. But as long as I'm sitting there hammering away and pouring out words, I don't notice it.
Second, and I think this is behind a lot of the blather about spontaneity and freshness that people employ against revising: The writing I generate in flow state always seems better to me than the writing I generate at other times.
I'm not sure why that is. I suspect that when I reread such a piece of writing, I remember what it felt like: I actually get the high (in an attenuated form) all over again. Maybe a year from now, when those memories have faded, I'll reread Drumheart and that won't happen. In the meantime I have to take it on faith that the scenes I've struggled with, where I had to force out the words according to my best judgment rather than just letting them pour through my fingertips, can look like just as good writing to other people. 'Cause they sure don't look that good to me.
This is one of the reasons it's important to have other people read your MS. It's hard, at least it's hard for me, to look at Drumheart and figure out which are the "good" bits. To me the "good" bits are the ones that came easily. But, personal preferences aside, the fact that I worked harder on the other bits may actually translate into a higher quality of prose. At least, I have to take it on faith that that' spossible.
Friday, December 28, 2007
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Getting my head back
So I finished the rough draft on the Solstice and rested through the weekend and Xmas Eve and Day. I feel more rested now than at any time in the last three months.
I never had any idea how tired writing could make me. Not that I didn't know it was hard work. But I had no idea how much life it could suck out of me. Luckily I seem to be recovering fast. I've even managed to write some more poetry.
Note to self: If I have a writing project of this length to do ever again, pace it slower and take more breaks. 2000+ WPD was sustainable for two months, but I wouldn't want to try to keep it up longer than that. Still, it was a good larval-mode, baptism-by-fire experience. And the product's not bad-- I think. I still have the editing to do.
I never had any idea how tired writing could make me. Not that I didn't know it was hard work. But I had no idea how much life it could suck out of me. Luckily I seem to be recovering fast. I've even managed to write some more poetry.
Note to self: If I have a writing project of this length to do ever again, pace it slower and take more breaks. 2000+ WPD was sustainable for two months, but I wouldn't want to try to keep it up longer than that. Still, it was a good larval-mode, baptism-by-fire experience. And the product's not bad-- I think. I still have the editing to do.
Friday, December 21, 2007
Reading other stuff
I have one scene left to write. I know more or less what happens in it. I just have to find a reason to make it happen.
Weird stuff: I haven't read any fiction to speak of since about the middle of October. At first it was because I was speed-reading reference books and I didn't have time to read fiction. Then it was because I didn't want my prose to get "contaminated", so to speak, by anyone else's style. But earlier today I tried to read a chapter or two (of Jim Butcher's latest Alera book)... and I couldn't. I could not get my head around it.
But I find I can read comics. Apparently they live in a different part of my head. I re-read Neil Gaiman's Books of Magic (the original miniseries, not the mostly crappy stuff that came after). Damn, what an awesome comic that was. Vertigo should have never allowed anyone other than Charlie Vess to draw Titania. Ever. The page with Zatara (watch my dust) is still probably the best single comics page I have ever seen anywhere.
Today I re-read the one-shots from Sandman. The first one I picked up was "Calliope".
Oh. My. God.
It was pretty horrible when I first read it; this guy rapes and enslaves a person, even if she's not exactly "human", a sentient suffering being, for his own personal gain. It's much worse now... because now I see the writer's actions as a denial of God. As denying that his inspiration, all inspiration, comes ultimately from God. Thinking that he can go out and take it from somewhere else... Thinking that he's entitled to. As if inspiration were something that belonged to him.
All things belong to God.
I don't know if Gaiman intended it that way. But it's how I'm seeing it right now. I can't imagine what it must have been like for Gaiman, as a working writer, to write that story. I can barely stand to read it. Because there, but for the grace of God, go I...
Weird stuff: I haven't read any fiction to speak of since about the middle of October. At first it was because I was speed-reading reference books and I didn't have time to read fiction. Then it was because I didn't want my prose to get "contaminated", so to speak, by anyone else's style. But earlier today I tried to read a chapter or two (of Jim Butcher's latest Alera book)... and I couldn't. I could not get my head around it.
But I find I can read comics. Apparently they live in a different part of my head. I re-read Neil Gaiman's Books of Magic (the original miniseries, not the mostly crappy stuff that came after). Damn, what an awesome comic that was. Vertigo should have never allowed anyone other than Charlie Vess to draw Titania. Ever. The page with Zatara (watch my dust) is still probably the best single comics page I have ever seen anywhere.
Today I re-read the one-shots from Sandman. The first one I picked up was "Calliope".
Oh. My. God.
It was pretty horrible when I first read it; this guy rapes and enslaves a person, even if she's not exactly "human", a sentient suffering being, for his own personal gain. It's much worse now... because now I see the writer's actions as a denial of God. As denying that his inspiration, all inspiration, comes ultimately from God. Thinking that he can go out and take it from somewhere else... Thinking that he's entitled to. As if inspiration were something that belonged to him.
All things belong to God.
I don't know if Gaiman intended it that way. But it's how I'm seeing it right now. I can't imagine what it must have been like for Gaiman, as a working writer, to write that story. I can barely stand to read it. Because there, but for the grace of God, go I...
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Stupid question
Q: If you write all day and go to bed at a reasonable hour, say 11 PM, then get up about 11:30 and write some more and keep writing until almost 1 AM... which day's word count do the words belong to?
A: Get a LIFE.
A: Get a LIFE.
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Cheat
So after all that fine talk, I did go back and write today. But only a little bit. Actually more than it looks like, because I destroyed a lot of words in the process of dovetailing the chunks of Akshedhen's part 3 and 4.
But it's all good now.
I have some more scenes to write but I know exactly where they fit and what they have to accomplish. I'm proud of the boy. He's come a long way since leaving home.
Think I may be writing through the weekend now. Likely going to break 120,000 words.
But it's all good now.
I have some more scenes to write but I know exactly where they fit and what they have to accomplish. I'm proud of the boy. He's come a long way since leaving home.
Think I may be writing through the weekend now. Likely going to break 120,000 words.
God Train
Voluntary servitude. Profound captivity. Submitting to the ever-narrowing confines of the Possible. Each word entrains the next and slices yet a smaller pie-piece out of the peacock-feather fan of story. There's only one way out from here.
Things could have been different, if I'd thought of them before.
At the end of the tunnel I can leave the track, but to get through it I have to run on rails. That's how it is when you're riding the God Train. Why didn't I recognize it before?
Things could have been different, if I'd thought of them before.
At the end of the tunnel I can leave the track, but to get through it I have to run on rails. That's how it is when you're riding the God Train. Why didn't I recognize it before?
Competing aphorisms
I'm restating the problem I mentioned in the previous post, because I think it has some general utility. It can be framed as a conflict between two aphorisms:
Quality is better than quantity
Best is the enemy of good
Logically, these aphorisms are not in conflict. But when time pressure comes into play, they can be. Should I pour on words, not worry about producing quality prose, keep the WPD up and just push on through? That's pretty much the philosophy behind NaNoWriMo, for instance. Or should I take my time and do it right?
I think this is an area where it's critical for an writer to know her own strengths and weaknesses. For most people (and I hear this from pros: both Steve P. and Steve B. have made the point repeatedly), getting words down on paper is a real struggle; the big issue is the self-editing/self-censoring. Aphorism 2 definitely works as an antidote to that, and I think that makes NaNoWriMo a valuable exercise.
I think I've proved that that isn't my problem.
Anyone who can write over 3000 WPD for more than a week should probably pay more attention to aphorism 1. I do have a tendency to toss things off in a hurry and do slapdash work. The good news for me is that that problem is fixable: as long as I have something down, I can work on it, improve it, add to it when I do my editing. If I have nothing down on paper (silicon), I have nothing to work with.
It does mean that for me, the editing phase will be critical. And I know I need help with it. I can only edit my own prose up to a point.
Luckily (luck has nothing to do with it), I know where to get help. God sent me a terrific team.
Quality is better than quantity
Best is the enemy of good
Logically, these aphorisms are not in conflict. But when time pressure comes into play, they can be. Should I pour on words, not worry about producing quality prose, keep the WPD up and just push on through? That's pretty much the philosophy behind NaNoWriMo, for instance. Or should I take my time and do it right?
I think this is an area where it's critical for an writer to know her own strengths and weaknesses. For most people (and I hear this from pros: both Steve P. and Steve B. have made the point repeatedly), getting words down on paper is a real struggle; the big issue is the self-editing/self-censoring. Aphorism 2 definitely works as an antidote to that, and I think that makes NaNoWriMo a valuable exercise.
I think I've proved that that isn't my problem.
Anyone who can write over 3000 WPD for more than a week should probably pay more attention to aphorism 1. I do have a tendency to toss things off in a hurry and do slapdash work. The good news for me is that that problem is fixable: as long as I have something down, I can work on it, improve it, add to it when I do my editing. If I have nothing down on paper (silicon), I have nothing to work with.
It does mean that for me, the editing phase will be critical. And I know I need help with it. I can only edit my own prose up to a point.
Luckily (luck has nothing to do with it), I know where to get help. God sent me a terrific team.
No words today
I'm resisting the urge to write today. It'll bring down the WPD, but what the hey.
The last chapter has most of the pieces it needs, but I have a couple more scenes that I have to write. It will probably get split in two as it's over 9000 words and I've tried to keep most of the chapters under that. Right now it's a bunch of prose fragments, which need to be pulled into a coherent narrative somehow without writing a lot of filler. The very last section, which was one of my original files from two years ago, is in present tense and I need to decide if I'm going to keep it that way or rewrite it into past tense.
So there's work to do, but I feel dangerously unfocused. Yesterday I got a lot done by basically writing a bunch of key scenes without worrying about how they joined up. Then I tried to look at how to bring them together and my brain just wasn't up to it. Hence the enforced rest.
I may finish up over the next couple of days. Or I may just let it rest and work on it over the weekend. Either way, insh'allah I will be done well before the New Year. Then I'm going to declare a break, length TBA, before I tackle the first edit.
There's a lot less description and a lot more action in this section. Partly it's a reflection of Akshedhen's role in the story, and partly it's that his story covers a lot of landscape that I've covered before and I don't need to re-describe it. Partly it may just be that I'm tired and I'm not putting in as much description as I should. I'll decide that during the edit pass. But actually I think it's not a bad trend to have; it gives a feeling of acceleration towards the end of the book.
Tired. I'm changing the working title to The Brainsucker. When I'm done with the rough draft I'm going to look back over my blog posts and see if I can chart my mood swings relative to my WPD...
The last chapter has most of the pieces it needs, but I have a couple more scenes that I have to write. It will probably get split in two as it's over 9000 words and I've tried to keep most of the chapters under that. Right now it's a bunch of prose fragments, which need to be pulled into a coherent narrative somehow without writing a lot of filler. The very last section, which was one of my original files from two years ago, is in present tense and I need to decide if I'm going to keep it that way or rewrite it into past tense.
So there's work to do, but I feel dangerously unfocused. Yesterday I got a lot done by basically writing a bunch of key scenes without worrying about how they joined up. Then I tried to look at how to bring them together and my brain just wasn't up to it. Hence the enforced rest.
I may finish up over the next couple of days. Or I may just let it rest and work on it over the weekend. Either way, insh'allah I will be done well before the New Year. Then I'm going to declare a break, length TBA, before I tackle the first edit.
There's a lot less description and a lot more action in this section. Partly it's a reflection of Akshedhen's role in the story, and partly it's that his story covers a lot of landscape that I've covered before and I don't need to re-describe it. Partly it may just be that I'm tired and I'm not putting in as much description as I should. I'll decide that during the edit pass. But actually I think it's not a bad trend to have; it gives a feeling of acceleration towards the end of the book.
Tired. I'm changing the working title to The Brainsucker. When I'm done with the rough draft I'm going to look back over my blog posts and see if I can chart my mood swings relative to my WPD...
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Almost there
I think I'm pretty close to the final word count for the rough draft. Maybe 2000 - 3000 words of new material to add, plus some to hack out. I dumped the "End of the Beginning" file verbatim into the end of Akshedhen's part 3 and it needs to be rewritten. But it gives a sense of the finished shape.
A couple more days work...
A couple more days work...
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Memento Mori
I may as well say it now: the news about Terry Pratchett is breaking my heart. Part of the reason I've been ripping out so much verbiage for the last week is that I can't bear to sit idle when I should be writing-- wasting moments, of which I have so many, and he so few.
Of course, there's no guarantee that I have that many, either. Anything can happen: Allah alone knows the future, and while He has chosen to give glimpses of it to certain people, I ain't one of them. I could get hit by a meteorite tomorrow, or be diagnosed with an incurable tumor the next day.
We shouldn't need the reminders, but apparently we do.
Reposted from KFI:
This moment, here, is all we have to live--
to reminisce, appreciate, forgive--
and there are no exchanges or returns.
Time runs out like water from a sieve
or refugees when some poor city burns.
The last reward that no-one ever earns
is extra time. No extra innings run,
the final lesson no-one ever learns:
how little time we have beneath the sun.
We all protest: "It can't be! I'm not done!"
when Atropos with fatal silver shears
approaches. All the time that Clotho spun
we spent or squandered. Now the living years
have dwindled to a point. This moment, here.
Of course, there's no guarantee that I have that many, either. Anything can happen: Allah alone knows the future, and while He has chosen to give glimpses of it to certain people, I ain't one of them. I could get hit by a meteorite tomorrow, or be diagnosed with an incurable tumor the next day.
We shouldn't need the reminders, but apparently we do.
Reposted from KFI:
This moment, here, is all we have to live--
to reminisce, appreciate, forgive--
and there are no exchanges or returns.
Time runs out like water from a sieve
or refugees when some poor city burns.
The last reward that no-one ever earns
is extra time. No extra innings run,
the final lesson no-one ever learns:
how little time we have beneath the sun.
We all protest: "It can't be! I'm not done!"
when Atropos with fatal silver shears
approaches. All the time that Clotho spun
we spent or squandered. Now the living years
have dwindled to a point. This moment, here.
Saturday, December 15, 2007
Motorvate!
Didn't add a single word to the front end today. Over 3000 words of backfill! But I really like the new scene with Hingol's playing, and the stuff with Mafileo and Waïlaraitēo is definitely headed in the right direction.
Writing and chocolate
OK, the thing abut the chocolate? It's weirder than it sounds. I was too tired to go into any detail last night.
I've never been one of those people who crave chocolate. I can take it or leave it. Actually for a while I was slightly allergic to it, and it wasn't any hardship. I don't have much of a sweet tooth and I rarely eat candy of any kind.
But after dinner, if I sit down at the computer to write, a square of semi-sweet baker's chocolate really hits the spot.
Not anything sweeter. Not anything really rich: the fancy, 70-80% cacao, flavored with curry or tamarind or what have you chocolates that are popular right now aren't what I crave. (Though I am quite fond of some of them, especially the curry one.) I suspect the baker's chocolate is delivering something my brain needs, in a sensual package that isn't strong enough to be distracting. Weird.
I've never been one of those people who crave chocolate. I can take it or leave it. Actually for a while I was slightly allergic to it, and it wasn't any hardship. I don't have much of a sweet tooth and I rarely eat candy of any kind.
But after dinner, if I sit down at the computer to write, a square of semi-sweet baker's chocolate really hits the spot.
Not anything sweeter. Not anything really rich: the fancy, 70-80% cacao, flavored with curry or tamarind or what have you chocolates that are popular right now aren't what I crave. (Though I am quite fond of some of them, especially the curry one.) I suspect the baker's chocolate is delivering something my brain needs, in a sensual package that isn't strong enough to be distracting. Weird.
Friday, December 14, 2007
One hundred thousand
plus words.
My WPD is back up over 2000.
But here's the real shocker: In the last 6 days I've written almost 20,000 words. That's about 3000 per day. I'm flying.
There are still some places I have to go back and fill in. I'll probably spend most of the weekend reworking the Mafileo/Waïlaraitēo scenes. The WPD will go down some, although it will actually probably be mostly additional writing rather than rewriting.
I'm also probably going to completely toss the "Beginning of the end" file. There's a lot in there that just doesn't go with how I've imagined things since. I want to save the description of the storm: everything else can go.
There's definitely light at the end of that tunnel now...
God knows these words are not coming from me. My head is as empty as the husk of a coconut.
Writing makes me crave chocolate.
My WPD is back up over 2000.
But here's the real shocker: In the last 6 days I've written almost 20,000 words. That's about 3000 per day. I'm flying.
There are still some places I have to go back and fill in. I'll probably spend most of the weekend reworking the Mafileo/Waïlaraitēo scenes. The WPD will go down some, although it will actually probably be mostly additional writing rather than rewriting.
I'm also probably going to completely toss the "Beginning of the end" file. There's a lot in there that just doesn't go with how I've imagined things since. I want to save the description of the storm: everything else can go.
There's definitely light at the end of that tunnel now...
God knows these words are not coming from me. My head is as empty as the husk of a coconut.
Writing makes me crave chocolate.
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Sacrifice
Thank you, God! I could not figure out what the heck to do about that, but I knew it was for something.
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Splurging!
Over 4000 words today!
I skipped the duel and wrote the end of Mafileo's part. I'm going to go back tomorrow and finish with Mafileo, I think. Strangely I'm not looking forward to the duel as much as I'd expected. It's probably because I did write a version of that scene before in "Riding the Sea Dragon", so it's not going to be new to me.
My total word count just broke 90,000...
Today for the first time, I felt like, if I had plenty of time and I didn't get tired, I could actually just keep writing and finish the novel. Of course it's not true. There's still plenty of stuff I have to figure out with Akshedhen's story. But still, it was a glimpse of the light at the end of the tunnel.
Part of the reason I'm having trouble with the duel scene, and what's held me back with a lot of SofS part 5, is that I don't have a handle on Waïlaraitēo yet. I don't want her to be a cardboard villainess. She's a real person with legitimate concerns and a strong faith, even if it's narrowly defined. Has suffered emotional disappointments: her relationship with Astirama'a is something I'm going to have to leave unspoken, since none of the now living characters know much about it. At the same time, I need to clarify it for myself. Something to sleep on. If I don't feel able to write the confrontation with her, I can always go on with Akshedhen's story and come back to the duel later.
I skipped the duel and wrote the end of Mafileo's part. I'm going to go back tomorrow and finish with Mafileo, I think. Strangely I'm not looking forward to the duel as much as I'd expected. It's probably because I did write a version of that scene before in "Riding the Sea Dragon", so it's not going to be new to me.
My total word count just broke 90,000...
Today for the first time, I felt like, if I had plenty of time and I didn't get tired, I could actually just keep writing and finish the novel. Of course it's not true. There's still plenty of stuff I have to figure out with Akshedhen's story. But still, it was a glimpse of the light at the end of the tunnel.
Part of the reason I'm having trouble with the duel scene, and what's held me back with a lot of SofS part 5, is that I don't have a handle on Waïlaraitēo yet. I don't want her to be a cardboard villainess. She's a real person with legitimate concerns and a strong faith, even if it's narrowly defined. Has suffered emotional disappointments: her relationship with Astirama'a is something I'm going to have to leave unspoken, since none of the now living characters know much about it. At the same time, I need to clarify it for myself. Something to sleep on. If I don't feel able to write the confrontation with her, I can always go on with Akshedhen's story and come back to the duel later.
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