Category Archives: Works in Progress

Anything about whatever I’m writing now.

Creative Catch-22…

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I have been corresponding these past couple of days with an aspiring writer who followed the Harry Turtledove interview to my teaching page, and saw that I sometimes take students for one on one mentoring. He’s newly out of university and hasn’t written seriously before; he’s been researching how one goes about developing a novel, but is afraid of diving in, writing 50K, and ending up with something that can’t be turned into publishable work. That’s the part that’s really stopping him, the What if I spend six or twelve months of my life writing this thing, and it turns out it can’t be polished to a professional level?

These are the economics of art: especially when you’re new, you do it on spec, for love. You put in the time and you don’t know if it will ever pay. You have to hope the process is in some way gratifying, that the artistic growth feels good, that there are discoveries that pay for the lost time, sleep, and social opportunities.

So I’ve told him that some first-timers write salable books, some write fixable drafts, and some write books that may have been really good learning experiences, but otherwise oughtn’t to see the light of day. And I’ve asked him if he’s afraid he won’t enjoy the process of writing something he may well have to trunk. It seems like a good place to start. What do you all think?
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A few days ago I drafted up a post about how I thought I’d start posting word counts for the current project: at that point, I was up to 20725, which meant I’d written 1200ish words over the long weekend. I have about another chapter in hand but not all of it has been typed; I’ll report again soon.

What kind of sexy are we looking for today?

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On Friday morning, I posted the following on Twitter and Facebook:

Trying to decide on a physical type for sexy recurring minor character. Is he a Denzel Washington? Jon Hamm? Giancarlo Esposito?

I looked at that and thought, I have no idea who the hot young guys are these days.

Rather than actually buckling down to work–I’d slept poorly–I considered Glee, because it’s got the highest profile and the youngest cast of the Hollywood Stuff I watch. Will Schuster, as I’ve recently discussed, is not my thing. Finn? Meh. Trouty Mouth, a.k.a. Chord Overstreet? Ewww, Trouty Mouth!! Kurt and Blaine are lovely and gay and this character is bait for a 24-year-old female extrovert. Burt’s too uncle-y. Kevin McHale, is adorable, I admit, and could totally play the role if I were actually casting a movie–but Artie himself is too buttoned down. And I like Puck the character enormously, but I’d call Mark Salling more charming than cute.

(I’ve also recently seen the vampire boy from Twilight on the cover of Vanity Fair, by the way, and all I can say is a world of no to that action.)

On the one hand, this is the perfect sort of question to throw to the Twitternets just for the fun of it. It was also an insufficiency of information to offer, or it would have been if I were seriously looking for help. Maggieno immediately asked what kind of sexy I wanted. Jon Hamm sexy, she pointed out, does not equal Johnny Depp sexy. She went on to ask: Sexy as in wild, hot, slam-n-g’bye? Sexy as in grab a blanket, find a cozy place, and start canoodling right NOW?

(As I was underslept and set on random that morning, I have to tell you that this made me think: “Must stop using the verb canoodling so imprecisely.” Because I use it to describe a mental process whereby I play with story ideas in my head, or sometimes in e-mails to Snuffy when I need to bounce a story problem off someone exceedingly patient. Bad writer! Wrong usage! Although, considering the uses I’m going to put this particular character to… oh, sorry!)

The thing was, the reason I was going through the mental flip-file of celebrity nom was to decide just that. What kind of sexy?

Anyway. I got suggestions, both of actors and of characters. Spike and Angel from Buffy. (Great characters, and creditably heterosexual, but they don’t rank high on my cute scale.) Hugh Jackman in a utilikilt, from Breklor. Jason Stathum whom I’d never heard of, but whose name reminded me of David Strathairn, which made me think, I really don’t know who the hot young guys are these days.

A smart-ass cousin suggested our Prime Minister, which is to gag. Thank you for that at seven in the morning, Colleen. I will have my revenge.

I do like Hugh Jackman, though. I thought: Is he a hot young guy? But no, IMDB says we were born in exactly the same year.

So far, Johnny Depp is the winner. Because yes, I am thinking rather of a grab-a-blanket now guy, but not so much a keeper. If nothing else, Johnny’s got not a keeper written all over him.

Check-In – 2010 Fiction Plan

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Last year, at about this time, I set out the following 2010 goals:

1. Draft a novel.
2. Finish a novel.
3. Draft a story.
4. Finish a story.
5. Sell a story.

(This is just the fiction portion of a larger business plan. Non-fiction, promotional work, and other targets are separate.)

Draft and finish were separate items specifically because I’m working on multiple projects: drafting one book didn’t necessarily mean finishing that same book.

As plans go, this one looks rather fuzzy. The reason specific projects weren’t named (Finish this book, draft that story) in the above list reflects the fact that I spent a fair amount of 2010 waiting for other parties to get back to me on things. The timing on when I received edits for my next novel, for example, was entirely up to my editor’s schedule, and out of my hands.

So I kept it modest, and a little vague. And, of course, a nice thing about modest goals is that it’s often possible to overachieve. So here’s what I accomplished, working from the above plan:

1. Drafted two novels.
2. Finished one novel.
3. Wrote a series proposal and two sample chapters, polished it all, and sent it off.
4. Wrote a grant proposal and thirty sample pages, polished that, and sent it off.
5. Drafted, finished, sold and celebrated publication of a novelette, “The Cage.”
6. Drafted three short stories and embarked on a fourth that proved to be a false start.
7. Finished two 2009 stories, which are now off at market.
8. Sent a novel to market.
9. Sent out material relating to a potential short story collection, after I won the Sunburst.

Last line blues

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I will often get to the very last sentence of a nonfiction piece and find myself stymied. It is as though I can hear the tone of the thing, the notes I want to hit, but am waiting on lyrics.

When this happens, it usually plays out like this: I’ll polish up the article. Then I will spend ten or twenty minutes rearranging the few sentences before the yet-to-be-written ending. This can be followed by a denial phase. Maybe now that I have prettied that up, I can just stop. Damn! No! What if I rearrange thusly?

Eventually I buckle down and just grind out an approximation of whatever it is I’m trying to say, and then buff that from nonsense into coherence. Sometimes I give myself an extra public pants kick by tweetin’ about how I got those last line blues again. This triggers many helpful* suggestions on Facebook (“Write THE END”). Other times I whine via email to Snuffy, and then try to have something before she gets back to me.

This syndrome doesn’t manifest quite the same way with fiction. If I am writing a story, I will often end a session mere paragraphs from the end. Somehow, that feels okay, like waiting for a first layer of paint to dry. There are even times when the end comes early, and just waits for me to ravel together the beginning-middle-crisis.

The current story, tentatively titled “Among the Silvering Herd” has been weirdly recalcitrant, though, my writerbrain refusing to choke up a last line… until today. I am so happy that I finally have it. I am not such a one as enjoys thrashing with the same 250 words for two frickin’ weeks.

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*By which I mean “helpful.” As in, with air quotes.

The Afterpeople

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This morning dawned clear and unseasonably warm; the sky at six, when I headed off to the cafe to work, was aglimmer with stars. I look for raccoon activity on Cotton and Second now–having had one sighting, I consider this my due–but the bandits failed to show so I puttered off to the cafe.

My first browse through the slenderly-drafted THE RAIN GARDEN is moving quickly and producing a long list of scenes to add, things to research, and stuff to do. I will need to reverse-engineer an outline in the not too distant, if only to figure out where the scenes to be added should go, and to check that the clues to the mystery emerge in a sensible order.

Today I cruised through what looked suspiciously like the book’s thematic heart, and thereby hit upon a working title that is more fitting, at least in the limited sense that it has something to do with the actual story I’m telling. So, for now, the book is morphing into THE AFTERPEOPLE. Since the first book set in this universe has a similar title (THE WINTERGIRLS) this rather hints that the third book, whenever it happens, might end up being THE (something)BOYS.

(If you’re me, these are the sort of thoughts you don’t want to be having when you’re trying to focus on the Book at Hand.)

I think it can be safely argued that THE RAIN GARDEN is a prettier title, and AFTERPEEPS may not be a keeper. But THE RAIN GARDEN didn’t fit, at all… it sounded poetic, and I had a good reason to call the novel something poetic before I sent its ultrasound off to Certain Somebodies for review.

This evening I was briefly tempted to adopt THE RAIN GARDEN moniker for all my unfinished works in progress. This would have the entertaining side effect of confusing the hell out of everyone, probably me included, while perhaps creating a blog tag that spanned multiple books. But hey, that’s what “Works in Progress” and “Process” are for, right?

Besides, I have for years used a perfectly good acronym for such projects: AFNA. This stands for Another Fucking Novel Attempt, and dates back to the days when I was fourteen and couldn’t write my way past the first fifty pages of a full-length book. Even at five characters, it was short enough to use in the days of DOS files. AFNA.DOC. AFNA, incidentally, can be prefaced with other letters: J for Just, Y for Yet, B for Bollocks… well, you get the idea.

Anyway, the book’s out and renamed and blinking groggily. I worked on it until after dawn, and walked home in the sunny morning. After breakfast and a coffee date with my beloved, I caught a walk in the last of the bright, even as the clouds were moving in. I made it to Hastings Park and back before the skies opened. I didn’t get any horse pictures, as I arrived too late for the morning practice laps and too early for the actual races.

In lieu, here’s a RAIN GARDEN picture for you, from the universe of things that are not yet, and might never be:
Flora