Due to a dark and wet day, I've had to shift to plan B for my long holiday weekend tasks. That means I'm back to painting walls.
As I'm painting away, my mind wanders--which it likes to do when I'm in the midst of mindless tasks. It wanders to Anne Mini's blog posts of this past week regarding the perils of the Frankenstein manuscript. You know, that masterpiece you've revised twenty times in various stages over weeks/months/years.
I have one of those. I've been over it countless times since the final major overhaul. I've read from beginning to end. Critique partners have been over it from beginning to end. I've read it outloud. I've done a find/replace hunt on all my character's names that have changed spellings to make sure they are consistant. I've double checked all my spacings, my punctuation, use of italics, and formatting. Everything should be perfect, right?
I've painted my wall. I wiped it down, filled the holes, mixed the paint, put down my dropcloth, cut in all the edges with perfectly straight lines, and applied the rest with a roller ever so carefully. It should be perfect right?
Yet, why is it that when company comes over, I notice the spots I missed? That line I cut in at the ceiling wavers all over the place! How did I manage to paint over a long hair and embed it in my wall (and by the way, pulling the hair out only makes the mess far more obvious.) And I swear I used the same roller and the same paint, but the color from the beginning of the wall to the other side is uneven!
The heart of the analogy is:
A. Don't invite company over.
B. Don't paint your novel.
C. Pay attention to what you're painting instead of mulling over blog posts and your wall might turn out better.
D. Your novel will never be perfectly perfect, but make sure the color is even and the lines are straight before inviting company to look at it.
(For the record, I'm finally happy with my novel and fairly secure that I've got all my bases covered with this particular frankenstein. Not to say I don't have niggling doubts. Which is where this musing analogy stems from.)
Monday, May 31, 2010
Friday, May 28, 2010
Fortunes and Flogging
Sometimes you open a fortune cookie and roll your eyes or get a good laugh. Sometimes they aren't even 'fortunes' but general sayings. This one was so appropriate I had to wonder if someone slipped it to me on purpose, so I thought I'd share.
I apologize, my cell phone camera apparently wasn't up to the job. For those who can't read blurrese, it says: The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.
In other news...
I apologize, my cell phone camera apparently wasn't up to the job. For those who can't read blurrese, it says: The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.In other news...
Upon visiting one of my favorite procrastination sites this morning, I see that Ray at Flogging the Quill is running low on first page submissions to flog. If you'd like an editor's opinion and faithful readers to comment, follow the instructions at the end of any flogging post. I've run a mine through a couple times and received some very helpful comments.
In light of the upcoming long Memorial Day weekend, and all I need to get done before it, I'll keep this post short today. I plan to spend my weekend hopefully finishing up my flowerbed renovation project. Anyone else have productive plans?
In light of the upcoming long Memorial Day weekend, and all I need to get done before it, I'll keep this post short today. I plan to spend my weekend hopefully finishing up my flowerbed renovation project. Anyone else have productive plans?
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Tag redux
The tag strikes back from a new opponent, Stella Telleria .This time I am charged with sharing the seven most fascinating characters I've come up with.Oh, so many to choose from.
1. Leoric of Swan Queen - The timid son of an ambitious duke who goes from being known as the Mouse to the Hawk in the mind of the princess on the run. Why he's fascinating: Leoric was meant to be a throw away character, an experiment with writing someone dimwitted for a purpose within the story, however, he grew on me, became a major character, bringing about one of the most emotional scenes I've ever written.
2. Samarah of Samarah’s Sunset – Alone and far from home, Samarah prays to the goddess for help, only to learn that even the gods charge for their services… and they don’t take coin. Why she's fascinating: I set out with the intent to write something quite different from Trust: a female MC in a fantasy world. Samarah’s situation opened the door to adding an element of romance into the mix with both men and women.
3. Joshua of A Broken Race – A simple-minded man born into a life of hard labor who brings about the healing of what is left of humanity when he stops being a cog and becomes his own wheel. Why he's fascinating: After good things happened with Leoric, I thought I’d see where the simple-minded character would lead me in a dystopian setting. Playing with both sides of the sweet, well-intentioned, yet unwittingly violent young man proved to be an interesting challenge.
4. Watcher of To Exist – A robotic being learns religion from humanity and prays the knowledge will save its priceless research. Why it's fascinating: Writing an it that felt no emotion and had no expression wasn’t easy!
5. Dragon of Not Another Bard’s Tale – All he wanted was his jewel back but the knight who made the deal to find it was taking his sweet time and the townsfolk looked awfully tasty. Why he's fascinating: Dragon is the only central character in the story to not have a pov scene, yet he is the glue that holds the entire story together. Plus, writing a ticked off, hungry dragon was just fun.
6. Kenric of Swan Queen – Is he an evil duke as many say, or a proactive man moving to secure the countries borders and expand his people’s wealth with new resources and land? Why he’s fascinating: Kenric has been a good lesson in writing the bad guy who thinks he’s a good guy in his own mind, and sometimes it’s just liberating to be in the bad guy’s head for a while. Is that scary to admit? Probably a little.
7. Yanis of Samarah’s Sunset - Captain Yanis serves as gruff protector to Samarah, the lone woman in a band of starving, desperate men until he meets his end during a skirmish as they make their way home through enemy infested borders. Why he’s fascinating: Yanis was an angry man, bad-tempered and stern, yet his death turned out to be quite touching and a major turning point for Samarah.
What, no Trust characters? Many of you know them by heart by now so I thought I’d pull out some that are lesser known. Of course, Vayen, Delyn and the gang are fascinating in their own right.
Now, since I’ve already tagged others on my first time around, I’ll call my duty done and sign off. Thank you, Stella, for giving me a reason to revisit some of my attention-starved WIPs.
Monday, May 24, 2010
If only I had more time
There came a time in my life when personal and work interests took me away from writing. Though I had enjoyed the outlet writing gave me, I just never found the time to get back into again.
When the planets aligned eight years ago, allowing me to quit my job in printing and become self employed, I'd envisioned all this 'extra time' I'd have to write. After all, my son would be moving into kindergarten soon and business was sporadic. Slow days wouldn't mean me sitting at my desk twiddling my thumbs or chatting with co-workers, I could be writing without worry of the boss catching me work on personal projects on company time.
I started to write again for at least an hour or two and during the day, and as my love of writing reignited, a couple hours at night once my son went to bed. It felt wonderful.
Ten months later, I had my daughter. Let me tell you, having a baby at home directly impacts writing time and mental capacity for constructive thought.
I thought naptime would be my writing escape, but I was tired too, and friends called, housework needed to be done, and of course, work.
When I finally got her to the preschool stage, I was overjoyed to have my quiet writing time back. Work was slow enough, I could write again and make time for both kids and parental/social obligations.
I started looking around online and found some writing groups to get involved with. My actual writing took a back seat to learning how to write better.
When full time school hit, I thought I was golden. I would have all day--on slow days--to write!
But the bills still want to get paid and new equipment must be purchased to keep up with changing demands? Crud. My slow days were spent with promoting the business and developing new products. Then there are critique partners to work with, learning about this whole publishing business, and figuring out how to make my writing suck less.
Now business is good and steady. Which is great. Except that mythical devoted writing time I'd envisioned? Yeah, that just never seems to happen. Something will always come up. Something I can't blow off because it’s not a matter of break time, or being off the clock. There’s overtime, rush jobs, and customers calling during my morning writing hours and no boss I can give puppy-dog eyes too and beg to get out of it. No sir. It’s all me.
That time you hope for, that you can devote solely to writing, will never happen unless you make it happen. Write when you can, be it five minutes here and there or a block of hours you set aside each day. Every word you manage get down is one step closer to putting that idea into words, or finishing and polishing your current WIP.
If you have the fortitude to shut your door, turn off your phone and internet and just sit and write, go you. I allow myself to do this one month a year—November for NaNoWriMo. I know I can pump out an entire rough draft of novel in a month. I’ve done it four times. But if I did that all the time? I’d quickly find myself single, wearing the same clothes all week and living off ramen noodles while my children played in the street.
So it’s all about balance. We all sacrifice things for what we love, right? I won’t cut my kids out or my husband, work still needs to get done and the yard needs my attention, but I will turn off the tv, let the answering machine get the phone during writing time and do my best to stay off the internet unless what I’m doing is writing related. I will try to manage my time to get the most out of a day as I possibly can.
That doesn’t mean that everything coming out of my fingers during writing time is uber awesome, but hey, getting words written is half the battle. The other half… I’ll get to that when I have more time.
When the planets aligned eight years ago, allowing me to quit my job in printing and become self employed, I'd envisioned all this 'extra time' I'd have to write. After all, my son would be moving into kindergarten soon and business was sporadic. Slow days wouldn't mean me sitting at my desk twiddling my thumbs or chatting with co-workers, I could be writing without worry of the boss catching me work on personal projects on company time.
I started to write again for at least an hour or two and during the day, and as my love of writing reignited, a couple hours at night once my son went to bed. It felt wonderful.
Ten months later, I had my daughter. Let me tell you, having a baby at home directly impacts writing time and mental capacity for constructive thought.
I thought naptime would be my writing escape, but I was tired too, and friends called, housework needed to be done, and of course, work.
When I finally got her to the preschool stage, I was overjoyed to have my quiet writing time back. Work was slow enough, I could write again and make time for both kids and parental/social obligations.
I started looking around online and found some writing groups to get involved with. My actual writing took a back seat to learning how to write better.
When full time school hit, I thought I was golden. I would have all day--on slow days--to write!
But the bills still want to get paid and new equipment must be purchased to keep up with changing demands? Crud. My slow days were spent with promoting the business and developing new products. Then there are critique partners to work with, learning about this whole publishing business, and figuring out how to make my writing suck less.
Now business is good and steady. Which is great. Except that mythical devoted writing time I'd envisioned? Yeah, that just never seems to happen. Something will always come up. Something I can't blow off because it’s not a matter of break time, or being off the clock. There’s overtime, rush jobs, and customers calling during my morning writing hours and no boss I can give puppy-dog eyes too and beg to get out of it. No sir. It’s all me.
That time you hope for, that you can devote solely to writing, will never happen unless you make it happen. Write when you can, be it five minutes here and there or a block of hours you set aside each day. Every word you manage get down is one step closer to putting that idea into words, or finishing and polishing your current WIP.
If you have the fortitude to shut your door, turn off your phone and internet and just sit and write, go you. I allow myself to do this one month a year—November for NaNoWriMo. I know I can pump out an entire rough draft of novel in a month. I’ve done it four times. But if I did that all the time? I’d quickly find myself single, wearing the same clothes all week and living off ramen noodles while my children played in the street.
So it’s all about balance. We all sacrifice things for what we love, right? I won’t cut my kids out or my husband, work still needs to get done and the yard needs my attention, but I will turn off the tv, let the answering machine get the phone during writing time and do my best to stay off the internet unless what I’m doing is writing related. I will try to manage my time to get the most out of a day as I possibly can.
That doesn’t mean that everything coming out of my fingers during writing time is uber awesome, but hey, getting words written is half the battle. The other half… I’ll get to that when I have more time.
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Bunny fodder
I hear feminine sobbing and sniffing coming from somewhere in the midst of the crumpled pages that litter my floor. Ms. Wildstar, the most likely suspect, is over at the edge of the room trading beautiful and handsome adjectives with Xander.
Delilah is languidly combing out her lusciously long, curly, ebony hair far too close to the adverb storage crates for my liking. And she's not sobbing. She's casting coy looks at Nekar and Zsmed.
Unless the rabid dust bunnies did a real number on Marin's manly bits, I'm thinking it's not him crawling back into our midst. Everyone else seems to be accounted for.
Hmm. I give up all pretense of writing and dig around in the paper until I uncover the culprit. "Trala?"
She looks up at me with tear-filled blue eyes. "You remembered my name!"
"Yes, well, I do that. I wrote you, for goodness sake. You're right here." I point to one of my character sheets where her name and information are neatly typed. Of course, there's also a big, thick sharpie line through it all.
Her sobs elevate to full-fledged wailing.
"Oh, shut up you whiny woman. It's not like you're the only one cut around here." I point to all the others who are shaking their heads and rolling their eyes at her.
She takes a deep shuddering breath and holds up a scrap of paper—recently cut from the sequel I gather by its position near the top of the pile. "She says I'm sappy and boring."
"Ms. MC never liked you. I thought that was pretty clear from the original scene you played an active part in."
"She was just jealous." Trala balls up the paper and tosses it aside. "Mr. MC bought me a pretty blue dress. It matches my eyes." She batts them at me as if I hadn't noticed them yet.
"Very true. But she was already jealous of the other women Mr. MC spent time with. You were an anvil."
"Are you saying I'm heavy?"
I'm saying you're not real bright, you dimwit. Yet another reason you got cut. "Noooo, I'm saying I’d made the point twice and in this case, the third time was not the charm. It was the anvil hitting the reader over the head."
"What about the other girls, did they get to stay? Are they lighter than me?"
I smack my forehead. "There were a few that floated away, the rest were heavy anvils like you. You're not alone, dear." I pat her little head. Huh, sounds rather like a ripe watermelon.
There are times when a character can be less than intelligent and it works within the story. Trala was not one of them. She was just aggravatingly dim and that made her all wrong as a love interest for Mr. MC. Not only that, but when I decided to add more of a romance twist to the novel, those 'other women' had to go unless they served a major purpose. This one, nope, not one of the lucky two.
Hmm. On second thought, the 'lucky two' both ended up dead, so I suppose they weren't so lucky after all. Hey, I might be on to something here...
"Hey Trala, I hear there are some cute bunnies behind the desk. Maybe you should go look for them and see if they are hungry."
"I love bunnies!" Her face bursts into a grin that reeks of unicorns, sparkly rainbows and i-s dotted with little hearts. She dashes off into the shadows.
Population control at its finest.
Delilah is languidly combing out her lusciously long, curly, ebony hair far too close to the adverb storage crates for my liking. And she's not sobbing. She's casting coy looks at Nekar and Zsmed.
Unless the rabid dust bunnies did a real number on Marin's manly bits, I'm thinking it's not him crawling back into our midst. Everyone else seems to be accounted for.
Hmm. I give up all pretense of writing and dig around in the paper until I uncover the culprit. "Trala?"
She looks up at me with tear-filled blue eyes. "You remembered my name!"
"Yes, well, I do that. I wrote you, for goodness sake. You're right here." I point to one of my character sheets where her name and information are neatly typed. Of course, there's also a big, thick sharpie line through it all.
Her sobs elevate to full-fledged wailing.
"Oh, shut up you whiny woman. It's not like you're the only one cut around here." I point to all the others who are shaking their heads and rolling their eyes at her.
She takes a deep shuddering breath and holds up a scrap of paper—recently cut from the sequel I gather by its position near the top of the pile. "She says I'm sappy and boring."
"Ms. MC never liked you. I thought that was pretty clear from the original scene you played an active part in."
"She was just jealous." Trala balls up the paper and tosses it aside. "Mr. MC bought me a pretty blue dress. It matches my eyes." She batts them at me as if I hadn't noticed them yet.
"Very true. But she was already jealous of the other women Mr. MC spent time with. You were an anvil."
"Are you saying I'm heavy?"
I'm saying you're not real bright, you dimwit. Yet another reason you got cut. "Noooo, I'm saying I’d made the point twice and in this case, the third time was not the charm. It was the anvil hitting the reader over the head."
"What about the other girls, did they get to stay? Are they lighter than me?"
I smack my forehead. "There were a few that floated away, the rest were heavy anvils like you. You're not alone, dear." I pat her little head. Huh, sounds rather like a ripe watermelon.
There are times when a character can be less than intelligent and it works within the story. Trala was not one of them. She was just aggravatingly dim and that made her all wrong as a love interest for Mr. MC. Not only that, but when I decided to add more of a romance twist to the novel, those 'other women' had to go unless they served a major purpose. This one, nope, not one of the lucky two.
Hmm. On second thought, the 'lucky two' both ended up dead, so I suppose they weren't so lucky after all. Hey, I might be on to something here...
"Hey Trala, I hear there are some cute bunnies behind the desk. Maybe you should go look for them and see if they are hungry."
"I love bunnies!" Her face bursts into a grin that reeks of unicorns, sparkly rainbows and i-s dotted with little hearts. She dashes off into the shadows.
Population control at its finest.
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