Category Archives: Writing

And it begins… almost.

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I really wonder if it will be a whole month before I post again.

If I’m going to make 50,000 in 30 days it seems most reasonable to spend any computer time I have actually typing on my story. But maybe I’ll come over her for a break.

What I don’t see myself doing is IMing. I’ve gotten into a few message boards (and out of more than I’m in) but I don’t see myself going for the IM thing. Maybe it’s just b/c I’ve never done it. Don’t think I’m starting yet. I rather prefer the Blog/message board MO about answering things on my terms, my own timing.

I feel an imminent right to be “selfish” with my time. It’s a form of self-defense. I just have to remind myself to expect that from others too, and sometimes I’m even leery of accepting offers, feeling the unspoken obligation to listen to someone else’s random-dream-turned-novel explanation (when I’d rather be writing).

Sooo… “keeping short accounts” is something I’d like to manage if possible
this month.

I do expect I’ll go to the weekly meetings with my laptop– I’m intrigued at the idea of writing as a group activity, and am curious to see the reality.

So Excited!

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But I guess that’s the way I always feel when I’m actually working on something.

I spent a couple hours last night actively working on my Children’s book.  Some of you may know I have this book I’ve always wanted for my own kids (for reading aloud) and have never been able to find it, so I decided to write it.

But it was only after visiting with some other children’s/picture book authors that I had enough structure to my idea to get this project where it is now.  I got it about half laid-out last night, but that used up most of my prepared material, and now I’m praying about what should come next.

It is exciting.  Working on an actual layout and having a progression that I can put in a proposal makes the whole thing much more real.

Reference works

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Okay, I just started “using” my two favorite new reference works: Spirits, Fairies, Leprechauns, and Goblins: An Encyclopedia, and Giants, Monsters, and Dragons: An Encyclopedia of Folklore, Legend, and Myth.

The absolute coolest.

Okay, I was one of those (home schooled) kids who would sit down with my mom’s old set of World Book Encyclopedia and just read like crazy. To send me there to look something up for a project was to lose me for the morning.

And now I have this reallyreally cool double set of fantastical creatures, and it’s actually what you would call “scholarly:” based on research and not just a collection of one person’s ideas of things. I’m enjoying it immensely.

~~~

Anyway, I bought them initially because all my projects seem to have this element of the fantastic in them, so I wanted to be as… authentic as possible.

One interesting thing I’ve already read ties very closely to an earlier post I wrote while reading Mindhunter. It was a very long entry about werewolves (did you know there are were-everythings? Whatever animal is common in the area: panthers, hares, boar(s?), crocodiles…).

In it the author mentions a “highly publicized” incident in the late 1500s where a man in Germany “in the guise of a wolf raped, murdered, and ate humans, including his own family, as well as terrorizing the region for some twenty-five years until caught, tortured, and executed.”

The era of serial killers has been said to have begun with Jack the Ripper (late 1800s). But there really is “nothing new under the sun…”

Whew. I can see why that “werewolf” story made it across the channel. (Big story in England in 1590, according to the encyclopedia).

~~~

Anyway-anyway, fascinating books. Lots of interesting readings.

I’m getting the impression it will be the same type of information as the names I choose. That is, many of the names my characters have actually mean something related to their role or personality. This is nothing I expect a reader to know. It’s sort of a game I play with myself, a kind of “in” joke or story, for my own benefit and mental exercise.

Yes, it looks like I’ve got the new-book giddies. It’s fun. I haven’t had that for quite a while.

Lindorm Outline

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I think I’ve got my whole novel card-outlined.

It’s about 150 virtual 3x5s (of varying detail).

Intimidating and exciting at the same time to have it done.

What I’m trying to do now is set up a folder of characters (from an example I saw in a writing book) with mag pix for my image of each of the characters.

What I’m doing in November

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I realized I never actually said what I was working on.

I am currently imagining an expansion of the King Lindorm story (a variety of tales from Northern Europe), since that should give me a nice long something to work with, without having to create a whole structure out of air.

A lindorm is basically a wingless dragon.

So King Lindorm, in its original form gathers many typical fairy tale elements:

  • A barren queen
  • A helpful old woman
  • Directions not followed
  • Tragedy at birth
  • the separating of twins
  • The wicked step-mother
  • The passive (if living) blood father
  • Beauty and the beast elements
  • Death and dismemberment
  • The good-hearted woodsman
  • trying to get out of a bad bargain one made with hell, having to do with one’s soul
  • Long-distance communication and mail tampering
  • A war with no mentioned casualties
  • general misunderstandings that wouldn’t be if people actually talked
    • this is going to be the first thing to go. It always drives me *nuts*!
  • Villain’s punishment: being pulled by galloping horses in a nail-pierced barrel (*Gack!*)
    • This has been done in a book recently, so I’m re-writing that ending. I’ve come up with something else I like even more– though, I can’t say I really liked the nail-filled barrel, so maybe that doesn’t say enough.

I’m actually not interested in (much) modernizing or lampooning. I think it’s a cool story for its genre, so I’m working with what’s there to tell the story I want to tell.

Prep work

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Just thought I’d mention what I’ve been doing with my computer time this last week.

I’ve totally shifted from Blogs to research. Yup. I spent {I won’t tell you how much} time on the BehindTheName website digging up appropriate names for my new creations, and creating a virtual stack of 3x5s with my story progression on them.

It’s felt really cool. I never did do a play-by-play mock-up for my swan story, and now I’m all inspired to do it.

But that will probably wait until December. Or maybe not… I’ve recently met another gal who is also interested in writing YA, and we will be discussing current stories tomorrow. The Lindorm folder can’t count as current, since I haven’t actually written any of it yet. So I’ll have to shift stories again for that.

But… Knowing me, all I really have to do is research/outline/read a little bit, and I’ll be neck-deep in it again.

I honestly don’t know how I have more than one interest in my life, since I immerse so much in whatever the current project is. I’m always saying (usually to Jay), “This is so exciting!” I’m always loving whatever project I’m working on.

At one time I thought having this many interests and foci made me flaky. Now I’ve decided that my focus must be a bit like “mother love.”

There’s always room for one more. ;o)

NaNoWriMo

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I just heard of this this summer, and how could I not sign-up?

Short for National Novel Writing Month, it is in its 7th year. Hey, who couldn’t love the power of deadline, right? My screen name there is Iliamna (a deep Alaskan body of water and an Alaskan volcano– don’t try to read too much into that, I just like the sound of the name).  I don’t know if that link is usable or not, but it was worth a try.  Takes me there, anyway.
The two main rules (from my perspective/that I’m supposed to follow) are:

  1. Don’t work on something you’ve already started– you’ll care to much to work fast and make word-count (50,000 to “win”).
  2. You can’t start until November 1st.

The first I readily identify with and can understand. It’s the second that’s harder for me (though, currently I am still resisting– it’s been good for my in-progress novel, recieving as it does the focus of my noveling interest).

I love starts. I love diving into the middle of some action or tension or dialogue or meeting and swimming to the surface from there. My Shadow Swan effort (currently at 13,427 words) I have “started” at least four times. This has resulted in 23 pages that still will connect with the right interim, since I enter the story from a different place each time. I can pretend they’re all chapter-starts, I guess.

So far they work for me.

I also opened a new blog, to sort of track my “progress” and have something to look at next year (if I find I want to do it again).  I also chose to make it sort-of invisible (no links there) so that the only people that read it will be folks I’m asking specific advice, and similarly-enough engaged in this insanity to overlook things like spelling and plausibility.

Anyway, wish me luck. In less than a month my free-time will be wholly taken-up (I believe) with actually writing on a project.

“Imaginary” good and evil

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From Phillip Yancy: (though most of it isn’t his, I got it from his article).

Simone Weil said imaginary evil, such as that portrayed in books, television shows, and movies, “is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.”

This, I have learned, is one of the hardest things about writing (and reading too). It falls into the same category as a discussion I heard/read somewhere about how much easier it is to maintain your image if you are an “evil” leader, than if you are a “good” leader.

The argument goes: For the former, everything you do reinforces your image– who you are (Even the “good” you may choose to do sets your people on edge, because everybody’s wondering what’s really going on, or when the other shoe will drop.); while, for the latter, no matter what you do, someone will be unhappy, and you will lose your reputation of “goodness.”

Most people today call Jesus a “good teacher” (if nothing more), and leave it at that (“How can anyone have a problem with a man going around telling everyone to love each other?”). But, other writers have pointed out, most people in Jesus’s day had very strong feelings about him. And not all of those positive.

~~~

Getting back to the original quote, I’ve always wondered how best to make Good and Right as complex and alive as all the bad that must inevitably be in a good story.

I think it was my husband that pointed out one element of this difficulty: Everyone has encountered evil. Many of them intense evil. Far fewer have noticed a good on that scale.

I’m not saying it isn’t there (though I can think of several cases where even I, on the outside, can’t see it), but good does not usually impress itself so unignorably on the individual as evil does.

Let’s see, now what do I do.

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Last night was 23-days since my Grandmother died. Time keeps crunching along. I finally picked up a novel again. Inkheart. (I first read it a few months ago.)  And it felt like chicken soup.

Should that be embarrassing?

It was familiar, it whet my appetite and satisfied it too. A completely different “flavor” than the first time I read it. I wasn’t too impressed with the beginning chapters before, but they had the context of the whole story this time, and I was able to appreciate the author’s efforts to give them more meaning.

Tried a little too hard, maybe, but it was okay this time.

For the first time in more than 3 weeks I thought I might return to my own work.
Three weeks is a long time to wonder what you’ll do next.

The Olive Branch

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I gave my current rough-draft to my brother to read.

I was very reluctant to let it leave town (i.e. have it available to others to see) but I didn’t think of it before today and he leaves first thing in the morning.

He’s been telling me to write a book (I don’t think he cares what kind, he just feels I’m capable, so he keeps trying to push me toward that), so I wanted him to read what I have so far. He’s not a big reader, so handing him 10 double-sided pages was somewhat intimidating, but I think he sees it as the effort for peace I mean it to be. Something special between him and me.

Only my husband has read it so far.

Benj made some joke during good byes that I’d better keep plugging at it (the book) and charged Jay with encouraging/pushing me back-to/forward in this project. Jay’s smiling affirmation that he intends to was more encouraging than I could say.

Just this morning (while I was spell-checking the document– the only editing I allowed myself to do today), I bemoaned the fact that I haven’t done anything new in weeks, and hadn’t read any of the highly anticipated/recommended books I ordered right before all my work halted. Jay said he expected I’d get back to it once things settled down, and pointed out there’s no real way I could have been working on things, even if my mind was there…

I really needed to hear that from him.