Good morning (again.) Didn’t get much sleep, but I don’t feel like I needed it–I did fall into bed really tired, couldn’t sleep, read some Bukowski, and finally did sleep, with weird dreams of lanterns and spiders.
Don’t ask.
Anyway, last night the Selkie and I (on kind of short notice) made it to the Alice Hoffman signing at Beaverton Powell’s. Hoffman is only the Selkie’s favorite writer in the world, and we were both fangirly and all. Ms. Hoffman was divine–sweet and funny and old-fashioned polite. She read a bit from her newest book and answered some questions. Both the Selkie and I got questions answered, though mine was pretty much the Selkie’s question; it was about Ethan in Blue Diary. I wanted to know where he came from and the Selkie wondered why we never saw anything from his POV.
Yeah, us writers, always thinking about craft. The Selkie asked about The River King and the answer was so heartbreaking. In a kind-of-good way, though. I suppose if there was a theme to last night it was “writing can save your life.”
Anyway, Ms. Hoffman told us that Ethan was Bluebeard (which the Selkie had got ages ago but I hadn’t, and I’m usually quite good at spotting my fairytales.) And that she had to love her characters, so Ethan–a character who was either evil of had some evil in him, is how she put it–wasn’t someone she could get near.
I understood. Really, I do. The urge to love your characters is deep and profound, and I suppose I do love all of them down deep in some weird way. But mostly I dislike my heroes. I downright hate a couple of them–Michael Constantius, for one, is a manipulative asshat and I hatehatehate him. (One of the best times I ever had writing was that crucifixion scene.) Japhrimel I also dislike in some very fundamental ways, as he’s so wrapped around the axle by what he feels for Danny he won’t tell her anything for fear of losing her or frightening her. Plus, he was a demon, for Pete’s sake, and his idea of “truth” was so flexible as to be absurd. Darik? Insufferable and arrogant, but he’s nicer than the others just because of those exquisite manners. The Watchers? Collectively, they’re one creepy bunch of guys. I do like Jack Gray, though, and I’m awful fond of Merrick. I have a little black spot in my heart for Merrick.
I ramble. But the way I feel about my heroes is usually a complex mishmash of not-very-positive feelings. My heroines I’m closer to, but all of them are flawed–I mean, Christ, try spending an afternoon with Danny while she’s On The Rampage. Or with Elise when she’s in a snit, or Rowan when she won’t do anything for herself. Argh. I can understand my heroines and to some extent my heroes, but I don’t love my characters. They’re people to me, and fully-formed and fleshed people at that, but I don’t love them.
Part of that is because they’re going to leave when the story is done. Another part is that the story demands horrible thing to happen to them, and it’s wrenching. Dead Man Rising was terrible for me, because I understood Dante so thoroughly and could feel what she was feeling. It was awful.
Hrm. I’m rambling, and that can’t be very interesting. Suffice to say that it was ALL KINDS OF AWESOME to actually see Alice Hoffman in the flesh and get some of my favorites–especially Seventh Heaven–signed.
The Selkie and I had a longish dinner afterward, and a chat about character motivations. I can’t wait to read her WIP. *fidgets* Then we both wended our way home, and I settled in and read Scott Westerberg’s Uglies, which was (as I’ve said) a very good, very rolling read. It really reminded me of Tanith Lee’s Don’t Bite The Sun and Drinking Sapphire Wine, which is high praise from me. I finished it in about three hours, give or take about twenty minutes, and wasn’t bored once the whole way through. I did like how the subject of anorexia was approached, in a quiet almost-glancing way, and dealt with very lightly. I can see this book doing a lot of good.
And now it’s Tuesday morning, the kitchen is full of dishes, I haven’t had coffee yet, and I’ve got the YA to do a draft on. I think once I get through the first three chapters–which I’ve retooled and retooled because that’s what first chapters do, for me–it will go better and smoother.
I just read Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies since I got home from Powell’s. (More on that in the morning. Later in the morning.) Wow. It reminds me of Tanith Lee’s Don’t Bite The Sun, and is really rollicking-good.
I’m doing a lot of bulleted lists lately, for which I beg your indulgence. All my connect-the-dots is going into the writing. I just found out we need another revision on Redemption Alley. It’s not a HUGE one, it’s just one of those workmanlike things that’s got to happen once a story’s been pruned so an editor can see the nasty bits underneath. Heh.
* Gin, Television, And Social Surplus. This was AWESOME. I hope he’s right, but one of the things I’m struggling with lately is a bit of depression over humans as a species. We just seem so in love with destroying. Not even clean destruction, like a wildfire that clears everything out–but destruction for its own sake, from a dictator destroying lives and culture and social networks to wars destroying everyone who touches them in an ever-expanding ring, to gallons of poison pissed into our own life-support system. It’d be nice to find some evidence of people creating even half as much as they destroy, and just as reflexively.
You see? I’m on a real kick here. And most of it is…
* Holden Caulfield. I bought Catcher in the Rye for the Teen, since he said he’d never read it and I thought it was a) one of those books he should read, and b) that he’s old enough now he won’t go into a huge honking depression over it and end up making some silly gesture that will land him in the newspapers. Then I got to thinking, it’s been a while since I read it, too. So when he was done he put it in my TBR pile, and I read half of it last night.
The Teen says, “It’s scary. I had to put it down and give it a rest before going back to finish it because that kid? He’s me. It’s like the author KNEW me or something. When I was fourteen to sixteen, that kid was me.”
Then I started reading it, and I remember my own painful uncertainty during those years. It’s achingly depressing that Salinger remembered so much of the absolute agony of being a teenager to be able to write it down. Or, more precisely, what is depressing is that I can see the difference between that uncertainty and my adult self, I can see how that uncertainty fed into my adult self, and my heart aches for every kid who has to go through that. You couldn’t PAY me to go back to those years between thirteen and twenty. They sucked bigtime, and I never want to be that lonely and uncertain again. I never want to be that hungry for approval and affection again.
I’ve been talking to the Teen off and on about that hunger, and about the fact that he doesn’t have to have his life all mapped out at 18. I didn’t figure out who I was or what I wanted until I was about 23-25. Now I had Issues, so I was probably happening a little later in that process than I like, and it’s only now at 32 that I’ve grown (by dint of hard work) into someone I like. Nobody tells kids that they don’t have to have it figured out by 18, that it will take them a while to figure things out, and that’s okay. Well, on the one hand it can be a prolonging of adolescence, but on the other it’s necessary to build someone who isn’t a jackass stuck in high school popularity contests.
It’s funny, (she says, fully conscious it’s funny-strange, not funny-haha) but all the adults I like and get on with were outcasts, nerds, etc., in high school. Those were the kids forced to develop things outside the hothouse jungle of school to keep their souls intact. Kids that were popular in high school kind of forget there’s a world outside those glass walls. They learn to game that system so thoroughly, so young, that when they reach the Real World outside they have no fricking idea and end up settling rigidly into what they know–the reflexes that did them good in high school.
By no means is this a hard and fast universal rule, (I AM fully aware that there are decent adults who were popular in high school out there) but all my close friends had trouble/were unpopular/were outcasts/were braniacs/were nerds in school. We sometimes talk about this dynamic–the people who don’t find some way of interacting with the world that’s outside halls and lockers and taunting. And (bringing it full circle) Holden Caulfield is reminding me of that. When I read Catcher for the first time I was nine and had no idea, I just liked that the voice seemed true–not like an adult trying to impress or Teach Me A Lesson. When I read it again at fourteen it really spoke to me on some levels, and on others I thought Holden was such a privileged jerkwad; oh noes he had money and freedom and was So! Upset! And then at nineteen I read it again and thought, Jesus, I have so much else to worry about with the rent I don’t need to be reading this, but still did finish the damn thing.
Now I’m reading it as the mother-figure/friend of a teenager, the mother of a preteen girl, and seeing the painful self-doubt and uncertainties from a whole new perspective. I don’t know if this whole long ramble has a point, but I do know that Salinger did what he set out to do, if what he set out to do was write a book that people can read from several different angles. Truth–telling the truth, a writer’s truth–is like that; it’s got so many different angles. And who was it that said a good book grows with you?
* This upcoming Saturday, May 2, I’m going to be the featured speaker at the monthly Writer’s Mixer at Cover to Cover Books. I’ll be talking about continuity and characterization over the course of a multi-book series. If you have any questions etc. about writing series, why not comment or drop me a line? It will help me gauge the types of things to talk about, and if I talk about it all week I might sound halfway coherent when I do my half-hour thang.
At least, one can hope.
Happy Monday, all. I’m about to go back to the YA (it’s rested for a week) and start weaving in things I missed the first go-round because I was going so fast. Oh, and I’m making chicken tikka masala for dinner. Wish me luck.
Since I’m deep into Weasel Boy and still on that same flat diet (just slide a pizza under the door, thanks, I’ll stagger around to eating it when I’m about to starve and go right back to the work) I’m just going to bullet a few things out for weekend digestion and head back to the salt mines. (Mixed metaphors, anyone?)
* On May 3, I’m going to be the featured speaker at the monthly Writer’s Mixer at Cover to Cover Books. I’ll be talking about how to keep character consistency and continuity over a multiple-book series. I’ll have a whiteboard, so I’ll be at least halfway coherent, and there will be snacks.
The best thing will probably be the snacks, given my shyness. But I’m going to give it the old college try.
They have a potent aura of trustworthiness, fairness, decency. They are f—ing generals, for chrissakes, and hence we like to think of them as straight-talking, no-BS working men whose word is solid and whose authority unquestionable and therefore no wimp-assed monkey-faced president or scabrous Defense secretary could make them say something they didn’t actually believe.
Wrong. Oh, how horribly wrong.
So I ask again, did it work? Was America duped? Well, yes and no. There’s little doubt that this insidious, sustained PR attack — and make no mistake, it was/is an attack on the American people; such calculated “psychological operations” aimed at U.S. citizens are actually very illegal, though it’s enormously difficult to prove so in court — swayed millions of Americans, gave fuel to the preemptive attack argument, inflamed (and still inflames) the warmongering right, scammed the media, fanned the pro-war fires for years before the public recoil finally kicked in.
But oh, kick in it did. This is the fascinating thing. Even all those high-ranking military experts lying like well-decorated dogs in one of the most impressive, appalling PR campaigns in American history could not keep Bush from collapsing, could not prevent Americans from learning the real facts of the failed war and toxic presidency — eventually. (Mark Morford
* I have given up on reviewing Cassie Edwards’s Savage Wrongs. I offered to take one for the Bitchery and review it, but I just…I can’t. I’m sorry, I’ve tried several times. I just Cannot. Do. It.
So, if you live in the continental US and would like to give it a go, email me at lili at lilithsaintcrow dot com, first come first served, and you can have the damn thing. I just can’t. I’m sorry. *hangs head*
* Can I just say that Caitlin and Angela are AWESOME PEOPLE?
* A quick note: by the end of the day, between the punishing wordcount and the homeschooling and the getting the kids fed and into bed, I just want to drool as I play World of Warcraft. Dude, a human warlock in Teldrassil is ridiculously overpowered (even more so in Auberdine) and that plus-five-percent rep gain? AWESOME! Although, having a mace specialization as a race and not being able to train for maces because of being a warlock? BOGUS. I just…I guess I just like maces, especially with the regen stuff usually on them interacting with Demon Skin etc.
I am now officially, if I never was before, a geek. (Yeah. Like I wasn’t before I realized I was talking with a kid half my age about a video game and acquitting myself rawther well. Gah.)
* This morning the Teen’s Ipod-alarm woke him up with Billy Joel’s My Life. He’s taken it as a sort of anthem lately. And he tells me my music is “cool.”
I have hooked someone twenty years younger than me on Billy Joel.
I feel old now. Or maybe “mature”. Yeah. That’s the way to put it.
Note to my stupid self: When will I learn not to mutter, “Well, I prefer being busy, anyway.” where the career gods can hear me?
I know I’ve scheduled enough time for every project and a fair amount of downtime in between, but still. Sheesh.
So, erm, if you’re wanting to see me anytime in the near future…I’m afraid the closest most peeps will get is sliding the pizza under my door when I’m typing furiously.
Back to Weasel Boy. I swear I’m not even going to look at the manuscript that arrived this morning for revisions until sometime next week when I finish the YA revisions into first-draft form.
No, really. It is. And I’m not the only one who finds this news utterly delightful. I mean, come on. Of course the Earth is singing as she twirls through space, like a four-year-old in the backyard with a Goodwill prom dress and a magic wand. Twirling in circles, and singing that tuneless sort of song kids half-hum when they’re having a helluva good time, completely absorbed in what they’re doing.
As the Selkie might say, “That kid has magic.” By which she means, a lucky child whose parents understand that sometimes kids just need to goof off and hum.
But maybe the Earth is humming like an adult in the kitchen, fully absorbed in the making of something. Or at the laptop, or just messing around with a piano. Have you ever done that? Not played the piano, mind you, but just listened to the sounds it makes when you plonk it, humming while you do so?
I think Gaia wants us to sing back.
That was always one of my favorite Sesame Street songs. I don’t know about the “sing just about the happy stuff”, but the “don’t worry if it’s not good enough for anyone to hear”?
Oh, yeah, I believe in that. I really think that’s part of the point of writing. Or creating anything. (You knew this would come around to writing, didn’t you?)
One of the best things that ever happened to me was reading The Artist’s Way–the part where Julia Cameron says to give yourself permission to create bad art. To me, that was incredibly freeing. Permission to write the worst dreck in the world, as long as I wrote and kept writing. As long as I was happy, and doing what I was made to do.
Heady stuff. Because before there is discipline and doing this professionally, there was just me trying to get up the courage to write without feeling like I was a failure every time I set pen to paper. Trying not to remember everyone who ever told me I was worthless and that I couldn’t create anything worth looking at. Even, yes, my mother’s voice saying, “You’re so smart, why didn’t you do this right the first time around?”
I had a writing class once were I started explaining this. “If you need permission,” I said, “you’ve got it. You’ve got a working writer’s permission to write however badly you want. It’s not important for the first million words. That’s why they call it practice–”
I turned back to the room and two women were crying. Turns out they had really just needed to hear some variant of it’s okay to try this, to be bad at this. So much of our culture is bound up in the idea of teachers or authority figures giving us “permission”.
We ended up writing out certificates that stated so-and-so was a Writer, goddammit (the “goddammit” was my personal hiccup, uttered mentally every time), and had the right to write. It was silly, right? Nobody should need anyone’s signature to attempt to write, or to create. (I’m not saying everyone needs someone’s permission or even my permission, so don’t get all het up about that red herring.)
What I’m saying is, if you need to hear from someone that it’s okay to do this, and it’s okay to screw up and make mistakes while doing this, consider it said. Consider it heard. For what it’s worth, I am telling you this: you have permission to write the worst dreck in the world, sing off-key, dance without being Baryshnikov, knit without worrying about dropped stitches. The world is messy and wonderful, and how do we ever expect to learn how to write better, dance better, sing better, knit better without practice? And practice means making mistakes. It means f!cking up and going back and figuring it out and messing around with the joy of making something. That’s the important part. The finished work is important too, of course it is–but don’t let the fact that you’re going to make mistakes stop you from trying. Please don’t do that. Make all the mistakes you need to.
Each mistake is a chance for joy. Each dropped stitch could be a fork in the road, one that can take you somewhere you’ve never been. Each clumsy word will strengthen you, each comma you go back and remove will cheer you, each time you stumble while dancing you can consider it an invitation to a new movement, maybe one that’s never been done before.
Earth has been singing for a billion years or so. You think she didn’t have a few dropped notes? And still, look at what she made.
Weasel Boy is going well. 4k yesterday, and a lot of it usable. There will be dead weight in the rough draft, sure, but I want it well underway by the time I go back to the YA.
This is in many respects my favorite part of working, the creative burst that precedes a lot of revision. I had been having dark, dismal thoughts that the creative burst was in my past, that I couldn’t get up that head of steam anymore, etc., etc., shake that Internal Censor until s/he howls. But I’ve discovered that wasn’t the case. I was just resting, the ground kind of fallow and my usual speed slowed to a crawl. The creative life is somewhat of a bicycle ride, because one has to balance carefully and watch for danger and look at the bloody scenery. When one has to juggle on top of riding the cycle, speed necessarily slows–and this ain’t no Tour de France, it’s okay to sniff some roses and kiss some pretty boys along the way.
Or girls. Or tentacled monsters, if one prefers Cthulu.
On the book front, I’ve finished Wages of Destruction. It was a fun read, very dense, and I don’t understand half of what I should about statistics etc. but the author made it reasonably clear in context. I haven’t read any other studies of the German economy during the interwar and WWII period, so I’ll have to take the cover blurbs’ word that this is a revolutionary study. It did inform several other books I’ve read in odd ways–like Alan Clark’s Barbarossa and Beevor’s great study of Stalingrad. Now I’m hoping Tooze looks at the Russian economy in the same period. I’d read that book.
So…what I’m reading now: The Guns of August, Ivan’s War (thanks to all the Readers who suggested those) and, to leaven everything, The Beasts of Tarzan. I like Burroughs, actually. It’s pulp, but it’s reasonably good pulp and I know what I’m getting with every mighty-thewed chapter. Srsly, I haven’t read this many thews since the Iliad.
I have this regrettable fondness for Tarzan, mostly because of Travis Fimmel. I wish the WB would release that series on DVD. Hey. Quit laughing. I loved that show. It was awesome.
I am tossing around the idea of a historical Watcher series. It would mean a lot of research, but it would probably be fun. Of course, since I’m booked for the next couple of years it’s going to take a while and might never come to fruition…but it’s nice to think about these things, you know.
Happy Tuesday, all. And now, back to the salt mines–and I’m cooking Fifteen-Bean Soup and rye bread today. Let’s hope it works out as well as some of the writing is…
This? Is absolutely the most hilarious thing I’ve read lately. I love that burst of maniacal laughter from the bar. Been there. Done that.
I had a long and productive weekend. In other words, a lot of cleaning and sleeping got done, and I’ve planned out the rest of the week too. We’ll see what real life does to my plans.
I’m torn between working on Weasel Boy and polishing the rough draft of the YA. I know I promised to let the YA rest for a week, but one of the problems in getting enough sleep and prime-the-creative-pump time over a weekend is that I go back to work…at an accelerated rate, at least for the first half of the week.
*headbonkety*
Okay. Morning for Weasel Boy, afternoon for polishing. And in between there, dusting and deheading plants.
I’m at 62K with the YA, two more scenes and I’ll have a rough-rough draft. Then I’m going to stick that in a drawer and work on the Weasel Boy story for a while. (Don’t ask. Really. Just don’t.) After a week or two I’ll drag the YA out again, kicking and screaming, and give it a polish. Then the betas will get it, then the editor.
I used to think the hard part was finishing a rough draft. It is tremenjously exhausting, mostly because when you get a few scenes from the end it becomes The Book That Will Not Die. Then there’s the exhaustion of revisions, when it becomes The Book That Will Not Die NO MATTER HOW MANY TIMES YOU STABBITY STABBITY IT!!! Both are bone-crunching work.
But hey, I would rather have those problems than a host of others I could name. I do really love this job. *beams* If only because I have writing buddies like the Selkie who send me things like this.
Warning: the other stuff Amateur Transplants does is SO NOT SAFE FOR WORK, and if you’re easily offended you’d better not listen to other stuff. You’ve been warned.
Anyway, off I go to finish This Damn Book. It will die today, dammit, even if I have to chain myself to the chair. Once I finish stabbing it I’ll close the laptop and go for a walk.
Sounds like a plan, Stan. Have a great weekend, one and all…
You know? The day when you wake up out of a nice, beautiful restful sleep because they’re having some sort of screaming fire or something at the apartments behind you (no, there was no fire, just a lot of yelling and noise) and stumble into the kitchen for coffee. After spilling roughly a metric ton of coffee all over the kitchen, you finally get some into where it’s supposed to go and make some coffee.
The kids are a little fractious and your six-year-old hates you because you won’t let him watch TV. You consider putting a brick through the television but settle for putting it out in the garage, removing it from sight but not from the six-year-old’s mind.
Various other things threaten to rain on your parade.
You know? That kind of day.
Then the Teen gets up and says, “I’m so glad to be here. This is like heaven, you know, being here.”
And the Prince decides he doesn’t hate me at all, he cozies up to me (pretty much just to watch the screen as I type) and the Muffin decides to take care of some stuff that’s been bothering me, so I don’t have to deal with it.
