No, I didn't rewrite like the wind this weekend. Rewriting seems to go best at Write Club, anyway. Or on nights when there's a specific kind of burn-out staring me down, like creative burst burn-out.
I wrote about 3k words on By Right of Conquest, read up on the Great Trajanic Frieze, read Render Unto Caesar in one sitting (one long bath, actually), and started a short story that Dann thinks I should entitle "Whenever Love" and I'm calling "The Regency and Romans." It needs a better title. But I've gone ahead and written time-travel romance, by-passing the modern day. I'm sort of impressed with myself. (Won't be when I find out how many other people have done it, I'm sure.)
Beginning to think my Thing is Rome.
Not sure I'm pleased. I was hoping I didn't have a thing. But (at cursory glance) it does seem to show up in over 10% of my works.
Hm.
Did have a semi-realization this weekend, though: that just because you make yourself write when you aren't inspired, you shouldn't ignore inspirations. Because really, how often are inspirations with you? Not bloody often. I'm not as highly disciplined as a writer as I'd like to be, but of the times I write, it's rarely with Inspiration. Ignoring inspiration, who only visits on alternate days beginning with S and that have a 2 in the date, but never on months ending in "R"--that would be foolish.
Levels of inspiration exist, of course. I have inspiration often enough that Inspiration is not often bemoaned, and I probably get inspired every fortnight or so.
The Chariot, by the way, is the tarot card representing inspiration. It's about harnessing that force. It's a good lesson for today.
Render Unto Caesar by Gillian Bradshaw (14)
I love Bradshaw. Absolutely love. I don't think I'm ever less than 95% satisfied when I read her stuff.
That said, I'm going to say that the other 5% does seem to loom larger in some works than others. Sometimes I think the solutions are too facile. Hermogenes needs a woman--so, he falls in love with the gladiatrix! Well, actually, I don't think the choice of who he fell in love with was too facile (I mean, who else was it going to be?), but maybe the getting there was. I don't know. Maybe... maybe it would have been solved with one more piece of bad-assedness on the gladiatrix' part. Maybe if it (the romance, their happiness) hadn't seemed like a foregone conclusion. Maybe a lot of things. Bradshaw writes about exceptional people, but her exceptional women always seem to get less exceptional when they fall in love.
I'll be interested to hear what she has to say about this book in a few years. I read somewhere recently about Wolf Hunt that she thought she'd stuck the heroine with the wrong guy. I'm not sure I agree (since I'm always fond of the dark broody ones), but I don't necessarily disagree, either... so I'd like to see what a few years of reflection brings her (and me) on Render Unto Caesar.
Of course, I'm going to be dwelling on the 5% for years to come, as long as it takes her to write another Hawk of May or In Winter's Shadow or even Beacon at Alexandria. Wolf Hunt came so close, as did Island of Ghosts...
Not time to begin the novel, though. I mean, I've begun the novel a number of times now. Snippets of it have found themselves on the back of homework assignments and library call number sheets for five or six years now. A concerted effort was made last year when I tried to write the Short Story That Would Not Work. And I've been doing the outlining and such for the past week.
And on Friday, I sat down and wrote scene 0.1.
Why?
Because...
Because writing Scene 1 was impossible. I'm definitely one of those writers who pads the beginning, wrongly, unnecessarily. And I was getting that perfectionista panic at the thought of starting at Scene 1 and having it be less than it could because I was caught up in building background and stuff like that.
So, I kindly granted Myself permission to write as much of the story preceding Scene 1 as I wanted. Myself was very well-behaved and did not use this as a stalling tactic of another sort--Myself did not go back to when the main character was in utero or anything stupid like that. Two hours. I went back two hours in time. And it made all the difference.
In fact, until someone can make a strong case against them, I'm keeping Scenes 0.1 and 0.2 in the draft.
Scene 1 draws to a close. I went straight for the jugular on the rising action.
So, when I say it's time to begin, I do not, in any way, mean it's time to start telling the story or writing it down.
I mean it's time to start tracking word count. The only way, apparently, writers really have of understanding their progress, given how many writers do it.
In the morass of plot and structure and character and POV, it's the only thing tangible. Some days we live or die by the click of the word count button.
No, really.
Q: Can I rewrite all four short stories that are sitting in my Rewrite Folder -- this weekend?
A: Augh! Augh! Auuuuuugh!
Maybe.
The intended:
"Souls on a String" - only needs a spit and a polish. Well, actually, probably needs quite a lot, but I'm going to spit at it and then polish it. It's a stylistic piece. It could be other, if I shifted things around, but that would be denying its essential nature.
"Subletter" - only deserves a spit and a polish. This is for the silly mills.
"Bound by Spells" - another silly piece, but with a Statement. Don't know where it belongs. Julie and Lisa both agree that it's got to find the Right Editor. More so than most stories.
"Paradise Covenant" - needs more work than a weekend, and will be the true cause of any traffic jams. This may just stay in the folder until the next 'round of rewriting. And the next, for all I know. Too bad, though. And--maybe not?
Ultimately, in looking over the current list of candidates, I don't see anything Saleable. (Not capital S saleable.) Granted, I'm still a poor judge of Saleable, so I shouldn't dwell. Regardless, they ARE all things I want to work on, and for now, while I have a day job, I have the luxury of working on what I want to work on. Someday, I suppose, I may have to write to orders, or possibly write to make ends meet, but that day is not today.
Or even this weekend.
96 scenes. Yes, that's right. I have written an outline detailing 96 scenes for By Right of Conquest.
I think it's going to happen.
My suspicions that it's going to happen are high, and based on knowing the end before the beginning and knowing so much about the world, and even more, knowing what happens afterwards. I know what I need to know. No groping in the dark this time; no jump-in-and-where-do-we-go-from-here?
So strange. I've never been so precise before. Which may be why I actually finish this novel.
My new theory, by the way: Creativity begets creativity. The more I dwell in writing, the more that writing gets done. Yep.
And I have a tagline, too: "All that is sacrificed is not lost." I stuck it at the top of my outline. It's not proper grammar, I don't think (should be: "not all that is sacrificed is lost"), but this flows better.
(hugs self)
There's a sandwich called "Roger's Revelation" served at a local restaurant, and I've always wondered what the Revelation was.
Somedays, when I have a revelation, and then realize I had it (two separate and distinct processes, really), I try to pigeonhole it. Usually I say I had an epiphany or an enlightenment. But today I had a revelation, and really, but for the lack of bread, meat and cheese, it was Roger's Revelation: it was just that good.
Brook's Journey, my monstrous YA novel which should be nearly complete at 50k words but disastrously isn't, is really more than one novel.
You may all go "Duh!" and smack me now, but hey, it's a revelation to me.
Structure is my native enemy. Anyone who talks to me regularly knows this. I can spin a yarn, but it's darn hard to tell where the beginning, middle and end of it are. And sometimes, the point is lost, and sometimes, the tangents are phenominal.
So, clearly, obviously, I've been trying to tell the whole story at once, and I need to settle down and tell the pieces. Brook's beginning may be enough of a beginning for a YA novel. In fact, it is. The Royal Courtship, that's another novel (and also the fleeing thereof). The travel and the time in the City by the Sea, another novel. Coming back and confronting Justice: novel 4.
Duh.
DUH.
Roger's Revelation.
Oh, yeah.
Goals accomplished:
-send out "Hero & Prince"
-send out "Huntswoman"
-send out poetry to DMR
-figure out what I'm doing with "Reparations"
-partial rewrites on "Souls on a String"
Yeah, so that's a few things I didn't accomplish; and I did actually finish rewriting "Reparations," plus sent it back out.
Sunday, I spent most of my time toiling over getting my submissions ready to go.
Monday, I got a rejection on "Star and Galaxy" and tried to send it back out--but the Post Office was most injuriously closed due to President's Day. I wrote a bit after Kayla went to bed, but not much.
Tuesday, managed to make it to the PO and get International Reply Coupons (exciting!) and send out all the stuff from Sunday and Monday. Tuesday night at Write Club I finished the rewrite on "Reparations" and worked on "Souls." Also, got an acceptance on "Charmed Lives," first market I sent it to.
Wednesday, I mailed off my "CL" contract and started really plotting Conquest, using techniques from two sources (details later, if it turns out this method works). Took a working lunch at work--ran downstairs and microwaved my food and came back upstairs to do the plotting. Unfortunately, this means people think they can (and should) interrupt me. Must rethink working lunch strategy.
Thursday, plotted Conquest while gaming.
Friday, drove to Aunt Carol's, and plotted Conquest both in the car (with my tape recorder) and after she went to bed.
Saturday, scribbled Conquest notes as soon as I got up. Began to feel like I was getting somewhere fast, especially since I was on into the second and third book with some plot threads (which may sound like procrastination, but I think it will make for tighter plotting if I get the structure on some threads set beforehand. I promise).
Also, Saturday, came home and got the Mysterious SASE with Nothing In It. Am frustrated by this.
So, my additional accomplishments far outweigh the 2 or 3 pesky little goals I ignored. The point of goals, after all, is that something gets done; the guilt of not accomplishing anything is worse than the guilt of accomplishing other things. Right?
Goals for this week:
-finish "Souls on a String"
-rewrite 1 story (be it "Subletter," "Souls" or "Paradise")
-finish plotting Conquest and write 3k thereon (or more)
The Storyteller's Daughter by Cameron Dokey (13)
There was definitely a point where I stopped being interested, but kept reading anyway because I knew it would go quickly. This YA was a little too Y for me, I guess. I kept waiting for the big grab, and it didn't come. Too much distance in the telling, I think. I never felt like I was in the heart of any of the characters. Alas.
All right. Is it wrong to want to hear from everything from 2003 yet? No, it's not wrong. What's more, is it wrong to want to hear anything from anybody, in spite of the fact I've heard plenty this week already? No, it's not wrong. It's greedy, but not wrong.
That's the problem with this whole thing, I've decided. I've been fiddling with web pages since 1995. It's gratifying; a little ^o on the keyboard, refresh a browser, and boom. Obvious, exciting, gratifying changes. Fiddle in a story, and it's not obvious. Fiddle with where you send a story, and you're waiting for months.
These other-centric tasks are difficult.
In other news, I read an interesting statistic: that 80% of a story should be conflict. I think, actually, the statistic was "if there isn't conflict on 80% of the pages of your novel" then you should fix it immediately; less than 20%, burn the thing. Ok. That seems fair. And you know, I'm ok with that number. Not because I've achieved that number, but I find statistics comforting. If I can make them work for me. And I think I can.
Just like anything worth doing, it takes a little while to learn how to do it right. Refinements all along the way.
A new story beckons.
Yeah. Couldn't get out of new story craziness that easily.
My husband is off to Lansing today to take his interpreter certification test, or part of it, anyway. So, good thoughts for him.
(Random aside: "Off to Lansing" just doesn't have the ring "Off to Raleigh" does, but I think that's because of television. On "The Andy Griffith Show," "off to Raleigh" meant "beyond Mt. Pilot" (or was it Pilot Mountain in the show? I can never remember which is the real one anymore), off to a place where there were fun things to do. "Off to Lansing" usually means... going someplace less fun than where I am now.)
As for us, and not just him, we're planning our honeymoon (about ten months late). Scotland beckons. The plane tickets are in our pockets (metaphorically; they're e-tix), Dann is fighting out the logistics of renting a car, and I've outlined an itinerary.
The itinerary, in fact, looks like this:
April 05 (Mon): arrive 6:30 AM - drive-by tourism: Stonehenge, Longleat perhaps. Finish in Glastonbury.
April 06 (Tue): Bath and environs; drive north
April 07 (Wed): leisurely northern drive. Chatsworth, Arthuret, Carlisle, Gretna Green, end in, uhm... somewhere in Dumfries. Don't have my notes.
April 08 (Thu): Whitthorn and such; up to Glasgow
April 09 (Fri): Glasgow--up to Oban
April 10 (Sat): Isle of Mull
April 11 (Sun): Ft. Wm., Loch Ness
April 12 (Mon): Inverness (Culloden, etc.)
April 13 (Tue): Perth, St. Andrews
April 14 (Wed): Edinburgh
April 15 (Thu): Borders, Abbey
April 16 (Fri): padding day--drive to London
April 17 (Sat): fly to NY; attend nephew's christening (or at least the after-party)
I'm convinced that it's too packed, and I'll need to cut. Just not sure where. I'd cut the big cities if I could; I don't like cities in general. London? Bleah. Paris? Double-bleah. I realize I'm a freak, but give me a medium-sized town like York or Avignon any day.
However, I do feel Edinburgh should be Seen, and Glasgow's kind of right in the way, so...
Though there's interesting stuff in the Whitthorn jaunt, I think it would probably include the things least interesting to Dann. And another day on Mull, if that got us to Iona, might be worth it instead. Loch Ness is a must, on principle. You don't want to tell anyone you went to Scotland and skipped Loch Ness. On the other hand, this trip doesn't get us to Skye, and there's no time, just, *none* to get up to outer reaches.
I should probably scrap the Bath/Glastonbury leg, but I dreamed, a long time ago, that Dann and I went to Bath on our honeymoon. And the other night, I had this intense dream about Glastonbury; kept trying to get to the Tor and couldn't. Realized it was frustration over the thought of being so close and not going there. (sigh)
And yes, I pay attention to my dreams. For a variety of reasons, not the least of which, good story ideas come from them.
The knitters were there. They are loud. And intense.
But we were also there! I read Lisa's "Sinful Waste" and rewrote (maybe--well, I *did*, but maybe it's right) "Reparations" and maybe-almost-finished "Souls on a String" (which may not be a good story, or at least, not live up to its name, which seems much more optimistic than the story has ended up being). So, pretty productive for me.
Plus, general basking in recent sales. And Julie had a copy of Darker than..., which I hadn't seen yet, which was cool, because, hey. Coool. My story was one of the ones the editor mentioned in the foreword, which I only mention because I was called quirky and offbeat. So true.
Kenoma e-zine will carry "Charmed Lives" in their Feb. issue. I'm mailing the contract back today.
Please note for the record: this is the first time I've gotten paid for something I've written.
Please also note, and congratulate me on, my calm whilst making this announcement.
Week past:
Monday - I do not actually recall this day.
Tuesday - Write Club. Members in attendance: Lisa, Mer & Julie. Finished "Huntswoman."
Wednesday - failed to do anything meaningful
Thursday - see Wednesday
Friday - one notice that "Charmed Lives" made it to round 2; one rejection-but-you-could-rewrite on "Reparations", both timely 1-month responses from Kenoma and Fortean Bureau respectively
Saturday - rewrote "Hero & Prince"
Sunday - rewrote "Huntswoman"
In general, had some problems this week with motivation. Several days off, and many of the days on were just frustrating. I ended up trunking "Conquest" (it's true; it has to be a novel). Still no word on the last three things I sent out in '03, including no word on "June Mothers"--which I'm convinced died in transit.
For goals, I hit 2 out of 4 "mostly realistic" goals, and might have hit them all if not for sickness-related apathy and lethargy.
Goals for this week:
-send out "Hero & Prince"
-send out "Huntswoman"
-send out poetry to DMR
-figure out what I'm doing with "Reparations"
-rewrite "Subletter" (market research suggests that even things that silly may find a home)
-rewrites on either "Souls on a String" or "Paradise Covenant"
-restart Midsummer novel
I had a dreadful, dreadful time yesterday with the writing. There was much hair-pulling and gnashing of teeth and telling Dann how I was a failure. On his part, there was a lot of eye-rolling.
At midnight, I crept upstairs and started a long, whiny entry about self-doubt and its paler cousins. Then I stopped, and instead, opened up a file in the rewrite folder and rewrote "A Hero and a Prince." It's pretty decent, if I do say so myself, and it's ready to go out tomorrow.
Excellent.
So, the power of griping worked once again. The good news is, I deleted the whiny entry before I posted it, because it was terrible.
...all the things that I do contradict the Good Advice for Writers. I am a freak. A freak, and you should not model your work habits after mine, because mine include most of the things that are allegedly destructive to writers. I do all the following Bad Things: (1) Talk about books in progress, in great detail and sometimes obsessively. In fact, I can't write them unless I talk about them (2) Rewrite and revise (sometimes drastically) before I've finished the draft (3) Seek feedback as an ongoing process, before I've finished the draft.
Yipes! My first thought was "No! Don't ever change! I learn so much from watching you." Then I realized she wasn't planning on changing, so that worked out. My second thought was, "No! Don't say that. I thought all the Myths about the Bad Things were myths after all..."
Just in case they aren't...
My Bad Things vary. I managed to combine #1 & #3 of above when I wrote a whole story practically out-loud at Write Club one night, much to the chagrin of my writing companions. Not that it turned out to be a particularly good story, but I don't think that was a function of how I did it at all. But, all things considered, I don't do that very much.
I'm just not sure if I have a consistent Bad Thing. I'm not sure if I have any Bad Thing that works for me above and beyond the Good Thing. (In other words, I need to go out, find a list of the Good Things, and see which ones I defy to success.)
But I'm sure interested to find out of any of the rest of you defy Proper Writing Convention, and live to tell the tales. Any takers?
Barrayar by Lois McMaster Bujold (12) (re-read)
I think, somewhere between figuring out that, though the most compassionate person ever, she's still a social misfit, and enjoying the hell out of the bad-ass moment in which she brings back the head of the Pretender, I fall head over heels for Cordelia. I want to be her. (sighs) Only on boring days, though. I promise. Her life's a smidge too interesting.
What were the biggest lies you were told in school? What were the biggest omissions from the curricula you were taught? And what were the biggest mistakes your teachers made? I was thinking of these questions primarily academically -- the Noble Savage instead of If You Don't Bother Him, He Won't Bother You -- but academic or social or both are welcome.
What wasn't ommitted from the curricula?
If I had just known that geometry and algebra were the same side of the coin... if someone had said, "You can solve the same problem with an equation or a proof," I would have finally understood proofs, and would have spent fewer nights crying over my geomtry textbook.
If I had understood that the reason I sometimes liked Social Studies and sometimes didn't was because "Social Studies" is a ridiculous title covering everything from anthropology to civics to economics to folklore to history to sociology... well, I would have figured out a lot sooner that anthropology was my Thing. And, as someone who eventually became a social scientist, at least at the BA level, it would have been handy to know what it was I was actually interested in, all those years.
As for lies, well, I suppose simiplifying the causes of the Civil War, or any war, are going to happen when you try to explain it to kids. But still. I realized these lies early on. From a white teacher, I learned that the Civil War began because of states' rights. From a black teacher, I learned that the Civil War began because of slavery. Hm...
I resent the lies about Native Americans. I resent that no one ever fully explained what European germs did to native populations, or that's why the concept of manifest destiny could come about. Europeans took over an entire continent with relative ease because smallpox and such had already more than decimated it. If the germ warfare had been reversed, things would have been very different. I'm not naive enough to think better; in fact, I'm pretty sure it just would have been bloodier.
The lie that nothing happened in the last 20 years... I don't blame anyone for that. Most history textbooks stop about 20 years out because people don't know how to evaluate the last 50 years, even, certainly not to digest for a school textbook.
There are more, but those are what stand out in just five minutes worth of thought.
Two rejections today, except that I misread one of them, and it's not a rejection (the story, in fact, has made it to the second round) and the other one says, quite plainly, rewrite it and the editor will reread it.
As two rejections go, they weren't much like rejections. In fact, one of them definitely wasn't. So, that was kind of a fun misread, really. From mild disappointment to immediate hope. (Cue angelic chorus.)
I've gotten to the point where I like getting rejections because it means someone read my story, whether or not they liked it enough to publish it. But not-rejections are even better.
I finished a short story, but not much else. Of course, that was plenty, but I have a complex of some sort, that no matter what you accomplish, you should work the whole time you set aside to work. Which is a good Puritan work-ethic sort of thing to think, but may not always be necessary... or right. Work smarter, not harder, right?
I also bought some books: Garth Nix' Abhorsen is out in paperback, I found Ellen Kushner's Swordspoint, I got the promised-to-myself Archangel Protocol (but couldn't find Naomi Kritzer's books) and grabbed War of Honor in paperback for my husband (and myself, though I've already read it).
Unfortunately, Arborland Border's has an unusually vapid selection. And it has nothing on Border's Store 1. Of course, meeting in Store 1 would be difficult--parking is a nightmare, and getting a table in a cafe so close to campus is even worse. And, of course, instead of going to Store 1 to order what I couldn't find at Store Whatever, I will just order from Amazon.com. But they're somehow linked to Border's, so I guess no one's losing any money.
Ridiculous world.
The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkein (11) (re-read)
Not that I read this book that carefully last time; I had a hard time enjoying the thing, largely because of the lack of real female characters. Once I realized that there weren't any real male characters, either, I was more into it. This time I read it for more of the right reasons, whatever they are. And, whatever they are, they do work. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and am looking forward to finishing the trilogy.
Shards of Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold (10) (re-read)
I saw Brandon reading this the other day, and got jealous. Plus, Dann just finished reading the series, and I was jealous the whole time he was reading it. So, when I was a bit sad, and in need of a hot bath and a good familiar book, I took this up, and read it in 2 days.
It's not perfect, but there's no flaw that's meaningful to me. It's good. And it's the gateway book: everything that comes after is even better. I adore the series.
I've been trying to argue with Marissa that I'm not fen. And as I get bogged down in my self-justifications, I fail. My argument right now boils down to "I'm not fen, because the plural of fan is fans." Very convincing, no?
But I don't consider myself fannish, because I'm interested in everything. Not one particular show or author or genre, just everything. Though I've recently (and hopefully temporarily) narrowed my focus.
Right now I'm interested in other writers. To the point that I spend all my free moments searching out writer-blogs, looking for the ones that hit home. My regular writing reads, which used to just be Julie, Lisa, Marissa and Elizabeth Bear, are no longer enough. I crave commentary on the process. Every process.
I've read John Hansen on-and-off for a while, but now I've systemically gone over his archives, reading about each and every rejection and laughing because I've gotten those same rejections and had those same reactions... enthusing when he makes a sale.
On top of John Hansen, my search for a good read has taken me to:
I hope this ends soon.
A new feature! Look for it every Monday (I hope): what I did the previous week, goals for the coming week, and that sort of thing.
Week past:
Monday - thought about rejection, but sadly, merely sat on the couch and watched Stargate: SG-1. This recent spike in TV viewing has led me to propose to my husband that we watch no television at all for an entire week-- to reset the clock, as it were. He agreed! We'll see how the week goes, and I may challenge myself to that during Lent, not because I celebrate the Lenten season in any meaningful way, but because it's a convenient time to give things up, with an easily noted beginning and end-date.
Tuesday - Write Club. Members in attendance: Julie, Lisa and Mer. Accomplishments: bought Return of the King Soundtrack and wrote 1900 words, a story-complete (but ultimately, probably only a practice story, because it's a one-gag stinker). Called "The Subletter of my Subletter." Actually, don't know if one-gag stinkers are so bad.
Wednesday - tidy 1-month rejection from Dragons, Knights and Angels
Thursday - 2-month rejection from Cemetary Dance; filed rejections, chose markets, packaged manuscripts and all that jazz; wrote about 1000 words on various projects, none with alacrity since I was home from gaming feeling sickly anyway
Friday - read "Subletter" - didn't hate it; queried on some items lost at sea
Saturday - began to write like the proverbial wind; a 2500 word hour. Projects: newly devised "Huntswoman," and "Reclamation" (working title on the "Reparations" sequel)
Sunday - another 1000 on "Huntswoman," rewrote on "Paradise Covenant"
Week total: about 6k words, 1 finished story
Mostly realistic goals for this week:
-finish "Huntswoman"
-finish "Reclamation"
-rewrite "Paradise Covenant"
-send "Descent" out again
Extra-credit goals:
-start "Conquest" rewrite
-"Souls on a String" rewrite
The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snickett (9) (re-read)
Kayla and I are reading this series before bed; Dann and I got the first five for her for Christmas, and the second five for her for her birthday.
I read this one two years ago, but stopped because, well, entertaining as they are, they seemed a smidge expensive to read for something so slight. But they're perfect for Kayla--she enjoys the humor, adores the plot and hates Count Olaf--so it's way more fun than me reading them alone.
When did I stop writing poetry? When I decided I was no good, or when I decided there was no money in it, or when I decided that I wasn't going to be a literary critic? I don't know. I occasionally scribble something down, when there's a prompt, but I just haven't felt it in my soul in years.
M'ris talks about the death of magic, and it provoked some thoughts, but they were all intellectual. Only today, when I was wondering if I should bite the bullet and move the poetry blog archives over to Movable Type or just delete them altogether, did it really hit home. The only real reason I could see to keep any of my poetry on-line was because I really like the graphic I made for the poetry blog. The poems themselves, I still like well enough to call friends, but I don't know if I need other people to prod at them and make fun of them or any of the rest of it... and it's not like they're going to get significant brothers or sisters in the future.
And that was the click. Poetry is dead in me, I thought. The magic of it died. It stopped being important in degrees, and now it appears to really be gone.
Then I stopped being maudlin and realized, well, mostly the inspiration to create poetry has been subsumed by fiction.
And that's a much bigger realization than it seems, at first.
Hold on, it's going to get self-indulgent for a moment.
I've wanted to be a writer since Laura Ingalls Wilder and Anne of Green Gables and Emily of New Moon and Jo March wanted to be writers. My first icons happened to have that in common, so I adopted it. At least, I think that's where it came from. In any case, I started writing stories on my own initiative when I was 7. I remember impressing my teachers year after year with my motivation and creation. I saved up my dog-walking money when I was eleven and bought a typewriter. I knew what I was, who I wanted to be.
I remember the first poem, the first non-school-assigned poem, that is. It was well-received, and easily produced. I kept writing poems. I wrote fewer short stories. Mostly fables. I started a number of novels. Never finished. But poems I could do. During this, my first tenure as a writer, I considered myself a novelist, but mostly wrote poems. I can be forgiven, I'm sure, since I was not even yet a teenager.
And then I became a teenager, but I still wrote poetry and still didn't write very many stories, short or novel-length. All my first school-published works were poems. I didn't have any stories that I thought anyone should see. Ever.
So I was a poet. I didn't call myself a poet, but I look back, and I think, yeah, I was. I wrote dozens of poems every week. Also, looking back, I realize that I revised poems. Whew. That's a pretty big revelation.
I went to poetry workshops! I didn't even have enough fiction to workshop, so when the various young writers' things came around, and someone, my mom or a teacher, encouraged me to go, I had to workshop my poetry instead. Still, didn't call myself a poet. Still called myself a writer.
Then, the Dry Spell.
Not super-dry. Ultimately, I never did stop writing, and I certainly didn't give up the illusion that I was a writer (I was one of those people I know Lisa can't stand: "Oh, you're a writer? I've always wanted to write...") I just wrote different things--gaming fiction, but also gaming poetry. For that six or ten year period (depending on how you want to count it), I had abandoned all other methods of creation: if it wasn't game-inspired or assigned for school, I barely touched it. In retrospect, I call that the non-writing time.
The Writing Renaissance came late. How old am I, anyway? I feel thirty, maybe thirty-five, but I have to remind myself that is truly not the case. I'm firmly in the middle of my late twenties. Anyway. The Writing Renaissance came, but the poetry didn't come with it.
I find myself confused. Where did it go? Did I kill it with gaming? Did I kill it with disuse? Did academia have a hand?
Or, do I just possess a finite daily quantity of talent and creativity? Such that with all my powers of concentration brought to bear on murmuring statements like "the subletter of my subletter is my subletter" while typing furiously, I have nothing leftover for gentler, more refined writing? Or, are the mindsets appropriate to a writer of humorously-veined spec fic and a composer of ethereal poetry just too far apart?
I've certainly talked about it enough that you'd think I care.
I'm not sure I do, after all.
As my mom says, when she doesn't know how to define something: "It is what it is."
Yes. It is.
January's Battle
I didn't know:
polymath - a person of encyclopedic learning
handsel - a gift made as a token of good wishes or luck
thrasonical - bragging, boastful
omphalos - a central point
footless - stupid or inept
nostrum - panacea
uxorial - of or relating to a wife
luftmensch - an impractical, contemplative person having no definite business or income
I should have known polymath from the Greek roots, omphalos from all the damn art history I've taken, nostrum (once I saw the definition, I remembered it) and uxorial (but I got it confused with uxorious).
I did know:
watershed, forfend, lissome, chin-wag, kakistocracy (at least my Greek doesn't always fail me), akimbo (thank you, Kathleen Woodiweiss), crucible, Rosetta stone, welkin (thank you, Jane Eyre), bunkum, lexical, conundrum (thank you, Lewis Carroll), gauntlet, antediluvian, paladin, importune (thanks, Mrs. Miller, tenth-grade English teacher), mnemonic, hark back, bon vivant, pedantic, callow, voracious, and dreadnought.
My best run was Jan. 11-20th--crucible to importune. A good ten-word run.
It was just like the old days, last night. I sat down and wrote a story, and when I stood up again, the story was done.
This was done at Write Club, and both Lisa and Jules looked at me like I was a freak--but at least now I understand why. I haven't done that in a year, and yet, that used to be the only way I wrote short stories.
I'd say it's a gift, but I don't think it produces stories of particularly good quality. In fact, I would lay blame on this talent's doorstep for my problems with rewriting. (I did not learn how to rewrite until last year, and I'm still learning.) Writing like that doesn't lend itself to the notion of steady work. So, sitting down and writing a story in three hour is, at best, a false efficiency.
I just wanted to reassure those of you stuck up here in northern climes with me that the sun has come round again.
At certain times of the year, for about ten minutes each day, the morning sun crests West Hall (used to be West Engin) and pours directly onto the Physics Building, and as it creeps across the third story windows of said Physics building, I am blinded by the reflected glare while sitting at my desk. Reflected sunlight pours across everything, giving Brother Bear a halo and highlighting the dust on my computer.
I don't mind the glare. It's my own private astronomical event, my personal Stonehenge, if you will. It tells me spring is coming.
The basic links to all the rejection hub-bub... the original post by Teresa Neilsen Hayden, and Elizabeth Bear's take with links to others' takes.
My first rejection was from myself.
I was on staff of the high school literary magazine for one year before I became editor. In high school terms, that's paying your dues. And it does tend to give you an odd sense of what "paying your dues" means in the real world.
With a double-blind submission process (I guess that's the right term), I never saw my own work; likewise, my staffers and co-editor didn't know it was me when they rejected one of my poems. Nevertheless, getting a rejection letter from myself, however nominally, is pretty surreal.
You know, I did take that one personally.
And for a while since then, I've taken rejections personally. It's not a conscious choice. All the folk saying that they've never taken it personally must have completely different personalities from mine, or have different background that taught them something that beginners don't usually know.
And that's the issue, isn't it? Beginners don't know. There aren't any (are there?) books out there that focus on rejection and behaving professionally (none widely advertised, anyway). Some beginners may be lucky enough to have a mentor, but most don't, not really.
My pattern used to be: write a story. Send it out. Receive rejection. Discard story. Wait a year. Repeat.
That's a suboptimal pattern. But that's how seriously I took the rejections. Just because I didn't know any better.
Note that I didn't go ranting on the internet back in those days. I'd speculate, in fact, that for every person who goes ranting on the internet, there's at least a couple like me, who just withdrew like a turtle in a hailstorm.
Those are my issues, though. The editors who rejected me in no way suspected that this would happen from their (frequently kind) rejection letters. I'm sure, in fact, that they'd be appalled, just as appalled as they are at the rejected writers that rant on websites. Not that they (the editors) created that reaction, but that anyone could have that reaction. Now, I think it's an appalling reaction. I shake my head when I think of it. It was a pretty damn ridiculous reaction.
But I say that, years later, knowing what I know now, with my whopping 30-some rejections (hardly anything). What got me past the point? Mentors.
Even then, it took diligent practice to learn how to deal with rejections. I even wrote a ranty thing on a website about one once, but in retrospect, I think it was proof that I'd grown. I'm more of an introvert than I appear, so managing not to collapse inward on myself at the first hint of rejection is growth. Likewise, not getting out-of-hand angry about rejection is also growth. Necessary stages.
My guess about all the brouhaha is that a) there are a lot of authors who don't persist long enough to get through the stages, or b) some authors get stuck in stages. My other guess is that there are few people brand-new to the business side of the writing world who have enough objectivity to by-pass the stages altogether.
Yep. That's what I think today.
Who knows for tomorrow.