bodycount: 1 rejection, 0 acceptances
wordcount:
concount: for WisCon, am waiting to hear about Julie's renting of the car. For WorldCon, I have: registered for WorldCon, nominated stuff for the Hugos, bought tix to Manchester from JFK, registered for Milford, reserved a car, and reserved hotels in both Haworth and Glasgow. On the agenda still: get a Glasgow roommate, figure out tix from DTW to JFK (there might be some stepdaughterly shuttling going on, which was the reasoning), write to the Bronte Society for permission to access the archives, and calm down. On the total happy side of that, my room at the B&B (the Aitches) in Haworth overlooks the Parsonage. I am geeked.
There are probably other things to report, like my depression about not having sold anything in months, and alla that, but you know. Another time. Apparently, just writing about Haworth and Glasgow and Milford will dispel depression long enough to get through a journal entry.
So Worthy My Love by Kathleen E. Woodiwiss (10) [romance]
Another loaner from Lou, borrowed when we were both waxing poetic about Woodiwiss's influence on our reading childhoods (adolescences, also).
I, uh, go on for an unpardonably long time after the cut.
And, well. It was sort of like mix-and-match Woodiwiss, you know? The reason I had chosen to borrow it from Lou, in fact, is that we were both waxing poeting about different Woodiwiss books, and we somehow thought we were talking about the same book right up until we started naming characters (and the title, too; titles are a dead giveaway).
Problematically, I found myself confused several times while reading it. Why yes, I remember this plot element from that one book, and this one from the other...
I was genuinely interested at the beginning. I read straight through with appreciation and eagerness right up until the mutual declarations of love, and then--the whole thing devolved into a giant schmaltz-fest of pointlessness for the last several hundred pages, while the supposedly secondary and tertiary plot-lines were rounded up and then dragged on and on for even longer.
I am all for breaking the romance format, I really am. I think Outlander, for example, which breaks every romance rule in the book, is the best romance novel out there. (Arguably, it's just a plain good novel, and may not be romance at all, but that's where it gets shelved, so let's go with it for now.) But I think the power of Woodiwiss's writing has always lain with the sparks between the hero and heroine, and notably, the sparks always go out of her stories as soon as said hero and heroine are secure in their mutual love. Then, when there is a massive, well, piling-on of every secondary character (I'd say the villain is a main character, but so far in Woodiwiss's works, not usually... not in this book, for certain), it just becomes tedious. The world spits at them; they cling to each other. Or to the image of their perfect love. Whatever.
I don't mean to be so negative, but really, I was very bored by the middle of the book, and kept putting the book down. I had to skip pages in order to keep going, in fact. I have a feeling that it's just--I didn't bond with this book as an adolescent, and it doesn't have enough going to please me as an adult. I have another unread Woodiwiss on my shelf, and I will be very interested to see if that one works for me or not.
I should add that this is one of Woodiwiss's works that made me laugh out loud--this is not usual. The exchange between Maxim and one of his servants about Elise's haircolor had me in stitches. So, there's something going for it...
Off seeing my cute nephew. When I call his name, he smiles and claps his hands. Occasionally, he buries his head into the couch and giggles. If you all did that, I'd be here, but you don't, so I'm there.
Good productivity last night. I wrote about half a scene with Cora and Baxter, somewhere around the middle of the book--it came out to around 800 words, and it does all these things, like explain how Baxter's mind works and how Cora actually feels about Zikor. It rails against the Overwhelming Healing Penis* theory and does double duty with symbolism and little jokes... It was very satisfying, it was not written sequentially, and it was a major triumph for me. By Right of Conquest may actually come into being.
I also, for a break, dove over to an epistolic time travel story I started some time back. It now has an ending. I may need to (no, definitely do need to) go back and fit it with something resembling a point of climax. I can't quite decide what to call it. "An Archive of Unanswered Letters Found under the Floorboards of a House Slated for Demolition in 2032 in Portland, Oregon" is just too long and not interesting enough. I think there are parts of that title I can use, but... I'll have to think on it.
But, hey, progress.
*The Overwhelming Healing Penis: when a character is suddenly brought to tears and has a catharsis and all the psychological ills of the character are healed instantly by having sex; usually a female character gets over previous instances of sexual assault or abuse by having sex with a sensitive male character--whose apparent power center is a magical healing penis.
The Wastelands by Stephen King (9) (re-read) [fantasy]
Actually, not so much a re-read as a listen-to-something-already-read. Audiobook ahoy, and the first one of the year.
I don't feel at all competent to speak to what makes a good audiobook. I just know that I usually hate listening to things done by the narrator of this (whoever he is), but the book itself overcame that hate--*and* I think he did a better than usual job of it.
Anyway, the thing that struck me on this re-read was how impatient I was as a younger being--I hated The Wastelands, and always skimmed it on re-reads. I no longer know why I hated this book. It's good. It's better than the ones preceding it in the series in many ways. Why didn't I like it?
I can guess--it doesn't so much advance the plot as kind of stand in the plot's way, and it ends on a cliffhanger and then has a smug author's note at the end which essentially says, "Yeah, I know, cliffhanger! Whoa! Who knew! Well, y'all best write me some letters if you want to see more--suckers!" Or maybe that's just how I interpreted it when Wizard and Glass was nowhere to be seen. Except, no... it still sort of seems that way.
Also--and total digression here--I first encountered the Dark Tower series at the same time I encountered Piers Anthony, and I was beginning to think that smug author'sl notes were de rigeur for the kind of books I wanted to write. I used to compose smug author's notes in the shower of a morning, when I had nothing else to think about. I didn't exactly notice the passing of the smug author's note, but you know, I'm glad it left my consciousness.
Onward. To Wizard and Glass.
All I intended to do is lay down 1,000 words of By Right of Conquest today. I was mugged, in turn, by an ill-timed nap, a biography of Henry VIII, one of Mata Hari, some hungry cats and a story that thinks it's called "Rampion in the Belltower."
I think it's the feng shui of my office. The one at home; the work one is fine since all I want to do when I'm there is write. Frustrating. The only thing I can think of is that I should make work look more like home and home look more like work.
Hm... I also think I'm being constrained by my process. I'm trying not to force myself to write this book sequentially all the time. I'm not trying to force it non-sequentially, either, but. I think the problem is that I have a macro-outline and a micro-outline and the two are separate (one is on paper and one is in a Word file). I need integration. Immediately.
Integration and Chris Botti, because his trumpet is like whoa.
An Exchange of Hostages by Susan R. Matthews (7) [science fiction]
Lou loaned me this book, with promises that the psychological exploration of character was fascinating. And there is no doubt, it was that. It's the story of a surgeon turned torturer, in a world where that is a necessary, usual and even respectable job progression. It was horrifying and revelatory, the both because it took so long for me to become truly horrified; not until Andrej tortured a woman did I get squicked. I'm not at all sure I like what this might say about me. Except that I note, upon reflection, that Matthews' world is densely protected by words. It takes effort to worm one's way past the alien concepts--the passage of time is obscured by non-standard terms ("eights"); names and concepts feel deliberately opaque, and cultural allusions are almost wholly alien. I didn't get annoyed by this, or anything; I appreciate the sentiment that future-time shouldn' t be fully or immediately understandable to us, especially a future where humans are space travelers and spread to many different planets.
But I think the author did all of this for it to serve as a distancing function. We're reading about torture. It's that much easier to read about it if we never over-identify with either the torturer or his prisoners.
Tales of the Beau-Monde by Sahara Kelly (8) [romance]
Er, well, actually, "romantica," which is supposed to be a blend of romance and erotica. I'd have to say, however, it failed to satisfy my desire to read either. Perhaps not the fault of the author; it was a technically apt book, far, far better than I'd been expecting... I wonder more if it was a fault of writing to a supposed market.
I say supposed market, because I am not it. And I really don't know anyone who is. I mean, I know people who'd be interested in romantica as a concept, including myself, but I don't know anyone who'd actually be interested in reading this book, or any others of its style, which is thin on plot, romantic tension and sexiness. There was a glimmer of good romantic tension in a couple of the vignettes I read (the book was a series of linked tales), but... eh. The book was rather short, and the sex was less interesting than that of most romance novels because the characters were barely explored, barely differentiated, even.
I only read this because Julie and I dared each other to buy one of these romantica things to see what it was all about. Hers, I'm afraid, had a much greater chance for unintentional comedy--rumors of a "Cajun batman" lover abound.
Less than half of the progress of regular beer!
Yeah... well.
...even if I rewrote it once, I'm still not at 5k this week, and certainly not at 5k for BRC. Such is life. I was sick, and Lost was new. We had snow and ice and rain and bitter cold and warm fog in seven days. It was Valentine's Day and cat-vet day this week. Such is life.
Home sick today. During the muzzy dreams of the past two hours, I've been rolling around in a semi-fevered (might actually be fevered--I should check) and feeling guilty that I'm not using my sick day to better effect. I should be reading if I can't be writing.
This is entirely my subconscious talking. I'm otherwise perfectly well aware that when you feel like this, you have to stop moving for a while. And when I feel like this in particular, I have to just stare at the wall and drool a bit.
On the other hand, if I got some fluids into me and maybe some sort of headache medicine, and checked to see if there actually is a fever and then took steps if there is, I might not have to drool quite so much.
The main difference between me and my husband, besides the obvious (male/female, introvert/extravert, etc.):
When given a list, my husband's obsessive-compulsive tendencies will cause him to go through every item on the list until it's done.
When given a list, I will think of a reason to do ten things that aren't on the list instead.
Both are effective if you know how we work. If you want the bathroom cleaned, you write it on his list, and you don't put it on mine.
I was just thinking of this because I now have so many unread books that I don't know where to start. As soon as I made my first-in, first-out resolution, I read five books that I'd bought recently instead. When I started lining up books in the order I thought I wanted to read them, I went and grabbed books outside that line-up entirely. I'm trying now to read books people have loaned me in an effort to return them before another six months goes by--that's working about as well as can be expected. I considered having my husband make a list for me, because he'd select based on no criteria that would ever occur to me; but that's when I realized I'd end up reading everything not on that list.
All the same, I really should read something. My inability to commit to a new book is very strange, and does not, sadly, result in more writing--just in more time spent on the IntarWeb.
I know I previously came up with a formula for letting go of stories.
The more (and more and more) I think about it, the more I'm convinced that maybe 1 in 5 is a better baseline. But if I don't know if it's the recent "no sales" drought talking... but I also don't know if it's more realistic, since 1 in 3 is based on my "paying markets" sales in part, and I'm aiming towards pro/semi-pro these days.
I wish there were a punchline here. I'll just tell you that I've out-superstitioned myself of late: I haven't scratched an itchy palm in three weeks (itchy palms means that money will cross them, and scratching it makes that not come true). This has gotten to the point where I get an itch anywhere, and I spasm slightly as I try to contain the impulse to scratch until I remember it's just the palms.
Stupid superstitions.
Note that I've not said I'd overturn them any time soon...
Random short story mugging while trying to take a bath and read a book about the Black Plague. I think I need to finish reading the book before I can finish the short story, but in this case, it's one of those stories that's pre-written in my head. I know the whole thing, I just have to fill in the details.
It helps that it's not a story, except in a technical sense; it's a bit of "found story"--an alternate universe as uncovered by a brief bit of primary source material in an anthology. I've titled the story "Tertio Millennio Adveniente" for now, but I'm not keen on that... It seems to be holding around 444 words, as well. That's rather small. Rather smaller than I thought once I'd laid most of it out, even.
Huh.
I have a problem with letting go of stories. Not in the writing sense, but the selling sense. I want to let go more. I need to let go more. But I was trying to let go by feel, and it was becoming readily apparent to me that "by feel" wasn't working. I am still circulating stories that sometimes feel like they work and sometimes feel like they don't.
In any case, something I decided tonight was that I needed to sit down with myself and agree that some stories are just written for practice. And that's what happened. I surveyed Eric and Lou at Write Club. "I should make it a goal to sell 1 in... how many stories?" I was thinking 1 in 10. They suggested 1 in 3. That seemed pretty disparate.... But I ended up agreeing with them. (Some of the logic is spelled out in the extended entry.)
Ultimately, the math is just smoke and mirrors here. I was just trying to invent a new paradigm for myself in which I acknowledged that I can let go of a greater number of stories without doing agonizing soul-searching over each one. Maybe that would be the wisest way to continue, but I tend to think not. This way allows me to look at any three stories and say, "No, really, this one and this one, they were just for practice. This other one, though; that's pretty special."
I sat down and tried to think out how many stories I'd shelved and trunked and circulated, and at the time came up with 21. (Even though I don't think that's right.) I've sold (in a couple of instances, "placed," anyway) 6 stories. That means I need to sell one more and trunk 14, total. (Of the current batch.)
On the understanding that this is by no means an exact science, for practical purposes, I will trunk 7 and keep 8 circulating until 1 sells. I will *not* then trunk the remaining 7, obviously. The goal is not to adhere to a strict numbers game; the goal is to learn how to let go, how to give myself permission to let go, and to realize that giving up two stories for each one published is not a loss, it's a lesson. If I make three stories' worth of progress for each new story I circulate... that's pretty good.
Incedentally, four stories are already trunked, and when I look at the titles and the numbers of the ones circulating, the next three to trunk are incredibly, right-off-the-bat obvious. So, I tend to think there's something to this notion.
Could not get into writing at Write Club for all the tea in China. I blame it on the change in locations--our usual café is undergoing renovations, and we have been cast adrift upon the sea. Or, actually--we've removed to the Barnes & Noble down the road from our usual Borders. The food is better, but the atmosphere less homey. The music was stultifyingly loud. The tables were too high, or perhaps the chairs were too low, and I had to sit on my balled-up coat.
I did manage to outline and narrow my focus on "Peppercorn" or whatever that story is going to be called. I also managed to really, finally refocus my thinking on "Alloy of Optimism"--apparently it's a screwball comedy of manners. Ohhhh... well, no wonder I didn't know what to do next. Laying out the disparate plot elements and characters caused Julie and Lou to point out the Connie Willisishness of the thing, kind of an "Even the Queen" atmosphere. I had thought it was a much more serious story than that, but then I reread it and no, it's really not.
I came home and generated a whopping 223 words, but they were the right 223 words. I think. The story can be funny with so many disparate plot elements, and it's possible to do funny and meaningful together. Right? Right. "Even the Queen."
The first two sentences of "Alloy of Optimism" are behind the cut, for your brief amusement.
"There is nothing like a family gathering on a festive occasion to showcase the eccentricities of the filial bonds therein. To think otherwise is to invite ridicule by wiser and more pessimistic minds."
The Wolf Hunt by Gillian Bradshaw (6) (re-read) [fantasy]
A comfort read. The last time I read this, I was definitely in it for the France. Bretagne felt strongly evoked, and I'd recently been to all the cities discussed in the story. This time, I was unable to capture the magic, and I remain uncertain how clear the Britanny-ness of it was drawn, and how much was in my head.
Spoilers below.
In any case, I was reading for Tiher this time. There is a general consensus that Tiher is the true romantic hero in this story, and sadly, I re-read this, thinking, "Oh! Oh, maybe Tiher will win this time!" Which, of course, he does not.
It's one of those cases, I think, where a secondary character steals the show. The writer has a difficult decision: let the secondary character go on, or tone him down a bit? It's interesting that this one comes out the way it does. Tiher doesn't have a chance to be anything other than perfect, because he's set up to be the foil in almost every instance: foil to his cousin, foil to the Normans.
Tiarnan doesn't stand a chance: he spends the first half of the book being stupidly in love with one of the most unlikeable characters in fiction, and for the second half the book, he's a wolf. We don't even get a chance to see Tiarnan in a way that would make us love him. The post-wolf denoument probably should have been extended, for one thing. Having Tiarnan grievously injure his wife (while he's in wolf form) also loses us sympathy for him. Tiher comes out looking like a winner all the way around, in comparison, for he is a bastion of self-control and honor.
Perhaps these are genre-reader expectations: the romance element requires certain behaviors from Tiarnan that we see more strongly expressed in Tiher; the fantasy element requires more to be made of Tiarnan's time as a wolf, when there would be further exploration of the theme of otherness, contrasting himself with Marie. There are too few scenes of either of those genre elements, and it falls toward a pallid center instead. One of the genre readers in me wants more, in both directions, though either direction would do.
Not sure where the last few days went, but I think they happened something like this:
*zone out*
"Oh, look, another reading list from my teenage years, from February to June 1991."
*zone out*
"I don't think I should drive to work today."
*zone out*
"I'd read something. If I had an ounce of concentration."
*zone out*
"Thank goodness that it takes no effort to put songs on my iPod. No, rea--"
*zone out*
I think I might be over my Influenza of Apathy, but there are really no guarantees. I'd like to write something, since the 400 words of random scenes I laid down for By Right of Conquest (yes, this is merely an official working title) don't really quite equal the 5k a week goal I'd set for myself... *cough* Sorry, I think I just lost my train of thought by zoning out right then.
Lioness Rampant by Tamora Pierce (5) (re-read) [YA, fantasy]
Mostly this was read to round out the previous rereading I was doing on this quartet.
I still love Alanna a lot... though this time, I paid more attention to secondary characters, particularly Liam, Roger and Thom... or maybe, "was struck by," not "paid more attention to." As a girl, I read for girls. Boys were of little or no interest to me, either as viewpoint characters or secondary ones, with a few notable exceptions, like Taran.
Other than that, no new insights, just a good read.
Now that the flush of recent publication has worn off, I am feeling pretty low. Self-doubt lurks behind every corner, and hey, look, I think I just turned a corner.
Things certainly got easier when I gave up self-doubt. When I said, "I'm not going to double- and triple-think things, I'm just going to send stories out and take no rejection too personally." Unfortunately, circumstances occasionally combine in a fiendish way and I start taking it personally again. I'll go you (and here, by "you", I mean "me") one better: I not only am taking rejection personally this week, I'm also convinced I will never write anything good again, ever, and that nothing I've written is good, either.
You know, except those couple of stories that have been published, and everyone seems to like. But those don't count anymore. Not for the purposes of this exercise.
Anyway. I'll give myself until 7PM to continue to wallow in the self-doubt. But Write Club is tonight, and I will, by then, have dusted myself back off and stopped being an idiot.
I swear.