I've done a few things in my time in the name of "writerly experience." It's sort of the method acting school of writing, where you think "Am I really going to know what X is like if I don't do/see/experience X for myself?"
(I've also encountered strange, difficult and painful experiences and thought, "Well at least now I know what X is like." I'm not sure if it's a coping mechanism or some advanced form of denial.)
(Sidebar #2: I'm not sure it's necessary to do things in the name of writerly experience. I remember reading an anecdote about Charlotte Bronte and her depiction of taking morphine, and how she'd worked herself up into an imaginative fever and "experienced" taking morphine by basically going into a massively altered state. Now that's using your imagination for awesome.)
Anyway. If you're writing a story about cannibalism... it looks like if you demand the writer's experience on that, you have a legal option: Hufu... created when the inventor "was reading about cannibalism in the book Good To Eat: Riddles of Food and Culture... and eating a tofurkey sandwich."
Alright then.
I'd like a better sense of how character works, like how one engages with a fictional creature, and how one starts to cheer for them in interactions, and things like that. So very much of how I relate to people is tone of voice, body language and timing that I can't apply real-world templates to this--these things don't translate directly to characters on the page.
I suspect I'll be making a study of it for a few years, and as with all things, get really confused for a while--then, when I've gotten it, be completely mystified as to why I didn't get it before.
The good news is, after a couple years of beating my head into the wall to fully grok plot, I seem to have (somewhat) solved the dilemma. I may have learned something about the way I learn creative processes, too. I read a hell of a lot of formulaic plot creation methods, most noticeably from The Marshall Plan for Novel-Writing, which is SO formula'd out that I don't think anyone really could write a good novel in just those 16 steps. (Power to you if you have.) On the other hand, seeing people break down their creative process down to these tiny steps helps make it clear. It's no different than analyzing a golf swing with a video tape, really--as long as you don't get so focused on the pieces that you forget the art that is in the whole.
I spent three days off in the woods with five writers. This is the stuff horror movies are made of, but the only horror was coming back to a cat who didn't get enough attention from my husband while I was gone.
I had a really hard time settling down to write for, oh, the first day and a half. I think--as invigorating as my new job has been, it's also been--ennervating? And I need to learn how to relax, focus and discipline myself. I talked some things over with Julie, and she thought my idea of using my break times at work to do research would be good. I can head off into the stacks with a notebook, and yes, this would get research done, but I think the important thing is that it will keep me focused and in the writing mindset and maybe get me excited enough to keep the momentum going.
I did spend at least quarter of the time I wasn't writing (half being spent making cookies and building fires and sincerely catwaxing, and the other quarter playing Trijinx and totally goofing off) looking at my writing goals for the coming year, and trying to sort out a schedule to juggle my many projects, as well as coming to terms with the fact that I will not be spending all my time and energy on short stories. (I realized that in focusing on short stories, which I believe my talents do not naturally incline me for, I have been spending about twenty times longer on one six thousand word short story than I would spend on a six thousand word stretch in a novel. I'm not sure that this is the wrong way to approach short stories--they must be polished--but it's damned frustrating.)
On Saturday, I got the word that Lenox Avenue is closing down. I did drink to them that night; lampshades were worn in LA's honor. Alas.
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen (46) (re-read)
It was good to re-read this, since I had been clouded in my memories by that ridiculous movie, in which Fanny was empowered.
It's not so much that Fanny needs to be empowered to make the novel more palatable--she's not a super-pathetic character, in my view; I can see what Austen was intending to do with her--she's just really, really restrained. And good, yes, sure. I've heard complaints that one cannot see where the goodness and restraint comes from, what with Fanny's upbringing, but it's not hard, not really; Mrs. Norris scared the crap out of her when she was a kid, and her role model was Edmund. The only flaw in Austen's characterization is bringing her to Mansfield at age 11; at 7, I could see it as having more effect, developmentally speaking.
Either way. The book is not as enjoyable as, oh, every single other book written by Jane Austen simply because it's not particularly funny. Mrs. Norris is just mean. She's not mean and mockable like Lady Catherine, and she's not mitigated by doing bad things to hateful characters, like John Dashwood's wife in Sense and Sensibility does to Lucy Steele. There's never a point where "the enemy of my enemy" comes about, nor does there ever seem to be a reason behind her meanness to Fanny, other than that she's a bully and Fanny is weak and she can. It's just--not funny.
Mary Crawford isn't funny. She's witty, but not inherently funny. Mr. Rushworth is funny for about six pages during the play, but he quickly becomes an object of pity. Lady Bertram is almost funny, but she's so annoying that she eventually becomes unfunny, and since she enver stands up to Aunt Norris, so one cannot forgive her.
All in all, Mansfield Park is a massive failure on the part of light drawing room comedy. I have nothing but sympathy for Fanny and Mr. Rushworth, and deep hate for nearly all the other characters, most especially Edmund the Obtuse. Henry Crawford very nearly redeems the whole thing, but then he goes and screws it up by conveniently turning out to be so bad that they let Fanny not marry him.
Of course, bad Austen still beats damn near anything else in print. Don't get me wrong. And the book is still better than the movie; the movie is like a badly painted wall--you can see where they patched and didn't sand. By making Fanny as proactive as she is in the movie--by essentially turning her into Eliza Bennett in the guise of making her more like Jane Austen herself--they've done away with the point. The point is weak enough already.
Oh, well. I enjoyed the book, in spite of the above rantings, and I enjoyed it the first time I read it, too (though I liked it better when it was simply the only Austen I hadn't read, and when I didn't hate Edmund so much because I was letting Austen lead me around by the nose).
Oh, the jokes engineers make when confronted with a liberal arts student. (I would know--the majority of my relationship experiences have been with engineers.) My current least favorite is "You can't spell McDonald's without L, S and A." (LS&A stands for Literature, Science and the Arts--ie, the parent college of my even more liberal and more arty subcollege.)
There's a lot to argue for in favor of a liberal arts education, however... and not the least of which is a truly fine collection of books to draw on for creating alien societies. Case in point today is Wisdom Sits in Places, which is currently acting as a font of inspiration about how my present batch of aliens look at place, and have divided their society into those who know place (planet-born) and those who don't know place (shipborn).
A random aside if anything ever was, but I'm always delighted when I think I might need to do research, and it turns out I not only did the research but wrote a term paper on the subject already.
As Dann would say, "Don't hurt yourself patting yourself on the back."
Heh.
I input all the Milford revisions on "The Library Seed" on Thursday, and today I spent a couple hours trying to cut 500 words out of the story (which was my interpretation of either Liz C. or Deirdre's notes, can't tell which). I'd like to cut out 1500, actually, and get it down to a slim 4k, but I would need more distance from the story in order to do that, and this is one of those times where one has to stop fiddling and send something out.
I'm going to send "Wedding Dress..." to Jason and see what he thinks. I will make a bold guess and predict he will suggest more violence. It's probably an unfair prediction, but I think it's what I'm wishing for m'self, even though I sense that's wrong--it's just, it's a drawing room space opera of manners, and having already written myself into one corner with it, I'm reluctant to chop half the story and go back and write myself towards another one. Either that, or I have to admit it's a novel and start over. Which wouldn't be a bad thing to admit, other than it's a completely fecking unsaleable novel as the concept stands, and writing it would be little more than mental masturbation.
As usual, during the writing process, I'm stalled by plot. It almost makes me wonder if I live my life in a little bubble. My characters so rarely make things happen, I'm beginning to wonder if *I* know how to make things happen. Am I really just a passive player in my own life? Or is it just that the forces moving things around me (and through me) are too subtle for me to grasp?
Oh, wait--that's just more mental masturbation.
Onward.
An Arranged Marriage by Jo Beverley (45) [romance]
In thinking about this romance novel, I had some sort of grand revelation about how harshly I've been judging romance novels for the past fifteen years--which is how long it's been since I picked up Woodiweiss's Ashes in the Wind and stayed up all night reading it--enthralled by the plucky Al(anna) and completely certain that the author cadged the villianess's flaming death from Jane Eyre.
I've maybe twice wanted to stay up all night with a romance novel since then. That, combined with a snobbish attitude that I think I picked up from my English teachers in junior high, has made me less good at judging the books on their own merits. Really, I'm not so hard on other genres--except mysteries, which I tend to find boring in the extreme (with a few exceptions, like noirish foofy mysteries, as per A.A. Fair, and gimmicky mysteries in which I'm highly invested in the gimmicky, as per Stephanie Barron's Jane Austen mysteries), and Westerns, which I abhor in the written form because for me a Western is about landscape and vernacular, and both are best witnessed on a screen in my opinion.
That was a hell of a digression, by the way.
I don't know, really, what it is I want out of a romance novel that leaves me so wanting more at the end of most of them. I had some quibbles with this one--which was that the hero got off too easily, and everyone knew it, including the author, and everyone said it, and still the main character got off too easy after all that acknowledgment. But I think that was a writing quibble, not a romance quibble.
So, what's my romance quibble?
I think... well, I think it's about consequences. Too often there are blithely executed plot threads (kidnappings, disguises, lying, rapes, pre-marital sex, scandalous behavior, time travel, public humiliation, and who knows what all) that are lightly attended to in terms of character development. To paraphrase Mary Lou--I'll read just about anything (no matter how squicky) if I feel it's being true.
I'm not sure I'm done mulling this one over. But I'm done for now.
Or rather, edits. I managed to read through the first chapter of A Dream at Midsummer or whatever the heck I'm calling it, and I can see the potential. Now to figure out an editing strategy and a rewriting strategy. Maybe I'll pick Miss Shack's brain at Writers' Retreat. She has a way about her on the rewriting front.
And, since I'm gonna do NaNo, I'm thinking about what to do. So far, I've done YA and a Regency. I figured at the time that 50k was way more than halfway in both instances. Now I don't know what to do. I want to write the book-length version of Bound by Spells, but I'm afraid the story-length version will come back all rejected and I'll be dejected (haha, I rhyme). I know, it's a silly reason. And I feel quite strongly that BBS is probably Not Marketable, and I'm having an internal warfare over artistic integrity and wanting to be a Working Writer.
In any case, I've been slacking pretty hard in the writing department, all in the name of getting adjusted to the new schedule. What writing I have managed hasn't actually, you know, finished anything. I may need a double-dose of discipline.
Of course, even a goodly amount of discipline doesn't overcome the driving need to sleep (which always increases dramatically for me at this time of year). As it's 12:20, I've probably already cheated myself out of an hour of writing time tomorrow morning. So, to bed.
My attempts to get to my husband's brother's wedding reception site early enough to help them decorate were thwarted by an errant transmission--my errant transmission. Or should I call it erstwhile? It's no longer alive, in any case.
The search for a new car has begun.
Meanwhile, my brother-in-law did manage to get married, and my drama had little to no effect on the proceedings (and what effect it did have seemed too much--I understand the sympathy, but "can we just talk about how beautiful the bride is?" went through my mind a hundred times). It was an exhausting day (series of days) for me as a bridesmaid (must have been worse for the main players), but it was beautiful and fun and well-executed.
Now, back to the grind.
Restoree by Anne McCaffrey (44) [science fiction] (n+3 re-read)
I have evidence that I first read this in May of 1989--when I was 14 (for me, the golden age of science fiction was 14, not twelve); I read it last in June 2001. I'm sure I read it at least three times in between, or at least the good parts of it.
It's space opera--I think. I also think when I was younger, I didn't really care, and read it largely for the romantic elements (plus the "waking up on another planet with a different identity" elements). I don't think even on my last reading I realized all the little hints about McCaffrey's SF interests were foreshadowed in this book (one of her earlier novels, if not her first one). There are crystal resonances, for starters--shades of Crystal Singer.
Anyway, big discussion? No. Someday, perhaps. It's definitely on my favorites shelf, however, and has been since I first read it.
I'm easing myself into some better time management scenarios. Expect to see phrases like "less television" and "less internet" and "more writing" and "working lunch hours" bandied about.
That's an aside, but it also sets up my punchline way down at the bottom.
Other things that occur to me...
I still don't know how to make this damn journal display paragraph breaks in the livejournal feed. Sorry. I've tried everything short of installing the new Movable Type.
I wrote my "fat is a feminist issue" short story about two years ago now, and only recently had the courage to send it out again after almost a year. I've been very afraid people wouldn't get it. But then, after I saw a certain editor's blog complaining about too many negative fat stereotypes in the slush pile, I thought, "Eh, there you go." I'm still nervous about it. I'm still afraid people won't get it. But (and here's the kiss of death) my friends really liked it.
I'm currently writing a story that I've been trying to write for almost ten years. I think I first got the idea when I started working at the University--it's a story about the month of October. I think it used to be about the loyal scions of the Religion Library (not that U of M has a religion library, but this is fiction) fighting the demon-summoners in the Math Department, but it has since morphed in a variety of ways to a coven of witches working in the library to what it is now, which seems to be a Tam Lin retelling.
In any case, about four years ago, my black cat, Arthur, scratched my palm whilst I was trying to do something heinous to him, like clip his nails or something, and the scratch ran right along my heart line. I wasn't sure what he was trying to tell me then, but since then, I have gotten a thorn scratch on my life line while trimming roses and yesterday I got a paper cut along my heart line. All three of these things happened in October.
In other words, this story wants to be written.
(Argh. Another sign of autumn is here: I have a fake Japanese ladybug buzzing my head. They always sneak in during the last warm days of autumn, looking for places to hibernate.)
So, anyway, I need to sign off on this entry... looking at my "better time management scenario..." I'm thinking I need some sort of cut right down my time line, but unfortunately, I don't carry my timeline on my palm.
Ok, so it wasn't a good punchline.
Rejection on "The Library Seed" yesterday from Ms. Datlow. Short, but personal. At least, I think it was personal. "Interesting, but didn't like it enough" etc.
I have less of an emotional attachment to "The Library Seed" than I do to "Sun's East," and what's interesting here is that a) people like "The Library Seed" better (people in general; so far, not much editorial evidence to base that on) and b) I can handle it better when "The Library Seed" is rejected or critiqued.
There is a big lesson in that on emotional attachment.
Anyway, I'll input my Milford critiques on "The Library Seed" tomorrow night and ship it off to the next market. I'm supposed to have finished at least "Wedding Dress Tea Parties" or "Breakfast at Antigone's" this weekend, but I got really sidetracked by "Getting Pregnant with Strangers"--a Tam Lin retelling provoked by an offhand comment by someone who as yet shall remain nameless. (I'd better send her an email...)