A Writer's Paradise

The Writing Life, with Cats

Nothing says "I love you" like stealing your computer and your spot when you get up to go to the bathroom.

The other night, he shut down my computer altogether when he stretched out over the whole keyboard. There's no stopping Merlin when he senses a source of warmth.

I like the detail in picture two--you can see the stripes on his tail, which you mostly can't make out in real life except in strong sunlight. Merlin the Grey, Secret Tabby.

Rejection Junction

Tidy blue form of death from the place that sends blue forms of death, Realms of Fantasy.

I can't say I'm actually a fan of the blue/yellow signalese, if only because it feels like having your toenails ripped off to go from yellow form of promise back to blue form of death.

Okay, not really. It's more like having a hangnail on your little toe. Which I had a few weeks ago. It was really annoying when I got into bed, but mostly ignorable.

I was tempted to rewrite, but only briefly. Unasked for rewrites are the mindkiller. Plus, this story was an Editor's Choice on the OWW and was workshopped at Milford. It is quite literally as good as I could make it six months ago, and while my skills have improved in six months (it almost makes me cry to think of how much my skills improve in just six months), it's not time yet.

Book: 78 Reasons Why Your Book May Never Be Published & 14 Reasons Why It Just Might

78 Reasons Why Your Book May Never Be Published & 14 Reasons Why It Just Might by Pat Walsh (33) [non-fiction]

Okay, so this is a pretty necessary book--if you haven't spent the past two years reading Making Light and Miss Snark and The Evil Editor and everyone else out there who's fighting the good fight to educate writers on publishing.

Since I have spent the last two years reading everything I could find on the publishing biz by the people in the publishing biz, as printed on the web for free, this book was a lot like reading the Cliff's Notes. Note: I'm not knocking Cliff's Notes. It's the only way I was able to get through The Aeneid (though, as a supplement, not a replacement). And, just like Cliff's Notes, this book doesn't get into the nitty-gritty, like alg's comprehensive profit and loss essays or Michelle Sagara West's book contract dissections.

Now, the only thing left to do is to ponder the deeper symbolism of this work. The 78 in the title is clearly an allusion to the 78 cards in a tarot deck, which means that if one is clever and creates a tarot out of the bad reasons, one can do personalized readings for the prospects of one's book--by the dark of the moon only. The 14 is, of course, a red herring that makes you think of the word fortnight.

Weekend

I came home Friday to find that one of the cats--no longer able to pee in our laundry pile because we have deployed the technology of hampers--peed on an afghan and missed most of the afghan and hit the couch instead. I spent Friday night cleaning up this debacle and laying down tin foil. (Cats don't like to walk on tin foil, you see. And what they do not like to walk on, they also do not like to pee on.) I've informed Dann that we are getting more litter boxes for more floors of the house.

The cat pee will not win. The cats might, but not the cat pee.

Saturday, we headed out to the lake cottage, mostly to see my stepdaughter since she's been at horsecamp and her mom's house (alternately) since school let out. Swimming was accomplished. Brownies were baked. Tennis was badly played. We attempted to teach the kidlet Euchre, that "descendent of Whist and the ancestor of modern Bridge" that I think no one in America knows anything about unless they grew up in Michigan or Wisconsin. This was largely not a success.

Saturday was also good because I managed to write for a couple of hours. I smoothed the first 8000 words of "Wedding Dress Tea Parties of 2443" so that they all made sense in the order they're in, and in preparation for what I believe to be the final 4000 words--that's my best estimate, and yep, I'm already in novelette territory. I'm terribly happy because I have figured out the plot entire, and I'm no longer flailing. I'm a smidge less happy because, well, you reach that point where you just don't know if the story is worth writing. Sure, it's entertaining you, but is everyone else going to toss it down by paragraph two and forever afterwards groan when they see me coming?

Oh, yay, self-doubt!

I think this is a legitimate fear arising from writing to an unfamiliar length. Is it so long because it's actually just boring crap? Is it so long because I'm trying to fit a novel's worth of concept into a short story? Is it so long because it's actually just supposed to be that long? Yeah. Self-doubt.

Anyway, I intend to jam on it: a thousand words a day this week until it's finished. Then, I've got about another thousand words left to wrap up "Almanac for the Alien Invaders." Then, I think I'll need to rejoin the OWW, get these bad boys posted for some feedback, so they can exeunt, stage left, into slushpile.

I find the waiting for feedback phase to be the most maddening part of the writing process, but the getting of the feedback is simply too valuable to skip. Or, at least, it has been... I'm getting a better, deeper sense of what I do that works and what I do that doesn't, and how to make what I don't do as well matter less. At the same time... ya can't write into a vacuum. Can you? Is there actually a point where people don't need extensive external criticisms anymore? (I'm not even suggesting I'm there, but I wonder.) I suspect, no, there is no such point--you'll always need someone to tell you when you've crossed the line into self-indulgent pap.

Right, so. Today I got some more done on "WDTP," and did edits on the car-ride home on "Rampion in the Belltower." Other than spelling "soldiers" as "solders," I figured out a couple of major things I need to add and jumped on some deeply awkward phrasing. I think it'll be ready to send out the door this week.

Right now I need to cogitate and try to remember the story idea I had on the way home Friday night--the one that went immediately out of my head when confronted by cat pee.

Sold!

I just sold the story formerly known as "Bound by Spells" to Farthing! (Yes, there is a title change in this story's future.)

This story has in it, among other things, vampires, Santa Claus, leather bustiers, and a healthy dose of "fat is a feminist issue."

This story is also about some student film-makers working in faux Ann Arbor. I wouldn't mind if someone who has had more experience working on student films vetted it for me at some point... my "experience" comes from having lived with a film student for two years. So. Earn my eternal gratitude!

Moments, Bells & Buttons

A particular meme that I've seen going around is the "what flips your switch in other people's writing" and (I think) hence, what do you like to write about?

Since I'm declaring the month after I finish The Bitter Road "Embrace My Inner Twee Month," it is handy to start thinking about this.

I like warfare. The more I read about it, the more I convince myself that I understand it, and that makes it okay, or at least, bearable. I don't like modern warfare, though. I like to read about interstellar warfare (Starship Troopers, Old Man's War, but if it's future warfare, it's got to be not-depressing (no Forever War). Past wars can be depressing (or at least not glorious) (I like wounded soldiers returning from the Peninsular War, cf. Lady Elizabeth's Comet, but this has to be really well handled to ring my particular bell). I love most anything with Roman warfare in it, though I tend to like it more in visual media (Gladiator, Rome) or the original source material (anything by Tacitus).

War gets about a thousand times better if there are women in it--Honor Harrington and Cordelia Naismith in the future, for starters, but I'll take any woman at any point performing most any role. Tanith Lee's Heroine of the World is a book I only half-remember, but I think the main character was an army camp doxy, and that was good enough for me. Far more enjoyable: Mary Gentle's Ash, Robin McKinley's The Hero and the Crown and The Blue Sword.

But it's not just about women in war, it's women fighting. Tamora Pierce's Alanna mostly stays out of war, and I thought the war parts were maybe the weakest bits of the Keladry series... but when Alanna first picked up the sword, I was won over to fantasy forever. Here were GIRLS doing STUFF. More stuff than even Eilonway in the Prydain Chronicles.

If girls can't go to war, then they'd better be strong leaders. Elizabeth I floats my boat in a big way--strong E. R., in fact, and I don't like historical romances that focus overmuch on her love life. Part of that is because I don't think the man who could match her existed in her own time. Women queens are as good as women warriors at times (best if both, however), so Narnia got in with me okay, even though Susan and Lucy didn't quite get to do enough.

And, well, if women can't be queens or warriors, they've gotta be good at what they do, independent, stubborn... my early attraction to McCaffrey's Pern centered around Menolly and Lessa. On the other hand, I tire quickly of "strong-minded Southern women" plots. I'm not sure why.

In the completely opposite direction, I really love healers. Charis in Bradshaw's Beacon at Alexandria is an early love, and I particularly like to read about midwives and doctors--especially good ones in bad conditions. Claire in Outlander? At least half her appeal was that she was a WWII nurse trying to make her way as a healer in the 1700's. (Time travel is a big flashy button marked FUN for me, too, and Outlander typifies the kind of time travel novel I like. Mostly. I like my time travel complicated and fraught with misery--I rarely like the easy-peasy knockoffs of Outlander.)

Female to male cross-dressing--either as a lark in Regency novels, or as a matter of life and death (or life and freedom) as in the Alanna books or Beacon at Alexandria. I think if done right, I could equally get behind a female to male cross-dressing novel, but it'd have to be on par with Beacon in terms of motivation. I do love the movie Stage Beauty, actually, so I know I can get behind it in some circumstances.

(Considering how early most of these buttons were installed, I'm a bit amazed that I considered gender-subversion and -inversion such a high priority at such a young age.)

On the romance side of things, I want a couple who argues. Not one who hates each other, but one who are each others' first and best intellectual adversary. It's a theme in Lady Elizabeth's Comet, for starters, but I'm sure I encountered it earlier than that. I know I like how it shows up in Pride and Prejudice.... I think it comes from tiring of seeing women characters simply sitting around and agreeing with their menfolk. At the same time, it's particularly boring if a female character is called "spirited" and is really just petty and spoiled. It takes a deft hand to write an argumentative couple so that they resonate instead of grate. See also Doris Egan's Gate of Ivory.

Well, I've been writing this for about 30 minutes, and I could keep going for another 60. We pause now so that I can actually go write... something with an argumentative couple, as it happens.

Tres Anos

Happy third wedding anniversary to Mr. Haskell.

The third wedding anniversary gift is supposed to be either leather or glass/crystal. I'm sure there are many people out there who don't stick by the lists, but we do because then it saves us from asking "What do you want?" and concentrating on purchasing things we don't want. Or at least don't need. Trust me, it's more efficient this way.

Actually, we've done all right for the past three years. For year two's cotton, I got some nice t-shirts that I sleep and garden in (cotton shirts with Chinese characters on them, a nod to the china that is the traditional gift). And, entertainingly, for this year's crystal/glass component, I got my husband Pokemon Crystal--an old game, but one he didn't have, and the cognitive dissonance was too good to pass up.

I'm sort of hoping to get a wood-burning stove insert for our fireplace for the iron anniversary (year six), but I'm not planning on it. I can do without the seemingly inevitable sweaters of the wool anniversary (year seven), but I suspect Mr. Haskell will outthink me on that one, anyway. (And is that where the term seven-year itch comes from? The wool sweaters?)

Though, actually, I hope in year seven he considers the traditional gift, then goes one better and gets me, instead of a desk set, the movie Desk Set with Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn. I can't give it to him, because he just wouldn't care, but it's the second-best librarian movie ever (the first being that one I've never seen but it's all deeply intense about anti-censorship and has, like, Barbara Stanwyck in it or someone I always confuse with Barbara Stanwyck; the third being a tie between The Mummy and The Librarian: Quest for the Spear).

Now. What I think the biggest problem with this anniversary gift-list schmebus is, is that it only goes to year 15 and then skips every five years afterwards. Though the experts hardly agree: the list of wedding anniversary stones goes up to year 20 and then starts skipping. This list is good, and I hope its authentic or thingummie, because it means that if I can be patient, 16 years from today I might get an aquamarine, which is a particular favorite of mine in spite of people assuming it's my birthstone when I wear it. (No. I just like it. I wear garnets, too, and amethysts and iolite and all kinds of things that aren't my birthstone, which is diamond, and I wear that every day because this is America, baby, and you must have a diamond to prove that you have acheived the status of engaged at some point, and too bad for April if you're into birthstones, you April kids will never get a birthstone that's actually a stone, because the diamond market is kuh-razy. Not that I don't love my engagement ring, but it's an heirloom diamond at least. Reduce, reuse, recycle.)

Uhm. Anyway.

So yes. Happy crystal, glass and leather, my dear. Onward to fruit. And flowers. And appliances. And don't stop until we hit diamonds. Again.

Ta-Done

Finished 8,000-word short story, "Rampion in the Belltower."

Let the dancing commence!

Art and Gardens

Particularly when I'm working in my herb garden, I get the same sense of flow and accomplishment that I do when I'm writing. Maybe it's simply the act of shaping meaning, since I don't find as much joy in flower gardens (too much pretty, not enough utility) or the vegetable garden (too much utility, not enough pretty). With an herb garden, I imagine myself coming out to snip a culinary herb for some dish I'm cooking, or imagine drying some medicinal herb to store for winter (to never be used because I don't actually trust my herbal skills enough to self-medicate with them)...

And there are more layers to herbs than utility and attractiveness; herbs function as symbols, as well, and I'm not simply talking the Victorian language of flowers... There are magical associations--some herbs are sacred to different gods and goddesses no longer worshipped, or are associated with rituals or planets. And there are personal associations: I love my rue border because I like how rue looks, how it smells... and also because when I was sixteen, I placed rue under my pillow intending it to help me dream of my true love's face. (I didn't remember a single rue-dream, as it turned out.)

Then, there's the artistry of location. Thymes with thymes, sure--that's my current choice--but do the thymes go next to anything else? I now have thymes next to basils, but I'm aware that's a transient thing, since basils are annuals. I'm trying to add a lavender a year, though now I'm a lavender behind since last year's didn't survive the winter. Adding in a garden path in the herb area has meant that the lavenders are now isolated on a peninsula of yews that segue into the rue border, and that seems wrong to me; I think the basils next year will be lavender land.

Rosemary gets pride of place in the center (behind it will go the bird bath, when I get around to buying one); we'll see if I can find a way to nurture it through the winter (I read somewhere online that wrapping it in Saran wrap is the way to go; Saran cuts wind, creates a greenhouse-like effect, and yet lets light through in early spring; plus, I'll try to remind Mr. Haskell that autumn leaves are the best protectant for tender plants, and see if we can remember to heap the leaf-fall up into the herb garden this autumn). The oregano has taken hold where it is, and won't be going anywhere; the chives are well-established in their spot. And I like them both where they are, so it's fine, but they seem light on meaning, being solely culinary in nature, so I desire to plant something else nearby, something with some depth.

Anyway, I've rambled long enough without managing to help myself understand how it is art, if it is art.

Book: Sebastian

Sebastian by Anne Bishop (32) [fantasy]

I would have to re-read the Blood Jewels series in order to figure this one out, but it really felt like Bishop's writing quality has gone down. It's not like it's bad, it just seems unsophisticated. In fact, the whole book seems a bit unsophisticated in comparison to previous work by the same author.

And I'm always going to think that when a female character has nothing going for her but a combination of innocence and a history of being abused, and when self-described bad boys never seem to do anything worse than have a little wild consensual sex. Daemon was far badder than Sebastian, so I know that Bishop knows how to do this. The only thing I can think of is that this book is meant to be one of those fantasy/romance crossover books, which I am getting SO tired of because it seems like no one does either the romance or the fantasy justice.

Anyway. A bit disappointing. The gorgeous cover art lured me in, and the conceit of Ephemera kept me reading... but the characters with any depth (Glorianna and Lee) never got to be onstage all that much, and as much depth as Sebastian should have had, well, he just didn't.

Can't Leave Well Enough Alone

In case you were curious (and why wouldn't you be?), my writing stats are now at stats.merriehaskell.com instead over on my other website. This is to further differentiate Merrie Haskell from the other Merries I might be at any given moment (though I'm still not sure it's necessary, but you say "hobgoblin of little minds" and I say "reassuring." But we both mean "consistency.")

Now, to be inconsistent, I want a comfort read, but I want also something that surprises me totally. I may have forgotten enough about Northanger Abbey for this to suffice; it is the only Austen I have read once, but therefore, it's not really a comfort read. I don't believe I've had this particular itch before. Hm.

Rejection Junction

Very speedy rejection from Aeon on "Sun's East." I loff the loffly Aeoners; they send very nice rejections.

I have been working hard on a short story since Friday; this is my new promise to myself, that I will not write short stories over a period of weeks/months/years, but rather, days. The statistics show that this is how the good stuff gets done, anyway. Everything I've sold was drafted in either one sitting or two. And honestly, looking at the graveyard of stale stories on my hard drive, letting things sit for months is a good way to fail to finish stories.

For me. Of course for me. I don't speak for others.

Interesting outlier, though: looking over the stories I have in circulation right now, easily the best one was written over a period of several months, but I'm going to call that the exception that proves the rule.

Ultimately, I'm hoping that finishing a short will give me the courage to get back into The Bitter Road. Julie fixed me with her eagle eye today and said, "So, do you think because you've promised yourself that you're done with this book after this draft is why you can't finish it? Because you can't let go?"

She knows me so well.

The good news is, mostly when I acknowledge a problem, I'm able to overcome it. And I acknowledge I have a problem here. This draft was supposed to be done two months ago.

Okay. Back to work.

New Rules for Writing

I've been thinking about why I haven't been writing short stories lately. It's not for lack of trying--I bust out those files and stare at them, even type furiously for a while, before putting them gently back to bed.

And there's been sort of a perfect storm effect of figuring out what's going on. First, in listening to Stackpole's podcasts, I was introduced to the concept of a story going stale. That is, you start a short story, put it down, and when you come back, you're no longer able to finish it. Stackpole theorizes that your writing level may have changed in the interim, and that's certainly a pretty good theory, but I wonder if there isn't more to it. I mean, I don't know what the more is, but I do think there's something beyond skill jumps involved.

Then, I got the OWW newsletter and Kelly Link had written a piece for it challenging the workshop members to move beyond competent writing into astonishing writing. I know exactly what she's saying--from a slusher's point-of-view--but as a writer, I don't know how to move to astonishing. I know it once I've done it, of course, but I rarely know if a story is going to be astonishing until I start it. And sometimes not until I finish it.

Sometimes, though, I wonder if the reason I can't finish some stories is because I know they aren't the cream of my crop.

My begun-but-not-finished folder on my laptop is ginormous. I have three in-progress folders: Brainstorming, Writing, and Rewriting.

Rewriting is a graveyard of three and a half stories. These are stories where I know the concept is good, and not much else. These are the stories with a sincere lack of voice, which is why they linger, unsent. The half story is one that I know is REALLY, REALLY good in concept--so good that I wrote a flash version of it that I'm shopping, but so far, no one is biting. And I know why--because I don't have a voice or a real plot for it. With flash you can get away with having only one story element. But not always. I'm sort of waiting for a full slate of rejections before going back to the drawing board on that one, because it's alternate history and that takes so much research it hurts. And there's one story in rewriting that I almost have a voice for in there, but I lack the confidence to figure out how to apply it. I think I need another character, but I don't know. I wouldn't mind a sign from god on that one. The other two, I should probably scrap altogether, but just in case I figure them out, there they are.

"Brainstorming" is everything for which I scribbled down a few paragraphs and don't really know where to go from here. Fourteen stories there. It's a huge mess. I don't even know what to say about them, except have I mentioned how much easier novels are than short stories? Not in every regard, of course, but with a novel, you can keep throwing the spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks, but with a short story, you have to know what sticks from the get-go. You can't just maunder on for 25,000 words and hope that the story finds itself. So I guess things end up in this folder when I can't determine what's going to stick.

And finally, the "Writing" folder. "25 objects," Windows tells me. They are all things that I poke with sticks from time to time. (Maybe that's my problems. Stories prefer you poke them with fingers-on-the-keyboard, not sticks. Maybe.) The problems I run into in the Writing folder are legion, and all I can really say is that sometimes you just know a story has gone off. Stale, even, one might say, if one were Michael A. Stackpole.

It was very freeing when I had the realization that I didn't have to shop every story I finished. That I could just let some things molder in mediocrity and never see the light of day. It goes against the advice of persistence, but I think, for the most part, it's not the worst realization to have... for one thing, it gives you permission to write badly, if you were someone who needed such a thing.

At the same time I gave myself the "don't have to shop every story I finish" rule, I stopped writing stories that I knew I wasn't going to shop, and maybe that's where things went astray for me and my in-progress folders grew to staggering proportions and nothing got finished.

I don't actually know, though.

I do know: I either need some really good writing rules, or I need to let go of rules altogether. I'm leaning towards the latter, since whenever I make rules, I find that I've done it just so I have something to flout.

Yep. I'm a rebel, all right. Breaking all my own rules.