revision thoughts

I know it’s bad form to get too enamored of one’s own characters, but I think the great tragedy of this novel is that Jack isn’t in more of it.

I should let myself write smart-asses more often.

ETA: Also, more novels that merit revision notes like “don’t forget the severed heads.”

apropos of that mountain metaphor

It’s the sixteenth; that means I be blogging. Head on over to SF Novelists for my post “Apprentice, Journeyman, Master,” wherein I talk about watershed moments in one’s progress as an artist. (Or really anything else that involves a lifetime acquisition of skill.)

I won’t disable comments here, but if you’ve got anything to say, I encourage you to head over and say it there. (If you’re new to commenting on SF Novelists, it will take a little while for it to appear, while we fish it out of the moderation queue.)

129,682

We’ll call that done.

Ladies and gentlemen, a minor announcement bundled into a major one: In Ashes Lie (note the slight change) is complete, at approximately one hundred and thirty thousand words.

***

This is my longest novel yet, by about four thousand words. I am very glad I asked my editor for permission to run over my target wordcount; it needed that extra 20K. I strongly suspect it is also my most ambitious book to date, though from here in the trenches it’s hard to tell. It doesn’t give me the feeling of accomplishment that Midnight Never Come did, because this one isn’t a watershed: last year, I reached the summit of the peak I had been climbing for some years, while this year, I started up a new one. The latter is better for me than the former, but it doesn’t give quite the same warm glow of satisfaction.

I think it will be a good book, though. Ambitious. And full of stuff blowing up. And who doesn’t like that?

***

No rest for the wicked. Tomorrow I tackle the remaining revisions, so I can get this thing to my editor. Much of the novel has already been beaten into shape, each Part before each day of the Fire, but work remains to be done. (Like fixing the prologue. Which currently blows. Not blows up; just blows.) But I’ll try to find time in there for some celebration. After a hundred and thirty thousand words, I think I deserve some kind of party.

Well, that was bloody stupid.

On the bright side, I almost have a complete novel.

6647 words tonight. I’m too sick of sitting at the computer to look up whether that beats the giant marathon I did at the end of MNC. I’m closer to the end than I was then, though; all I still have to write is the epilogue.

And a half-finished scene I glossed over because I’m still not sure what bit of folklore to stick in there. I think we may cut that out for now, and put it back in if I find something appropriate. (Because I have a long-standing habit of insisting that I cannot declare a novel done until it has no holes in it. And I want to write the epilogue last.)

Anyway. Bedtime came and went hours ago. Time for me to do the same.

cognitive dissonance

Yesterday, heading up to SF for dinner with jaylake, zellandyne, and a variety of other people whose LJ usernames I did not catch because they were all new acquaintances, I had an odd bit of cognitive dissonance.

Drive to Millbrae, park, wait around on the platform. Get on Caltrain. Sit down, pop in headphones, stare out the window —

And I’m in England.

Because, according to my subconscious, England is the only place in the world with trains. Or at least the only place I ever ride them. Ergo, if I am on a train, I must be in England.

My subconscious thought this was perfectly acceptable logic.

seven years

I don’t want to think about the past today — not because it isn’t worth remembering, but because I want to keep my eye on the future.

In a little less than two months, the adult citizens of the United States have a choice to make.

One side tells you America is great. We are the best nation on earth, and the other guy envies and hates us because of it. They tell you our economy is strong, and the people who think otherwise are whiners. They tell you our health care is fine, because anybody without insurance can just go to an emergency room, where they cannot be refused care. They tell you our environment (and everybody else’s) is not changing, and nothing happening with it is our doing. They tell you we can answer all our energy needs by drilling more.

The other side tells you America can be greater. We are a wonderful nation, but that does not mean we should not make ourselves better still. They tell you our economy is faltering, but we can change it so that the guys at the bottom have a chance to lift themselves higher. They tell you our health care is inadequate, but we can change it so parents don’t have to choose between going to work and staying home with a sick child. They tell you our environment is in flux, but we can change the habits that are sending it awry. They tell you we can answer our energy needs, not just for now but for the future, by looking to answers other than oil.

One says we don’t need to change. The other says we must, and we can.

The first side tells you their attitude is patriotic. I call it arrogant. Patriotism is not resting on your laurels, assuming your forefathers and foremothers did all the work for you. It’s rolling up your sleeves and acting to make things better, because you want to see your nation become more than it already is. It’s looking to the future, and asking how you can improve it for the generations to come.

Patriotism is hard work.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity . . . .

Good words. As far as I’m concerned, they don’t stop with the Constitution. Justice, domestic tranquility, and all the rest — perfection included — are something we need to keep fighting for.

whiskey tango foxtrot, over?

I don’t know if this is a California thing or what, but I’ve come across some appallingly ill-organized stores since moving out here. The Blockbuster within walking distance is so bad I’ve pretty much vowed never to set foot in it again: not only are 3/4 of the DVDs stacked in haphazard piles rather than laid face-out for ease of browsing, but there are L’s in with the A’s and C’s among the S’s, to the point where I had to search the entire section to be sure that if the movie I wanted was anywhere in the store, it was too thoroughly lost to be worth my while.

And the grocery store! I thought for a while they didn’t carry Near East couscous, because it’s shelved two or three aisles over from the rest of the couscous. (Which is in the aisle labeled “natural foods,” including such natural foods as Powerade.) Hunting for taco seasoning, did I find it among the Hispanic foods? Among the spices? No, it’s in with the stuffing and gravy packets. Or at least some of it is; either Safeway doesn’t stock the most stereotypical brands of such things, or they’ve hidden the Old El Paso god knows where. In with the pet food, maybe. The cheese, sour cream, and yogurt aren’t in with the milk, eggs, and butter — no dairy section for you! — they’re clear across the store, along with the lunch meats, which are likewise nowhere near the rest of the meat.

Srsly. Is the state of California too busy being hippies in the sunshine to think about how they set up their stores?

Maybe I should hire myself out as a consultant.

murder your darlings

Dammit. I think the line which was a seventeenth-century translation of “blowing up a busload of orphans” has to be cut from the novel. The conversation it was in has been changed by the decision not to kill a particular character, and there just isn’t anywhere else it belongs.

Sadness.

ETA: actually, maybe not. Certain aspects of the conversation have to happen, I think. Let’s see what we can manage.

mark

Three parts revised. Three days’ worth of London burned down. One hundred twenty thousand, three hundred and thirty-six words.

I’m nearly done.

Observations: I have lots of great epic battle music. “Holocaust” not only was a word back then, but originally meant a sacrificial offering that has been completely burnt, which is a fabulous thumbs-up to me using it here. I am spoiled by the internets, getting mad at them for not giving me a high-enough-resolution image of Hollar’s 1658 plan of St. Paul’s Cathedral for me to clearly read where Sir Christopher Hatton’s grave monument was. (What do you mean, I have to actually go to the library? And that I can’t do so at one a.m.?) I am, however, pleased all over again by history’s obliging tendency to drop perfect bits of story in my lap. St. Faith’s was right where narrative logic says it ought to be, and I didn’t have to go at all out of my way to smash Sir Francis Walsingham’s grave.

Destroying things is fun.

(Even if I’m running out of ways to describe stuff burning without just repeating myself over and over and over again.)

random movie query

I need recommendations for a movie with a really epic fight scene in it. But the fight has to be of a specific variety: something in the “two-handed broadsword” or “double-headed axe” family. Y’know, the sort of fight where a guy plants his feet and starts whaling away at something at least twice his size with a weapon that’s at least half his size. As much as I loves me some rapier duels, or dexterous hand-to-hand throwdowns, I’m not after that kind of thing right now (and I’ve got plenty of it on my shelves anyway). We’re looking for mighty-thewed, stamina-of-an-aurochs kind of combat here, or at least as close as I can get to it.

Suggestions?

(N.B. — I would like suggestions of such scenes done well. Bonus points if the movie containing said fight doesn’t suck. I’d rather not watch crap, thanks.)

eee!

Some short story sales make you happier than others.

Back in (I think) 2006 — maybe 2005 — a friend of mine named Crystal Black presented a paper at ICFA on the visual representation of Peter Pan, specifically with regards to his apparent age. She made some comment during the course of her talk that had nothing to do with that topic, but got my brain spinning on the ending of the story, where Peter comes back and takes Wendy’s daughter Jane to the Neverland, and then after Jane gets too old he takes Margaret.

The hindbrain, source of all truly good ideas, coughed out the phrase “The Last Wendy,” and left me to play.

I got maybe a thousand words in and stalled. Normally I start at the beginning, go on until I reach the end, and then stop, making it all up as I go. In this case, I knew where I was trying to go, but I just couldn’t see how to get there. One late-night Christmas conversation with kurayami_hime prodded at the unmoving mass of stuff in my head, and a couple of weeks later I called her up to say, “hey, I think I’m trying to make this be the wrong story. What if it was this instead?”

Her response, as I recall, was something along the lines of “That’s horrible. You have to do it.”

The result is one of my favorite stories . . . which came equipped with a little problem. See, the U.S. copyright status of Peter Pan and all his related materials is a tangled, bleeding mess. I’m pretty positive my story is in the clear, but not all magazine editors see it the same way. The solution? I mailed it to Canada. On Spec, the lovely magazine that published “Nine Sketches, in Charcoal and Blood” (one of my other favorite stories), has just agreed to buy it. You won’t get to see the story in print terribly soon, due to constraints on the number of U.S. authors they can publish, but it’ll be there eventually, and I don’t mind waiting. I think that’s a great home for it, and Peter Pan is firmly out of copyright in that country, so everybody wins.

But copyright or no copyright, I’d like to state publicly that I intend to donate my check from this sale to the Great Ormond Street Hospital, which controls the weird quasi-perpetual-but-not-really rights to J.M. Barrie’s works. They do good work, and I didn’t write this story for the money. I wrote it because my hindbrain latched onto some problematic points in the original and would not rest until it thrashed through them in narrative form. Secondary to that was the hope that the result could find an audience. Now that I have that, I’m happy.

(Actually, now I need to figure out some way to make my even-more-problematic Narnia story happen. I wonder if that’s out of copyright in Canada?)

morning linkery

(Quick question: I’ve told Livejournal that I’m in the Pacific time zone, via my profile, but it keeps time-stamping my posts for Eastern. Where do I fix that?)

A variety of amusements from my morning webcrawl . . . .

First, behind the cut: one of the more original book-promotional videos I’ve seen. Successful? Who knows. But the Little League team and the retirement home folks are brilliant. (Via Smart Bitches, Trashy Books.)

Embrace your reviews!

what we like to call a marathon

Over 4K words today (all of the London Go Boom variety), and over 8K of revision. We’re nearing the home stretch.

This book feels more raw to me than Midnight Never Come, in a way I find hard to describe. It’s not simply that I think I’m being meaner to my characters — though that’s part of it. (I think Irrith is the only viewpoint character I haven’t done anything horrible to. I wonder if I can fix that before the end?) Partly it’s that I think the politics are less polished; whether it’s a genuine difference of time period or a result of the rough edges being worn off the Elizabethan era, the seventeenth century just feels messier, with more sharp corners sticking out. And I’m really going all-out on the explosions, which no doubt contributes in its own way.

Raw. That’s the only word I can find for it.

112K of book at present, with two days of Fire yet to be added.

In which the moving castle moves house

Castle N 3.0 is up and running!

Well, not running. Groaning under the weight of boxes, perhaps. But our stuff is here; I’m sitting on my own couch, facing my own TV, and nothing is obviously missing, though as we unpack we may find something has gone astray. Right now, though, I ain’t worried about that.

(Unless the thing that has gone astray is the DVD player. kniedzw and I are bound and determined to be mindless couch potatoes tonight, if we can possibly manage it.)

It’ll take a while to settle in. But at least now we can start.

special landmark

I finished revising Part Two last night (in a marathon session made possible by the fact that it’s been revised once already), but here’s the real landmark:

I’ve killed a pen.

Yes, dear readers, I have taken so many notes for this novel that they have single-handedly killed a pen. The thing was new when I took it to London. But in the midst of scribbling down some details about how the wells and conduits in the City were running dry in the Fire, I noticed my ink doing the same thing. So we just took a break to walk to the store and buy a new one.

(Because I couldn’t just go to the ammo box and pick out another. Why? Because our stuff isn’t here yet. But the latest forecast is that it should be arriving tomorrow. Keep your fingers crossed.)

I’m just hoping I don’t run out of notebook before I’m done. That would be very inconvenient.

BOOM.

I am up stupidly late, but I have 2325 words of Fire and — more importantly — precisely 100K of book.

There will be no LBR measurements taken here. It’s all Fire, all the time, exactly as it should be.

milestone

Revisions of Part One are done. At least in the broad, chainsaw, “this scene can just die already” sense.

Tomorrow? I start blowing shit up.

on the fourth hand . . . .

Other writing-related news:

While in Dallas, I sold “Kingspeaker” to a new magazine called Beneath Ceaseless Skies. I’m really pleased by this one; I quite like that story, and am glad to see it find such a pretty home.

***

This month’s post at SF Novelists is about characterization — specifically, how being an introvert affects the way I write characters, and therefore the way people read them. (i.e not everybody will interpret the tightening of a character’s fingers on her wine-cup as a sign of growing anger.)

***

More reviews of MNC lately, but most of them are saved to my desktop, which is on a truck right now. Several negative ones, though. There may be a faint logic to seeing the negative reviews now; people who read and liked my previous work probably make up a greater percentage of those buying the new book right when it comes out, and those readers are more likely to give it a thumbs-up. Strangers to my work may come across it later, and with them it’s a toss-up as to whether they’ll like it or not.

***

I have all kinds of other writing-related program activities I want to do, but the truth is, AAL is consuming pretty much all of my spare processing cycles. So until that’s done, it’ll be pretty quiet on other fronts.

Part the Third

I’m sure you’ve all been dying to know how the novel’s going.

The answer to that is complicated. Have I been getting work done? Yes, almost every day. How many words do I have? 96,224 — which is not so much, given that I was at 86K back on the 7th. But this discrepancy comes about because I’m doing something different from usual.

As I’ve said before, I’m structuring this book so that it cuts back and forth between long sections skipping forward through the years I’m covering, and days of the Great Fire. So I wrote Part One, then Part Two, and so on, with the intent of going back to write the Fire days once I finished Part Four. This is more or less what I’m doing, but I realized that a) given the massive revision Part One needed and b) the advisability of making sure each part flowed properly into each day, when I got near the end of Part Four, I went back and started revising Part One. I’m 13K+ through that and making good progress; you would have to see it to believe just how much less it’s sucking now. (I’ve lost all perspective as to whether it’s good, but it’s definitely better.) When I finish that, I’ll write the first day, then revise Part Two and write the second day, and so on to the end.

I haven’t quite finished Part Four; it needs maybe one or two scenes, which I will have to get done before I write any Fire stuff. (The night I was supposed to tackle those, I just didn’t know what I wanted to do with them, so I went back and started revising instead.)

Some of the revision has been polishing; some has been wholesale replacement of scenes. It helps that now I know, as I did not when I wrote this, that I don’t have to stay below 110K for the whole book. Antony’s got a series of three incredibly short scenes coming up, where I all too obviously am trying to keep my word-count in check, to the detriment of the story. So expansion of existing material is the third leg of this process, and possibly the most important; only a couple of scenes have been chucked out in their entirety.

I’ve become a moderately better writer over the years, but a substantially better reviser.

Mush!