His name is Chewie, and he’s a ratbag.
Game reviews
I’ve added a new page to the site, imaginatively titled “Game Reviews,” after finding out that NZGamer.com, the gaming website I wrote for, for over ten years, has closed its doors. It looks like the site itself is no more as well, so in the spirit of posterity (aka sticking this stuff somewhere) I’m going to be slowly adding some of my reviews and features here.
I’m leaving off the previews–I never much liked writing those anyway, and it was the reviews, features and interviews that I really put something into.
Who knows, maybe I can land another reviewing job with this very odd CV of mine. In any case, if you are curious, they are there.
Culture shock
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about culture, mostly because I’ve been reading / watching some great things on world building (Orson Scott Card’s How To Write Science Fiction and Fantasy & Brandon Sanderson’s lectures on it in his Write About Dragons series) – and also because in the novel I’m writing, I have a character experience some serious culture shock when they travel from an isolated village to a high-tech society.
As someone who’s more of a “gardener” than an “architect” (thanks GRRM), I don’t over-plan my cultures when I’m writing. But that said, I’ve never had a situation where I’ve set down two such differing cultures side-by-side, and then introduced a wide-eyed innocent to the wonders and horrors of technology.
It’s made me think a lot about my own experience of culture (and culture shock), and how overwhelming cultural differences can be, even when moving between two relatively-similar cultures. When I was thirteen, my family picked up and moved from the Pacific Northwest to a pretty small town in New Zealand. Yep, one English-speaking country to another English-speaking country. We even touched the same ocean, weird as that sounds. We moved to a place we’d visited before on lots of occasions, to a town where we had family already living. And we still were traumatised by it, at first.
So how different was it? Just a couple of examples:
• We instantly stuck out like sore thumbs with our American accents. People at school knew me as “that American girl,” and as nice as it might sound for people to know who you are, even though you don’t know them, it’s actually a really weird feeling. Even my grandparents would tease us about it: “say waterrrr!” My dad’s car was known as the “Yank Tank.” We were “the Americans,” and therefore immediately different.
• Starting a new school was weird. OK, so starting a new school anywhere for a thirteen year old girl is always going to be dramatic. But throw in a totally different syllabus, a school uniform, the accent thing, and hell, even the way people took notes, and the result was total bewilderment for me.
• People would ask me if my school was like Beverly Hills 90210.
• Driving. We brought over our chevy suburban from the States (how American of us, hah!), but before it arrived we drove one of my grandparents’ cars. We were forever getting in the wrong seats – usually my little sister in the drivers’ seat. Also, my grandparents’ car would start binging once you started driving over 98 km per hour. Annoying!
• TV. When we moved to New Zealand, the country had two TV channels. This, for a TV-aholic who was used to cable TV, MTV, Nickelodeon, Disney Channel, HBO, and the rest of it, was totally bizarre. Channel One was news and “old people shows,” so invariably I would come home from school, change out of my uniform, go upstairs to my grandparents’ mezzanine (we were still staying with them; it took us three months to find a house), and go upstairs to watch Neighbours and ‘60s Batman. New Zealand didn’t have Shortland Street just then, so Australian soap operas was as good as it got.
• The smells. My grandparents’ house had this certain smell about it, and for ages I just thought it was the “smell of New Zealand.” After both my grandparents passed away and their house was sold I thought I’d never smell that smell again – until the day my husband and I moved into our current house. I opened a drawer, and woosh. Turns out the “smell of New Zealand” is some sort of drawer liner paper. Huh.
• Culture. OK, regardless of your opinions on America as a hub of culture, living there – especially in the 80s – absolutely gave one a feeling of immediacy. There was so much going on, and it sincerely felt as though the US was at the centre of it all. (Yeah, I know.) I’m pleased to say a great whack of objectivity was acquired after we moved, but it did still feel as though we had moved from somewhere very big, to somewhere very small. As a thirteen year old, this was most noticed by the availability of movies and other consumable media. Seriously – I have to wait six months for Cry Baby to come out at the movies? FML.
February good things
It’s been a semi-productive morning down in the study, today. A big win was rewriting a section that I lost on Monday when my Scrivener syncing went wrong somewhere between the iPad, Dropbox, and my computer back at home. I was really resisting going back and writing it, though the section (mostly dialogue, thank god) was pretty fresh in my mind.
A bit part of my frustration is that I’ve realised I’m basically writing a new story with my re-write. Oh, not really, the main characters are all still there, and their history, the locations and technology, and all the rules of my world. But a large section of the first draft is going to be removed, with the intention to focus more on the path of my main character, and her story. In the first draft it got a little lost as bigger and splashier things started happening. So I’m really happy that all the questions I was asking as I wrote the first draft have indeed been answered, and I know the heart of this story. It’s just the frustration with the process, and realising that a crazy number of hours have been spent on this so far, and there are a lot more needed before I can consider this story finished.
But I wanted to write about some of the (other) things that are making me happy this month. There are quite a few of them, so, yay!
My journal: I’ve really got back into writing in my paper journal, ever since I took a journaling workshop with Helen Lehndorf last year. I’m trying to be more playful with it, pasting in bits and pieces, receipts, maps, scraps of things I find, stickers, etc. I’m terrible at drawing, so I have to make do with looking for interesting scraps in mags and the rest. But it’s fun, and nicer to flick through than my suitcase of earlier diaries and journals with endless scrawl…
The library: I’ve given up buying books at the moment, with my reduced income (I’m hoping to get more hours working this year, but it’s tough, even with my wee one at school; you can’t exactly go full-time, unless you want to look at after-school care, and stress about basically bloody everything all the time. I’d rather have less money, to be honest). I love that I can just go online and reserve books and they get sent from practically anywhere in the Hutt / Kapiti / Porirua and just appear at my local Eastbourne library a few days later. So good. This year so far, Every Heart A Doorway by Seanan McGuire, Embers by Sandor Marai, & In the Dutch Mountains by Cees Nooteboom have been standouts for me. Oh, and the Saga graphic novels by Brian K Vaughan. Oh my god. I love these.
Music: I’ve finally restrung my guitar, and it’s sitting in the kitchen where I play music to Leila when we’re meant to be getting her ready for school. Our latest fave is “Puff the Magic Dragon,” though I have to sing the last verse really quietly, it’s so sad. Steve also got me some replacement speakers for Christmas, to replace the Logitech ones that blew up a year or so ago. It’s bloody brilliant listening to music while I’m at my desk again. On heavy rotation: Trilok Gurtu, Mahavishnu Orchestra, The Smiths, and various Flying Nun playlists.
Telly: yeah, there’s been good stuff on TV lately. We just finished watching Star Trek Discovery, and I’ve just started watching Altered Carbon. Travelers is good too. So much good sci-fi.
Games: I’ve been gaming a wee bit in the evenings. Pillars of Eternity (which I started back when it first came out but never got round to finishing). I love Life is Strange (played the free Vol 1 and will buy the rest once PoE is done!), and Va-11 Hall-a is fab too (bartender visual novel? You make drinks for people who come into your bar, and get different conversations based on what you make them).
There were lots of other things I imagined I’d like to do when Leila went back to school. I really wanted to do the Whitireia novel workshop / class. Really wanted to start Ancient Greek at Victoria. Start some intense exercise program. But being poor means I can’t afford any of these right now. I don’t mind so much – having options limited can be a good thing too.
Everyone did that “word for the year” thing for a bit in January. I couldn’t really decide on one, but I like the idea of GO DEEPER as my motto this year. Not to keep bouncing from different idea or activity to another. To learn more about the things I already have an interest in. To aim for deeper understanding, deeper mastery. It’s as good as anything else, I suppose.
Hi
Hey 2018! How ya doin? It’s been a while.
New year, same old pondering on the place (and relevance) of personal blogs in the web-o-sphere…
I find I am more and more irritated by places like Facebook, where I basically stay for the sake of old friends and family, but to be honest I never check in on it, and I’ve disabled all of my alerts. I still Instagram a fair amount, but that seems to be a nice repository for travel pics, crafting photos, and the occasional journal snapshot.
A couple of days ago I created a (temp) micro blog. Not sure how long it will last (or if I will continue to subscribe once I have to start paying), but the site is discombobulated.micro.blog. At this stage I’m just playing around, but I like the format.
I’ve also been thinking about this blog, and wondering if I ought to migrate old posts somewhere else. There is an awful lot of baggage on this blog (fifteen years), and I’m not sure how I feel about all of those old posts being so accessible.
I updated my profile photo (in the about section here). The other one was far too serious. I think I set that one up back when I was trying to earnestly create some sort of writing profile. The new one is more honestly me.
And in case you thought I was avoiding something, I am still working on the novel re-writes. It has been a surprisingly difficult process for me, and there’s been a lot of downtime. I have felt like I’ve been finally able to get back into it now, what with Leila starting school. Hard to believe she is 5! I’m not sure I want to write about the process of this, but my goal is to finish the second draft by the end of March. Just putting it out there.
Like a witch in the kitchen
Seriously, when a hobby hits, it hits hard around here! Lately I have been so obsessed with dyeing wool (yarn, mostly). It started over the holidays, when I thought it would be something fun Leila might like to do – and to get her away from the TV (obsessed with Octonauts at the moment). We started off with my trusty Ashford acid dyes, which I’d already mixed (months, maybe years ago), and we had fun just squirting it on some hanks of vinagery yarn, and then steaming them.
Then we moved on to making up a pot of dye from all the onion skins we could scavenge, plus a few teaspoons of turmeric for good luck!
It worked out pretty well…
But ever since then I’ve been getting a bit more serious – ordering some alum mordant online, scavenging for acorns down a neighbour’s driveway, even forcing the child to collect eucalyptus leaves with me at one of Steve’s bike races!
(Yarn dyed from avocado pits – the two top – and some lichen I scraped off the deck, on the bottom.)
We did make it out of the house over the holidays, even though we had several pretty bad storms blow through. We got to the planetarium in the first week, and in the second, had a fun outing with some friends to the Dowse gallery. Spotted some cool street art along the way!
I’ve also been knitting – doing a scarf in fisherman’s rib, for Leila, with one of the yarns we dyed. Finished some socks for Steve.
And, just in case it looked like I wasn’t getting domestic enough, there’s also a new sourdough starter on the go…
I’ve also finally – FINALLY! – found my editing mojo again and have drawn up yet another plan for attacking the novel beastie. Progress is being made!
Rosey
We’ve been adopted by a large black-backed seagull, that Leila has nicknamed Rosey. He sits, most mornings, right up on the roof outside the kitchen window (we have an L-shaped house on different levels; the roof outside the kitchen window is the roof over our bedroom, a level down). We feed him Leila’s leftover crusts, leftover pasta from the night before, the heels from the loaf of bread. In return we get to listen to him tap-tap-tapping across the roof early in the morning, as well as regularly hearing his full-throated seagull cry that I’ve taken to mean this place is mine – back off! whenever any other seagulls come around.
He sits on the roof and looks up into the rain; he even sat up there during the last big hail storm we had last weekend. Didn’t budge a feather, not until he was ready to.
You’ll be standing in the kitchen, doing dishes, or just standing there drinking coffee and making toast, and suddenly you look up and he’s there, eyeballing you. I find it strangely reassuring.
I grew up with birds – Mum has had them as pets since she was a little girl. We had a blue-front amazon when we lived in the States. His name was Chester and he had the most amazing vocabulary. We had to leave him behind with my sister’s friend’s family. Her brother really bonded with Chester, and eventually took him to university with him, where he had him in the dorms. We even got to meet Chester again on our last trip to the States. I swear he remembered me after all those years. I whistled the whistle that he used to love doing, and he responded with a hard stare, his feathers puffing up a bit around his face, like he always did when he liked something. Parrots live for a really long time (Mum expected Chester to outlive her), even back then, but sadly Chester was killed by a racoon that broke into his house, and then presumably his cage. He would have put up a fight, but it’s a horrible thing to imagine. He was so intelligent, so funny.
After that, in New Zealand, we got a bird named Cookie, who had apparently had some issues with its previous owners. Cookie was a beautiful big sulphur-crested cockatoo. He was really amazing. But he hated men. He bonded immediately with my mother and then spent the rest of the time throwing seeds at my dad whenever he came into the kitchen. He’d get a huge beakful and then toss them the length of the kitchen – seeds hissing along the floor. He didn’t stay with us for long. Poor Cookie.
After that – a couple of budgies, and then Rosey. Rosey was a galah. Less showy than Cookie, sometimes coy, sometimes a real loudmouth. Mum & Rosey really hit it off, with the rest of us accepted a bit later. He was hilarious, loved dancing, singing, and periodically taking off from the roof of our house (at the top of a hill) to soar down and usually land on a neighbour’s roof. It wasn’t uncommon for us to have to drag a ladder round to someone’s house, knock on the door and explain our parrot was up on their roof, and could we have a look please? The fortunate aspect of Rosey’s aerial escapades was that he had a serious fondness for potato chips and we could usually lure him back from his moment of freedom, in exchange for a snack.
Rosey caught some sort of awful bird flu (Mum reckons from the sparrows who used to go in to his cage and steal seeds, when we had him outside) and died in Mum’s arms. She buried him in the back yard, and put his bell on top of his grave. She never got a bird again after Rosey.
In any case, Leila had no knowledge of any of this when she decided to name our friendly neighbourhood seagull Rosey. But I can’t help thinking of him, and all the other birds in my life, when I watch him up on our roof.
I’d love to have a pet bird, myself, but often struggle with thoughts about animals in captivity. Of course most bird owners don’t just leave their birds in cages – most let them out to roam around and often the birds do come to think of their cages as their “safe place”. I guess it’s the symbolism of it, in part. (Also bird poo is really hard to get out of clothing – that white part (protein?) sticks like anything.) Maybe one day. But for now it’s a lovely feeling to have a sort of friendly acknowledgement, a sort of window into a wild animal’s life. I often think of him when I see seagulls flying around the neighbourhood.
Rememento Mori
I’ve finally got organised and created a new category for the WIP: Rememento Mori. It’s a wanky take on the phrase Memento Mori, which I’m sure you’ll remember is Latin for “remember you must die” or thereabouts. So Re-memento Mori is a play on this, Latin scholar that I am (not), and my wink-wink “remember that you must die…again.” Hopefully I’ve caught all the old posts with it now.
Speaking of… I’ve hit a hard patch in the revision, with new scenes that have felt awkward to write, and usually this is the place where I’d go ughhhhh and go off and play Skyrim for a bit. But I’ve got to get this baby in the bag, got to. So I’m pressing on. Up to page 78 in the revisions, with probably 50% of that new writing.
This part is hard. This is the bit where I find yourself wanting to clean toilets, do some sock knitting, and work on your taxes. Anything but the work. And not knowing even if people will respond positively to the book makes it even more of an unknown quantity.
Hopefully recording the process / progress of this will make for some interesting reading when I look back. Hopefully I’ll be able to draw some lessons from it and find ways to improve on the next book.
(Because, and here’s a dirty little secret, I have already started doing some pre-writing on book 2. It’s a million miles away from the current book and man, it feels wonderful to be thinking about something else. I do it when I’m upstairs and Leila is watching TV or pottering around. Revisions are downstairs, by myself, full concentration. This pre-writing feels like play. It’s wonderful.)
Elbow-deep in revisions
Over the weekend we went up to Silverstream to ride on the awesome steam train they run up there! 
It was very cool – noisy, smelly, and sunny. Steve and I split a beer and we had a bacon and egg pie at the station, between rides on the train. Wee Moo loved it – especially because one of her friends from kindy was there with his family too!
Like the title says, I am in the thick of revisions at the moment. I’ve made it through all of the various analysis steps in the Holly Lisle “How to Revise Your Novel” course I signed up for, and I’m finally at the scissors-and-tape stage.
That’s right girlfriend!
Scissors.
And Tape.
One part of me really likes this process. I love extracting the good bits, physically chopping them out of the page and spreading them all out on the table in front of me. Taping them on to another bit of paper and scribbling all over it, somehow feels like progress:
It’s interesting though, that I feel a bit like I’m flying blind this way. I’m so used to reading on the screen that I find I’m saying to myself “we’ll see at the type-in,” as if I can’t really see how it looks and feels until it’s typed up. Strange, no?
This way also feels slow. I know it’s a class. I know it’s a particular process. I know I don’t need to do this forever. And in many ways the slowness is good. I feel like I’ve made a huge breakthrough in how I look at what I write. It no longer feels “stuck” to the page, unchangeable.
I just want this pass to be done – so much!
I felt the same way when I was finishing the first draft. It seemed to take an age to get there. (In fairness, because I had such a huge break halfway through, it bloody well did take an age!) It’s weird though, there’s this sense of something clicking into place inside and it’s like a horse bolting from the gate – I just want to be done with this and on to the next book, where I can avoid so many of the mistakes I made in the last book, and…
It’s kind of addictive, book writing.
The school holidays are looming large – four weeks away. I’m determined to switch up my night / morning routine and go to bed really early and get up really early for these two weeks, and not lose momentum on the book – and exercise! I recently downloaded the “Zombies, Run!” app – and it is fantastic. I’m already thinking about signing up for the next virtual race. Those tshirts are snazzy.
Speaking of great apps, I’m also really enjoying using Chris Fox’s 5,000 Words Per Hour app (iPhone only). It’s pretty basic (he says so himself) but tracks word sprints and different projects. It’s simple, but it works!
I’d write more but the cat is seriously BAYING for food now.
A spanner in the works
Well, I obviously am not meant to be a daily blogger. We’ll just leave it at that, shall we?
There’s been a slight spanner in the works today, with the small one erupting poo down the hall this morning. She’s complained of a sore tummy for a few weeks now, just on and off, and we assumed she was sticking her fingers in her mouth too often (there’s been a lot of that lately). But today it’s obviously caught up with her and so it’s a day on the couch, with me boiling water in the jug and then filtering it and keeping it in the fridge. Apart from the morning explosion there’s been nothing else so, like most child illnesses, we seem to be in a holding pattern to see if things improve or if they get worse and we go to the doctor.
Today’s meant to be one of my writing days. Over the past few weeks I’ve been making some good progress with my revising, and I guess while you’re in the thick of working through things, in the zone, in the flow, there’s not much to say about it. You just do. Much nicer than endless pontificating.
(That’s the new laptop, by the way. It’s a Windows machine, which has been strange to get used to again. I like everything about it except for the keyboard, which is weird and flat and plasticky, but the price and specs were right on the rest of it. So I will be looking at getting myself a bluetooth keyboard in the near future, but that’s a relatively minor niggle, I think. The main thing I’m missing is having Ulysses handy, though that’s installed on a mac mini downstairs.)
Instead of revising (I’m at a point where I really need to sit down and concentrate without any interruption) I’ve been fiddling with the blog (both here and at the tarot blog), and playing a bit of the very cool VA-11 Hall-A. Also currently reading All the Birds in the Sky. Still making my mind up about it. Elements are very cool, but it’s also very much “of its time,” almost exaggeratedly so, which feels pandering at times.
Finding White Space With Children
Day two of this blogging every day thing. It’s Wednesday, which this term means no kindy, and this week, no swimming. So Moo and I went to the movies – Ballerina, which is a cute animated film about a girl who wants to become a student at an elite school in Paris. Moo seemed to like it, and I, ahem, got a little emotional at the end. (Damn you, emotionally-manipulative child’s movie!)
I’m such a softie, seriously I cry at the drop of a hat at movies. It’s fine when you’re watching something by yourself, but when you’re with another person you have to surrpetitiously go for the eye wipe, and then hope you’re not looking too disheveled by the time they look over at you. Even worse is when you’re at the movies, and you have to walk out of the darkened cinema into the bright lights of the foyer, with people all queueing to get into the next screening. And you with your wet eyes coming out of Ice Age 5. Cringe.
Because there’s no kindy, there’s also no writing during the day for me. I wish I was one of those “writing while I do dishes” sort of people, but the only time I really do find myself writing away from the desk is when I’m taking a shower, or going for a walk. All the other stuff is too prone to little interruptions, distractions, and also my brain just wanders off to that funny little white room when I go into autopilot on things.
Even so, I’m fascinated by stories of people who manage to write (and enjoy a writing career) with rugrats around. But, you know, with the gory details. It’s pretty rare that people talk much about shoving the kid in front of the TV (though I did read somewhere an acknowledgement where a specific TV show was thanked by an author, though for the life of me I can’t remember who, or what). Others write with fondness about children sitting at a desk beside the parent at their own child-size setups – but seriously, how long can you expect a child to sit there and focus and let you write? Ten minutes? It’s not exactly the foundation for a writing career.
I’m not complaining – seriously, I signed up for this stay-at-home gig – but note there’s a real lack of warts-and-all talk about keeping it all going. I think many people just either work early mornings or late nights, or have a supportive spouse who can take the kids while the artiste is allowed the luxury of a room with the door closed. Or, they just struggle. Forget about an empty room, with just silence (or soft classical music) and your own thoughts. No, expect to try and write your magnum opus with the strains of Doc McStuffins blaring in the background.
It all depends on outlook, I guess. Look at Andy Warhol. He could only create when he had the radio and the TV on at the same time. Plus he had a house full of cats and didn’t he have his mother also living on one floor? He thrived on the chaos, could somehow find that white space when the noise drove out all other surface thoughts.
I guess that’s what it all boils down to, isn’t it – what you can do to get yourself into that mindset, as quickly as possible. Rituals would help. Sit down, put on headphones, listen to something that helps you tune out. Or crank up the cartoons, open the doors and let the sounds of the neighbourhood pour in.
Roger Zelazny spoke about writing during the day in snippets – three or four or five times a day. Keep a notepad lying around and when you get the chance to scribble, jump on it. Of course you might find your notepad being used for someone else’s latest artwork, but you never know, you could find inspiration there too.
Just one other note – despite the desire (and need) to create in a private space, it’s also important for kids to see you actually writing and reading. Both on the computer and on paper. Last year I went to a Literacy for Preschoolers class, and one of the main things that can help to get kids interested in doing these things is when they see you do it. So maybe there’s something to the whole “crank up the toons and do it” approach.
Back to it.
Well, school holidays are over, and we are back to it. First day back to kindy, first day to sit down and address some of the work that was creating a (small) pile that needed to be looked at. First day getting back into old routines – and trying to start some new ones as well.
I’ve cracked out the revision binders, and forced myself to get through Lesson 4 of How To Revise Your Novel (Holly Lisle), which I had thought would be too hard, but I made myself wizz (whizz) through it and it was less painful than I’d imagined.
Apart from that – it was a great holiday, really. Lots of lazy days with the little love. A long weekend to Christchurch for a wedding (see above!!) and a great catch up with some cousins I haven’t had the chance to see in years.
Earlier this month I was feeling pretty “meh” about making new year plans. To be honest I felt really tired and uninspired. But some of that energy seems to be returning now. I’m trying to do daily yoga (thanks, Yoga With Adriene! Seriously my sort of yoga person. Funny and interesting and not showing you her handstands every two seconds.) I’m going to try and get into a daily blogging habit as well (look out!) as revisiting some of my old fiction ideas that were languishing and see if I can’t make them into something better.
Little steps! There’s no deadline for this stuff. It just makes me happy and so I want to keep doing it :)
Storm rolling in
Overcast this afternoon; there’s a storm rolling in. Forecast gusts up to 160 km/hr. House battened down. Pool inflatables retrieved. Outdoor plants shoved together. The first scattered spray of rain visible across the valley. And this is summer!
We spent the morning down by the beach, though. Catching up with my old friend Paul, who has spent the last eleven years overseas. He was quite happy to play with Leila on the beach, making a castle with a moat and a bridge to cross a clear stream of fresh water coming down from the hills above. We walked out along the jetty where the ferry docks, and looked back at the bay. After that he came back to our house for a cup of tea and more talk while Leila watched cartoons. We went up to the pool, which has the best view, and I rolled the cover back, which I’d forgotten to do earlier.
I like rolling back the cover. Like feeling the warmth coming up off the water, and the smell of chlorine. I know some people hate the “fake” smell of pools but to me it’s deeply relaxing. Reassuring. I immediately think of hot days, hamburgers (a very specific smell association), swim caps (I had grommets when I was young), playing Marco Polo, and doing flip-turns (which I really can’t do anymore).
I’ve not been writing much these holidays; not been writing much since I wrote THE END on the novel back in November (or was it early December?). It’s been really hard to get myself to go back to it, after the first few re-reads and note-taking. I wonder if it’s been a bit much. My first inclination is to read it a few times, then sit down with a blank page and re-write it from memory. Keep the good bits, and hopefully gloss over the bad. But I’m trying to do that How To Revise Your Novel course by Holly Lisle, which has a specific approach, and I’m finding I am really, really, resisting going back to the book as a result. To the point where I’m so tempted to just chuck it in the filing cabinet and start all over again with something new. The uphill battle to shape something out of this hodgepodge is just going to be huge. And I’m exhausted just thinking about it.
I’m wondering now if I shouldn’t have ploughed ahead during the first draft, the way “everyone” says you should. “Just get it done! Then you can rewrite!” Well, this is true, but there’s also something to be said from rewriting what you did the day before, before continuing onward. I also think that taking a big break from writing, half-way through, was a terrible idea. I was stuck at the time, which is why I wasn’t writing, and by the time I came through the other side the story took such a different tack that when I read it now it’s like reading two different stories.
Hm…
Maybe I do have two different stories. Maybe that’s what the problem has been here all along.
More thinking about this blog, and what purpose it serves. It is so far down the rabbit hole of vanity project that it’s hard to see it as anything other than egotistic outpouring. But it’s been going on for so long, the habit to “check in”, so randomly, that I wonder what I would do without it. The earlier stuff is so infantile, however. Seriously, what to do…?
Maybe a digital journal is more what I need, a la Doogie Howser. I’m such a diary nerd – his writing at the end of every episode was my favourite bit of the whole thing, complete with mechanical keyboard clacking. Complete with white text on blue monitor background.
And I miss floppy disks. The way you could only fit so much on one. The SMELL of them, too. That reassuring soft cranking of the computer as it committed your text to disk.
Like most people, I have a reasonable online life. I post stuff up to Facebook and Instagram, and I have a half-hearted relationship with Twitter. But these days I’m pretty tempted to delete it all, untill I arrive at a better idea of why I would want to use these mediums (media?), other than the reason that they’re there. While it feels like the world is getting more and more online, I’m starting to feel overwhelmed by it. I don’t want to get my news from Facebook – but it’s everywhere. I don’t want to feel obligated to these mediums any more.
Maybe it’s the new year. Maybe it’s turning 40. (40!) Maybe it’s the fading light and rising wind. It’s the feeling that words, which used to feel so precious and valuable, each one slaved over with pencil on blue-lined paper, erased and written-over, crossed out and diagrammed, have come to feel cheap, or too-easy. It’s too easy to spill with words these days, too easy to assume authority. Too easy to lose yourself in the potato-chip-ness of being “online,” of consuming without nourishment, of consuming without discretion, of writing, but not even writing to yourself. Writing to everyone, which is the same as writing to no-one.
Revision
Yikes – very overdue for an update. So, I finished!
It was such an amazing feeling to just write “The End” after slogging away on this first draft for so long. Odd though, too, after my writing output just ramped up so crazily towards the end, to just…stop.
I knew it was a total mess though; the downside of working on something over such a relatively long period, was that there were so many inconsistencies and continuity problems, story threads and character arcs that dropped off, never to be picked up again…you know, the usual crappy newbie mistakes.
In any case, I’m slowly working my way through the manuscript at the moment (as you can see)! Highlighters and codes, and pages and pages of notes. I’m using Holly Lisle’s “How to Revise Your Novel” approach (as I seriously need some help on how to restructure a magnificent sprawl) and so far it’s been really useful.
First up: looking at places where a) the story fell apart, b) places where a character was either well-developed or something detracted from them, c) what worked / didn’t with world/description/exposition d) places where I skimmed, and e) bits I liked! Then, looking at promises, especially the unplanned ones. Both been very valuable filters to place over the story.
In any case, it’s Friday, and I’ve got the morning to myself! Schnell, schnell!
Nearly there!
OK, apologies again for the word count… but seriously, I’m almost there! Got up this morning at 5:20 despite having a rough night last night with a sick sproglet. I almost didn’t get up, but the excitement of making progress (that feels like actual forward movement instead of treading water) got me up.
Some observations (I’m going to need to refer to this later when I’m bogged down in the re-write and not feeling enthusiastic):
- the enthusiasm ratcheting up is directly proportionate to the distance to the end (inversely proportionate? bigger enthusiasm, smaller distance? OK, inversely). I seriously need to get better at creating small goals to smash so I can feel like this all the time.
- there’s nothing wrong with “WOOHOO”ing about even the littlest goal. In fact, I reckon you should go crazy when you hit anything you’ve had to work towards.
- although I have always considered myself a night person, I think I’m getting more done and feeling happier during the day, on the days when I get up early. It really has taken me a long time to get this.
- Even though I really want to just bullet point to the end and then write “THE END” some part of me thinks it’s really important to write actual scenes. Yesterday morning I really struggled, and wound up writing just in my ‘project diary’, and then made a screed of bullet pointed lists. This morning I junked them all (well, chucked them in the diary, out of the manuscript) and just got to work on the current scene.
- A little every day seriously does keep the wheels oiled. Some days it’s over 1,000 words, but other days it’s much less. A goal of 5k words per week at least keeps me honest. The NaNoWriMo approach (50k in a month) is a little too intense; there’s no room for the slow days, or the days when you’d rather nut something out. That said, I would like to try doing NaNo when I’m in that boggy middle part of a book, just to get out the other side a lot faster.
- I’m really not good at writing big battle scenes. But rather than feeling intimidated I’m just going to write it – just pretend I’m blocking it out – and then go study books that do it better (not hard – ha!). Look at the language they use, everything. Sentence length, sentence construction, even sum up the action. Break it down and look at how I can use the information to make mine roll a bit better. It’s ok for something to be really not-good in the first run, as long as you have a plan towards making it better.
- Blogging can keep you honest too. Even just posting the odd update here makes me feel like I need to keep going. Who wants to write about “that novel I couldn’t finish but still found time to blag about for months on end”?
- Writing group tonight – got to fly!
