Why do writers keep committing clichés?

Syfy (I still find it hard to write that instead of SciFi) recently debuted a new show called Continuum; the briefest possible summary I can come up with is that it starts in 2077 and a bunch of anarchists send themselves back in time to the present day (well, almost – 2012, an interesting decision), and a cop, trying to stop them, is whisked back with them.

There’s a reason I bring this new show up in a post I’ve titled “Why do writers keep committing clichés?” – in fact, it triggered the post. It wasn’t a bad show – it wasn’t spectacular, either, but it had some good things. I will probably keep watching if I remember. But the thing that stuck with me, which I remember even though every single character’s name has vanished from my memory along with half the plot, which I will remember even after I’ve forgotten about the show, was a little incident at the beginning.

I say “little incident”, but in any story, especially an hour-long television slot (which translates to, what, 42 minutes after commercials?), every moment must be made to count. I think it’s a reason the whole “Chekhov’s gun” thing is so important – if you’re using up screen time, or pages, telling me about this, there needs to be payoff by the time the story ends. There needs to be a reason.

So, the little incident: The cop I mentioned in the first paragraph is a woman in a surprisingly traditional-seeming home: it’s her and her husband (male partner, anyway) and their little boy. She is, as cops often are, called unexpectedly in to work, and her son pads out in his jammies to see her off, and he holds something out to her: one of his little toy soldiers, in case she “needs backup”. And I said to the tv, or the dog, or myself (whatever’s sanest): “She’s never going to see him again.”

Keep in mind, if you would, that I’d never heard of this show before I saw it listed On Demand, and decided on the spur of the moment to watch, partly because last night was the last night it was available. I knew nothing about the plot, the setting, or anything else. But that little touch of domesticity, that little heart-string-tugging moment, was a complete tell, like the poker player who taps his fingers when he’s got a good hand. I’ve seen it before, so often: it’s a compact moment to give the audience a quick shot of all that a main character has to lose, and what she will lose, and why she needs to get it back (or get revenge for having lost it, depending on circumstances). Also, they always seem to provide the main character with something to take from a pocket and finger at pensive moments, a tangible reminder of her motivation: think Zuzu’s petals.

To me, a scene like this, which prompts me to accurately predict major plot points, is a bad scene. (Not Zuzu’s petals, though. Even clichés can be done well.)

This got me started thinking about all the other oh-no-don’t-do-that-dammit clichés I’ve come across; a few spring to mind, and I can only imagine I’ll be expanding the list as time goes by.

1) The heroine suddenly feels nauseated, early and often.

Just once, I’d like to have that mean the heroine is dying of some horrible disease rather than that she needs to count on her fingers back to her last period. There has to be another way to play the realization of pregnancy.

2) In related nausea: A main character becomes so violently seasick on even a short water voyage that s/he is like to die, or simply wants to.

I don’t really understand why this one is so popular; why does there always have to be someone losing his or her cookies (all of the cookies eaten in the past year) in the background of nearly every boat ride ever? What does that add to anything? Is it meant as comic relief, as the hale and hearty companions of the nauseated one chuckle about his incapacitation and avoid his close and smelly cabin at all costs?

3) It is a truth universally acknowledged that if a party goes out to hunt boar in a book, there will be blood shed, and not just the boar’s.

It’s amazing. I have no doubt wild boar are formidable; there are tusks (tushes?) and they’re fast and there usually seem to be young boar being protected, and there’s always the added enticement for an author of describing the angry/infuriated/cold/mean/flaming little piggy eyes of the boar that attacks. It’s all very picturesque. But it’s also been done. Over and over and over. The minute anyone even simply says the word “boar” in a book, I sigh, and wait for it, and knock a star off the book’s rating, knowing for certain that the very least a dog is going to be horribly killed, but more likely it will be a named character maimed or killed. I’ve never kept track of the phenomenon; one day I would love to go through my books and make a list of fatal-and-near-fatal boar hunts. (I just read one in The Bull-Slayer a month or so ago.) It may not even be that there are dozens of them or anything – just that every single one has much the same outcome.

There are more. I know there are more. They’ll come to me. Or, if you think of one that I forgot, please leave a comment!

Related articles

• The Bull Slayer – Bruce MacBain (agoldoffish.wordpress.com)

 

Writers’ Tricks of the Trade – Morgan St. James (LTER)

Wow. This is a LibraryThing Early Reviewer book, and I’m really reconsidering whether I’ll finish this or not. The one-star rating this wears on LT and GoodReads right now is provisional; I honestly don’t know if I’ll go open it up again. I hate the format, bouncing from Distribution of the published book backward in the process to Editing, just because of the alphabetical order of the words. I’m (ironically) not happy with the writing or the editing – I started taking screencaps of the grammatical and punctuation errors and sentences that were outright stinkers, and had nearly a dozen before page 50:

To avoid cliches, reach into your own experiences and picture things that impressed you. Put the image into words and apply it to something about the character. For example, the woman had shining blonde hair. If it was straight, did it just hang there or shimmer like a golden shawl?

Why would I choose the simile of a golden shawl for this example? Because I pictured a former business partner and friend who had hair like that. I could never look at her without thinking of a golden silk shawl. Let’s say the hair isn’t straight, but curly. Is it in tight ringlets perhaps described as coiled like the fur on a pampered poodle? Maybe this blonde hair undulates in luxurious waves reminiscent of waves kissed by the glow of the sun as they push toward shore.

That is two paragraphs’ worth of some of the worst similes I have ever seen.  I … can’t even begin to discuss how much work I would do to avoid using anything remotely like anything said above.  Phew.

Be honest in evaluating whether you have a book or story that is worth the time it will take to go through the manuscript another time or even multiple times to make it saleable?

All punctuation, such as it is, is accurate to the eBook.  Tip of the iceberg: why is it in the form of a question?  An overall terrible sentence.

…We virtually knew nothing about it.

Another bad sentence; perhaps “knew virtually” would be better, but I question the use of “virtually” at all here.  Still, it’s technically correct, unlike “literally” here:

… the words literally flew from my fingers to paper.

Although she speaks against clichés, it doesn’t stop her from mangling one:

…Move on. As the saying goes, “You can’t beat a dead horse.”

That’s not how the saying goes.  Sure you can beat a dead horse.  The point is that it’s pointless to do so.

Well, one explanation, cited in The Word Detective explains that …

- – Missing comma. I may not be able to cite the rules of punctuation and style, but I know when a comma’s missing. I also know when a comma is where it oughtn’t to be (or two are):

Take many of Dorothy L. Sayer’s Lord Peter Wimsey novels. In Unnatural Death and Strong Poison, from the start there is only one real suspect whose guilt is more or less taken for granted by the middle of the book. And, no big surprise that person does turn out to be the murderer. But, how is the killer trapped?

Without even getting into the plotlines of the two books mentioned – I’d be here all day, easily – “Sayer’s”? Wrong. The author’s name is Dorothy L. Sayers, not Sayer.  The possessive of that name could go one of two ways: Sayers’ or Sayers’s.  The only way that is utterly incorrect is the way it appears above.  As for “And,” and “But,” – isn’t it a rule that one oughtn’t to start a sentence with a conjunction? And isn’t the other rule that you only break the rules judiciously when you know them very well and make a conscious decision to do so? Based on those commas (etc.), I question the writer’s knowledge of the rules of grammar and punctuation.

And, finally, two more very bad sentences, for different reasons:

…covering a variety of topics as far afield as dementia to barter.

When I went to the supermarket and saw the magazine on the stand, a wonderful feeling invaded my soul.

Yes, that’s nitpicking. Which can be another word for “editing”. These are evidence of poor judgment, and these are mistakes, errata which should not have made it to the finished product of any book, much less one on … writing. Still, there were a couple of small useful nuggets that let me temporarily overlook all of that.

But what set me off was this line:

The guy who didn’t finish high‐school probably won’t use “fifty dollar words” unless he pursued lots of self‐education after he left school…

First of all, there’s another one: since when did “high school” need a hyphen?

It might have been a mistake to walk away and do something else for half an hour after reading that, because it gave me time to think about it – and to become really, really pissed off by it. Because, little-known fact: I didn’t finish high school, not in the traditional way, and when I got my equivalency I went to art school – not a great breeding ground for linguistic improvement. On paper, I’m undereducated. And I can assert, based on copious empirical evidence (what’s that, about $150?) that I’m a good deal better able to use “fifty dollar words”, and use them correctly, than a good many people I know who not only finished high school but graduated college.  My vocabulary when I left school at the age of fifteen contained probably too high a percentage of “fifty dollar words” for my own good.

I didn’t leave high school because I wuz to dum. I left high school for a variety of reasons, primary among them that I had no support and was largely unchallenged. Ten minutes’ web search could turn up a long list of people a lot more intelligent and better spoken than I am who never finished high school. To assume that someone who didn’t finish high school is therefore incapable of using a strong vocabulary is perilously like assuming someone with an Hispanic accent is in the United States illegally. I see the author’s point – make a character’s voice accurate to their experience and personality – but if this is indicative of her mindset, I not only don’t have much confidence she can teach me anything in this book, I don’t ever want to read any of her novels.

So, yeah. I don’t think this book has anything to tell me which Stephen King or Anne Lamott or Lawrence Block hasn’t already told me, far more effectively, far more eloquently, and far less offensively. I think I’ll go finish Telling Lies for Fun and Profit instead, and free up a little memory space on my laptop by deleting this.

Another screenshot:

 

LTER: Brewing Fine Fiction

This is a compilation of pieces by denizens of a website who have been published: the tag line for the book is “Advice for writers from the authors at Book View Café”.  It is an extremely mixed bag, in content and quality.  The overall theme I came away with, funnily enough, is “no one can tell you how to write” … That, and “Get published?  Don’t hold your breath.”

The e-book is nicely arranged along the chronology of producing a finished, possibly published work, beginning with “The Basics” and “The Craft” and moving on to “Research”, “Marketing Your Work”, and then to the catch-all chapter for everything that didn’t fit elsewhere “”The Writer’s Life”.  My understanding is that all of the articles were culled from the website, but some of the articles were not only clearly written for another venue entirely but were grafted into this project without any editing to smooth the join.

Some of the articles are funny, some sharp and erudite, many helpful in one way or another.  Others are of the sort of writing that give me hope: if this person’s writing can be published, surely mine can.  It’s a gamut of very different voices and messages, with no real binding theme apart from “stuff about writing and getting published” – and, as I said, the latter is spoken of in the same sort of terms as might be used for winning the lottery.  I don’t know if the intent is to discourage, but if it was it worked.  I know that the economy has made it all more difficult.  I know the interwebs have changed the game substantially.  But this … I suppose it’s better to go into something with no illusions, with a realistic outlook and full understanding that it won’t be all beer and skittles.  It is, though, a sad thing to have every shred of optimism and hope snuffed out.

 

LTER: Writing Horses: Judith Tarr

Been too long – I’ve been eBaying like mad, trying to free up some space and also earn a bit of money to pay for Clarence (the still-hateful Buick).

I received (via email) this book quite a while ago, and it’s just taken some time to finish it.

Judith Tarr is someone who’s been on my List forever; I think the first I read by her was The Hound and the Falcon, which was an astounding and beautiful trilogy. Alamut was gorgeous too, and I wanted a sequel to A Wind in Cairo in the worst way. It was the latter especially that proved to me that Ms. Tarr knows her horses – it was the perfect fantasy + horse book.

So I was tickled to win her Writing Horses: The Fine Art of Getting It Right. This is a book by a woman whose love of horses only grew, and who knows horses through living and working with them 24-7-365, in a way I could only dream of (she breeds and works with Lipizzaners, for heaven’s sake), who has been frustrated by the ignorance writers have shown in writing about horses and decided to do something about it.

That is one happy kid

I was a little smug going in.  I was a horse-girl, so in love with the beauties it came close to obsession.  I drew them constantly.  For fun I would trace the points of the horse diagram in one of my books and fill it in (cannon and pastern and fetlock, and dock and withers and crest and poll).  I knew the difference between a bay and a sorrel, and between a canter and a gallop, and fully intended to be a) a jockey (that was the Black Stallion books, that was, plus I’m short), b) a vet (probably thanks to James Herriot), or c) ride show jumpers (I was SO going to ride in the Olympics).  At a family-and-friends party my family went to a very obnoxious friend of the family challenged me; he’d learned I read all the time and that I loved horses, and decided to put me in my place, I guess, by quizzing me.  He asked me what the biggest breed of horse was.  In a “duh” tone of voice, I told him (Shire).  He shut up.  I was six.  When I was a little older I cleaned tack for free riding lessons (no stalls, though – wonder how I escaped that).  A bit more: my cousin in Newfoundland had a Shetland pony (Candy); I was about ten when we visited, and one of the best moments of my young life was when she bucked me off onto the porch.  She stepped on my foot and left a perfect tiny hoofprint - I loved it.  Another of the best moments of my life was when I was on a trail ride with a class and my horse (Spiz?) ran away with me.  We flew across a field - I stayed on – I loved every second, and was sorry when they caught us.

So, yeah, I never really had much fear of screwing up my horses in my writing.  And honestly I’ve never to the best of my memory come across anything too egregious – I’ve never seen a writer refer to a male mare or anything too idiotic.  I am, however, made very happy when a writer, as Ms. Tarr puts it, Gets It Right.  I love it when a character’s horse is not referred to as “it” – especially when it’s been identified as a specific gender.  I love it when a writer at least names the horses that appear.  If there’s more than that, I’m delighted.  But I am aware that it’s all a mystery to most people (hence all the hairy automata transporting people in so very many books) – so this is a brilliant idea.

The book (an ebook) begins with the very basic basics: a mare is a female adult horse, bay is brown with black mane and tail and points, there are two basic modern styles of riding, and so on; it goes on to give deep and useful detail about the basics (there’s no such thing as an albino horse) and some of the esoterica of breeds and disciplines. I’d say I did know about 90% of what this book explains (though not about the albinos) – but I’m a freak. For normal people who want to write anything in which a horse might come into the picture, this is incredibly valuable – I think anyone would be a fool not to use this book as backup for any mention of horses. It’s wonderfully detailed, insightful, and expert – and funny and well-written. The only thing I wish it had gone into would be a little more of horse personality and communication. Horses speak with their ears: pricked sharply forward means interest, flattened back means you need to back away, slowly and without any sudden moves. Whickers and whinnies and snorts and flaring nostrils and head shakes – I think it would be equally valuable to have knowledgeable insight on all the little details of equine behavior: corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude. Other little things about riding, like how it’s helpful to stand in the stirrups to ease weight off the kidneys if the horse you’re riding needs to urinate.  Speaking of which, some talk about the scents associated with horses – from manure to hay to the sweetness of a horse’s breath – would be a nice addition.  But overall, as far as it goes, Writing Horses is pretty fantastic, and a pleasure to read.  And now I want to reread A Wind in Cairo.

 

Anne of Avonlea — and not (episode 4)

I was going to go on as usual and write a post about the remainder of the BBC Anne of Avonlea, but … there’s too much.  (I don’t even have the heart to make that a Princess Bride reference.)  My usual posts are ridiculously long, and this would have been a tome. So I’ll break it up. I’m actually a little angry about this, so this is going to be fun.

What, exactly, happens to people when they try to adapt the Anne books to the screen? Is there some buried trigger in the work, some booby-trap that is sprung when someone says “I think I’ll make a screenplay of that”, causing some drastic change to their brain chemistry? I’ve gone on at length about Kevin Sullivan, and won’t go there again – the post is here – except to say that Anne of Green Gables was beautiful. Go rent it.  Seriously, it’s wonderful.  Just stop there – really, do.  Because then Sullivan lost his mind – it’s as though he took all the words to all the books after Green Gables, put them in a big vat, and stuck an immersion blender into the thing.  It started out as a disruption to the space-time continuum of Avonlea – people disappeared, other people spoke their words, time compressed in one place and expanded in another.  But it wasn’t so bad at first.  And then someone must have killed a butterfly in one of those space-time hiccups, because it all went kaflooey.

The BBC version is in six parts; I talked about the first half over here, and while there were redeeming qualities, the detractions were many and hard to get over. Still, I hate leaving something unfinished… and I really do like Nicholas Lyndhurst’s Davy and Barbara Hamilton’s Marilla. And I wanted to see how they handled the rest. I want to see Patty’s Place and Phil and Gog and Magog as they move on to Anne of the Island.

Oops.

Don’t do it. Seriously. Watch the first three episodes if you’re in a forgiving mood, the first disc, but if you care at all about Anne – or Miss Lavendar - don’t do this to yourself. I think this might actually be worse than the Sullivan travesty; that left my Miss Lavendar out entirely. Maybe watch the last two episodes – but not #4, and – seriously – turn off the last episode when Anne is standing at the window. Trust me on this.

They polish off Anne of Avonlea in episode four, pretty much. Oh, look, there’s Paul’s father – and – he … looks familiar. He looks like … Oh. You know those Worlds Collide moments I talk about, especially with BBC programs? Stephen Irving is played by Anthony Ainley. Anthony Ainley, who has been in my consciousness for more years than I care to think about as the Master on Doctor Who … He was the third to play the role, though he was the first one I encountered, and like his liveslong adversary the Doctor, your first is the one who means the most to you… He killed Nyssa’s father. He was, in all seriousness, one of my early influences to help define what evil is.

And here he is playing Paul Irving’s father. Oh my stars and garters.

I’ll come back to that. Miss Lavendar is getting a post all to herself.

There are good things in the mini-series, even a few which are not of the book: Mrs. Morgan was lovely. I liked the line “They must think I’m ravin’ mad or a secret drinker!” I still love Davy, and Marilla. They have some scenes, particularly together, which are not LMM, and which still work nicely.  Some full transcriptions are on the TV Quotes Page, so as to try to keep this a little shorter, but:  Davy asks Marilla why she never married, and tells her Milty Boulter’s pa said men were crazy to have left her on the shelf. Marilla’s reply, especially in the astringent tone of voice Barbara Hamilton excels at, is beautiful: “Did he by any chance mention the nature of this mass insanity among menfolk that has resulted in me being left on the shelf?” It’s actually an impressive scene. The upshot is that Davy wants a piece of plum cake. He also really does want to know why Marilla’s not married, but he figures he can talk his way into a piece of that plum cake… The whole scene uses the passage from the book – here, and scroll down to L.M. Montgomery – up to and including the chickens, uses it to its own ends, and does a nice job.

So, good on ‘em for that; I am actually quite fond of that scene, and one or two others.  But.

The affair of the willow pattern plate was turned into something bizarre involving Charlie Sloane and, of all people, Mrs. Blewitt, who began casting aspersions on Anne’s character because she’s an orphan.  Paul Irving is brought in again to have tea with Miss Lavendar – and is made to look even worse than before.  This is a child who a) did not come from America, b) is frequently beaten up in school, and c) is in big trouble when he sees his father again.  I think I’ll have to have a Paul post as well.

The scene of Anne’s First Proposal was a jagged, ill-fitting combination of good and bad.  Of course, it’s placed entirely wrong; here it’s in the midst of the Anne of Avonlea content, when it didn’t actually happen till Chapter 8 of Anne of the Island.  And of course it wasn’t supposed to be Ruby Gillis bringing her brother Billy over to … ew.  What they were alluding to, I suppose, was in a way better and in a way worse for Anne than what they produced here; it was supposed to be Jane proposing on behalf of her brother Billy while staying the night at Green Gables.  This had its humor – Billy: “You were real loony!  Real loony!!”  Anne: “I still am.  I’m not normal at all.” – and her reaction to his trying to kiss her, but it was creepy - ”Show her the whip!  That’ll calm her!” and … well:

“When you first come here I used to spy on you … when you weren’t lookin’.  I used to hide behind your hut. [hut??] You useta lean outa the window and talk to the tree there.”

“Ew” doesn’t quite cover it.  This one little speech bothers me almost as much as the massive character violations elsewhere in the series, because I know Anne.  Being told … that … knowing that this oily, earthbound creature was sneaking about and covertly watching her – and simultaneously mocking her and, I suppose, in his own nasty way, admiring her – would retroactively taint all of the beautiful moments of her childhood, and her communions with the Snow Queen; it would have destroyed something beautiful.  It’s another reason I question the sanity of the screenwriter here.   What a terrible thing to do to Anne.

One odd thing which may have been part of the book but wasn’t as obvious was the benefits arising from deaths.  Davy and Dora’s uncle dies, and that means that Anne and Marilla can keep them, to the joy of all.  Thomas Lynde dies, and that sends Rachel to live at Green Gables and allows Anne to go to college – to the joy of all.  It’s … I used “creepy” already, didn’t I?

I need to compare the book and the film in regards to another scene, and – well, let’s see if you can spot the difference.

Book:

There was more romance in the world than that which had fallen to the share of the middle-aged lovers of the stone house. Anne stumbled suddenly on it one evening when she went over to Orchard Slope by the wood cut and came out into the Barry garden. Diana Barry and Fred Wright were standing together under the big willow. Diana was leaning against the gray trunk, her lashes cast down on very crimson cheeks. One hand was held by Fred, who stood with his face bent toward her, stammering something in low earnest tones. There were no other people in the world except their two selves at that magic moment; so neither of them saw Anne, who, after one dazed glance of comprehension, turned and sped noiselessly back through the spruce wood, never stopping till she gained her own gable room, where she sat breathlessly down by her window and tried to collect her scattered wits.

“Diana and Fred are in love with each other,” she gasped. “Oh, it does seem so … so … so hopelessly grown up.”

… Diana came to Green Gables the next evening, a pensive, shy young lady, and told Anne the whole story in the dusky seclusion of the east gable. Both girls cried and kissed and laughed.

BBC:

Having been apprised of Diana’s engagement in a set of scenes presented like a bad attempt at madcap comedy, filled with interruptions, and during which she managed to mortally offend Diana by saying aloud worse than what Book Anne privately thought in her weaker moments and would have died before saying (and which was foolish in several ways – as if Anne would not have seen her ring immediately), Anne is strolling, carefree, through the woods when she comes to a scene the viewer has already been treated to: by a lake (Barry’s Pond? Never the Lake of Shining Waters) Diana and Fred are lying together among the ferns, kissing. The actual dialogue:

Diana: Oh, Fred!
Fred: Oh, Diana!
Me: Oh, my God!

I want to pull one word in particular out of each scene description, one word which makes all the difference in the world:
Book: standing together
BBC: lying together

Never, never, ever, to save their immortal souls, would any main character of LMM be found lying in the woods (or anywhere else) making out. Ever. To paraphrase Amanda in Lost in Austen: “Hear that sound, George? ‘Lurrgh’? That’s Lucy Maude Montgomery spinning in her grave like a cat in a tumble dryer.” I came within half an inch of walking out of STV because of extreme character violations. This … this would have had the same effect in a theatre. This is not only character violation, put together with the Miss Lavendar/Stephen Irving scene (which I’ll come back to) and what they did to Gilbert (ditto) it goes against just about everything the books are about.

My frequent refrain with adaptations is “I understand why changes must be made to the original material, but”.  In this case, I understand why some of the changes were made; if I dug into it I might be able to make sense of the messing about of the timeline, which after all doesn’t trouble me too much.  It doesn’t hurt the characters, and the characters are the most important aspect of L.M. Montgomery’s books.  The reason the books have remained known and loved for over a century is that there is a sweetness to them which is easily mocked, easily sullied, and hard to capture; I can’t compare with LMM in descriptive language, but here’s my attempt: there is a gentleness in the books, coupled with an intelligent, clear-sighted humor, occasionally self-deprecating but never mocking.

With the Kevin Sullivan version I was angry because he treated the first book with great respect, and then decided he could do so very much better than the rest of the series and changed everything. I think this is actually, bizarrely worse: they kept the plot details much as they are in the book (though not necessarily in the right order), but they put a spin, an inflection on everything – everything - that reminds me of Mordor’s influence on Middle-earth.

 

NaNoWriMo: the aftermath

Okay.  So.  NaNoWriMo is over.  It was a truly wonderful experience.  The 50K + words (about 62K) have been written, recorded, and verified.  It would have been very cool to have kept a blog about the process, but I begrudged every single word I wrote in November that I ouldn’t count toward my novel; I don’t know how the people who did blog about it managed. 

So – now what?

I’ve signed up for NaNoFiMo, which involves writing an additional 30k in December; I really, really want to finish this thing this year.  If you asked me on December 1, I would have said it was a lock.  Now … The first half of this month was kind of a washout – I pooped out, I admit it.  It was partly a return of bad habits – *I don’t have to write today, because I can knock out 700-odd words in nothing flat – tomorrow*  *this weekend I’ll sit down and really rough out the rest of it* *or at least the next few scenes* *ok, next weekend, then* … and countless games of mahjongg and Animal Rescue Site Gem Swap later (damn the charity sites for making it not only acceptable but almost mandatory to waste time playing games!), I have a few more pages in my notebook and less than a thousand more words digital.  Hm. 

Still, I had an exciting day yesterday; and how sad it is that this is what constitutes excitement in my life.  Still, it was pretty wonderful: I realized that I needed a wedding ring.  There were three possibilities: she had her mother’s ring (or they would go and get it); he had his mother’s ring; or he made one.  The latter was the most likely, and I’d had a plan for it for a while now, but thinking about it a little more took the wind out of that plan’s sails.  Then I discovered that harpstrings were – possibly, there’s dispute over this – once made of precious metals.  And *zing* went the strings of my heart.  It’s perfect – it’s exactly what I needed – and that discovery led to some decent scenage.  It was a little breakthrough.  And I’ll take all of those I can get. 

I’m beginning to learn that that’s a big part of writing, at least for me; I’ve read comments from some writers who have said that they function as if they were just frantically trying to get down the story as they’re hearing it told to them in their heads.  It’s a little like that for me.  It’s not that easy – it’s not transcription – but I know when I’m getting it right and I know when something I have down just … didn’t happen.  It’s sometimes like archaeology (which is nice, because I used to want to be an archaeologist); I thought it would be interesting if my bard character used harp strings to make his bride a ring.  Then I thought it would be wise if I looked into exactly what harp strings were made of, now and historically.  And what I found out couldn’t have been more perfect.  It took a little digging – it felt like I had to unearth the idea, and then dig deeper for the data.  It came together.  It’s happened before – I’ve needed a cause for an effect I already had, or the reason someone was where I needed them – and it’s just come.  Epiphany really isn’t too strong a word – it’s the best feeling.  It makes it feel like I’m doing something right. 

Aaand … now what? 

March is NaNoEdMo, which seems to be more active than FiMo is (there doesn’t seem to be much activity on the FiMo forum).   EdMo is March, in which I believe 50 hours are to be devoted to editing.  I look forward to it – and I’m trying to hold off on any serious editing till then.  There seems to be a lot of info out there on the EdMo site, and a lot of direction – and, with a little luck, there’s some way of getting feedback.  I’ll come back to that.  NaNoPubYe is National Novel Publishing Year -  and it will be.  At some point in 2011, after I’ve beaten on the book and ripped it apart and put it back together (see how I can call it a “book” now and not blush?  Even though it’s STILL not finished?  That’s new) I will …. possibly … send it to an agent.  This is the terrifying part.  There’s a guest blog post on the Office of Letters and Light blog, and it’s scary.  Every person to whom a book can be sent is predisposed to say “no”.  It seems that the smallest wrong move can send a manuscript into the garbage.  I think the first and most important thing will be to find people to read the thing (*waves to Jen* – don’t think I’m going to let you off the hook, lady!) to determine if the characters are hateful, or disappear (I forgot about one character’s dog; I really should name him Chuck, after the other son on Happy Days who went upstairs with his basketball in one episode and never … came … back), or are suddenly standing by the fireplace when they were last seen sitting outside the door … Continuity.  That’s what’s a little alarming about the whole thing.  I’ve been working on this forever, and I’m too close; I won’t see errors like that.  And … does the ending make sense?  (And could someone who’s read it please time travel and tell me what it is, because right now I have no idea in the world?)  Too wordy?  Me?  Surely not. 

So – it’s difficult (to say the least) to find an agent, or even to decide if one should use one.  It’s difficult (to say the least) to find a publisher.  And assuming one finds an agent and a publisher and the baby is delivered - the book is published – that’s still no time to relax, because when the deal is done is when the work I’m not as confident about begins.  And assuming I do get the thing out into the world, it isn’t as if I can quit my day job.  Ever.  I think of Jo March, who hand writes her manuscript and ties it up in a brown paper parcel and ties it with a string and sends it off and a few minutes later is a published writer, and one who can live off her work.  Apparently one could, then.  Now?  Unless the stars align just perfectly, writing will always be a sideline. 

I look at the writers I know to one degree or another; there’s Lily from The Board Which Shall Remain Nameless, with whom I became friendly before I knew who she really was; she’s has been writing for many years, and as far as I know makes a living at it.  I exchanged a few letters with Guy Kay, but if I start comparing myself with him I’ll go lie in the snow.  (When we get any, may it be next winter.)  And there’s my compadre Adam Schell … He produced a beautiful book.  He created something that should have blazed across the book world.  And there was a series of unfortunate events, to quote Lemony Snicket, from the death of Michael Jackson to firings at his publisher … And he said sales did not meet expectations.  Well.  The publisher did what a great many publishers are doing: leaving promotion of the book to the author.  What terrifies me about this is … if Adam Schell - who is personable, charming, funny, outgoing, (and tall and adorable) and knows a lot of people: he’s connected - couldn’t promote the book in such a way that sales were what they needed to be, how in the name of God am I going to? 

But all of that’s a long ways off.  I have the happy part to work on for quite a while yet.  And I’m just not going to worry about the rest till I need to.

OK – back to work.

 

NaNoWriMo – Winnah!

I was fairly sure I could do it – - but!  By the NaNoWriMo word count validator I hit 50,651 words at about 6:55 pm.  

And it feels amazing. 

I was what they fondly call a “NaNo rebel” – I did not start from scratch (originally), with a blank page and an idea.  I went into this with a blank page and an idea and about 75K words already written on a novel (depending on how you count ‘em) – and I devoted this NaNo month  to writing fifty thousand more words on and hopefully finishing the book that I’ve been dragging along behind me for years.  And two things have happened: it’s a damn sight closer to being finished (and I have a clearer understanding of how ”magic” works in my world – and I have a name for my country, which I didn’t before) (and I have four more days till the end of the month, two of which are weekend – - I LOVE Thanksgiving!!).  And the second thing was: last Saturday I Had An Idea.  And did what you’re supposed to do on November 1: I started from scratch on *deep breath, in – - out* a whole new novel.

So, in a way, I’m not a winner.  To really count myself a winner, I need to a) finish one book or the other in the next four days (plus five more hours today!!), or b) write 100,000 words. 

The wild thing is, I think I can do it.  One of them.  Maybe both.  Right about now I’m ridiculously sure I can do anything.

I only wish I had tried this all those other years I knew it existed and didn’t go for it.  All of those jotted-down beginnings I have in notebooks … Some of them might now be more than that. 

All I know is this has been a wonderful month.  I didn’t participate in the social aspects – write-ins and gatherings and such; after the Board Which Shall Remain Nameless I frankly didn’t want to open that door.  Maybe next year – but it seemed counterintuitive to take time needed to reach the 50K and go to dinner or a movie or bowling or what-have-you, and I can’t imagine I would write more in a room with a bunch of other people than I have solo.  Maybe next year.  The most important thing to me was to do it. 

And I did it. 

And who knows - maybe I’ve set the groundwork for habits that will carry me through. 

I’m pretty bloody happy right now – especially with a full weekend in front of me.  So: 50,651 — and counting. 

Back to work.

 

Random Acts of Culture

There are a lot of reasons I don’t like the internet. I know, stupid to say, given the number of hours I rack up and, well, my current mode of expression. But seriously – the trolls often seem to outnumber the good folk, and even the good folk often have a lamentable lack of language skills.

But there are times, here and there, now and then, this one and that one, and how are you, Mr. Wilson (sorry), that the internet is a pretty awesome place. (Just don’t read the comments if you watch this on YouTube. Remember what I said about trolls.)

And while I’m at it, there’s also this, from the magical mystical marvelous NaNoWriMo forums (I’m up to 25,640, and yes I’m behind and should be writing other things than this). This thread made my day – and a lot of other people’s, judging from the 70+ replies – I’ll need to find a way to archive it when they close the forums.

Happy Tuesday.

 

NaNoWriMo Approacheth!

I can’t remember where I first heard about National Novel Writing Month … but I think my first reaction to it was “You’re kidding, right?”  The goal, you see, is to write a full novel in a month (November): 50,000 words, or the equivalent of (I believe) a 175-page book.  But it’s a fun website (the signup email subject line was “NaNoWriMo loves TMStewart” – aww), with a great sense of humor throughout, and there’s a massive forum with some really amazing discussions going on.  And, after all, I can usually knock out a blog post of about 5,000 words (sorry about those); the magic number to reach 50k is 1666 a day.  Three years ago I signed up – but between a horrendously slow internet connection and Mom’s broken hip I didn’t end up participating officially.   I did take all of the notes for the book I’ve been working on since I was about sixteen, notes scattered hither and yon and chapter ideas and chapters written and rewritten and notebooks interleaved with a dozen other ideas … I took all of it and organized the heck out of it.  It was awesome.  (It was remarkable the amount I accomplished in the waiting rooms of doctors’ offices and physical therapy facilities.)

I don’t know why I didn’t play last year; beaten down by the job, maybe (who knew?), or simply forgot.   This year I was wandering about the world-building sites, and landed on the site of Holly Lisle.  She’s a fantasy writer who’s produced quite a body of work; I haven’t read so much by her, but I’ve liked what I read, and regardless she has a lot of good stuff to say on the site.  And she started a forum for writers called Forward Motion, which is quite nice – and that reminded me of NaNo. 

This is going to be fun.  What I really, really want to do is take the book I whipped into some sort of shape three years ago which, yes, I’m still working on … It doesn’t seem to be against the rules – which are, after all, based on the honor system – for me to use what I’ve got as a base, draw a line, and count all new words from midnight 10/31 through midnight 11/30 as towards my 50K.   I would dearly love to finish this book, at least in rough form, by the end of the year…

Then again, I could also start work on one of the two related books I’m planning.  Or … I do have a list of other ideas in various stages of development, from ideas (a novel exploring they whys and wherefores of Benedict Arnold, who was a pharmacist and bookseller right in New Haven at one point, and who, really, had his reasons) to outlines (the fairy tale of Beauty and the Beast stripped down and inverted, with a female Beast and a male stand-in for Beauty (who will not be named Beau)) to a few chapters knocked out (a story semi-related to the sorta-trilogy, long before them when things were more peaceful). 

Help?

Oh, for the time to do ‘em all. 

Meantime, November is coming – and I’m really, really looking forward to this.  There are 80 people signed up in NaNo’s Shoreline Connecticut region, and that’s only so far; evidently during the rest of this month and most especially next month there are events online and in person.  And while I am maintaining a level of cynicism about the whole thing after my experiences at the Board Which Shall Remain Nameless … still?  I want this to be as much fun as I think it can be. 

And in a few weeks I think this will be me:



 

Guy Gavriel Kay: Under Heaven

Finally.  I finally set aside time to read Guy Gavriel Kay’s latest book, Under Heaven.  As I’ve said before, Kay’s books take preparation for me.  I can’t just, on a whim, pick one up and read it on the spur of the moment.  I can’t just open it for twenty minutes on my lunch break and then ten minutes after breakfast and toted around for a page or so now and then.  I always remember what Tigana did to me, and, that in mind, I make sure that I start a Kay when I have plenty of time to devote to it.

I came home from work last Friday with a headache that would stop a horse (heh) – the allergy meds I take purposely to stave these sinus headaches off didn’t, for whatever reason, help that weekend.  However, somehow I can read when I have one of these headaches.  I can’t function, but I can read – which I guess is just further proof that book-in-hand is my natural state.   So, Friday night, the whole weekend ahead of me, I started Under Heaven.

(For once, I think I’ve managed to avoid spoilers.)

The story begins with one Shen Tai, second son of a great general who has just, two years and a half ago (not quite), died.  The mourning period is that long, two and half years, and requires complete withdrawal from society.  And Tai, as part of his mourning, to honor his father, has come back to Kuala Nor, where his father won a great victory.  That victory cost his people 40,000 Kitan men – and cost the enemy, the Tagurans, 60,000 men.  None of these soldiers received burial, and an unburied body means a ghost – and Tai very very quickly found that, indeed, there are about 100,000 ghosts crying and screaming through the night.  His self-appointed task is to bury these soldiers … or, at least as many as can be buried in two and a half years by one man.  It’s mad – and, in a civilization that echoes 7th century Tang Dynasty China, steeped in honour.

As he starts another day of digging, he is pondering where his life will take him now that the mourning period is ending – whether he will go back to what he was trying to make of himself when his father died, or … something else.  And then, with the unrolling of a letter, the decision is gone from his hands.  In recognition of his mad, honourable actions, the White Jade Princess Cheng-wan, a bride sent from Kitai to Tagur some twenty years ago, is – with permission – giving Tai a gift.

“It is a large gift”, says Bytsan, the Taguran soldier who brings the scroll.  He is, apparently, a master of understatement.