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!

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No Plot? No Problem! – Chris Baty

I have a checkered past with National Novel Writing Month. I first signed up for it years ago, and then my mother broke her hip and everything else went by the wayside. I tried again in 2010, and won, and had a great time; skipped 2011 because I was in the depths of despair about my writing, and then tried to try again in 2012 – and my mother fell again, and everything went by the wayside again. I get the sort of feeling my mother doesn’t want me to finish my book. Maybe next this year.

One huge reason I continue to want to participate in NaNoWriMo is the spirit of it. The buoyant enthusiasm is surprisingly warming and encouraging. Pep talks usually make me roll my eyes. I generally look askance on cheerleaders and raises an eyebrow at unbridled optimistic zeal, and I’ve learned the hard way that shooting for the moon does indeed mean landing among the stars if you miss: in a leaky escape pod with no food or water and no rescue until an hour and a half after the air’s run out or fatal hypothermia has set in, whichever comes first.

But The Office of Letters and Light – the beautifully named group of madpeople who run NaNo every year – are special. They participate themselves, and know the trials and tribulations, the ups and downs, the smiles and frowns of the project – and they genuinely want all their participants to have fun and just maybe triumph at the end of it. They pepper the website and NaNo inboxes with humor and silliness and cleverness and inspiration, and somehow cynicism and pessimism wither away in the onslaught.

It’s kind of awesome.

And the fearless leader of this merry band, the one from whose forehead NaNoWriMo sprang fully formed and wearing a silly Viking hat, is Chris Baty. No Plot? No Problem! is both the tale of that genesis and a week-by-week primer on how to survive and succeed in a month of frenzied writing. It’s irreverent, it’s inspirational, it’s subversive (I was scandalized – scandalized, do you hear! – at the tips on how to NaNo at work without getting caught), it’s fun (no real surprise there), and it’s practical – there’s a truckload of good advice here, from a man who knows whereof he speaks. This is why I love NaNoWriMo, whatever my rocky road through it has been – it’s all about joyful creation. Chris Baty brought something magnificent into the world. Thank you, Chris.

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Telling Lies for Fun and Profit – Lawrence Block

The articles that compose this writing guide are all, happily, nicely written – but there’s not much new here, I’m afraid, and not much applicable to my particular situation … Larry Block – as he tells the story a couple of times in this collection of essays – has basically always written. Motivation can be an issue for him, as it is for all writers, but for the most part the driving force that made him apply butt to chair and fingers to keyboard has been that he enjoys eating, and what puts food on his table is the money he makes by writing.

One article which raised my eyebrows a bit was one in which Block talks about how easy it is to excuse oneself from actually applying one’s butt to one’s chair and writing: “well, writers are actually working 24/7, every bit of sensory input has the possibility of adding to a scene sometime, there’s editing needed, and research, and a good writer reads a great deal” – etc. What it comes down to, for Block, is that yes, he does agree with all of that – it’s true, after all, even if it is easy to use the list as excuses – but what he feels is the real work is actually pushing the current project forward by so many pages. He doesn’t set times, he says, but instead sets a daily goal that takes as long as it takes. His goal is, apparently, five pages a day, and this generally takes about three hours, and then he can feel free to, as he says, go enjoy the day.

Three hours?

No wonder so many people want to be writers when they grow up.

What he doesn’t seem to be mentioning here is that it’s probably taken him years to reach a level of discipline where he can, as mentioned, apply butt to chair and get to work rather than frittering away time and needing to achieve the correct mindset and such. Also, to where he can achieve five pages in three hours with some reliability; that’s not always a given. In my experience sometimes twenty pages will come in that space of time; other times, one, and I count myself lucky.

The reasoning he gives for the five page/three hour goal is sound, but the reason my eyebrows went up was that it sounded so very much like something that could be misconstrued. Hhe may not at the time of the writing of this book have been making millions, but he’d established himself and was making a modest living. And the little nugget he neglects here is that the less time you spend writing, the less you will write – and the less you write, the less money you can make through your writing.

I said before that a lot of this misses the mark for me. That’s because I do not now write and never have written short stories. It’s not how my mind works. Maybe it should be; I know in past decades it was almost unthinkable to try to make it with a novel right out of the gate. You were supposed to write short stories and submit them and get them rejected and send them out again over and over till someone took them. I almost wish I could do that. A beaten path is always easier to follow. This is the way Jo March did it; this is the way E. Byrd Starr did it. This is the way Lawrence Block did it. Me? Not so much. Short stories are very simply not in my repertoire. (I don’t know if a novel is, either, but that’s what’s in the works. Sort of.)

Due to the nature of the book – a collection of articles from whatever magazine this was – there is a great deal of repetition. Sometimes two essays in a row say essentially the same thing. Block says in the introduction that he decided to arrange the book in a sort of chronological-by-process way, and did very little editing to the essays beyond changing “essay” to “chapter” and such … As a writer, I’m sure this was a tremendous idea. As a reader, it wasn’t. Rather than a book to read straight through, it became a reference book, something to dip into here and there.

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Thanksgiving, and why (or: Remembering Anne McCaffrey)

Given the day, it seems obvious to couch this post in the terms of what I’m thankful for.  First and foremost, always and above, I’m grateful for my family.  We’re none of us a huggy gushy expressive family, but the love among us is unquestioned.  I’m grateful for an amazing sister with whom a real friendship has grown as we’ve matured; for a thoroughly insane brother who will make you laugh whether you’re willing or not; for three stunning nieces who are turning into amazing young women; for a mother who has always been my staunchest supporter and biggest fan.  And for the beagle, best dog I’ve ever met.  I’m grateful for the small core group of friends who have stuck with me through, to coin a phrase, thick and thin rather than just … till something more interesting came along.

And, remarkably, I’m a little thankful right now for Lady Gaga. Never thought I’d see myself write that, but she’s kind of fabulous.  And valuable.  And has Mark Kanemura in her troupe. (Yes, her Thanksgiving special is on as I write this.)  I’m grateful for, and to, all the artists of the written or sung or spoken or illustrated word who weave through my life and make me smile, and cry, and laugh, and feel fierce, and feel humble … who make me feel. These are the beings who are, when I’m lucky, shared with friends, and – more importantly – are with me when I’m so alone, and – some of them – who save me.

Which brings me to one of those people, someone who has been with me since I was about twelve.  (That’s the age I seem to have discovered a great many of my pillars of strength, or maybe I just remember it that way.)  Anne McCaffrey passed away this week. She was 85, and wrote dozens and dozens of books over nearly fifty of her years, and – more importantly – she acted as a mentor and partner to young up-and-coming writers, co-writing novel after novel and helping careers in a way I admit to being deeply envious of.

The biggest impact she had on my life was through Pern.  I’ve learned a lot from the Pern books, what I suppose could be called life lessons earnestly imbibed when I was younger, and a great many of the do’s and don’ts and whys and wherefores of writing ever since.  Whatever else can be said, she created a deep and rich and real world filled with people going about their extraordinary business, and let us in on it.  I wish she could have lived to see her creation brought to life.  She didn’t create fire-breathing big lizards from whole cloth – but she did create dragons.  She created the dragons generations have dreamed of ever since, the great battle companions and steeds who both were and served the knights of Pern and the small, quick, charming fire lizards who filled in all the gaps the great dragons could not. These creatures have fulfilled – and created, for that matter – a deep visceral need for the extraordinary.  C.S. Lewis wrote, “I desired dragons with a profound desire.”  Thank you, Anne McCaffrey, for creating a self-propagating joy and desire.  I wish you peace.

 

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.

 

Yarrow, Charles de Lint

Yet another book I haven’t read in probably twenty years, Yarrow is the story of Cat Midhir, a fantasy novelist who, unbeknownst to everyone but herself, is dependent on her dreams for her writing.  Every night she has found herself in another world, where she sits at the feet of the tall fae bard Kothlen as he spins tales, which she on waking weaves into her books.  Every night of her life since she was very young she has had what for lack of better language she calls dreams – every night until three months ago, when she stopped dreaming at all, and because of that stopped writing.  We the reader know what she cannot: there’s an ancient creature called Lysistratus who feeds off dreams, off soul, and who finds her a rich source of sustenance.

Quick question: why on earth call a soul/dream vampire “Lysistratus”?? There was a real Lysistratus in the 4th century who was a highly skilled sculptor (a creator), and there was the fictional Lysistrata, the Athenian heroine of Aristophanes’s comedy about the women on both sides of a war deciding to withhold sex until peace could be achieved.  Not, either of them, anything remotely appropriate for this character, which is unusual, especially if my assumption is right, that he took the name for himself. 

This was probably one of the first de Lint books I read, which helped lead to my reading more, which is by and large a good thing … but if this was my first time reading it I’m not at all sure I’d pursue the author.  It’s not bad, at all; it’s well-written, characters are well done, there’s a good story, the setting (especially the Otherworld) is very good… I just didn’t like it.  I will, of course, being me, explain.

First off, the main character.  Cat Midhir is, we are told early in the book, sick unto death of explaining to everyone in the universe and his sister how her name is pronounced.  Honey?  I have to spell both my names to everyone in the universe, because both names have multiple variations.  You should have taken a self-explanatory pseudonym if it’s going to get to you this much, and you didn’t, and it’s an odd name so it will keep happening, so suck it up.  And that’s the thin end of the wedge, cracking open her character for the reader: there’s not much there, there.  She is a talented writer, but socially inept and alone (what ever happened to her parents?  It’s not a good thing that I can’t remember if we’re told).  Now that her dreams have abandoned her, she can’t write a single decent sentence, and I’m afraid I can’t muster up a single spark of sympathy for her.  I have delusions of authorship.  I’ve had a couple of wild dreams that might someday, with a lot of work, become something readable.  I have not ever had the ridiculous advantage of being able to sit at the feet of a bard, soak in his stories, and then write them down.  We are assured that she took the stories deeper than Kothlen did, expanding, fleshing out the places he skimmed over and using her own gift of expression to turn them into best-selling novels… but we are also told several times that every word she tries to write without the umbilical cord of the Otherworld is “lifeless”.  I’ll buy that she’s not merely transcribing but actually writing – but how am I supposed to feel anything but mild contempt for a woman who has sponged off others for her livelihood?  A woman who has never had to sit in front of a blank sheet of paper and search for what comes next in the story?  Given a rich source like Kothlen, I’d be a best-seller too.  If anything, her “writer’s block” gives me a self-righteous and slightly perverse delight.  Again, suck it up, honey, and sink or swim on your own damn merits.  Wet dishrag, her.

The other characters, as I said, are well done: Peter, the bookstore owner who has tentatively befriended her over the years and who becomes a true friend now; Ben, the cab-driver who has had a minor obsession with her since he read her first book (though I kept thinking he was an old man for some reason); Mick, the mohawked punk-rocker with a heart, apparently, of gold; Rick, whose name is well chosen as the only word I can think of to describe him ends in “rick”… The Otherworld characters are not as strong, but sketched in well enough to serve, if not as clearly as I would like.  Some of the many red shirts in the story were given more time and delineation than the major characters of the Otherworld, and I resented being asked to get to know and like them (which I didn’t, always) in the pages before they were hideously murdered.  That was actually a problem with the beginning of the book, as well: a large number of characters were introduced, one after the other, and it was fairly clear which ones weren’t going to be around long.  After that it was just a matter of Lysistratus picking them off at will. 

My main issue with characterization shouldn’t be a big one, but is: their language.  As in profanity.  It’s constant, and every non-fae male character, antagonist or pro-, cusses like a sailor.  And it’s not just nice pungent anglo-saxon words, but it’s those anglo-saxon words with “jesus” (no caps) in front, which … Come on.  I’m not a prude when it comes to strong language – anyone who thinks so has not driven with me on the highway – but this was just too much.  On every page, every circumstance from minor annoyance to lives being threatened prompts the same response.  It gets old.

Also, I was reminded frequently that de Lint has a horror background under another name.  There were strong horror elements throughout – Lysistratus is evil, and does evil for evil’s sake, and it’s no fun to read.  And that’s something of a problem.  As with profanity, some is fine, even good in context.  More is not better.  If I want to read horror, I will read horror.  I don’t want to read horror.  I don’t appreciate a constant barrage of blood-soaked scenes packaged as a fantasy – particularly with my edition’s cover – except for the skull in the foreground, it leads a prospective reader to believe the concentration is on the fae, not the evil.  I’m uneasy with the idea that L stole people’s souls, too, but that’s my own issue.  Or, to be more timely, hang-up.  Which leads me to – -

A last issue, sometimes fairly easily overlooked but still a distraction, was that the book did not age well: it is very, very dated.  Very.  This doesn’t usually bother me in a book written in the 80′s, any more than reading, say, Dickens does.  But here it was startling at times (there was a comment about the awareness of Reagan in office south of the border apparently intent on starting a war, which was an unexpected and unusual Canadian political commentary), and almost funny at times (how many times would a cell phone have made all the difference?  And – they have turntables!  Aw!), but frequently it was just … odd.  The name-checking was annoying – there was a great detail of corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude … who was on the turntable, what books Peter was ordering, what books everyone was reading (everyone) (seriously) – it felt grafted on to prove de Lint was “hip”.  Oddest, though, and unintentionally hilarious, was Lysistratus humming the Human League song “Don’t You Want Me”.  The radio station I leave on at work plays this now and then, and I get the joke.  It’s just not funny.  He could have been an amazing Big Bad.  He wasn’t.  He was the well-dressed “Dude” (*sigh*) with the piercing blue eyes who you really want to avoid, and particularly to avoid having sex with.  Who has terrible taste in music.  That detracts from his fearsomeness, and I think it would have even in the 80′s.

***minor spoilers***

The ending felt a little rushed.  I still don’t think Cat did enough, and what she did was undermined and cleaned up to pave the way for a happily-ever-after, with some major questions left unanswered (Is the whole Otherworld, or is it not, part of her?  And how in hell is she the deer woman whose name escapes me?  And why?  And when??).  I resented the death of one major character, rather than regretting it, and unfortunately the result of “the Dude”‘s eye contact – paralysis – was sometimes funnier than it was scary.  And in the end … two things.  I can’t help but be resentful that someone who is never shown as deserving has a devoted lover, a loyal friend, access to faery, and a continuing career I’d kill for.  The other thing is: I’ve been listening to a movie review/writing podcast called “The Popcorn Dialogues”, and a comment made in one I just heard was that if at the end of a romantic comedy you’re thinking “Geez, I really thought she’d end up with the other guy”, it’s not a successful romance story.  That’s the case here: I don’t quite get why we needed both Ben and Peter.

I’m really a bit surprised that I’m not (with a quick search) finding fan art of Kothlen and Tiddy Mun and all… I would have thought it was obligatory.

Overall, three stars; probably won’t read it again unless in twenty more years I forget not only the book but this review; disappointed; not in the mood for more de Lint soon.  But I do admit I want to read Cat’s books.

 

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.

 

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.