Category Archives: Writing

Words and Music

I avoided my novel yesterday and sat down to do some serious book research, which consisted of going through two novels with an orange highlighter, a pencil, and a pad of sticky notes. Now I can press onwards, confident, using these texts to inspire my protagonist as she makes connections between these novels and the world around her.

That’s why my word count hasn’t budged. That, and practicing, and orchestra.

I’ve had better nights, but I’ve had worse nights, too. Two of our best cellists were missing, so Walter and I were struggling to fill in sound-wise and technique-wise, with our last two cellists alternately playing the bass part (which really threw me off a lot) and attempting the cello line. For some reason I didn’t move up to sit with Walter in the first chair (actually I know exactly what the reason was, it was avoidance of being close to the conductor for the Handel and the Mendelssohn disasters I foresaw looming), so both he and I sat alone, one behind the other, which meant we both felt unsupported because we couldn’t hear anyone else’s line to lend us psychological support. Next week I’ve promised to sit up front with him.

There were good parts (namely the bits I really, really practiced) and bad parts (the bits I practiced but became severely thrown off by the presence of the rest of the orchestra as we passed around the fugue theme of the Handel at breakneck speed). I’m really going to have to buckle down and do some serious work on these pieces in the next week or so. I don’t feel tremendously defeated, however, because there are some bits I can play that no one else can. So you see, I’m not a complete failure, which is a blessed relief, trust me. I still can’t get into the music, though; I’m finding it very difficult to create any sort of positive emotional attachment to it. I’m rather neutral about it all, which bothers me. Music is a very emotional art for me, and if a piece doesn’t make me feel something, I’m going to have difficulty playing it. Technical difficulty is a seperate negative stumbling block for these pieces.

This afternoon I’m going to do a couple of hours of freelance work, then I’ll novelise for a while. Can’t have my fingers losing flexibility, or my creative juices drying up, now, can I? (I believe I used the phrase ‘drooling language all over the page’ in encouragement to a fellow NaNoWriMo, and you know, it’s quite the apt metaphor…)

NaNo Reflections

It’s snowing again. Wet, messy snow that’s sticking to cars and sidewalks. The roads are wet, and I can hear the sticky hiss of tires on Sherbrooke street.

Ladled up from Ceridwen’s Cauldron:

She told me that after the first day she had gone to friends’ blogs to find out how the first day had gone. She was disappointed with the result. Sure, some of us had posted word counts, but that’s no indication of how the day actually went.

It was an awkward time of day to call people, I didn’t want to e-mail anyone and put them on the spot, so I surfed web logs instead, and no one had really said anything. I mentioned this to Ceri in passing, and now that she has blogged about how she felt on her first couple of days of NaNoWriMo, I figure that I should, as well. She credits me with the stimulus to talk about the first day or so, after all, so unless I wish to be subject to tomato-throwing fans, it’s only fair that I do so, too.

It was good. It was comfortable, and I felt like I was accomplishing something. I didn’t clock-watch; I wrote what I needed to and just let new things unfold, as if I was reading someone else’s story. It can be tidied up later. Better words can be carefully chosen some other time. I haven’t really reread it all from beginning to now, but I’m fairly certain it flows.

Not that it matters. This is about hitting a quota, of discipling yourself to sit down daily to do something, and, of course, to say at the end, “I have a big gloriously messy novel” and then say, “neener, neener” to anyone who asks to read it.

I mentioned to a few friends that I wouldn’t be comparing word counts; this project is for me, it’s not a competition. When I went to post my word count the first time on the official site, though, I wandered around a bit and looked, because I was curious. I didn’t want to beat myself up, I certainly didn’t want to gloat… I was just interested in seeing how others’ works were unfolding. Yesterday I discovered that three people claimed to have hit 50,000 words already, and that one actually claimed to have reached something like 999,999. In three days. Right. I went back this morning to check it out again, and found that the individual in question has been removed. Good to know the organisers thought it as unlikely as I did.

This leaves two people who have achieved their goal already, one of whom joined on November 3 itself. Which would mean s/he likely registered after she wrote the novel, because I checked late morning on the 3rd, and s/he’s in Virginia, so the pretext of a vastly different time zone can’t even be used. What gets me is that the word-count programs don’t go on-line until November 15th, so these counts and claims can’t be verified until then, which gives anyone claiming to be finished the morning they joined a two-week buffer to actually hit his or her count.

No, I don’t care. It doesn’t affect me. What bothers me is the idea that some people don’t care about the rules. I have no way of verifying if this person has a novel or not; s/he just might, and that would be great. If s/he doesn’t, then s/he’s just cheated him/herself.

Back to me, though.

I love writing, and I love being able to write. The two days I’ve sat down and written for three or four hours straight have been terrific. As Ceri says, I felt like a “real writer”. I feel like that already, though. I don’t need (another) novel, finished or in progress, to prove that to me.

However… this is the first novel I’ve written where I actually feel like I might be able to do something with it afterwards. I have a context imposed upon me from the outside, so I won’t be too sprawling. I feel more focused in my efforts. The Great Canadian Novel feels similar; I’m focused, not reaching out wildly on tangents, but I’m letting it unfold as it wills, too. I think the difference lies within the knowledge that there’s an ultimate word count goal, so I’m just letting the NaNo novel run on. I don’t really edit myself in the GCN, either, but there’s still a difference, and I can’t quite put my finger on it. The GCN is more complex, but I’m assuming that comes from the less-frantic approach. The GCN has time to breathe. I do write primarily for myself, but in the back of my mind I’ve been thinking about attempting publication sometime in the future; I just need a likely manuscript to sacrifice. The NaNo script will likely be that sacrifice, since the GCN is too precious. I’ll cut my teeth on the NaNo novel, and then we’ll see how things have gone before I go leaping into the publishing fray with the GCN. Publication is not validation, not by a long shot. If you have a finished novel, though, why not try? The worst they can say is “No”. (Which is plenty crushing for any author, thanks very much.)

I won’t be writing as much as I’d like to be today, because my fellow professor e-mailed me to remind me that I had volunteered to teach two-thirds of the class tonight. I had agreed do it last week, and then in the next seven days my free time sank spectacularly in Kingston television performances, rituals, teaching, NaNo writing, and crisis-handling. This leaves me today to finish reading two books and to prepare a seminar on them. In addition, with all this snow, I have a sneaky suspicion that my husband will be home by early afternoon. Now, if only I could work those books and seminar into the NaNoWriMo novel somehow…

Ups and Downs

Seeing the end of October creep up on me, and knowing that the last time I sat down to work on the Great Canadian Novel was about two and a half weeks ago, I threw some Tori Amos in the CD changer yesterday and sat down on the living room floor with my laptop. I wrote three pages and felt really good about myself. I’d stopped being as curious as I had been about my GCN world, and deliberately immersing myself in it again was good – it felt comfortable. I also felt a bit worried, what with NaNoWriMo looming. Having two novels on the go is a bit like having a new child and having to soothe the elder sibling: no, I still love you, I haven’t forgotten you, this new baby just needs so much attention…

Then I amazed myself by getting up and making a wonderful dinner that included baked chicken, and brussels sprouts done in cheese, onions, and lemon butter. (“What are these?” asks my husband. “Baby cabbages,” I answer, unconcerned, as I begin to eat. “Oh,” he says, munches on one, and begins to rave about it. “I didn’t expect you to like brussels sprouts so much,” I remark calmly, reaching for my water glass. He faltered for only an instant, brave man.) After dinner, he asked what he’d done to deserve a big dinner, and I told him that as of Friday, I wouldn’t be able to do things like this, so I thought I’d get one in before I sacrificed my life to NaNoWriMo.

Yesterday was pretty good. Then this morning…

Argh.

I spent two hours setting up Eudora as my mail program, importing my Outlook Express stuff, and generally fumbling around until I can at least use the ruddy thing. I have experience with Eudora; we used it at work once or twice a week to mail out newsletters and such, so it’s not like I’ve never seen it before. Still, I get as frustrated as the next busy human when I can’t grasp things immediately. I also went through a bunch of old e-mail to delete it from OE before I exported stuff to Eudora, simply to save room, and it always takes longer than I expect – click, scan, click to delete; rinse, repeat. Boring. Like housework. Tidy, polish, sweep, dust.

Gods, it’s all so exciting, I think I’ll have to take a break and go lie down.

Good Days

I had a fantastic day yesterday. That’s about it. Four hours of playing in the store, dinner with Ceri, a smash-bang-wow workshop, a request for a private workshop for a group on the South Shore, then drinks with friends.

On the way to the pub we stopped in at Renaud Bray and I picked up those inks, because I was paid for my full-time work last week and for last night’s workshop (private instruction is so much more lucrative than retail!) and I thought that I deserved a little treat for surviving the past two lean weeks. I now have those darling little oval pots of cuivre, marron, and spring green. Yay! We got home last night and the first thing I did was get out my dip pen, sit on the floor and make lines all over a sheet of blank parchment paper to see what it looked like. I’ll be paying Hydro off in full later today with a chunk of my earnings, but before that, the inks were a lovely little gift to myself. (Note to self: ink (both black and colour) for the printer would probably help too.)

Over dinner last night Ceri gave me her latest pages of creative effort, and for the first time since we began doing this exchange of writing in July, I had nothing to give her. I felt guilty when I left the flat yesterday morning, but then I told myself that I really didn’t have to feel that way since I had given her seventy-eight (!) pages of the Great Canadian Novel over the past three months. I did try to write earlier this week, honestly I did; but I opened the laptop, made a couple of corrections as I re-read the eleven pages of the latest section, and then stared at the screen for about twenty minutes. I’m stuck. Normally when I’m stuck, I jump to the next scene and then go back and fill in the necessary space with an event of some sort, but the next scene I had planned was Christmas shopping, and the characters were still only in mid-November with no way to get to early December. So when I shared that frustration with Ceri yesterday, she said, without missing a beat, “Make it snow,” which was absolutely brilliant and I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of it. Another of Ceri’s super-powers, by the way, is being a Muse for people. She gives them great ideas. She occasionally laments that alas, she doesn’t inspire herself in the same fashion, so I can only hope that our writing arrangement covers at least the deadline sort of inspiration that writers need. I did give her a nifty idea for her husband’s Hallowe’en costume, but I doubt it even comes close to repaying the Muse-debt that society has incurred to her.

I’m terribly looking forward to driving up to see my parents next weekend; I haven’t seen them since July, and we haven’t made the drive to Oakville in this new car yet. After its spectacular performance through New York and Pennsylvania, this five-hour spin should be a dream! Seven days to go!

Were You Always This Odd?

Found on Neil Gaiman’s blog (and why the hell haven’t I linked it before?): this question from a fan.

1. When you decided on becoming a Writer, did you have trouble on deciding what type of novels you were going to write, for example you thought that maybe you were a science fiction writer, or a modern fiction writer. Or have all of your stories always been dark and macabre?

Lovely.

Too Easy

I sat down between kitten-nursing yesterday and whipped off three pages of the Great Canadian Novel.

The ease with which I do this is beginning to worry me. (I know, I know – remove major sources of stress and I’ll instinctively create something new to obsess me.) How can I be writing something meaningful if I’m not trying?

Oh, wait – this is connected to the work-ethic thing that says, “If it doesn’t hurt, you’re not growing”, isn’t it? Always reminds me of that wonderful Calvin & Hobbes strip where Calvin’s pretending to be his dad and says, “Go to your room! Being miserable builds character!”

I do honestly worry sometimes, though, that because I don’t seem to be putting a lot of work into my writing, it’s useless. And yet, I’ll take this ease over the seven or so years of writer’s block I had, thanks very much. I’m not complaining that things are flowing, I’m just… concerned. Okay, yes, it’s a first draft (“This is your first draft?” Ceri says, looking up from my weekly sheets with big round eyes), and I can always “work” on it later, where I will no doubt cry and moan and tear my hair. (Y’know, just as an irritating aside, I used to get A minuses on the papers I used to write and hand in without rewriting. When I finally caught on to the idea of rewriting and improving a first draft, I still got A minuses.)

Stuff

I am officially sick. Right on time, too; I have an audition in four days. Nasty headache, sore throat, coughs and sneezes, the whole cold package. I’ve been feeling increasingly off all weekend, last night I slept horribly, and I’m cranky. So I’m in bed with my laptop, and when I’m done here I’ll curl up with A.S. Byatt’s Possession, the rest of my pot of peppermint tea, and furry hot water bottles that purr.

Well, well, well – Chretien is going to take Kyoto to Parliament. About bloody time. HRH will be pleased – that was going to be his next rant. Along with building a big air-proof dome over the Kyoto-scorning US, he was saying something about short-term sacrifice on the part of companies to ensure a long-term benefit of saving the planet.

I printed out the sixty-five pages of the story that I’ve been working on, and I read it all at one go last night. It’s rather gratifying to see that things flow. I even found some lovely unintentional foreshadowing and dramatic irony that was unplanned but which works quite nicely. For things like that to happen I have to be in the right headspace, and evidently I’m occupying it on a regular basis. There are snags, and I need to smooth things out here and there, substitute other words, but all in all, I like it.

I mentioned that I’m reading Possession again. In only three chapters an innumerable amount of references to thesis-related concepts that I didn’t find while I was doing it have leapt out at me. I must have been so focused on the particular angle I was after that I filtered out these other ideas, which is good for what I was doing at the time, of course. Now, though, it makes me want to write another paper. Hmm. Maybe the use of research and the character of History in Byatt’s work. Angels & Insects would be perfect for that, both the title novella and its focus on natural history, and its sibling novella about mediums and reaching into the spirit world for news of past family and lovers. So would Virgin in the Garden, which is all about staging a Renaissance-related drama.

Uh-oh. Do I sense another project coming on?

I have been taken with the whim of attempting to publish something; perhaps I’ll focus on an academic periodical and see what happens.