Category Archives: Writing

Huzzah, w00t, And Also Yay!

I sold my book! The hearth magic book has been accepted! They want to massage the title, but that always happens.

Details of the offer are being discussed. So technically I haven’t really sold it yet, as we still have to work out the offer and my counteroffer… but essentially, yes.

Let the (conditional) rejoicing begin!

(Also, I just realised that this will be book number five. Yikes.)

Not As Bad As All That

Lovely words to read when you open your e-mail client first thing in the morning: ‘Thanks for turning in a flawless proposal as always’. And she likes the new direction! It’s going right to the publishing board in two weeks, with no revisions.

*pats self on the back*

They’re doing the photo shoot for the cover of the pregnancy book today, too. I’m very excited to see the mock-ups for it when they eventually get to me.

I had to turn the heater on in my office when I got home from dropping the boy off at the caregiver’s house. Nights are flirting dangerously with the zero mark.

Orchestra last night was not the train wreck I expected it to be. Somewhere along the line I got good at this cello thing. Practising twice this past week may have helped too. (Wonders may never cease.) There’s lots of nice singing cello lines and only a few really tricky technical bits this time around. Or maybe I just think that because I did get better somehow. Whatever the reason, I’m not feeling over my head for once. Actually, I haven’t felt like that for a while, have I. Hmm.

I signed up for eMusic.com yesterday, following Curtana‘s lead. eMusic is full of great classical stuff, and I’m very happy with it so far. It’s already been invaluable: I downloaded a movement of the Weber clarinet concerto we’re playing with a young soloist at the upcoming concert, and said, “Oh, so that’s what we’re playing — I’ve heard that.” We’d tried to play it last week and it was such a mess that I couldn’t grab on to what the musical line was to identify it. It’s always harder to do it when you’re only hearing the accompaniment, because what’s missing is the melody itself. We really nailed the parts we played last night, though; proof that people practised, and also testament to the conductor’s clever choice of specific bits to practise instead of starting at the beginning.

I’m currently reading Stephanie Judy’s Making Music for the Joy of It, and I think it’s one of the reasons why I feel like practising more. Written for amateur musicians, it explores the drive to play music and the obstacles encountered (external and internal). It’s easy to read and it’s thought-provoking, too.

On today’s list of things to do: keep revising the complete YA book for submission. Also, taking Tylenol for the cold-associated headache. That would help.

Proposal Away!

The proposal was sent off at 4:24 PM. (And I just got a ping from my in-box — a note from my editor saying ‘yay, can’t wait to read it!’ That kind of thing goes far towards making a writer feel better.) I got it down from an extended thirteen pages to a tidy five by summarizing and collapsing detailed point-form chapter outlines. I still don’t think it properly reflects the book in my brain, but that’s all right, because the final product won’t either. And that’s okay, too, because the book the reader reads is never the book I wrote, since everyone brings something different to the book and takes something different away.

I am in full-fledged cold miserableness. Last week was the stomach-digestive system miserableness; it cleared up only to have me be felled by the cold. I am cold and achy and I can’t think straight. Meer, meer, meer.

And oh drat, it’s Wednesday, which means orchestra tonight, and I can’t hear and my fingers don’t move correctly, and thinking, what is thinking? I anticipate a not-so-enjoyable rehearsal.

Okay. Time to shut things down and go fetch the boy.

Pressing the Restart Button

Gentle readers, I know it’s the eleventh of the month and therefore the boy is twenty-eight months old, but I am very ill thanks to something I ate last night and it’s not going to happen today. I’m going to go back to bed, read research books, and draw arcane editing symbols all over a printout of my current book proposal with suggested rewrites in the margins. Watch for his monthly newsletter tomorrow instead.

Vivaldi Update

Today I wrote what is essentially the climax and resolution of the first draft of this young adult novel.

Total word count, Il Maestro e le Figlie di Coro: 53,903
New words today: 3,643

There is a full chapter of wrap-up to go, but the hard part is over. Then comes the rewriting of the uneven first draft and expanding of the basic story. I still have two pages of scenes outlined in note form to expand and insert somewhere in the first half of the book, and I know the timeline is a bit wonky season-wise and needs to be fixed. When it’s over it will be the right length. I have to keep reminding myself I cut five thousand words not long ago, too.

I had momentum on my side today, once I actually got this part going. I kept thinking ‘I should stop and work on that book proposal’ but another part of me would point out that if I stopped I’d just have to work up the momentum again another day. So here we are, and I’ve written what the entire book has been leading up to. It needs more emotional depth, perhaps more detail (although I risk going into territory too technical that may lose the reader if I do), but the basic structure is there, eleven months after I began it.

Mousme came over to write with me today again. I like it when she’s here; I actually sit down and write instead of messing about doing other things. She requested Haydn quartets as writing music and I remembered why I own so many CDs of them: I love the things. And when she left I took a bit of a break, then went back to writing (see above re: momentum).

Now I have to really change gears and get into the headspace for orchestra tonight. And I’ve just realised that because I was gone for four days over the holiday I haven’t practised at all, and there will only be three of us in the section tonight, which means I have to be extra on. Oops. I should put the CDs I have of the pieces we’re doing in the CD tray and listen to them.

behold, I am blanking on clever and/or descriptive titles

The alien child masquerading as Liam was replaced by the original model in the late afternoon yesterday, and all is all manner of well again. Thank you all for your sympathy. It was more bewildering than anything else: if the Terrible Twos fairy had visited, one would think sie would have bestowed a single fairy-gift rather than dumped the whole bag on top of the poor kid. All those actions are things he never does, so for him to do it all in the space of a few hours… wow. It was a rough day for him for some unfathomable reason. He woke from a nightmare around ten-thirty in tears, sobbing something about “Mama gone no say bye-bye”, so I cuddled him and told him I wasn’t leaving, we read a book together quietly, and he slipped back into bed cuddling his huge Thomas pillow as a treat. At least it wasn’t the “car coming, no stop, Dada gone” nightmare he had a couple of weeks ago while HRH was out gaming.

In other news, there is a crumb of cold comfort for those who are horrified by the massacred The Dark Is Rising film:

First it was The Dark Is Rising. Then The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising. Now it’s simply The Seeker.

Good thing, too. Maybe now people unfamiliar with the book won’t get the wrong idea altogether, or associate the film with the novel at all. We can hope.

Today I go back to researching and drafting that new proposal based on the original one from 2006. The book has changed so much in my brain that the original proposal seems almost cartoonish. Then this afternoon I’ll be doing a ruthless editing pass on one of my early YA books, because why on earth am I letting it sit on my hard drive when it’s finished and has gone through one serious edit already? I’ve got agents bookmarked to query, and I wanted it out making the rounds by the end of last year (of course, this was before I was contracted to write the pregnancy book, but still). This way, the Vivaldi novel becomes my enjoyable escape-from-work writing. You see? A fiendishly clever way to outwit the inner critic!

And… a proposal to co-teach an intensive workshop on designing ritual has just landed in my in-box! I am absolutely fascinated by the idea and am excited at the notion of co-teaching with this individual. Something to seriously consider. We’ll see if we can work something out.