Category Archives: Writing

On Recent Writing

I’ve written some little dribs and drabs longhand over the past fortnight, bits of dialogue and scenes that don’t belong anywhere yet. It’s August and I’m engaging in the August Writing project as usual, where one writes every day. I missed a few days last week; for once, I’m not stressing about it or trying to write extra things to ‘catch up’. The Wings & Ashes novelette has submerged back into my subconscious to mellow some more; I can’t get into one of the key characters yet, and it’s understandably blocking things as she’s one half of the romantic pairing of protagonists and central to the story.

Yesterday, I sat down and plotted out the entire last half of Swan Sister, creating and writing out the key scenes in point form on index cards and ordering them in such a way that they made sense as a story. I now have the future of the rest of the book sitting on my desk by my pencil cup, existing as a quarter-inch stack of pink, green, and white cardstock and fountain pen ink bound together by a small green bulldog clip. Each index card is akin to a writing prompt. Now I know where to go; now it can be written. When I’m ready, of course. And the writing prompt doesn’t guarantee that the scene or scene sequences outlined on the card will be easy to write, or quick.

So yes, I am writing. I’m really enjoying the permission I have given myself to not write at the computer this month. I write for a living and I work at the computer; writing longhand somewhere else is a change I need. It’s more relaxing, less fraught with getting it right (write?), and a different method of creating. And allowing myself the permission to not transcribe and post it to the writing community (thereby removing a deadline of sorts) frees me up to create something less polished as well.

The August Writing project is about giving most people a structure to get them writing again. For me, it’s about removing the customary structure so I can write. Sometimes, as Bodhifox said last week, you just have to change the rules, to perform some sleight of hand in order to slip past the obstacles in your own psyche.

A Lovely Way to Begin the Week

I have just discovered that all three of my books have gone into second printings at some point or another.

I knew that the Wicca book had a second printing six months after it was published. I expected the spellcraft book to reprint at some point because it sells well, but I had no idea when it might because it had the largest print run of the three. The green witch book had the smallest print run as it was a more specialized title, and to be honest I wasn’t expecting it to reprint for a while.

Well, today I got the total sales-to-date figures for all three of them, and as sales of the spellcraft and green witch books outnumber the size of the original print runs, they must perforce have reprinted. In fact, all of them seem to have sold an average of one and a half times their original print run so far. That’s within two years for the spellcraft and Wicca books, and within one year for the green witch book.

I have a backlist that sells, and sells steadily! I am doing the bookgeek dance of joy!

That Writing Thing

Last week I found myself writing down interesting words that I came across in order to spur writing at a future date, ending up with a page of completely unrelated but fascinating and mysterious words. This was generally as close to writing as I got. One of those days I wrote a new paragraph in Wings & Ashes, the story I’ve been trying to work out this month. Then we were visiting family for four days, and I never get writing done there.

Today, however, upon hearing some news, I found myself handwriting a 700-word scene. Like W&A I’m not going to transcribe it to computer immediately, and if I did I wouldn’t share it because it’s very triggery for people with/who have family members with fatal illnesses. It’s just a scene to tuck away somewhere. The last page needs reworking because I said the same thing three different ways — basically because the narrator needs to work it out and restate it three different ways in order to understand it, but still, what’s sauce for the character is not necessarily sauce for the reader.

Am writing. Go me. (Cautiously, of course, because one mustn’t scare the idea pigeons away.)

Also done today: laundry, sweeping, finishing Jasper Fforde’s latest, First Among Sequels (O how I love Fforde with much love!), and picking up that parcel (two of the four used books in it are slim and I have basically already gone through them as they are NF/reference-type books that I now may never read again, sigh). Huh. When I write it all out it sounds more impressive.

Daily Meh

Despite the fact that we’re away this weekend, I did a huge grocery order this morning. We do need to eat before we leave, and there’s nothing worse than coming home to an empty fridge and pantry. A hundred dollars goes way, way too depressingly fast in the supermarket. And the cheque for the urgent work I did in July did not arrive today, which is disappointing because HRH gets paid after we come back. The credit line is my fridge’s friend.

However, the price of gas here just dipped under a dollar per litre, so that’s good news.

I’ve been beating my head against this story I’m working on, and against pretty much everything in progress. None of my writing interests me and hasn’t for a while now, which is bad. And the last thing I need to do is start something new, which just perpetuates and/or exacerbates the problem. Not that there’s anything new knocking at my brain. I feel so disconnected from the creative process these days. All the tricks I recommend to people because they generally work — free writing, working on character sketches in various ways and so forth — do nothing for me and never have, mostly because I can’t shake the feeling that they’re a waste of the time and energy I could be using to do Real Work. Not that any Real Work is being done these days, or that this stupid perception is true, but that doesn’t change my inability to work with those kind of exercises. I just can’t get excited about my work.

It’s a slump. It will pass, eventually. When? I have no idea. In the meantime I’ll keep trying.

Weekend Roundup

This is what happens when I am not online for any more than two brief moments for four days running: I sum things up in a very long post.

The boy stayed home with me yesterday because he had the developings of a nasty chest cold. He was fine other than the occasional chesty cough that didn’t disturb his nap or sleep, so we dosed him with Triaminic and it was pretty much gone by this morning. We had a great day together, though, especially since it stormed all morning and HRH came home.

We had another terrific weekend, with lots of family involved. The weather was beautiful, sunny and not humid at all. We took advantage of it by driving out to Finnegan’s Market in Hudson on the Saturday morning, and going to the Highland Games on Sunday. At both we met the Preston–Leblancs (the former unplanned, the latter a-purpose!), and Liam was in absolute heaven spending time with his godsister, whom he adores with every fibre of his being. At the market he asked if he could get out of the stroller and hold her hand, and after ascertaining if this was all right with her we set him free. He calls holding hands “pulling so-and-so’s hand”, and he’s not far off because when he moves he runs and ends up literally pulling the hand of whomever he’s walking with. The two of them trotted around the market together looking at various things, and she was wonderful with him, reminding him not to touch certain things and keeping him within certain boundaries. He was heartbroken when it was time for her to go home, and his tears upset her so much that she asked to pat his back to help make him feel better. When he saw her at the Highland Games the next morning he was thrilled and they got to run around together again, the boy heading around the track with great determination and a huge grin as he gripped her capable five-year-old hand. She introduced him to the concept of inflatable playgrounds and bounced around with him to his incredulous delight (“Liam bouncy-bouncy!” he chortled over and over). He clapped and danced like a mad thing to the pipers practising near one of our shady sit-down spots, was very impressed by the snare drummers, didn’t jump at all this year when the cannon went off to open the games (“Big BIG bang!” he informed the people around us, however), applauded the massed bands a lot, and entertained the masses by dancing madly to Kitchen Party as they did a sound check and warm up in the beer tent. He really is the best kind of audience: not only did he dance with great vigour and glee, he applauded every time they stopped (which was frequent, as it was sound check after all). Now that I’ve found the Bramble House I don’t need to stock up on the UK candy and foods available for sale at the games, and since I can’t wear silver any more except for short periods of time there’s no point in looking at the jewellery either, so the only stall I look for among the vendors is the one that sells meat pies. And as we were there so early this year they actually still had them in stock and there was no lineup, so I finally got to eat one! It was tempting to buy extra and freeze them, but we really didn’t have the money to do it.

This is the second and last time he wore the tiny kilt my maternal grandfather brought back for me from Edinburgh when I was a baby; it was a just-fit this year and will be too small for him this time next year. (I am assuming this based on the insane rate at which he grows. We may all yet be surprised, I suppose.)

This year we went early in the morning and ended our visit with the massed bands, which was an excellent plan and we’ll do it again next year. It avoids the really hot part of the day and the crowds that accumulate later. Usually we begin our day with the massed bands at the opening ceremony around noon, but with Liam’s strict nap schedule that wasn’t feasible this year. Even holding out till the opening ceremonies at twelve-thirty was pushing it, but he had enough to keep him distracted and busy (see above re. the dancing in the beer tent!). He fell asleep in the car on the way home around one-thirty and we transferred him to bed without mishap. After he woke up we headed out to see the local grandparents who had just returned from a two-week trip to Cape Breton (“Presents!” exclaimed the boy upon seeing the gifts awaiting us, although he was much more interested in the Mega Bloks crane than the scotch and the stained glass and the pretty little earrings we got). We were fed delicious steaks and salads and sent home with leftovers.

After Liam’s nap on Saturday afternoon we went out and picked up Eva at the music store (“Music store?” said Liam, perking up as he remembered the trip two days earlier. “Pulling Mama’s hand to the music store?”). She has lovely new flatwound strings (thirty-four dollars; I laughed and laughed and laughed), a strap (finally! — although I have to cinch it as small as possible), and a basic gig bag with lots of pocketses (also thirty-four dollars, at which price I also giggled madly, because this stuff is blessedly cheap compared to my cello outfitting). I also have two picks with which to experiment. I didn’t go into the whole suggestion of alternate tuning right off the bat, because over the past couple of weeks as I play it I’ve realized that the basic tuning enables certain playing patterns, which while irritating to stretch and shift and play on the cello are in fact stunningly easy to play on the bass. There has been a lot of “Ohhhhhh, I get it” happening as I work through chord sequences.

I’ve been sleeping better (all hail herbal insomnia pills!), but I’m still struggling with what feels like unfounded frustration and the occasional shimmering rage that pops up with no discernible trigger. This disturbs me, particularly since I’m extremely not prone to rage, and I’ve been trying to work it all out. The sleep and lovely weekend helped, but I’m feeling cautious, and really, there’s nothing that puts a damper on relaxing or just trying to do everyday stuff like feeling as if you’re being stalked by something like rage. I’ve been feeling uninspired by the August Writing project and have been writing a few sentences longhand here and there, but it feels mechanical and I don’t like not enjoying writing. I think what I need is a vacation, a real one, not just driving out of town to see family for a few days, because while that is enjoyable it is not relaxing. The problem with any vacation is, as t! pointed out to me once, you don’t get away from yourself, which is part of my problem I think.

I did get to bill for both projects I worked on in July, which was very pleasant and will no doubt go far towards alleviating some of the frustration (because finances are always frustrating, particularly when one has friends complaining about not being happy with things we would love to have and can’t). I’m hoping the first arrives before we leave for Toronto this weekend.

August Eve

I’ve been cleaning up and sorting files and posts and things today. It’s Lughnassadh this week and I do a thorough backup of my system every sabbat, so that will happen later too.

It’s the last day of July, which means that tomorrow is the first day of August! If you haven’t signed up for the August Writing project yet, you still have time. For once I’m not actively engaged in contract writing, so I won’t be scrambling to try to fit not-work-writing into the schedule as I have done in previous years, breaking my brain and any chance of relaxation I had thereby. Last year I wrote a series of fairy tale-based poetry for half the month before things got too crazy. I had no idea what to write this summer, until as I was cleaning out files I found an idea fragment I’d typed out quickly and forgotten. It’s literally six words and a question mark. I think I’ll give it a try, which means sitting down later today and sketching out a schedule and breaking the writing down into thirty-ish parts, because I’d like to actually write the whole thing during the month for the sake of balance and completeness. It won’t be long, only a few thousand words, so that won’t be an issue. I just want to see if the idea will work.

Sigh…

Just sent in the first part of the project, and I’m all wibbly because I don’t think it’s as reduced as they hoped it would be. The problem is these characters talk to one another a lot — the dialogue is kind of the point of playing, as in many social simulation games. It’s been incredibly difficult to rewrite the dialogue so that it says the same thing in fewer words, while keeping the age of the characters and the age of the audience in mind. I effectively lost the last two days of work too, because there was a miscommunication between us and I’d been cutting out entire useless scenes, only to discover two days later that everything had to remain intact: there had to be the exact same number of lines in the final product. So Friday, yesterday, and today were spent restoring and rewriting those deleted scenes to use the fewest possible words.

Argh.

If I could have deleted scenes that don’t affect the action, I could have reduced the script by a fifth! They would have loved it!

Now I shall mope until I hear back from the client. And maybe eat lunch, as I’ve been working since five this morning to meet this deadline, with only a pancake and a cup of tea to keep me going.

[LATER: Yup. They’re disappointed. My hands are tied! Tell me I can delete entire lines — nay, entire unnecessary scenes! — and it will work!]

Excellent ritual last night, lovely and grounding and introspective (which is what we all needed). It ended up coming to me remarkably easily in plenty of time, thank goodness. An excellent meeting all in all, actually. I’m excited about studying something again, which is nice. It’s draining to constantly provide something for others to do, and for everyone’s good intentions about holding workshops or presenting research it rarely seems to actually happen. It’s a relief to have a topic to cover the next few months’ worth of meetings, and a topic I can learn about too.