Hope… and inspiration :)
One of my favorite urban fantasy authors is (the husband and wife team writing as) Ilona Andrews, as anyone who reads this blog regularly already knows. 
So, today I was reading the blog post linked above, where she mentions a $0.99 e-book called Blood Wager. Her comment was that it’s not necessarily as polished as a traditionally published book might need to be, but that the story and voice pulled her in such that she stayed up til 2 in the morning finishing it.
I figured “hey, why not?” and downloaded a free sample… and then bought the e-book, noting as I did so that there were another four (!) books in the series out – which I will most likely be buying as I read through. 
The writing really is less polished than I am used to in the trad-published books that are most of what I read, but not so much that it’s getting in the way of me enjoying the story, and I really am enjoying the story! Actually, I think she could easily have split this first novel into two, but I’m not going to complain about getting more bang for my buck!
It also makes me feel better about my ambition to write fiction for a living – I *can* write this well, I think. And I’ll keep getting better, as I’m sure she has over the course of these five novels. I’m also pondering the idea of series again… and I was already thinking about my Ilsa stories, partly because I know they’re some of Brian’s favorites, and partly because my friend Gosia was mentioning them this weekend. And partly because I’ve always wanted to do more with that world, and those characters…
I think Ilsa and Vekev could sustain a pretty lively series, as they travel, discover, and face new challenges. I think I could enjoy writing with them for a long time too.
I have a new novel idea, which I really really liked and started planning… and then started not wanting to write yet, possibly because I’ve planned it too much. So I think I’m going to try something new – having two active projects at once, and just working on whichever catches my fancy the most when it’s time to sit down and write.
Hopefully it’ll still be a fun ride. 
Identity…
My main NaNoWriMo character, who was made using a technique that copies a person’s memories as well as their genetics, has finally met another instance of herself, one who thinks that all the recordings another copy could have been made from were destroyed.
She’s having a hard time convincing herself that she’s not just a well-coached clone, sent to spy for the company she’s on the run from.
I’ve been wracking my brain, trying to come up with the sort of inconsequential memory that she never would have mentioned to a coworker or a therapist, but that’s distinctive enough that she would A: remember it, and B: not be able to make it up if she didn’t really have those memories.
It’s an interesting process, especially since my own memories of inconsequential things are generally pretty fuzzy.
Any suggestions?
Guilt…
The cat was staring reproachfully at me a minute ago. Now, she’s sitting with her back to me.
Every time I get up, she moves with me and stares hopefully, and pointedly, at her food bowl.
But if I feed her at 5am, or 6am, then she’ll get used to being fed then, and think nothing of trying to wake me up to feed her at 4am, or 3am. I know, she’s done it before, which is *why* I don’t feed her until 7 at the earliest, no matter how much earlier than that I get up.
She uses these silent methods because she knows I know what she’s saying, and she also knows that I don’t like her yelling at me – because that’s when I pick her up and rub water into the fur on her head.
As effective as our communication is, though, it doesn’t stretch to saying “I’ll feed you in an hour, so chill out.”
Not necessarily because she has no concept of time, but because our ways of dealing with time are so different that we haven’t found a way to bridge that conceptual gap yet.
How much more difficult would it be to learn to communicate with an entirely alien intelligence, one from a different evolutionary lineage, a different environment, maybe made up of different chemicals, with different basic needs and urges…
The idea of a universal translator in science fiction is a nice narrative shortcut, but I think part of why it exists is that the stories are communicated in words, and so very, very little of communication between species is verbal, let alone word-based.
I think if we really did encounter a non-terrestrial intelligence, it would take a long time to even recognize it, let alone communicate with it. And, like with the cat I’ve spent fifteen years learning to communicate this much with, I think it would take an immersive level of exposure to them in order to learn to talk. Living with them, every day, for years, or maybe even generations.
Hmm…
Stages
I’m finding that it’s really difficult to get up early for the planning stage of a novel. Sleeping til 6:30 the past couple of days feels great, though, so I think I’m just going to accept it and take the rest of October off from my morning writing – a vacation to store up energy for NaNoWriMo – and do my planning during the day instead.
Planning’s very different from the other stages of writing for me, since it’s pretty much a matter of daydreaming scenes that catch my interest and then asking questions and waiting for some sort of answer to pop up in my mind. Eventually, I’ll have enough bits and pieces that I can play a game of connect the dots and start filling in the details with draft 0.
The nice thing about planning is that I can do it while I’m doing other things, as long as I take note of ideas as they pop up. So my planning work at lunch is really just note-taking for the planning that’s been going on in the background all day.
All of which kind of boils down to me making excuses for sleeping late.
Done!
Well, this stage is done, anyway.
I’ve finished the rewrite of my spring novel, now titled Puppet Strings, and sent it out to friends for comments.
Now I have about a week to plan before the start of NaNoWriMo.
After I get comments back from a few people, I’ll need to plan out final revisions, do them, then another polishing pass.
I might see about paying for someone to copyedit it, and I’m definitely going to see about having someone else make up a good cover. Covers just aren’t where my strengths lie – I have ideas of what it could look like, but I’m not really able to get those images in my head onto paper. (or pixels, as the case happens to be)
Then, eventually, I’ll put it up for sale as an ebook, while I work on getting the next one up to snuff.
Happy Monday everyone. Here’s hoping our weeks go well!
Blah
No writing this morning – I went back to bed. I may have to make wednesday an official day off, just because I’m so consistently exhausted the day after yoga.
On another note, though, I had an interesting realization last night. Working at Circles was a key factor in a lot of the personal growth that I am happy about.
It was working as a researcher there that I learned, really, solidly *knew* that you could find anything if you looked hard enough.
It was there, practicing my research skills on personal interests even when there was downtime, that I found Holly Lisle’s website (see the sidebar), with its wealth of in-depth guidance not just on writing, but on building a writing career.
Another thing I learned, though I still have trouble internalizing it, is that you generally don’t have to take no for an answer. You might not get the *exact* yes that you’re looking for, but you can generally get close if you refuse to give up. I learned that from our customers, who were used to getting what they wanted – not just through money, but by refusing to give up (or to let their concierge service give up) once all the obvious avenues were exhausted.
The customers who were inflexible, who wanted only the exact option they wanted, were the only ones who I couldn’t necessarily help. But the ones who were flexible often got exactly what they wanted by coming at it from another direction, and sometimes wound up with something they liked even better!
Without that training in persistence, I don’t think I would have believed in the end result enough to embark on this writing journey. So today, I think thankful thoughts of all the customers who insisted that I always keep trying.
What experiences have you come to see in a new light as time goes on?
Writing vs. Revising
I find it interesting, and always a little surprising, just how different different types of writing feel.
You know how different sorts of tasks feel like you’re using different parts of your brain? I mostly notice it in the transitions, like switching from doing math problems to essays, to paying attention to a lecture.
Or, in the workplace, switching from data entry, to composing a tactful email, to talking on the phone.
Even in games, sudoku feels different from doing a crossword, and both are very different from playing a first-person shooter game like Halo.
Writing and revising are like that, and so is planning a story.
In some ways, I think revising is the easiest, since you already have the text and know what happens, you’re just tweaking the words to express everything more clearly. On the other hand, it’s also a very analytic, systematic process. It’s where my internal editor gets to come out and play.
Planning a story for me is almost entirely free-form, pure imagination. I stare off into space and invite my mind to daydream, to envision scenes and play with dialog and natter on about whatever silliness amuses it, until I have enough bits and pieces to start shaping into an interesting narrative.
Writing draft-zero material, on the other hand, requires turning that internal editor off and embracing imagination, but also channeling that imagination in a linear fashion, delving into the details and the spaces in between instead of just jumping from fun shiny image to fun shiny image. It’s a sort of marriage of discipline and recklessness that actually feels a little scary when I’m switching over to it from the other sorts of work.
It’s so much fun, though.
What about you guys? Can you feel your brain changing gears when you have to do something different? Are there activities or tasks that you find intimidating to start, but fun once you get going?
Reading vs. Writing
I woke up late this morning (Yay, weekend!) and lazed in bed for a bit before getting up. Inevitably, my mind turned to the book I’m reading, Mockingjay, and I spent a lovely half hour half-dreaming, half-remembering and speculating about what has happened/will happen in the book.
I wasn’t sure until I started the laptop up whether I would write or read first this morning, though I did remind myself that if I want to eventually make a living writing, I need to make it an actual priority!
So I will work on my novel this morning, and *then* read, and hopefully finish the book sometime today. I think part of the difficulty is that I’ve been a reader so much longer than I’ve been a writer.
My usual approach to an enjoyable novel is to consume it in huge gulps, in as close to one sitting as possible. It has to grab me first, but once it has, I’ll read every waking moment I can fit in – while cooking, while going to the bathroom, while walking from one room to another, on lunch break at work, and staying up late until my eyes won’t focus on one more word, no matter what I need to do in the morning.
About the only things that break into the book-obsession are work and sleep. (And car rides, since reading in the car makes me sick.)
So it’s been a challenge this week (I started Hunger Games over a week ago.) to keep going to bed on time, keep getting up at 5 and writing. That would have been a challenge anyway, especially with how I was exhausted for a couple of days after yoga on Tuesday.
But it was extra challenging because I knew that writing time could easily be reading time!
I’m fairly pleased with how I did, considering how I could have done. I only took one full day off from writing – Wednesday, when I went back to bed and didn’t have time to write in the morning, and chose to read all night because I felt a sincere need to recharge.
I still fit in every moment I could reading, but I kept my 5:30am to 6:30am time sacred to writing at least. Now I just have to keep that up, and expand upon it!
In some ways, I’ll be relieved to finish Mockingjay this weekend – to have the story inside me for easy access and replay of favorite moments rather than having bits still unknown and plaguing me to discover them ASAP!
It’ll still be on my mind for weeks to come, of course, but in a milder, easier to put aside while writing way.
Anyway, time for me to write, before we go over to the Southington Apple Harvest Festival. What are you guys up to this weekend?
Tired…
It’s only Tuesday but I’m exhausted… but I’m also up, and getting ready to spend an hour writing.
Last night, I tried out something new – I skipped the gym in order to clean up the library enough to write in here, and then wrote from 6pm to 7:45. I was going to write til 8, but the kitty got too strident about wanting. Food. NOW!!! Then I made supper for us too.
I’m going to see if I can do this regularly. Not on yoga nights, when we don’t get home til 8 or 8:30 anyway, but on other nights I can go to the gym for a bit, be home by 6, write til 8 and then make supper. Then I’ll have until bedtime to hang out with Brian, read, watch TV, etc.
Last night went well, but the first day of a plan like this is always the easiest. We’ll see if I manage to keep it up!
Brian helped me to find a more positive mindset about it all. I had started out thinking of it as committing to writing as essentially a part time job, and sacrificing the extra time, but he suggested that I think of it as a sort of continuing education, like getting a master’s degree or a certification, and to think of the time as invested rather than sacrificed.
I like it. I *am* investing the time, just like when my Mom got her master’s degree when I was in high school. She had to invest a lot of time in it, and my brother and I took turns making supper on her school nights, but it helped her to pursue a career that she loves.
Hopefully that thought will help me to keep on track.
Speaking of which, it’s time for me to go write. Have a great day!
Writing Momentum
Sometimes it’s really hard to get started writing. Yesterday, for instance, I signed off here with every intention of immediately writing for a couple of hours.
Instead, I stared at the screen for a few minutes and then gave up and read for a while. It wasn’t until after supper and a couple of episodes of Castle that I actually buckled down to start writing.
Then it was hard to stop… I was on a roll and wanted to keep going, so I wound up going to bed about 30-60 minutes later than I had really intended to.
The effect is even more noticeable on longer time-scales. If it’s been a few days since I’ve written, it’s extra hard to even sit down to write, but if I’ve been writing every day, especially if I’ve been writing at the same time every day, then it’s pretty easy to just sit down to it with no questioning or debate.
It appears that a writing project in motion tends to stay in motion unless acted upon by an outside force (like the need to go to work, errands, or bed), while a writing project that is stalled tends to stay that way as well, unless acted upon by a determined writer.
Anyway, it’s just about 5:30, so it’s time for me to go write.
Here’s hoping we all have a great day!
© 2010 Catherine Wechsler, used with permission.
