Found Objects

A while ago some people on the rec.arts.sf.composition newsgroup tossed the idea around to have a dedicated IRC channel where people could drop in and out to talk about writing (and, as writers do, about cats, chocolate, and just about anything else), to shout out wordcounts without littering the newsgroup, and to ask “what’s that word again?” in someone’s general direction and get an answer immediately so it doesn’t stop the flow.

This disappeared into the general Usenet nowhere for a while, until it came up again just when I happened to have time, so I went and set it up. It’s been up for two weeks now and it’s started working as intended. People drop in and out and talk about anything that happens to be relevant or interesting (though, at the moment, very much about bread-baking; the other hardcore baker and I have already got two other people to take it up), shout out wordcounts, ask for words and toss around plot ideas.

Some people feared that the IRC channel would take the interesting discussion out of the newsgroup, but that seems not to be happening: the chat is mostly social and practical, immediate, whereas the more thoughtful discussion is still in the newsgroup, and even comes back to the newsgroup from the channel (“that’s a good idea, shall I post it or do you want to?”)

It’s not exclusive, though it’s ex-directory: if you don’t do Usenet, but read this and think you’ll fit in with a loose group of …er… idiosyncratic writers, don’t hesitate to drop in. It’s #rasfc on irc.freenode.net, and if you mention my name (I’m irina_r there) someone will know where you’re coming from.

The kids are away at camp, the house is full of hackers hacking away (Boudewijn is hosting the Krita Hackathon) so it ought to be easy to make some writing progress.

Erm, no. It flows like treacle; very sticky.

Probably because this is one of those awkward scenes that don’t write themselves and can’t be glossed over to fix in the second draft. It’s a court case, and I simply don’t know enough to let that write itself, I have to pay attention to every detail. I’m tempted, and about to give in to the temptation, to have the accused (the about-to-be king and his consort) simply split and leave everything dangling. They’re that kind of people.

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Finally done a real round of marketing-type stuff. It doesn’t make me not want to be a writer —any job has its no-fun parts— but it’s the least fun part of the job, until now.

Three serious email queries, one of which got rejected in 20 hours (!): probably boilerplate, but friendly and encouraging boilerplate along the lines of “this is not the kind of thing I’m handling right now, it’s no reflection on the quality of your work, you should definitely seek other representation”. Pity, because this was the agent I liked best from his web site; when I have something else that’s finished enough, I’ll see if it’s the kind of thing he’s handling then.

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If —I’ll be optimistic: when— an editor buys my book and gives me an advance, I’m going to buy a new bicycle. A new new bicycle, not just another second-hand rattletrap only slightly newer than my current rattletrap. This one. Or this one. Unfortunately they don’t have them in green. But I’ll settle for red or purple or grey as long as it’s the right shape for my proportions and the lights work when I want them to work. Well, I did get the light of the old grey mare bike fixed, and the chain oiled and tightened, but it’s still a rattletrap.

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Last week the story of King Vegelin (well, currently Prince Valain) sprouted wings and a propeller and soared away. I was averaging easily 800 words a day. Then the family flu came and took me by the scruff of the neck.

Two days of nothing, one day with exactly one sentence, one day when I was proud of 151 words, and today seems to be reasonable (though I still have an annoying cough and random fits of sneezing): 370 words until now and I’ll see what comes of it. But I know where the story is going now. I’ve killed a good guy and a bad guy, and slightly redeemed a bad girl, and set up the prince as a Really Good Guy. At least that’s something.

Eric Jarvis wrote in rec.arts.sf.composition on January 24:

(aargh! I hate Google Groups, and I especially hate the new beta interface)

If anyone is up for a challenging exercise I’ve got an idea. Short shorts, 500 words or so. ALL the events portrayed must take place within five minutes.

So this is what I did. It’s exactly 500 words and I wrote it on my birthday. Yes, Dorothy, I know that posting it in the public domain means that I can never submit it anywhere; but it’s my birthday present and it’s not for submitting.

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Yesterday I finished transferring the blue-fluorescent-marker edit to electrons. Terms of Service is now officially finished. For the second time: this is the revised version, still innocent of slush piles.

Now for the synopsis. That word has an epithet when I think it that I won’t write in public, because that’s one skill I don’t have (didn’t have it in high school either). Boudewijn wrote the synopsis for the previous version, and what I’m trying to do now is to make it match the new one without showing the stitches. It’s slightly easier than it sounds, because most changes are cosmetic (though I did fix a continuity error or two, zapped a complete subplot and played down a little subplot that had never really come to fruition), but it’s still, well, The Very Hot Place.

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Two thousand words into the thing about Vegelin the Great and I already have a conspiracy. Of the good guys, no less. They’ve just made a bad mistake, but then they don’t know what I know: that the prince they suspect of —well— not being entirely fit to rule is already, at fifteen, planning to kill his mother, Queen Mialle, and rule before his time.

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Revising what is now tentatively called A Voice from the North, the Frozen North thing, it suddenly came to me how to cut thirty thousand words out of Terms of Service and make it better.

I didn’t quite manage thirty thousand (in fact just under ten thousand), because even when I wrote the then-final draft of Terms of Service my style was almost as spare as I want it to be. I like writing lean; the moment it becomes florid under my hands I know I’m doing something wrong.

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Not one but two first readers sent me rave reviews of what I can now reasonably call my second novel. My almost-finished second novel, that is. A handful of other people are still reading it, so my joy may yet be stamped out, but when I fixed a typo that someone had alerted me to I started reading right there, in the middle, and read on to the end (when I ought to have been in bed), and there was some really good writing there.

The advantage of sending something out to readers and waiting for comments is, of course, that I can keep myself from looking at it for a few weeks without guilt. If I’d decided not to look at it without having something to wait for I’d have felt uneasy about it, and perhaps opened the file and worried at it every once in a while, and Little Voice saying “it sucks! It all sucks! Tee hee!” wouldn’t have shut up.

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Disclaimer: I haven’t suddenly developed a case of multiple personality. This is fiction, okay?

There’s the Muse, of course. She’s usually about eleven, slight and red-haired, likely to lean over my shoulder and say “Well? What now? Come on, write it!” At least she used to be likely to do that. Lately she’s gone into an adolescent sulk. She probably misses Mary Gentle’s muse, who she went to the beach with last summer. I’ve been very stuck as a result of that (or perhaps as a result of various Real Life-type things). If she doesn’t come out soon, I’ll kick her; but it looks as if she’s rallying a bit, so I’ll give her until Saturday.

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I’ve run out of story in the main story at eighty-something thousand. Part of it isn’t really the main story, so I think it’s about seventy thousand all told.

Jilan has killed Lyan, though he doesn’t find out until later: he thinks he’s only knocked him out. I don’t want an interminable Beethoven ending complete with the Scouring of Ildis. I wrote some of the Beethoven stuff anyway, because I want it to exist in order to zap it in the revision. It also needs to exist as background and characterisation, of course.

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Jilan, my much put-upon protagonist, got this to eat and drink while in the dungeon. Until it dawned on me that “water en brood” is the Dutch way to say “bread and water”. I’d already thrown the paragraph at the iwrislomo mailing list as the day’s sample:

If I was the king’s enemy and I’d caught the king, I’d either kill him or try to use him, not keep him in the cellar on water and bread and thin cabbage soup.

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My British ispell insists on putting the ‘o’ in.

After an excess of Real Life (which Boudewijn already wrote about, so I don’t have to) I was so stuck that I started revising from the beginning, making the existing text conform to the plot in my head. On the 23rd of May, a Sunday, I came to the end of Chapter 23 late at night, then did one more chapter before going to bed, one more, one more… until I closed Chapter 43 and ran out of chapters.

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I’ve been stuck. I’ve been very stuck. Two days of zero words, a couple of days of a hundred and something, and then I wrote pure drivel for a few days merely to produce wordage and have something to fill in on the spreadsheet.

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