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Phantoms

annabowling Leave a comment

Ichabod and Abbie get me on this one. I’m in a mood. It will pass. It already is. Getting into the swing of the day, taking a look at what needs to get done today, and in what order I would like to do it, all generally work together to turn things around. My mom was right; the more I do, the more I’ll want to do. Which is where things are going. Left foot, right foot, and all of that journey of a thousand miles stuff.

What got me in a mood wasn’t one thing, but a combination of things, and, as much as I’d like to say it was the state of the world, or something big like that, it wasn’t. Consider it another nibbled to death by ducks moment, and a good sign that I really do need to keep my head down and eyes on my own paper when I’m tempted to do otherwise. Not a good thing for us over-thinkers, but an occupational hazard. The minutiae don’t matter. What does matter was that I landed on the fact that I’m not where I’d hoped to be at this stage of the game, career-wise. Life happens. Life happened (egads, did it happen) and, as I have found out, does not have a reverse gear. There’s only forward from here.

Which is where the phantoms come into play. I don’t think the specifics matter here, either, and I’m not going to tie myself up trying to word things in exactly the right way (because, newsflash, there isn’t one.) Attempting to use something that isn’t there anymore, wanting to talk with someone who isn’t there anymore, adapting to the not-there-ness and finding out what goes there instead; again, not easy, and I doubt anybody actually picks that, but, as with anything else, the more exercise a muscle gets, the stronger it gets. The more ingrained a habit becomes, the easier it is to slip into autopilot, because a new pattern has formed, and we know what comes next and next and next.

The thing is, and this is not always entirely a bad thing, those in between times. Leaning on the right side of the staircase when going downstairs in a new house, for example, because, even though the railing is on the left side now, it was on the right side in the last house, and the pattern is that strong. I suspect part of this bent may be due to getting the old desktop back into play. Some of the files on that hard drive need to go away, whether to a jump drive or the trash bin may depend on the individual files, but there are phantoms there. Story things I tried that didn’t have it in them to go all the way, other things that are too strongly tied to times/places I don’t want to revisit, and yet too close to eliminate entirely. The phantoms don’t do much, exactly. More like lurk there, on the outskirts, cock their heads at what I’m doing here, disturbing their rest. Some of them may well wander back off into the mist at some point, and others will adapt, take on a new form and make tentative motions in my general direction.

If what I come away from all this rooting around in the bowels of electronics past is that I’m not where I wanted to be, then that’s a good thing. It points me in the direction of where I want to go. The destination hasn’t changed, and it can still be reached the same left foot, right foot, way. Some of those steps will, of necessity, be taken with figurative phantom limbs. Those will hurt, until they don’t. At some point, what’s new now will become how it’s always been. Set a course, stick to it, keep moving in that specific direction, and there will be a point of arrival. I’m learning.

This wasn’t meant to be such a meandery post, and I’m not intending it to be a mopey one, merely splashing about in the shallows, getting bearings and finding the lay of the land in this new season. What I wanted was to get to my magic seven hundred, because then I get to go play with my imaginary friends. Mission accomplished.

 

Closer to Fine

annabowling 2 Comments

To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.
~ Joseph Chilton Pierce

I have no idea what to write here. Seriously, nothing, but I have less than an hour before writing time begins, so I’m jumping in here, Hypercritical Gremlins muzzled, at least for the moment. If everything I write is going to be wrong, then, does it really matter what I put down? Nope. So anything’s good then. My blog, my rules. Which means, most likely, that I am going to free-form ramble here, until I reach my magic seven hundred words and can hit post.

Today’s workspace picture is kind of cheating, because I’m writing this entry on my laptop. Old desktop (her name is Dahlia) can’t keep up with this newfangled interweb, so she doesn’t do anything that involves talking to other computers. She has Word, though, and Word Pad, so she’s perfectly fine for story stuff, and, with her nice big screen, inspirational photos are much more visible than on a smaller screen, so point Dahlia. I can use my phone for Spotify, a floor lamp pilfered from the living room (and kind of in the middle of this one) for a light source and I am ready to roll. The chair situation is another makeshift arrangement, as it’s a folding camp chair with a squished-flat pillow for a cushion. Not ideal-ideal, but it has a cup holder, and that’s worth something.

Making do and keeping on seem to be a theme at the moment, so I’m going with it. Hopefully, this will turn into some coherent blogging. This past Saturday, our CRRWA meeting’s topic was self-publishing, which I found interesting and plan to find useful, but, right now, my job is to get my current manuscripts done. Head down, eyes on my own paper, left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot, until I reach my destination. It’s got to the point where I’m looking at things differently. I can’t do NaNo style word count goals. I can’t. One way ticket to paralysis right there, and I am not taking that trip one stinking more time. Nope, nope, nope.  Won’t do it, can’t make me.

What works instead is my usual method of jumping in and flailing about until, at some point that always surprises me, I’m not flailing anymore. I know what I’m doing. I look forward to spending time with Hero and Heroine, rather than agonizing over meeting a number or smashing my head against a brick wall, trying to make the voices in my head do what I want. They’d rather do what they want, thankyouverymuch, and the best way I can help them is to follow them around with pen and paper and write down what they do. Jabber about it with like-minded friends who can help me figure out the stuff that isn’t immediately obvious, and then write that down, too. Usually with pen and paper, and then I can transcribe into Scrivener or Word.

Do not ask me right now which one I prefer, because I don’t know. This time, last year, I was one hundred percent a Scrivener convert, but the last couple of days, working in Word has felt like sinking into a warm, relaxing bath. No bells, no whistles, only me and my imaginary friends, having a darned good time, each party bringing us that much closer to our goal of living Happily Ever After.

This morning, I woke to the sound of Skye’s zoomies, which almost always portend her use of her excretory system. I took care of feline output and input, made myself a cup of tea, and booted Dahlia, to see what I could accomplish before the day began in earnest. I’d forgotten how much I’d missed being able to do that, get up before the rest of the house, shut the door, turn on a light and…go. Rather nice, that, and satisfying, as well, to save, shut down, and walk away. Or stay, if I’m so inclined, and open a book at that very same desk, and visit someone else’s imagination for a while, rather than being rushed hither and yon, only able to scan a paragraph or two before my attention is needed and/or wanted elsewhere. I could get used to this.

If I had to describe my process right now in only two words, those two words would be, “in flux.” It’s a changey time, new things coming into play, old things rediscovered, both of them mushing together to make something that hasn’t been there before. I don’t always know what’s going on, but the process of curating what does and what does not, has turned out to be an extremely intuitive endeavor. Enough light for the next step is all that I need, as long as I keep on going.

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Typing With Wet Claws: Anty Unplugged Edition

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Hello, all. Skye here, for another Feline Friday. Before I talk about anything else, I have to talk about Anty’s writing (which is pretty much what I was going to talk about anyway,) but first things first.

It is now summertime, Anty’s least favorite season (and mine; you would understand if you had a built-in fur coat, like I do) and that makes her very crabby, but, fortunately, there is one thing Anty does like about summertime (apart from the increased social acceptability of having ice cream during the day.) She talked about that at Buried Under Romance. That post is here and it looks like this:

 

BUR

 

Saturday was a big day for Anty, because she also got to recap last weekend’s episode of Outlander, when Jamie and Claire get ready for war. Anty loves the grittier side of historical romance, and this episode had lots of it.  That post is here, and it looks like this:

 

OUTLANDER

In case you only read  my posts, Anty also shared a short piece of fiction from her personal vaults here, and listed fifteen writers who have influenced her, here.  She will go into more depth on some of those later, and she is still deciding about other items she has in her vault. I can make no promises, but I do think it is interesting to contrast earlier work with the current stuff and see what is the same and what is different.

One thing that is different this week (all right, two, but I am not sure if I am going to get to both of them, so let’s say one thing for now) is that Anty has been making a conscious effort to spend less time staring at screens. This may seem counterintuitive for a writer, but it is something that has been on Anty’s mind ever since she went to the people vet last month. The people vet gave Anty a paper to fill out so that they could know how to help her the best. Since Anty could not see right then, she had Mama fill it out for her. One of those questions was how many hours a day Anty looked at a computer screen. “All of them” was not an acceptable answer, but the number Anty gave, gave the people vet some concern. Maybe Anty might want to think about reducing that number.

Well. Maybe, Anty thought, the people vet might be on to something. Anty was also irritated that she did not have a lot of time to read paper books, and wanted to try something different with the way she uses her time (that is the second thing, so I will talk about that, too.) Making time that is set aside for reading paper books and nothing else is now one of her goals, and doing that means that she gets more reading done. That is a very good thing. She has also found that switching between screen-related and non-screen-related tasks is a lot easier on her eyes. Since she composes best with pen and paper, this works out very well. There is time enough to look at screens at other times and other stages in the process.

The different thing Anty is trying about how she uses her time is scheduling. Instead of giving each task a set time, like answering emails at 9AM, looking at notes from Anty Melva at 9:30, etc, she writes down everything she needs to do that day, and the hours in which she will have to accomplish those things. Then she picks what thing she wants to do most from that list. Sometimes, that means getting the hard thing out of the way first, and sometimes, it means easing into the day with something easy. So far, Anty notices that she gets more done this way, and feels less stressed. She will see how this goes when she applies it over a longer period of time, but so far, so good. Every human works differently, so this method may not work for everybody, but, for Anty, it does.

Today, Anty picked helping me with this blog as her first thing, because she and Mama have to go hunt for cat food (and people food) and she wanted this posted before she did anything else, in case the hunt takes longer than expected. Anty wants to get the hunting done early, so that she can have uninterrupted time to work on Her Last First Kiss and on Beach Ball (remember those notes from Anty Melva I mentioned?) Anty gets very crabby when anybody interrupts her while she is writing, so that needs to be in uninterrupted time, either when nobody but Anty and I are home (I wait patiently for her to come up for air before I ask for food or scritches or playtime) or when she is away from home, at a coffee house, with her earbuds in, a signal for other humans to leave her alone. When the desktop arrives (she still has to hunt for that) then she can go into her office and close the door, which will give her another private place to get things done. It is not the same every day, but it all has the same goal – to get these books finished and send them out into the world for others to read.

Unplugging for part of the day is not only good for Anty’s eyeballs, but the whole Anty. She likes tackling smaller chunks of things, which are varied from each other, and being able to give one thing her full attention until it is done-done, and then on to the next. Speaking of which, that is about it for this week, because my sunbeam is here. Until next time, I remain very truly yours,

i1035 FW1.1

Until next week…

 

Skye O’Malley Hart-Bowling
(the kitty, not  the book)

Typing With Wet Claws: Grow-ning Pains Edition

annabowling 2 Comments

Hello, all. Skye here, for another, later than usual, Feline Friday. Today, you get a beloved classic picture of me, because I am hiding. There are two reasons why I am hiding. One, some humans are working on the road near our house, and they have loud trucks and loud equipment. Two, it is going to rain here, probably soon, and rain always makes me want to hide. I go under Anty and Uncle’s bed, because that is the safest place in the world. I have not been wet from the rain once since I started hiding there, so I know that it works. Technically, I have not been wet from the rain ever since I got rescued, but hiding under the bed makes me double extra sure. It is a good thing Anty keeps almost all of her pictures of me, in case things like this happen. Anty is smart.

Anty is also talkative. This week, at Buried Under Romance, she talked about how readers can best celebrate the life’s work of favorite authors who are no longer with us. Anty’s post is here and it looks like this:

 

BUR

 

I am going to paw it for today’s blog, because Anty is mostly keeping her head down and eyes on her own paper with the writing stuff.  She asked me to let you know that the promised flash fiction is being formatted, and you can read it on Monday. She wants to get this draft of Her Last First Kiss written all the way to the end, because A) it is time to get this story baby out of her already, B) she actually likes the rewriting/revising part of the whole book thing, and C) once she gets to The End, she can probably start using Hero and Heroine’s actual names when she talks about them, but not before that. Even so, she does poke her head up every once in a while, like when somebody mentions gummi bears. Gummi bears always get Anty’s attention.

 

It is not gummi bears that got her attention today, though. While Anty was at the Laundromat this morning, she checked her mail on her phone, and found a notice from RT Book Reviews, her favorite magazine for a very, very long time. Like the cat before the cat before me long time. With time between cats, that is how long. Anyway, she opened the email and got quite the shock – the issue she plans to go out and buy later today will be the very last print issue. Anty did not authorize that. Anty is, in fact, very much against that, because A) it is her favorite magazine, and B) this means that there are now no print magazines devoted to the romance genre. (That is apart from Romance Writer’s Report, the magazine available only to RWA members.) If Anty were independently wealthy, she would probably look into immediately starting a new one (and probably very shortly thereafter be found in a fetal position under the dining room table, clutching a notebook and mumbling something about cupcakes, because starting a magazine is a lot of work and Anty already has a lot in her bowl…um, on her plate. Because she is a human.) Sadly, Anty is not independently wealthy (yet) and so she is going to have to deal with this.

Anty’s reaction was much more subdued than it would have been if this news had found her at any other time, because she is going through a lot of changes, and this feels like it fits right in with all of that. The e-publishing revolution really has been a game changer (if cats can have their own blogs, then anything is possible) and publishing, in general, is a business, and the way people use media like magazines is changing, so while she is surprised, she can see the logic behind the decision.

Because Anty is Anty, some things really aren’t “real” until she can talk about them (this is true of many extroverts,) and the friend she would normally talk to first about things like this has become a once-upon-a-time friend, so that will not be possible exactly the way Anty’s first instinct would like, and that is an adjustment on top of an adjustment. On the one hand, Anty can now call her collection of all the issues of the magazine from the time she started reading it, until now, complete. She can still look into hunting down a few years’ worth of print magazines from before the time she was allowed to read it (she started when she as an almost-almost-grownup) so there are still new-to-her issues to be found, though it will take some hunting. There will still be the website and she can even get a subscription to VIP content, but, still, she will miss the thrill of seeing the new issue on the newsstand, or in her mailbox at home.

There will be a little mourning involved. Anty has very special memories of drinking in every word of each issue, especially when she first started getting the magazine, making special trips to stores to get it, and even one time, when she and Uncle lived all the way out in California, Uncle making a very long car trip just so he could get Anty the new issue because he knew it was important to her. This is one of the many reasons Uncle is Anty’s Real Life Romance Hero. There will probably be petting of the issues Anty has in the apartment, and she will likely want to get some special magazine files to keep this last batch in good shape and close at  hand.

Anty admits she is disappointed that she will never be able to pick up a copy of the magazine with her books on the cover (that was a longtime goal of hers) but she has seen her name inside it on multiple occasions, in the letter section and in the memorial to Bertrice Small. She remembers screaming so loud the first time she saw her name and her letter in the magazine that Mama swerved into a different lane. She remembers convincing a store or two to carry the magazine, and recommending it to others. It’s going to be a loss, but not the gone-forever sort. More of the taking on a different shape sort, as there is already the website, and all of the content will still be there, that way.

As a kitty, I understand not liking changes in routine. That is perfectly normal and natural. For humans, though, changes in routine can often come out of growth. Like going from a tiny kitten to a big, majestic mountain lion like me. (I am really a Maine Coon, but Uncle says I am his mountain lion.) The in-between stages are sometimes not the most comfortable (I spent a lot of my in-between stages at the vet, so I get it) but believing that the end result will be worth it puts things in perspective.

Anty says it is now time for her to work on her draft (and sniffle about the magazine a little) so that is about it for this week. Until next week, I remain very truly yours,

i1035 FW1.1

Until next week…

Skye O’Malley Hart-Bowling
(the kitty, not the book)

Influences of Late

annabowling 2 Comments

The last couple of days, I’ve been bingeing. Monday, I stumbled across Grace Burrowes’s FAQ section, which led to glomming on her blog, a couple of years’ worth of entries, full disclosure.  I haven’t read any of her novels -yet- but I know I have some in my TBR bookshelf, some waiting in my Kindle, and they take up a significant amount of the B shelf in the romance section at my local library branch. I started with the About Writing section of the FAQ page, and fell immediately in love, which may be a good indicator it’s time to dive into the actual books. Thankfully, there’s a suggested reading order on the author’s website, because there are a heck of a lot of t hem.

Tuesday, I investigated the Bad Girlz Write blog, whose members include the fabulous Jeannette Grey, a CRRWA chapter sister, and Heather McGovern, whose workshop on the big black moment I have  heard-but-not-actually-seen, because the day she presented at CRRWA was also the day my former pair of spectacles died, and my valiant attempt to hold them together with electrical tape and a binder clip A) did not work, and B) hurt, because electrical tape, when folded, has sharp, pointy corners, as well as C) made me dizzy and gave me a headache. I took notes anyway, but will not vouch for the legibility of same. Here, as well, I hit the back button to read blog entry after blog entry about wandering and, heck, the entire section on writer life in one go. There may or may not have been actual tears in either of the above.

There sure as anything have been a lot of tears in my other binge, Parenthood. Not the life state. The TV show. Yes, I do live under a rock, and no, I do not know how I somehow managed to never ever see a single episode of this until Netflix, but I needed a show to binge and Netflix said I might like it, because Netflix knows me, and yessssssssssss. Oh so very much yes. Only a few episodes into the first season, I had to check to make sure my OTPs (from the adult generation, that is; everybody shush on the teens, because I want to experience it myself) were going to be endgame (they were) before I could allow myself to get as deeply attached as I am wont to do in these situations.

All three of these binges brought that same reaction in my writerheart: YES. This. This is what I want to do. This is what I’m shooting for when I write. This connection. This emotional impact. This need to stop everything I’m doing and check to see if Crosby and Jasmine are going to be all right, because if they aren’t, there is no good left in the world. Also Joel and Julia. I already know a couple of things about the finale, and I am fine knowing them, but the rest, I want to discover as I go. I want to take all of this in and use it as food to fuel my own work. The tightly-knit family, made of people who aren’t perfect, who do get mad and lose their tempers and yell at little kids and shove their elders and say horrible things and lose every last shred of hope, and yet don’t give up because that’s not what they do; I love that stuff.

In the midst of all this, I noticed one interesting thing. The more I binged, the fainter and farther away the voices -and influences- of the Hypercritical Gremlins became.  Maybe Ms. Burrowes, the Bad Girlz and the Bravermans  are taking turns helping to barricade the Gremlins’ closet. Shutting out the “shoulds” is one thing, and a good thing, but there has to be something to move  into the old “should” place, or they’re only going to come back, with more “shoulds” and more Gremlins, and that only leads to paralysis and anxiety and literally ugly crying in the middle of a critique group (yes, that actually happened, and yes, in public, and yes, to me) and miscarried manuscripts and…you get the picture. But replace the “shoulds” and the forcing and the gnashing of teeth with the things that elicit that YES in every fiber of my writerheart? That brings back the joy, lifts the weight and, well, of course I can do this; it’s as natural as breathing, and I’ve been doing that for a few decades now, right? Right.

What could go wrong? Well, plenty. That’s part of life, but the encouraging part, thanks to reading accounts of others navigating the often treacherous writing waters, is that I’m not alone. I’ve done this before. I’ll do it again, and I have no shortage of fuel for the journey.

 

Digging Up Bones

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Somewhere, on one of these four flash drives, (or possibly my old laptop, definitely my old desktop, but that one isn’t speaking to me at the moment) is the flash fiction that you, my liebchens, have earned by hitting the magic 450 followers. Where I know I have it for sure is in the notebooks where I originally wrote it, in a storage unit a two hour drive away, and several boxes back in from the front. Possibly behind furniture or kitchen equipment, or miscellaneous items that really do need a new home. In short, it’s been a while.

I’d originally planned to post the flash fiction today, and there is one piece that made it onto one of the drives, which may end up being the one, but that overthinky part of me wants to look for another one. A particular one. No, maybe two. The first piece of fiction I ever sold was a story poem, that I still kind of like, but not sure if it needs to be aired out again after all this time. The particular story I have in mind isn’t a romance, though it does have a strong romantic element. Women’s fiction, I’d call it, if I had to shelve it right now. It’s a tragic story, and I still remember how wrapped in the emotion of it I felt as I wrote it. It’s complete as it is, a snapshot (or sketch, in this instance, as the viewpoint character is an artist) of one particular moment, so I don’t feel a need or even desire to spin it out into a full novel. Not every story is meant to go the entire distance, and this one is what it is. I recycled the name of the secondary character, though the book that used that recycled name is, while not miscarried, in suspended animation (protect your voice, and protect your vision; these things, I learned the hard way) until all of the “bad juju,” as BFF terms it, has burnt off. There was a lot. This may take a while, and what ultimately comes out of it will probably bear very little resemblance to what I first envisioned, but the core will still be the same.

Apple trees, as it were, can only grow apples. Trying to force an apple tree to suddenly grow tangerines, even if the neighbors are huge tangerine aficionados, and/or tangerines are now the hot fruit in the produce world, isn’t going to work. These bits of things, on these assorted drives (the small orange one is my current drive, but problematic, as the slightest touch, including that of air currents, seems to throw it into a tizzy; the big black and red one has given up the ghost, and taken its contents with it; the blue one shares writing folders with Sims content, and the black one has surprised me with its longeviety) are all part of my foundation, each a step in the road that got me to where I am today.

When I look through these files, it’s like seeing old friends, reliving close calls, bullets dodged, lessons learned, both the positive and negative, and I’m not sure how I feel about that at present. Were there some things I would have done differently? Certainly so, but the time machine is being serviced at present, so I can only go forward from where I am at this moment. Are there things I once did, that I could do again? Again, absolutely. Some of those may need some modification, and that’s okay.

What I feel most when I look through these files is hard to give a name to, but if I had to guess, it would be “recognition.” This is how I did things before life took a big freaking detour through the unexpected. This is how it was when I was confident and, at times, if caught on a particularly good day, feeling basically bulletproof. It’s my own personal history. Genres tried on and set aside, experiments that failed and those that succeeded, and always, always, the way I got back on my feet to try something else yet again. We have a history, these drives and I, and I’m not getting rid of the black and red one, because, even if I can’t access the files, it’s still part of me. If, someday, I can, all the better.

Some of these stories, files, ideas, manuscripts, are dead and buried. Some, we’re not going to talk about and pretend do not exist. Others have gone to seed, and will give new life to something else. There may be a few nuggets of gold in there, which, after some sifting and polishing, might yet have their moment. One or two things are patiently biding their time, waiting for me to finally be big enough to handle what they already know they want to be. What I do know for sure is that these drives hold my history, and some (but not all) of what is yet to come. A bit of old, a bit of new, a bit of now; it all mixes together and takes on a life of its own.

I will admit that going through these drives and their files feels a smidge Doctor Frankenstein-y, digging up things long buried and looking to make new life out of them, but that’s an occupational hazard for may writers. When we put something in the figurative earth, sometimes we don’t know if we’re burying a body or planting seeds. Even then, what comes up may be plant or zombie. The only thing for it is to keep on moving forward. The more targets we shoot at, the more targets we are likely to hit. So we keep at it. Butt in chair, fingers on keyboard, pen on paper. The harvest will come.

 

Grumpy Writer Blather

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Blabbity blabbity blab blab, hit keys, English words, hate it when Wednesday’s posts get bumped to Thursday. Do not remember which week I still owe a Wednesday post from, but I remember that I do. I’m trying something new today, blocking time out in one hour segments, because I am the queen of overthinking. (Seriously, I am. I was once in an NECRWA meeting, and the instructor  had broken us into small groups to work on my writing goals. I will not go into my entire dither here, but cut to the chase, where I stopped myself, and asked the rest of the group, “or am I overthinking?” They, all at once, answered with “Oh, God, yes!” So, yeah. That’s pretty much me.)

I hate going into even a blog entry without a plan. Hate, hate, hate, hate, hate it. I’d say I have nothing for this entry, but that’s not true. I always have something. I hate it that Jo Beverley died. When I think of her work, I think first of her RWA workshop on flying into the mist, and her useful lists of forms of address, as well as how long a horse, horse and carriage, team of horses, etc, can travel in a day. I think of her posts on Word Wenches and articles on romance writing, her Facebook posts and the discussion of the  merits of standalone romances in the age of series, series everywhere.

It’s only after that, that I think of her actual books. Not sure what that means. I’ve read most of the Malloren world books, and only the first of the Rogues. I’ve read a few of the reissued Signet trads, and a plethora of novella entries. Right now, I’m reading Lord of My Heart, her first medieval. Not very far into it, but it’s always an interesting experience, reading a book by a favorite author and knowing there won’t be any more. Granted, I have rather a lot of Beverley still to read, but whatever there was is now whatever there will be, and I am not okay with that. I am going to miss having her in the world, the books, the blog posts, and, even though our only person to person contact had been short exchanges on the Word Wenches blog or Facebook, never personal, it’s like there is now a part of me that isn’t there anymore, and I’m still dealing with the jagged edges left from other broken-off parts, so it’s an adjustment.

I’ll grump for a while, fuss around in my office for a while, and I’ll write. There’s a bullet point draft that needs writing, because, once that’s done, I get to the smoothing out and rewriting, which I sometimes think I like better than coming up with the initial raw material. This may actually succeed in distracting me from the fact that summer, my least favorite season, will be upon us after this weekend. Bleh. Yeah, I’m grumpy. Grumps like this are best dealt with by acknowledging they exist, and letting the grump do its thing, because it does have a job to do. Exactly what that job might be, I’m not sure, but I trust that it’s leading me in the right direction.

Not quite at the magic seven hundred, so I will keep on going until I’m there.  Blabber has a job to do, same as grump does, and the best thing I can do is keep out of its way and let it do its thing, dump the entire contents of my noggin onto the real or virtual page and then, maybe, see about mushing it all into some sense of order. There’s usually something of value, even in the biggest mess, and I do feel like a big mess today. That won’t last. I’ll work through it, but it is where I am right now, and it has a part to play in the rest of the day. The fact that I don’t know what part that is, exactly, bothers me, but getting this entry checked off my list will help me feel more like the writing badass that I am.

I get antsy when I don’t get enough writing time, and by that, I mean specifically fiction. It’s like the characters and stories bottleneck in my brain and batter at the inside of my skull. Really best, in that case, that I let them out so they, too, can do their thing. Which, apparently, is at least partly to get me to the magic seven hundred, so that will be it for this entry, my liebchens. Off to party with my imaginary friends.
 

 

 

 

Lush

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Romance is not about happy people in Happy Land, but courageous people in We Love Each Other Land.

–Grace Burrowes

 

Another Monday, another new week. I have no idea what I want to say in today’s blog entry, but it rankles that I still owe Wednesday’s post from a week (or two?) ago, and the stubborn, schedule-loving part of part of me is not going to create any more of a backlog than I already have, because such things annoy the heck out of me. All of which means you’re getting the rawest of brain droppings today, and fingers crossed that it actually goes somewhere. Only way to find out is to plunge ahead and find out what happens.

Right now, I am ensconced in my comfy chair, next to an open window, Skye curled in a ball at my feet, sound asleep.  Mary Chapin Carpenter’s “Something Tamed Something Wild” is playing on my earbuds, while I plan out how I’m going to tackle the day. I know the things I want to get done, and I know the time in which I have to do them, and I know that I do best when I give my eyes a break and switch between digital and analog throughout the day. This past weekend, I had the opportunity to recap season two, episode seven, of Outlander, “Faith,” for Heroes and Heartbreakers. It is here, and looks like this:

HHOUTLANDER

Skye will no doubt have something to say about this on Friday.

 

To say that this episode hit me like a brick is an understatement. If I could breathe this episode, I would, because there is so much in there of what I want to bring to the pages of my own work that, even though a good chunk of my brain had to be focused on taking notes so that I could capture the salient points for the recap, the rest of it skipped happily through the angst and the opulence (possible book title in there?) of the costumes, the setting, the soul-crushing loss and the love that pulled it all back from the brink of despair. Yes. This. Oh so very much this that, two days after viewing and recapping, parts of me are still back there. It’s not a nice story, not a pretty story, and yet it’s beautiful.

That kind of stuff makes my blood tingle. The books I love the very best, both to read and to write, have bad things happen to good people, sometimes very bad things, and yet…and yet the love is bigger. It’s stronger. It’s beaten sometimes, bruised sometimes, dragging itself along by broken fingernails sometimes, but it’s alive, and it’s not going away. That’s one of the requirements of a romance novel, and it’s going to be there, whatever other flavors the author tosses into the mix.

This week, when I whined to another writer friend about being at the “I hate this, I can’t write, I should give up” stage, I got a reality check. Friend laughed at me, and reminded me that writing super-super detailed is something I do, it’s part of my style, so quit fighting it and do what comes naturally. That’s not going to change. Write. Tell the story. Tell my characters’ story. Tell it my way. Put in the details. Describe stuff. Work the angst. I should note that this is advice I find incredibly easy to give, but, when it comes to taking it, I need a lot of repetition. One of these days, I’ll get it.

What I do know for sure is that, when I try to rein myself in, I’m miserable, and it shows in the writing, or the lack thereof, (usually that one) but when I slap the duct tape on the mouths of the Hypercritical Gremlins and dive headlong into the angst and the opulence, that’s when I feel like I’ve come home. Still learning to trust myself in this whole writing of fiction thing, but the best way out is through, and so I have pretty legal pads and fountain pens and colored ink and if my “black on white” is actually “purple on paisley,” that’s not a bad thing.

My very favorite moment from the Meat Loaf (the singer, not the food) biopic is when he and musical partner, songwriter Jim Steinman, pitched one of their early efforts to a record producer, the reaction is first, silence, then the explanation that most songs have a verse and a chorus, maybe a bridge. These guys’ songs  have bridges and tunnels and aqueducts. I want to write aqueducts, and so, those are what I need to be taking in. Something I’ve known for a while now, but, as above, something that also needs repeating, as does the actual writing. The more I write, the more aqueducts I get to build, the more movies I get to play in my head. The more lives I get to lead. Not a bad thing to start a new week.

Typing With Wet Claws: About That Doggie Edition

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Hello, all. Skye here, for another Feline Friday, and we have a lot to cover. Before I do anything else, I have to talk about Anty’s writing first. Since the people vet had some words with Anty about the way she uses her eyeballs, she has been looking at (see what I did there?) some ways to alternate between glowy box and non-glowy box tasks. This means that she is using paper more, which she is finding works pretty well. I could have told her that. She loves paper. I don’t know why it took a people vet to give her the idea, but it seems to be working, and, upside, more potential toys for me.

First Anty writing thing is that she got a surprise when Heroes and Heartbreakers asked if she would like to talk about the ending of Castle. Anty said that she would, and then promptly started doing some research to fill in some gaps. That meant she got to watch a lot of TV. Since I am a dedicated mews, I helped by sitting very very close and reminding her to take frequent cat-feeding breaks. The first post (she is still working on another) is h here, and it looks like this:

HHCASTLE

Next, well, actually before that, because Saturday comes before Wednesday, Anty had another Buried Under Romance post. This time, Anty wants to know if you will follow your favorite authors when they write in different genera.  It is here and looks like this:

BURIMAGE

Now we get to the doggie part. Anty posted a picture the other day, of some pancakes  Uncle made for her. That picture is the picture, and, if you look closely, you will see a doggie in that picture. If you need help finding the doggie, I will put only him in the second picture:

 

One of Anty’s friends, Miss Sabre, asked Anty when she got a doggie, and why I never talk about him in my blog. Even though Anty, Uncle and Mama have been talking about maybe getting me a brother, and whether that brother could be a dog (they will talk to the vet-vet about that first) I am still, for the time being, an only pet. Even though the doggie (his name is Rolf) can look very real, he is stuffed. Anty got him for Uncle, as a Christmas present a few years back, when they lived in an apartment that did not allow pets.

Miss Sabre is not the first person who thought Rolf was a real doggie. When we first moved to this apartment, the cable human nearly jumped through the roof when he noticed Rolf inspecting his work. (Rolf is next to the modem, if you cannot tell. I do not blame him for being interested in it. Sometimes, I like to look at the lights, too.) The cable human did not know why Anty thought his being scared was all that funny, until she showed him that Rolf was stuffed and not going to bite him or otherwise cause any trouble. This was not the first cable human (or delivery human, or visitor, for that matter) who thought Rolf was a real doggie. I am sure the humans who designed and made Rolf would be very happy to hear that people think he is real and treat him like a real doggie.

Once, a very long time before I was born, when Anty was an almost-grown-up, she went to a summer program for young humans who were good at creating. Anty went there to study writing, and one of the things she did there was take part in a poetry workshop. One segment of that studied what makes a ballad. (It is a poem or song that tells a story.) Students had to read and listen to a lot of ballads and then write one of their own. Anty wrote one and handed it in. When the teacher was discussing how the material he showed the class influenced the work the students did, he mentioned Anty’s ballad…as one of the medieval examples. The whole class laughed, and it took the teacher a while to understand why that was funny, that his brain had filed Anty’s ballad, written that same day, along with those written hundreds of years before. That was probably a sign that Anty really was meant for historical romance. Needless to say, she got a good grade.

I mention this because I take my duties as a mews seriously, and wanted to point out that the very best fiction can be as real as what is commonly called “real life.” Anty, for example, is very, very sure, that, if she were plopped down into certain houses described in her favorite books, she would totally be able to find her way around (and in some cases, out of, as fast as she possibly could) because the picture the author painted on the page was as real as if she had actually been in the physical location. It is the same with characters; if they are really real, which is to say, written as though they are actual people, then readers can form emotional bonds with them. That is why, to give another example, humans can watch unsatisfactory endings to TV shows, or read them in books, and say, “no, that’s not what happened. Those people would never do that. This is what they would do instead….” For writers, like Anty, sometimes, that is all it takes to plant the seed of a whole new book, which could then plant a seed (but hopefully for a better reason) in another reader or writer’s mind, and on it goes. I like that, and Anty does, too.

Anty also says she needs the computer back, so that is about it for this week. Until next time, I remain very truly yours,

i1035 FW1.1

Until next week…

Skye O’Malley Hart-Bowling
(the kitty, not the book)

PS, also Rolf

ROLF

 

 

 

 

 

 

Grande Dame

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To survive, you must tell stories.

–Umberto Eco

 

Third week in a row that Wednesday’s blog entry comes on another day. This may tell me something about time management in general.  Hypercritical Gremlins have been chatty boogers as of late, but I have duct tape and pens and paper, and, when properly employed, the latter do a pretty good job of muffling the former. As my once-upon-a-time writing group facilitator used to say, the process begets the product. I’m learning that my process is eternally in flux, which I count as a good thing, because that means I’m growing.

For some writers (I can only speak about me, with absolute certainty) it’s a juggling act between stretching for the new and getting back in touch with what’s always been there, but may have been obscured by the flotsam and jetsam of life. Some bones, we need to unearth, and, in the digging, we find the seeds we need to water so that we can bloom. Today, two tasks on my to-do list combined, as my morning pages volunteered to be most of my blog entry, as well. I took them up on the offer.

 

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19 May, 2016

Today, I want to run away. I want to drink tea and bake cookies and watch movies and make art. I want to write merely for the fun of it, without my Hypercritical Gremlins chiming in. I want to lose myself in the pages of the books I am reading and in the pages of the books I am writing.

I want to pick apart great historical romance novels with surgical precision, take painstaking notes and absorb it all into my writersoul. I want to do this with a group of my peers, at the hand of a master (mistress?) at rows of wooden desks in a medieval escritoire, where dust motes float in the natural light that streams in from floor-to-ceiling windows. I want to hear the footfalls of leather slippers on stone, the whisper and rustle of the Grande Dame’s skirts and petticoats as she walks the rows of desks, looks over our shoulders as we work. I want my pages to forever carry the imprint of her pointer finger in my red-black ink, to show where she put her finger down and said a decisive, “There.”

Not “there is where you went wrong.” I can do that on my own, and I do, all too often, all too much. “There,” I want her to say, “there is where you went right.” She does not smile often, this Grande Dame, and so these moments are all the more valued for their rarity. “There is power. There is truth. There is emotion. There, my blood tingles. Keep doing that.” Her hand, fingers bent from decades of excelling at the skill I now practice, cups my shoulder. Lingers there, in the silence, but for hushed murmurs and whispers and breath. One gentle, motherly, encouraging squeeze, and she moves on. I will find, later, her fingerprint on the cloth as well. I will not wash it away.

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morning pages, doing double duty

 

 

Not quite at the magic 700 yet, so I’ll keep on going. That’s how it happens, this getting back on the metaphorical horse. Left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot. Slap another layer of duct tape on the mouths of the Hypercritical Gremlins, and stay at that desk, pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard, whatever works for the individual) and study the masters (mistresses?) and tell the stories. Fall down. Get back up. Try again. Crumple paper and throw it at the wall. Hit the backspace or delete keys as needed.  Take out a fresh sheet. Re-ink the pen. Forget all the rules of writing. Tell the story. Take all the pictures needed to make the head-images turn into English (or into whichever language one writes, if it’s something else) and tryfailtryfailtryfail as many times as it takes to succeed.

That, I need to remind myself, is how the Grande Dame got to be the Grande Dame in the first place. It’s been said that the master has failed more times than the student has ever  tried. So, too, I think, it works with  this Grande Dame in my head. She, too, was once that awkward-aged student, shifting on the hard wooden bench, bottom sore from falling off that blasted metaphorical horse for the umpteenth time, black and blue beneath worn skirts. She, too, looked for hours at the work of those who came before her and attempted to interpret how they did what they did. She was a hack. She almost gave up hope. She kept on going. She wrote one…more…page. She did it again. So will I. So I do.