writing process

Sicko, pt 2

annabowling 2 Comments

If I can’t blend in, I may as well be who I am.
–Rainbow Rowell

Two days ago, I ran out of socks. The list of things I want most in life is as follows, in constantly shifting order:

  1. Tea
  2. pizza
  3. orange juice
  4. soup
  5. full use of my entire mouth, including but not limited to :
    • ability to wear lipstick again :pets lipsticks:
    • ability to brush teeth without having to work around large dome-shaped crust on lower iip.
    • expressions of affection to Real Life Romance Hero

Please note that “socks” is not on that list because I dragged myself out to the laundromat this morning and did a load, while listening to recordings from last year’s RWA Nationals. Also free writing while doing both of the above. Even under the weather, multitasking makes me happy.

This post was originally going to be another dip into the archives, with a continuation of my Duluth post, but it’s a big file and would need to be split into two posts, and I’m cranky. See item #1 on the list above. So, instead, I’m going to ramble.

Today’s quote comes from the fabulous Rainbow Rowell, and it fits with my current area of self-directed study. Today’s picture comes from my write-in with SueAnn Porter on Monday.  Since we both compose in longhand, we left the laptops at home and instead brought our notebooks. SueAnn worked with one. I brought three, because my brain was all scattered, unfocused and prone to wandering off without me.

SueAnn suggested that our first writing sprint would be brain dumping, which I sometimes call bloodletting, spewing whatever is in my head onto the page. That went in the black hardcover Picadilly, and I’d planned to use my black Pilot Varsity fountain pen for that exercise, but pen had other ideas, and my first page has a small, interestingly shaped blob of ink in the middle. I ended up using a different pen.

Note the absence of tea and presence of a can of seltzer with a straw sticking out of it.  The cookie, though labeled as “cookies and cream” was actually red velvet (thank you, Jess-the-Barista, for clearing that up; red velvet makes anything better) and ended up coming home with me, because with the writing and the talking, some things have to take a back seat.

The Abbington Park notebook did not get used in this session, as SueAnn suggested I face my hesitation about working on Her Last First Kiss by doing some character work . Maybe, she suggested, I’m balking at this particular jump because the themes strike too close to home. There is some truth to that. Granted, I do not live in the eighteenth century, am not a member of the nobility and Real Life Romance Hero and I have been happily ever aftering for some time now, so my love life is not as tumultuous as my characters’ romantic prospects.

The thing, though, is that, without knowing it, I had seeded this book with some personal issues. Not fitting into one’s family of origin? Yep, know that. Caregiving? Know that, too. This book isn’t about me; it’s about my hero and heroine, and those really are their issues, and it would change the story into something else entirely were I to take those aspects out and give my people other hurdles to overcome.  Well, okay, then. Guess we’re doing this.

Knowing what the roadblocks are doesn’t make them go away, but it does make it possible for me to look at them head on and see how to climb over or dig under them.  It’s not a bad thing. Part of that wandering around in the forest time was spent trying, often too hard, to write things to which I did not have a close personal attachment, and that went down in flames, so going to the other end of the spectrum seems like a logical step to take.

Maybe it’s a good thing SueAnn and I had this talk while my brain took frequent mini-vacations without me, because at the end of most of our sprints, I had pen (blue Pilot Varsity) in hand, scratching across the mottled ivory of the page, spelling out how my hero got from adorable cherub child to grown man with seriously warped self image, and responded with, “Really? Already? Are you sure?” and kept making a few more quick notes. Not a bad outcome, that. We’re going to have to have more write-ins like this, but next time, the cold sore is not invited.

 

Sicko

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For most of the last few days, I have been a lump under the blanket in the recliner. On Thursday night, I felt a suspicious tingle on my bottom lip. I’ve had enough of those to know what that meant: cold sore.

I hate cold sores. They’re painful. They’re  ugly. They sap my energy. They present a lot of complications for a lipstick loving tea drinker who was looking forward to pizza on Friday night. Until the scab drops, it’s goodbye to all of that and hello to ibuprofen and ointment and a brain whose new hobby is flitting off without me. In a word, not fun. Okay, those were two words.

Because I am me, the need to rest took a while to sink in. Friday, I did laundry and then hied myself off to the local CVS because all the ibuprofen in our house had expired last month. Saturday, I decided that I was feeling up to running the weekly errands with Housemate. I found out fairly quickly into that trip that I was not. I take some comfort in knowing I was mildly entertaining, and that I did have the presence of mind to replace toothbrush and two out of three lip products.

The adventure of Saturday errands over, I retreated to my recliner and blankey, played the Sims 4 game time demo until I’d exhausted the time allotted (will probably get the game with the next computer, but it’s a bit much for the current machine, as well as a more cartoony game than I generally like) watched DVDs, napped a lot, and wrote.

Today, I’m venturing out, ahead of the big snowstorm barreling our way, to meet SueAnn Porter for a write-in. I’m going to miss the tea, mightily, and spend my time sucking seltzer or iced tea, if I can make myself order that when it’s eleven degrees out and we will be buried under a blanket of white by nightfall. I have no idea what I’m actually going to be writing today.  Hopefully something Her Last First Kiss related, but if it ends up as freewriting or something else, that’s okay, too. I’m allowed a partial sick day.

Even when I feel like horse poop that’s been crushed by a steamroller, there’s still that part of me that wants to drag out of the energy-free sludge and head off to story world, because that’s my natural environment. So, the HLFK notebook goes into my bag, along with a fountain pen, because writing with those always feels like a special treat, and I’m going to give it a go. Total crash time afterwards, at least until it’s time to recap tonight’s Sleepy Hollow, but tomorrow could be a sick day and a snow day at the same time. Which I will probably spend writing. There could be worse things. Not being able to have hot chocolate while having a sick day and a snow day at the same time may be one of those, but I think I will live. There is something to be said for anticipation.

Throwback Thursday: Duluth, Part One

annabowling 2 Comments

I sometimes forget the lessons of my past. We all have them. But don’t worry they come back to remind you that your journey isn’t over.
-Adrian Paul

I normally don’t do Throwback Thursday, but blogging three times per week is one of my goals, and since I am not going to show up at my next CR-RWA meeting (especially because I will be the speaker) on February 14th and say I did not meet my goals (if I make a goal public, I will meet that or die trying; it’s something I do) and because Sue Ann Porter has a way of encouraging me, today, you get to hop in my wayback machine.

The year was 2013, our family newly arrived in Albany, my writer brain in a constant state of shock and caught between projects. I had only recently discovered the joys of Hudson River Coffee House, where I am writing this entry. On this particular day, date lost to the wilds of time, Housemate banished me there after one of my mild freakouts (“What on earth am I doing, thinking I can write anymore?” variety) and said I had to write something. So, there was this:

2012 was one of those years. Family health issues. Planning and carrying out an interstate move when one family member was not physically able to make any of the apartment hunting trips. Carrying out said move in stages, one of them involving sending one family member into a hurricane to carry out said stage solo because another did not want a third anxiety attack that week. A first trip to the hospital from our new home. Changes in important relationships. Buying a second snow shovel because we live in Albany and it’s winter and one shovel is not going to dig us out properly.

2013 is an unknown quantity. I’m letting one ms settle and diving into another. It scares me. What on earth am I getting myself into? Fear. The bad kind. Fear. The good kind.

What’s the difference between the two? Good question. When I find out, I will let you know, but I’ll give it a stab (and stabbing does seem like a good option at times, the object of which can vary.)

Bad fear = what if every bad thing anybody ever said about my writing is true? What if it’s true and I have no other marketable skills? What if I really do suck? What if I suck and there was something I could have done to not suck but I didn’t do it and now it’s too late to fix it because I really do suck and it’s all my fault? What if I have to live with the wanting to write and the needing to write and never being able to write for the rest of my life ? DOOM! DOOM!DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!

Good fear = I have never done X before, but it could be fun. Am I really doing it right?

:pokes X with a stick, then scuttles back a safe distance to observe:

:comes back, presuming the poking of X did not result in personal death or obliteration of all humankind; pokes X again. Repeat until done, then poke something else.:

Do I have all the answers? No. Do I have  my answers? Maybe. Let me look around the bottom of my purse a while longer. Or fumble my way through manuscript B and occasionally poke A with a stick. There is fear, both kinds. There are times I feel like I can’t find my way back to my normal writing self any more than I can find my way to Apartment Four, 738 North Anything Street in Duluth, Minnesota. At night. In a snowstorm. On foot. Wearing earplugs. During a blackout. In the zombie apocalypse. One thing is sure, though; if I never take one step, I’ll never get there.

So. This is a step. Today, I wrote. Is it a completed work of fiction between eighty and one hundred thousand words in my chosen genre? No. Is it real? Yes. Is it true? Yes. Is it finished? Yes. Did it bring me one step closer to that mythical apartment in Duluth? Yes. Are the residents expecting me? Maybe. I’ll find out when I get there. So will you. We all have a Duluth. I firmly believe that, and I firmly beleive that putting one foot in front of the other will eventually get you there. Maybe you’re on the right track now, and maybe you’ll need to circle the world a time or two, but the surest way to make sure you never get there is to not try. Right foot, left foot. Right foot, left foot. Right foot, left foot. Dress in layers. Stay hydrated. Rest, and then continue. Fill the well. Write something. Ask for directions. Right foot, left foot. Right foot, left foot. See you there.

This Time, It’s The N

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It’s not a race. It’s finding your voice. You’re okay. Now get off that ledge, give yourself a day off, feed your soul with something that brings you joy and sit back down from a place of peace. You’re a writer. You’re fine. You have all the time in the world.
-Beth Treadway

Well, I knew it had to happen sometime. We have had the first casualty, or should I say, sign of wear, on the new external keyboard. The bottom part of the N, I noticed as I sat down for the morning’s session, is not as there as it used to be.  I take that as a source of pride. I’ve been pounding keys enough to wear away letters on this new keyboard. As I started typing this entry, I noticed that the L is looking shaky on the bottom as well. Not too shabby, getting those letters, well, um, shabby.

Wearing the letters off keys may be the computer equivalent of emptying pens, which I have also been doing. I’d say filling notebooks as well, but maybe that’s more like using up memory with accumulated files. Maybe? Maybe not? I’m not sure that everything translates like that, but that’s not where I’m putting my mental energy these days.

The first part of this week was consumed by domestic tornadoes of the sort that make one exclaim, “Really, life? Really?” Along with a few other strong words.  Second half of the week looks better, with a new opportunity that may be in the offing, but let’s get back to the first part, which fits very well with today’s quote.  There are going to be times in every writer’s life when the world goes crazy. That’s not an if, that’s a when, and it’s going to happen to everybody. Accepting that makes it easier to handle, I’ve found.

The last few years, the last year, and the last couple of days have made me realize how much a part of me writing actually is. It’s been a dedicated search to find my voice again, and find the process that works for the writer and the person I am now. There’s some wandering around in the woods still, but there are trail markers, and those are all worthy of celebration. It’s not a race (unless there’s a deadline, but that’s a good thing) and it’s okay to take the time to do it right.

Head down, eyes on my own paper. I got this. I know how to write a book. I know how to write a romance novel. I may not have a muse, but I do have a magpie, and she is happily gathering shiny things; books and movies and songs and scents and flashes of scenes and I am getting all of this down. Emptying pens. Filling notebooks. Rubbing the letters off computer keys.  Putting story where there was no story before. That’s progress.

The bottom bar of that L key is going down.

Floral Notebook Trio and Fountain Pens

annabowling 1 Comment

I think with pen and paper.
–Jude Deveraux

One of the things I’ve come to accept about my writing process in this past year is that I work best getting my initial ideas down in longhand.  This has always been the case, and it’s not going to go away.  I can stare at a blank screen and blinking cursor for hours, feel like a total failure as a writer and hate myself, but give me a pen and paper and zoom, off I go. Maybe I start off by freewriting, but that almost always shapes itself into something useful within a couple of pages.

What works best-best for me is when the right paper and the right pen for the right story all connect in my brain. This is not some artsy-fartsy time waster; it’s how my brain works, and I am done apologizing for it. In fact, for a writer of historical romance, it makes a lot of sense. My characters, most of them, would have done a lot of writing in longhand (barring those who are not literate, but we’ll get to them in another post.) The hero of Her Last First Kiss, for example, writes and receives letters, so that scratch of nib against paper is something he’d find very familiar.

Future bookmark, as soon as I make a tassel for it.

Even more gorgeous when in focus.

This past weekend, I had the chance to redeem a Staples gift card, a very thoughtful gift from a dear writer friend. I knew right off that I wanted to get backups for my Pilot Varsity fountain pens (recent fountain pen convert here) and so headed straight for the pen section. Three pack, black, blue and purple, the exact colors I wanted. Still need to visit the art supply store for red and turquoise, but that’s for another day.

Since no trip to Staples is complete without a full check of the perimeter, I headed for the back of the store and boom goes the dynamite. Paperchase display. Ohhhhhhhh. Insert favorite starry-eyed, drooling gif here. Stationery triage ensued, and lobster and seahorse themed fabric covered hardcover notebooks are on the agenda for next time (red and blue alternating lines inside, oh be still my heart.) What left with me, though, was a set of three cahier-style 5×8 notebooks, with plain, lined and patterened pages. Patterned.

See? Patterned!

See? Patterned!

The plain book is, of course, plain inside, but even the lined pages have me drooling, because we have images on every page. Every. One.

Shadow not included

Shadow not included

I cannot wait to start writing in this one. All three of them, really. Not sure what they will be for, though the most pressing need is Her Last First Kiss, though I already have notebooks started for that, but I can make these fit, dangabit. One can never have too many notebooks. One of my goals for the year is to get more into visual elements in my notebooks, so we will see if the patterned and/or plain pages can be useful for that purpose.

A friend asked me if I was going to use these pens in these notebooks, because they look like they go together. Still not sure on that, as I need to test the inks on the papers. Fountain pens can sometimes bleed through, and I haven’t used them on Paperchase before, so that remains to be seen.

One last shot before we go today, all three covers side by side.

My preciouses

My preciouses

The Magpie Phase

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When you feel you are on a wrong-headed path, the quickest way to get where you want to go is to turn around, head back, and start again from the point you went askew.
—William Fitzsimmons

Wise words for the start of the new year, from my newest musical crush.  Music and I tend to find each other, lately through the browse option on Spotify, which I love, and as soon as I heard “From the Water,” I knew I had found something to add to my magpie hoard for Her Last First Kiss.  I could go on about the intoxicating melodies, the raw emotion conveyed in poetic prhasing (how could I not love a singer/songwriter who can correctly and effectively use “soylent” and “picayune” in the same song?)

It’s a brand new year, this 2015, time to forge ahead and trust that I know how to do this writing-a-book thing. I’ve done it before. I can do it again, and the other stuff of life is going to have to get in line. I’m still not talking much about Her Last First Kiss (aka HLFK) at this point, because I am, contrary to my expectations (a favorite Dutch proverb states, “Man plans, God laughs.” Another favorite in that category says, “Pray to God and row toward shore,” which is also appropriate.) There are times when a story will look the writer square in the eye and say “I am more than what you think I am.” To which the writer often responds with something along the lines of nervous laughter, shifty eyes, and frantically sifting through notes because this thing was going to be all planned out, and…oh, very well.

The magpie stage is like preparing the nursery for a new baby. We’re going to need to babyproof everything, get a crib with sides that will both stay up and come down easily when needed, string up the mobile to keep baby occupied, because that rapidly growing brain is not  “doing nothing” while the kid is so young that it looks like all they are doing is lying there.  They’re doing tons, but since they don’t have language yet, they can’t tell us.  With books-in-the-making, this is the time for gathering all the stuff the writer is going to need to make this thing happen.

Notebooks and pens, yes. New file, sure. Scrivener and I basically stare at each other, as I’m still figuring that out, but one of the things I have learned from my NaNot this year is that I need to put the mechanics aside for a while. Feel the story. Know the story. Know how it feels, because I write romance. This is all about the heart, the broken, bleeding, barely beating hearts of two people who are absolutley convinced that love is not for them, because they’re too far gone. They are wrong, of course, and I can promise them a happily ever after at the end of the book. Between Once Upon a Time, and Happily Ever After, though, anything can happen. I do know what happens, but what happens isn’t enough.

How does it feel for each of them as they go through their lives? These aren’t plot points to them; to my story people (it doesn’t seem right to call them characters) this is their lives. My  hero, who really, truly, honestly believes there is nothing about  him that matters besides amusing others with his failures. My heroine, who really, truly, honestly believes there is no room in her life for joy, because she must give all to duty. They’re wrong, of course, and I can prove that, not only with the culmination of their story, which I know already, but with all the steps that lead up to it.

In this, my magpie stage, I flit about, collecting all the bright and sparkly things for this story’s nest. Historical background, yes, but here’s the thing – they don’t know they’re historical characters. The late eighteenth century is their now.  As for me, I’m here, so I have a few centuries more of resources, and even if they don’t know who Mary Chapin Carpenter or Rainbow Rowell  or William Fitzsimmons are, those creators have had a hand in stirring this pudding.

I’m reading like crazy, more outside historical romance than I had thought I would for this book, though HLFK is definitely that genre, but that deep-down heart trauma, I am going to take that wherever I can find it and let it soak into my marrow.  Dangit, this hero and heroine deserve that. They deserve everything I can give them and more. I am honored that they picked me, that they are letting me feel them, not merely acknowledge that they exist.  I am watching movies as diverse as The Smurfs (1 and 2) and Diner and Shutter Island and episodes of TV shows I’ve loved for years, and those I’ve never seen before, because there is a spark of something I can pluck from that and add to my toolbox.  There will be a Pinterest board, which will be secret, because I need current project boards to be secret; I’m surprised at that, but it’s one of the things I’ve learned about my own process, and that’s okay.

Chattering, too, as magpies do, when time and context are right.  Still learning the right balance on that one, but I do know that talking is a part of my process, which is a living thing. I’m looking forward to this new adventure 2015 will bring.

Time, Place, and Billy Joel

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‎If you are not doing what you love, you are wasting your time.
– Billy Joel

Welp, ten days until Christmas, and I am nowhere near ready.  This surprises me. Christmas has been my favorite holiday since I was but a wee sprog, even more as an adult than as a kid, and, normally, I am in a constant Christmas frenzy from the moment I get up from Thanksgiving dinner.  This year, well, it’s snuck up on me. I’m not sure how that happened.

I’m not sure, for that matter, if it matters how it happened. Fact is that it did, I have ten days until The Day and all I can do is make the best out of what i have. Today’s quote is from Billy Joel, one of my all time favorite musicians, and I’m going to count him as a favorite writer as well, because “Scenes From an Italian Restaurant” is a whole story of everyday genius, and there’s “Captain Jack” and he managed to evoke emotion in “We Didn’t Start The Fire,” which is comprised entirely of name dropping 20th century names, events and places. So yes, one of my favorite writers right there, as writers come in all flavors.

One of the reasons I love Billy Joel’s writing (and music) is that it is intrinsically tied to his voice. First few notes of “Piano Man,” and you’re there, in the bar, breathing the stale smoke and watching the regular crowd shuffle in and do their thing, again and again, day after day, while simultaneously inside the piano player who knows this can’t be his end point. It has to be only a stop along the way. (Pause here a moment to appreciate the storytelling mastery of “Stop in Nevada.“)  It’s a very specific place, and  yet a very universal feeling, and I think that’s why it resonates as much as it does with me.

I’m all about the emotional connection, which is probably a good thing since I write romance, and since I write historical romance, the connection to a time and place is also important. There’s a world of difference between Georgian England and modern day NY, but the same desire, to be known and accepted for the person one already is, that’s timeless. So, all in all, I’m in the right genre, and that’s a good thing to know.

This past Saturday, I sat in a room full of other romance writers and listened to the fabulous Marie Lark share her method of plotting via character motivation (which also works for pantsers. I think I’m somewhere in the middle, but not doing labels at this time.)  Where I’d come into the meeting wondering if I wasn’t off the mark with something regarding the new historical that I oh so greatly love but still didn’t quite grasp yet, by the time we were only a few minutes into the workshop, my characters, once reticent, were blabbering at me faster than I could write.

One of the things I found I tended to do during my wandering around in the woods years was focus so much on the plot that the characters faded. That’s not what I love. What I love is the characters driving the whole story, their needs and wants (especially when the needs and wants are two different things) taking me where we all need to go. This workshop was a great reminder of that, and exactly on time.

Which will be the same with my favorite season of the year. Play some Christmas music. Play some Billy. Write some story. Bake some cookies. Let the lights shine. Prepare the traditional Christmas zombie hand and dangle an ornament from its fingers. My mother used to say, “the more you do, the more you’ll want to do,” and she’s right. The Monday blog post is already up on Monday, I baked brownies, and story things are going to happen. Tree is decorated, gifts are in their process of being created and distributed, and far better to embrace the season with ten days left to The Day than turn Grinchy and let it slip by me completely. Besides, in our family, the twelve days of Christmas start on the 25th, so adding that all in, I’ve got oodles of time. Now where did I put those candy canes?

 

Tools of the Trade

annabowling 2 Comments

The more I tried to force it, the less it worked, until in the end I hit a wall of creative exhaustion.
–Julia Ross

Today’s quote comes from this post by author Julia Ross, whom I am afraid to read. Not that I don’t want to; I have several of her books (alas, in storage, but there’s the library and ebooks, so not an excuse there) and I’ve peeked into them and closed the covers and put them back on the touch with a reverent pet. I’m sure I’m going to love these books when I do read  them, but the giant question mark hanging over the possibility of there being more books from this author in the near or far future -her post was written in 2007, after all, about when my own wandering in the woods started, would require me to read them through splayed fingers. What if I love her and there aren’t any more, ever?

It’s happened before. I love, love, love Valerie Sherwood, aka Jeanne Hines, aka Rosamund Royal, one of the first wave of historical romance writers in the late seventies and early eighties. Grand adventures, bold heroines, intriguing heroes, vivid historical detail, heartfelt author’s notes, etcetera, etcetera. Most readers have those authors who get an “oh, yes!” from the very first page and never want the stream to stop. Sometimes, however, it does. After Ms. Sherwood’s last published work, Lisbon, she let fans know she was going to spend as much time as she could with her beloved husband, Eddie, who had fallen ill. She never came back. I can’t blame her. The illness of a spouse can overshadow everything else, and I can’t even imagine the impact a loss would have. When authors disappear for reasons like this, we understand. We don’t blame them.

The sort of creative paralyisis that affects writers in Ms. Ross’s situation, that I understand all too well. Those ideas that should work, but don’t, the yen to try something new but still stay true to who we are as writers, the shifting demands of the market, all of those together, compounded with the desire not to let people down, that’s a lot of balls (and sometimes chainsaws) to juggle at one time. There’s guilt. Frustration. Downright shame. This should work. It worked for Big Name Author. It worked for Writer Friend. It worked for Critique Partner. Why doesn’ t it work for meeeeeeee? Well, because it doesn’t.

(Makeup) case in point: today’s picture. This is part of my daily routine. I love makeup. I love makeup like I love historical romance. I’ve got Kat von D. I’ve got Wet’n’Wild. They are usually on my face at the same time. There’s primers and color correction and a pleasing balance of neutrals and brights, accumulated from a lot of trial and error. Makeup is natural for me. I like it. It’s playtime. It’s not a mask, it’s art on my face. It’s part of me. Some women don’t wear makeup. Some men do. Yay for all of us, as long as the face we see in the mirror reflects the person behind it, I’m good with that. If I were to run errands or meet friends in jeans and tshirt and no makeup, I’d feel…awkward. Uncomfortable. Not ugly, just not-me. I spent too much time being not-me to willingly go back there again.

So it is with writing. All that striving and trying and bashing my head against the keyboard and shoving what I naturally want to do into a box because “real writers” do this or do that didn’t get me anywhere good. I’ve spoken before about writer friends, however well-meaning, who think I “really should” write their favorite genre instead of my own, or what’s popular or what’s hot or the next big thing. Stop. Just stop. If I wanted to, I would. I’ve tried genres that are not-me, and know what? They’re not-me. I’m me. I wear makeup. I write romance.

Creative exhaustion is something nobody plans on, but sometimes it happens. It’s not fun. It’s frustrating and annoying and something I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. It does, however, have the potential to be a useful tool. It teaches us what we don’t want to do. What doesn’t work. When we know what doesn’t work, we can turn in the opposite direction and go in the other way. Forcing writing very seldom works, and if it does, it’s not the same as writing that comes from a natural place. It’s easy to say “relax, it will come” and for those in the throes of creative exhaustion, that can make the pressure seize up all the more.

I’m not an expert, by any means. I still seize up at times over the fact that my most recent novel release isn’t all that recent :runs around in circles, screaming.: Must get new novel out now now now now now! Accio manuscript! :taps foot: Nothing? Guess I’ll have to do it the old fashioned way. Which is fine, because it can be a wondrous adventure.

Fumbling Toward Storytown

annabowling 4 Comments

You should walk towards yourself as a writer, not away.
—Chuck Wendig

Writer Friends: What are you working on right now?

Me: :shifty eyes: Um, :mumble mumble: New historical :mumble mumble: Georgian. :mumble mumble: Something about a love triangle. :mumble mumble: Canada.  :mumble mumble: Hey, look, a kitty.

Even if there’s no kitty. Really, all I want is to change the subject. Current Project doesn’t want to be talked about yet. Odd for me, since extrovert me really does want to talk to Everybody about pretty much All The Things, though I’ve tried really really hard to hold myself back on that. Sometimes too much. There has to be a happy medium, and sometimes it’s tricky to find. On the other hand, there is such a thing as talking too much about a story, so much so that A) It’s all talked out and now no longer needs to be written, and/or B) there’s so much input from so many different sources that outside voices drown out the voices of the characters. In either event, nothing gets done, and the characters sit around in the author’s brain, all crabby because they were all set to have this awesome adventure and now nobody’s doing anything and what are they even here for?

Imagine various couples dressed in garb from various historical eras, drumming their fingers on various tables, sighing loudly and looking out the windows because they are sooooo booooored. Not with being historical people (except for Anthony and Christine, whom I tried to shove into a Regency setting where neither they nor I are at all  happy, because Regency sells, but my heart wasn’t in it. We’ll give this a rest and try again in a different era when they are speaking to me again.) or with being couples, but with being stuck in stories that weren’t working because I was so determined to do things the way they “should” be done that I couldn’t have shipwrecked them worse if I tried.

Can they be rescued? Sure, most of them. We need some time to let the dust settle, these would-be books and I. Others will shake hands (or bow and curtsy as the case may be) and go our separate ways, glad to have been in each other’s lives for the good times we had. Time plus distance equals perspective, and taking a step back from a story-that-won’t is often the key to making it into a story-that-will, and eventually a story-that-did.

The story I’d thought I could maybe possibly have done and dusted, at least to the halfway mark, if I did do NaNo merely laughed at me. It didn’t want to be plotted with charts or GMC’d into marching order. No, these two have banded together and want to play with me. They’ll tell me this much, but I have to figure out this other thing before they’ll say anything else, but when I do, they have something special for me. I haven’t had a hero and heroine do this to me before, but that’s kind of the whole point, having those characters find me while I’m still wandering around in the woods at night, bumping into trees and getting my foot caught in decayed logs. One of them will help me sit on some boulder I never noticed before and the other one will calmly disengage my foot from the rotted log, chase off whatever wildlife was inside said log (because there usually is) and then we’ll have a talk. They’ll tell me their story and I will write it down.

Because that’s what it’s all about for me. The hero, the heroine, their story. All the rest, word counts and GMC and plot and historical versimilitude (far better than historical accuracy, but that’s another post altogether) and character charts and all the rest, those come secondary. Listening to too many voices has resulted in the past with me stomping about in the woods at night, during a rainstorm, with both feet in rotten logs and a bucket stuck in my head, and I’m over all that, thankyouverymuch. Here’s this couple (even when they unite to make me their plaything, but I’m not minding much, really; it’s fun for me, too.) and here’s me and we’re going on an adventure. Feels about right.

Typing With Wet Claws: Traditional Christmas Zombie Edition

annabowling 3 Comments

Skye here, for another Feline Friday.  It has been an eventful week around the house for everybody. The leftovers from Thanksgiving are all gone now, except for a little bit of gravy, so I still get that nice warm birdy smell every now and again. Anty is very happy to have over three hundred followers and says she is working on something to say thank you for that.

The big change around here is Anty planning Christmas decorations for another year. That usually means lights get strung in the doorways to the living room and Uncle’s office, and the tree goes up maybe a day after that. There is some talk this year of a second tree to go in the front window, but I have not seen them bring it in yet. One tree is still good, full of lights and shiny dangly things. I do not get near the tree, since it is up on a table and I do not jump or climb, so I watch it from the floor. 
Mama got Anty a lot of new batteries, so that Anty will not be without her camera over the holiday season. I mean a lot of batteries. Like this many. This means she can chase me around the house for a long time in order to get my picture for this blog. She says it is for holiday pictures, but I know what she really means. She wants kitty pictures.

lots of batteries mean lots of pictures

lots of batteries mean lots of pictures

We also have something the humans say counts as holiday decoration, but I think they  have the wrong holiday in mind. Since I am only a kitty, I have not had a lot of Christmases, and someone may have to help me out here, but is there such a thing as a Christmas zombie? Because we have this zombie hand that Anty says is going to hold a Christmas ornament and be the centerpiece on the dining room table. It looks like this:

Traditional Christmas zombie?

Traditional Christmas zombie?

I think all that time on the glowy box is making Anty loopy. She says she has her head down and her eyes on her own paper. She has big purple headphones on so she can listen to the playlist she made for her story, and that’s pretty much where her attention goes most of the day.  Sometimes, she looks at pictures she has on the computer that she says look like the people and places in her head.  I sit really really close to her chair so she knows I love her and I stare at her a lot. I hear kitty stares help writers make better stories. She says I do not have to sleep under her footrest, but I feel safe with that roof over my head, so she has to be very very careful when she gets up to feed me. Or get tea. But mostly feed me.

That is about it for this week. Lots of clicking of keys and scratching of pen on paper. I know that makes Anty happy, and there is always the chance that she will feed me when she gets up to make more tea.

Until next week, I remain,

Very truly yours,

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