Back in the saddle

So many things raising their heads to thwart any progress on just getting through the read-through of the old Draft Zero.  Hurricanes, RSI, busted computers.  Feh.

Yesterday, I got the hubs out of the house and we went to Walnut Creek Park for the sole purpose of sitting still.  Usually, when we go there, we make use of some of the 11 miles of trails that tangle around the wooded section of the park.  This time, we brought water and apples and he brought a sketchbook while I lugged my only printed copy of the ms to read.

Parenthetically, it is extremely hard to get one’s mind into a book – any book – when there is Tejano music blaring from the speakers of one truck, let alone 3 or more.  This is a piece of Tejano culture that I truly Do Not Get(tm).  My husband theorizes that it is like a bird’s mating call, and that these men who sit in their truck, listening to the same “bum bum bum BA bum-bum bum bum” sound paired with what can only be described as a calliope doing unholy things, are actually waiting to attract a mate based on who can hold on the longest listening to the same wretched track.  But I digress…

So, I think I left off at what is currently known as Chapter 18 before we started to lose the light and I had had enough of the music.  But I will say this: Chapters 1 through 15 could probably be condensed into just one, or added as backstory to Chapters 16 on.  Which is both sad (kill your darlings, kill your darlings…) and heartening.  Because it means it doesn’t suck, but rather takes far too long to get to The Story.  Even I was getting bored and frustrated with the first several chapters.  And you only send the first 3 as your sample!  Gah!

The problem of time

No, not time to write (though everyone suffers that one).  What I’m thinking about is, how do you effectively introduce that your story is set in the recent past without plopping it in there like a bird turd out of the sky?

The hubby and I watched Starter For Ten the other night, and we pretty much figured out after watching for a time that it was set in the mid-eighties.  Mostly because the soundtrack was dominated by 80’s alternative tunes, but also by the fashions and use of these things called “cassette tapes”.  And maybe by the lack of cell phones.  But then, the characters are in a restaurant and they order wine, and this happens:

“What year is it?”

“1985.”

“No… [chuckle] …I meant, what year is the wine?”

“1985.”

See, that just seems hokey and ham fisted.  Not to mention, the scene appeared to exist for 2 reasons: to reveal that the female love interest was a slut, and to drop in the year for those who hadn’t yet figured it out.

Apart from the fact I didn’t really like the movie, this part really bothered me.  And if I were to write something set in the recent past, I’d really like to avoid it if I can.  But how do you do that?  Or do you just ignore hinting at it, and just not have cell phones or Internet in your story?

101 Questions

Still plugging away at reading the original MS.  A guy on one of my email lists introduced me to the 101 Questions for your character meme, which I started to apply to some of the main characters in the book.  I don’t see needing to do it for everyone, if for no other reason than it takes a lot of time to answer all the questions “in character” so to speak.  Perhaps I’ll start a new blog page to post the results, as they are quite interesting, and some of them surprised even me.

In other news, the graphics chip seems to be arsed on my laptop, which is part of the logic board, and thus something they’ve replaced once already.  Colour me not impressed with this.  Another round of repairs in the works, which means no laptop at home again until it’s right.

Pardon me for writing

Several chapters in to the re-read and it is hard not to bring out the red pen. There’s some glaring mistakes, typos, etc, that I’m thinking, “oh, I can just fix that right now.” But I can’t because then I’ll start line editing, and it’s not ready for that yet.

One of the main things I’m noticing is the tone of the writing is extremely cautious. The language of the narration is so passive, it’s almost sorry for being there. Very like, “um, excuse me, sorry to bother you, but if you wouldn’t mind, I’ve got a few things to tell you, should you have the time.” I don’t know whether that had anything to do with my general mental state at the time of the writing, or simply that my fear of setting anything down on the page manifested as being so apologetic. I’m not sure how far I got in the chapters before I was laid off from my job in San Francisco and took a month to pack up everything and move to Austin. I know now, though, that the word count will shrink considerably once I clear out all those weasel words.

A non-Elewirian post

There’s always some other piece of writing on the back burner while working on ALUTK. This one doesn’t have a proper name, but I refer to it (in my own head) as “The Ghost Story” even though the “ghost” in it isn’t actually dead. He likes to remind me of that occasionally, lest I forget.

“I’m not dead,” says he. “Just presently incorporeal.” He says it with a very English *sniff*. I believe he may be from Oxford. He was also born around 1905 and “went missing” in 1940.

At any rate, this morning, since I am momentarily caught up at work (relatively speaking; there is always *something* I could be doing) I spent some time with the non-dead ghost and got almost 900 words. They’re not all good words, but this scene has been plaguing me every night as I lay down to sleep and every morning when I wake up my alarm clock and my cat simultaneously try to get me out of bed. I wasn’t sure how it was meant to go, but it’s become a lot clearer now.

The crazy thing is, I see this story as having a multitude of climactic moments, which makes me wonder if it wants to be a book, a series of short stories, or an episodic TV show. I’m thinking book, but my stories almost always have that “this could have visuals and a soundtrack” feel to them, even if I have no idea how to write screenplays.

At any rate, he has gone from being a blonde with blue eyes and a broad frame, standing at 6′2″, to being thin as a rail, under 6 feet tall, with stick-straight chestnut brown hair and brown eyes. I think it fits the profile of a paranormal scientist far better, in the end. And the heroine of the story fancies him better than way.

Location, location, location

Is there anything inherantly wrong with setting the book in Massachusetts?  Apart from the idea that Salem seems rather a cliche in terms of tolerance of witchcraft.  Did I set it there *because* I don’t have such ingrained memories of it as I would say, Pennsylvania, where I grew up?  PA isn’t part of New England, but when I was growing up there had many similar cultural attributes, especially in small town terms.  And the oldness of Old City Philadelphia is such a shame to waste when I know it so well…

Another nit to pick…

Have I Read This Before?

So, I was without my laptop for nearly a week, and then after I got it back, it was terribly slow due to the fact that the repairs didn’t cover my 3rd party RAM card which had gone zzzt at the same time the logic board went zzzt. Ah, technology. But, it’s back up now, and with better faster RAM than before.

Last night was a “working while reading” night. Mr. Luna spent the evening reading Miles Davis’s autobiography, and I spent it going back to the very beginning of A Light Upon the Key and reading it from page one. It’s been ages since I’ve read the whole thing. I sat down with a somewhat poor attitude, I must admit, and telling myself that I’m just reading some piece of junk from a supermarket shelf. However, despite some glaring problems, it’s not completely broken, I think. In fact, I believe once I get through this initial read-through, I will be able to chart out what each chapter is trying to do, and start the edits from there.

I’m also finding that I get through the “chapters” rather quickly, which makes me think they’re not standard chapter length. But, again, I’m not getting out my red pen until I’ve read through it once as a whole piece of work to see how it actually hangs together. It’s tough when you’ve completed Draft Zero and then you put it in a drawer and ignore it for 4 years. At the same time, it’s exciting to think “I wrote that? Those words came out of my head?” It’s got seriously bad bits, but it’s got a good lot of good bits too. I have hope.

Progress report

Last night, I got 800 new words for a new replacement scene that had been bubbling in my brain for a few days. That’s a piddling number of words in the grande scheme of things, but I’m not actually trying to *add* word count to the overall work. In fact, I’m going to need to cut it by about 40k words, if I remember correctly. It’s been a while since I looked at the wordcount of the whole ms, since I have been using M$Word and as such, do better with the one-chapter-per-document format. Word doesn’t like super huge documents and will crash on you often if you have big ol’ fantasy-novel-sized ms open in it while attempting to make edits and referencing other documents and using any other application besides Word (such as iTunes, for example).

But! (check out this segue) Once I was done with that scene and best pleased with myself for sitting down to write it and being moderately successful at getting across what I intended, I headed over to Literature & Latte and downloaded Scrivener, which is only available for Macintosh. Sorry PC user writers. You guys get all the good games first, so it’s only fair. Anyway, this little tool is better than Word for large writing projects like way-over-100k-word-novels. You’ve got access to all your references right there, all your inspiring images, all your chapters. It’s got full-screen mode so you can literally block out distractions like your system clock or, you know, teh Interwebs. It’s got storyboarding, index cards, a place to keep a handy list of all your characters. It reminds me of Power Structure, which I got years ago before there was a Mac OSX, but it’s better. Cleaner and less “gadgets” to learn how to use. That and Power Structure isn’t a place to write your story, only a place to outline it and enter plot points etc. I don’t think it even works with OSX 10.4 at any rate.

Anyway, I’m very pleased now. Also? It’s Friday. Yay!

picking nits

It occurred to me as I was driving home from the day job this evening, that the character of Stephen is problematic, not least of which because he appears to just find Fiona with no effort at all while it’s taken Rendel, a full-blooded Aelf’en, many years to find her through trial and error. Why is it that a half-blood like Stephen should be able to just waltz up to her and know who she is?

The other problem is that Fiona is in her mid-twenties and no one seems to have ever said to her, gee, your blood type is all wrong, you never get sick, and you look nothing like your father. And btw, where the hell is your father? How would she have survived such mundane things like childhood immunizations, a requirement for attending most public schools? These are things formulated for human children. And wouldn’t a blood draw of any type have shown some unusual things if we’re to believe that the cells that make her “half-blooded” are there, present in her blood the whole time?

I have already nixed the scene in which Stephen appears to have car trouble and comes into their cafe for assistance. Cliche doesn’t even begin to describe it. It’s unimaginative and crap. The scene to replace it – not yet written – in which he meets with her as a vendor at an “Anachronists” event is better. But why would he know to follow her there unless he had been following her for some time and knew what she was up to? This scenario (chapter, really) replaces the scene in the basement of the church where Fiona and Sabhene find the panaten just because they read some spell out of a book. I think it’s still important to have some writing on hand, but not in the Neverending Story kind of way. I mean, what was I thinking? Two people happen to bust a hole in a sheetrock wall in the basement of a church, see stuff behind it, decide to investigate, and then just randomly do the spell they find in the book? Why would they not tell someone what they found? Hey, are you aware there’s a magic circle in your basement Mr. Pastor, sir? And that someone’s abandoned it and drywalled over it? How would your drywall installers not have noticed that there was this whole wasted bunch of space in there? Blech, yuck. Also, you would have to hit drywall pretty damn hard with your head to punch a hole in it. Ouch.

SO. So. Fiona is raised by her aunt and uncle. The blood relation is her aunt, who is Fiona’s father’s sister. Fiona’s father is Oliver. Oliver left cryptic instructions alluding to Fiona’s uber-specialness when he dumped her off on the doorstep (not literally), and it didn’t take long for the auntie and uncle to come around to understanding that Fiona probably wouldn’t do so well with traditional things like childhood immunizations and blood draws and so forth. So, they started trying to find Oliver, or one of his friends in the Anachronist’s group, and they were ultimately led to the right people who would treat Fiona with the specialness she needed. Except of course the part about telling her she was special. And so Fiona grew up thinking her aunt and uncle were simply crunchy granola hippies who didn’t like traditional western doctors or something, and only ever saw herbalists when needed. And people who would sign off on medical paperwork without actually doing the blood tests or shots.

Because there is a network of other people just like Fiona, but her aunt and uncle thought they were protecting her by not letting her in on the joke. Because Oliver instructed them to be supremely careful with whom they associated, for fear of his daughter’s life.

But as careful as people are, they can’t plan for every possibility, and Stephen ended up being one of those people they consulted with. They believed he was wearing the white hat, but he was actually wearing the black hat. And that is how he knew where to follow her. And how he came to have possession of her panaten which he then sold back to her (nice guy, huh?) at the Event.