Another year, another novel. I set out with some goals for the novel, and here's how that played out:
1) Finish it. Managed this one with a few hours to spare. It's 69.4K words, which isn't as long as an adult fantasy novel should be, but much will be added in edits, so that's not a big problem.
2) Produce a strong, non-stereotyped female lead. I think I did a good job on this, but only reading it will tell. One's memory of a novel as it is written is a bit strange.
3) Set up the possibility for a series of one shots in the same world/with the same characters. Done, and done.
4) Create a convincing world. Um...5 out of 10, maybe? 4 out of 10? This needs some work. A lot of good ideas, but many of them not realized until late in the book, so that I've got to go back and fill in many details in earlier portions. Also, finally realized that the flavor of the book is off, so I'm changing that, too, from slightly-off-of-generic European Fantasy Land, to the more fitting and satisfying suggestive-of-East-Asia Fantasy Land.
5) Represent people of color. Slight success. Improvement spots already noted, and will be made to happen.
6) Manage to not hate the story. Well...working on that, still. We'll see how it plays out. Fix it in post, right?
All of which means, I've got a hunk of book. Medieval city based fantasy with focus on religion and magic and two MCs and a nebulously developed world that needs a lot of work and naming conventions that need to be stabilized and improved and word choices that really need to be expanded for certain words.
Not my best NaNo. Probably my worst. But also the one which I actually had goals for beyond finishing, and that makes it trickier, it appears.
I'm setting it aside until later, and then I'll read and start to fix. Next year, probably, early, but I can't be sure. Whenever I'm ready, and it's ready, and I'm not editing for publication on other books.
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Sunday, November 27, 2011
The Difficulty of Finishing Up
NaNoWriMo is winding down. The home stretch, the last few days. At computers all over the world, people are desperately striving to get to the magic number, 50000. It's a nice big round number, and a great many people will never achieve it, but more importantly, some of them will. They'll get to a few hundred past it, maybe even less, and they'll stop.
The website, you see, has a simple method of figuring out if you wrote a novel. Count the words. Done. There's no other way, of course; no one has time to read scores of thousands of "novels" (I use the word guardedly, as there's perilously little of books in these scribblings most often). So once you get to the 50K, you often just stop. You're done. Goal achieved, badge unlocked, move on.
Most years, I end up writing a novel that's not much longer than that anyway. I like a nice sleek novel, so getting to five thousand words across the line is about all I normally need. This year, however, I'm ending up with something longer. I don't know how much longer; not too much mind you, but sixty or seventy thousand wouldn't shock. Well, at this point, sixty would shock, but in the wrong direction. I can't think I'd finish that quickly. Only I'm having great difficulty getting past the notion that I'm done: I've won the contest, I've put up the word count, and so I should just take a break.
That doesn't work, not for me. If I set it aside, I may never get back to it. So I'm just pushing myself to write, something or anything, to finish it off. It might not be good (then again, this year the novel isn't good, either) but I feel like I have to do it. And hopefully within four days, so that I'm done in a month. The second word of the acronym is after all No for Novel, not Fi for Fifty Thousand Words.
The website, you see, has a simple method of figuring out if you wrote a novel. Count the words. Done. There's no other way, of course; no one has time to read scores of thousands of "novels" (I use the word guardedly, as there's perilously little of books in these scribblings most often). So once you get to the 50K, you often just stop. You're done. Goal achieved, badge unlocked, move on.
Most years, I end up writing a novel that's not much longer than that anyway. I like a nice sleek novel, so getting to five thousand words across the line is about all I normally need. This year, however, I'm ending up with something longer. I don't know how much longer; not too much mind you, but sixty or seventy thousand wouldn't shock. Well, at this point, sixty would shock, but in the wrong direction. I can't think I'd finish that quickly. Only I'm having great difficulty getting past the notion that I'm done: I've won the contest, I've put up the word count, and so I should just take a break.
That doesn't work, not for me. If I set it aside, I may never get back to it. So I'm just pushing myself to write, something or anything, to finish it off. It might not be good (then again, this year the novel isn't good, either) but I feel like I have to do it. And hopefully within four days, so that I'm done in a month. The second word of the acronym is after all No for Novel, not Fi for Fifty Thousand Words.
Friday, November 25, 2011
Ruff, Washington
I haven't posted for a long while. I blame two things: NaNoWriMo, and getting married. The latter took up way more time, and left me with precious little for anything else. But it's happened now, I have a husband, and that's wonderful.
This year for Thanksgiving I went to Eastern Washington to spend the day with the husband's family. His mother (and his uncle and aunts) were all born in a little spot of a place called Ruff (pronounced Roof), Washington. It's barely visible on maps. There are grain silos, a couple of streets, one house and several trailers. Almost everyone living there is a cousin of my husband, but that's not a lot of people, maybe a dozen. If Ruff was ever incorporated, no one seems to know about it.
It wasn't always like that, though. Once upon a time, there used to something like a real town there. In the teens of the last century, there was a Model T assembly plant which lasted for some years, and the town was host to a rail station of some note. There would have been a store or two, and housing for the people who worked in the plant, and probably a bar or a restaurant. There was certainly a ten room hotel, which lasted into the 70s though not as a commercial operation; instead, my husband's mother and her siblings grew up in it, moving from room to room as the mood took them, with their parents hosting massive parties in the huge, dilapidated building. I don't know when everyone had moved out by, but it couldn't have been later than about 1975 or so. The building lasted a while longer, in an ever more ruinous state, before finally being torn down maybe 20 years ago. No one seems certain about when exactly that happened. If you look at the map, you can still see the vague ruins of the building on the corner of Main and W3.
Towns like this used to exist all over the rural areas of the nation, little places where local production and industry flared up before consolidation and better transportation did away with them. Probably there were a few hundred people in Ruff at one point, and a few hundred in dozens of similar places just in Washington that have since vanished off the map, mostly or entirely.
Another is Marlin, the "town" the was part of my husband's address when he was a little kid. It's part of a place called Krupp that changed its name during WWI, as Krupp was the name of Germany's biggest armaments firm. But it's still half Krupp and half Marlin, and both are listed on maps. Which is silly, as the place has only 60 people, the smallest incorporated community in Washington State. It's a speck, a spot on a map that you might not even find. There's a post office, left over from better days. There's not a gas station, from what I can tell, and there's no businesses at all beyond the P.O. Why there are still any people there, I can't guess. I suppose most of them work small farms, because that's the sort of area it's in. I suppose also that many of those people are children, who will move away to a big town like Moses Lake, or dream big and head to Seattle; or else fall into meth and boredom and linger on in their empty spaces.
We drove through dozens of little decaying places: Harrington and Wilbur and Hartline, Almira and Coulee City and others whose names I can't recall. Everything breaking down and vanishing, the old lovely houses replaced by trailers, the trailers replaced by empty fields littered with old rusty wreckage, the fields forgotten except for a little graveyard tucked away in an odd corner.
If there were more hills and hollows, it would all be well suited for horror, but the vistas are too open, the light too bright. I wonder what it would take to give some life back to these places, to make them attractive to people again. In this age when the internet brings the world to your home, I wonder that it doesn't promote more distant living. But at least near Ruff, it doesn't. It's lonely out there, and vast. All the little places are being swallowed up in the distance.
This year for Thanksgiving I went to Eastern Washington to spend the day with the husband's family. His mother (and his uncle and aunts) were all born in a little spot of a place called Ruff (pronounced Roof), Washington. It's barely visible on maps. There are grain silos, a couple of streets, one house and several trailers. Almost everyone living there is a cousin of my husband, but that's not a lot of people, maybe a dozen. If Ruff was ever incorporated, no one seems to know about it.
It wasn't always like that, though. Once upon a time, there used to something like a real town there. In the teens of the last century, there was a Model T assembly plant which lasted for some years, and the town was host to a rail station of some note. There would have been a store or two, and housing for the people who worked in the plant, and probably a bar or a restaurant. There was certainly a ten room hotel, which lasted into the 70s though not as a commercial operation; instead, my husband's mother and her siblings grew up in it, moving from room to room as the mood took them, with their parents hosting massive parties in the huge, dilapidated building. I don't know when everyone had moved out by, but it couldn't have been later than about 1975 or so. The building lasted a while longer, in an ever more ruinous state, before finally being torn down maybe 20 years ago. No one seems certain about when exactly that happened. If you look at the map, you can still see the vague ruins of the building on the corner of Main and W3.
Towns like this used to exist all over the rural areas of the nation, little places where local production and industry flared up before consolidation and better transportation did away with them. Probably there were a few hundred people in Ruff at one point, and a few hundred in dozens of similar places just in Washington that have since vanished off the map, mostly or entirely.
Another is Marlin, the "town" the was part of my husband's address when he was a little kid. It's part of a place called Krupp that changed its name during WWI, as Krupp was the name of Germany's biggest armaments firm. But it's still half Krupp and half Marlin, and both are listed on maps. Which is silly, as the place has only 60 people, the smallest incorporated community in Washington State. It's a speck, a spot on a map that you might not even find. There's a post office, left over from better days. There's not a gas station, from what I can tell, and there's no businesses at all beyond the P.O. Why there are still any people there, I can't guess. I suppose most of them work small farms, because that's the sort of area it's in. I suppose also that many of those people are children, who will move away to a big town like Moses Lake, or dream big and head to Seattle; or else fall into meth and boredom and linger on in their empty spaces.
We drove through dozens of little decaying places: Harrington and Wilbur and Hartline, Almira and Coulee City and others whose names I can't recall. Everything breaking down and vanishing, the old lovely houses replaced by trailers, the trailers replaced by empty fields littered with old rusty wreckage, the fields forgotten except for a little graveyard tucked away in an odd corner.
If there were more hills and hollows, it would all be well suited for horror, but the vistas are too open, the light too bright. I wonder what it would take to give some life back to these places, to make them attractive to people again. In this age when the internet brings the world to your home, I wonder that it doesn't promote more distant living. But at least near Ruff, it doesn't. It's lonely out there, and vast. All the little places are being swallowed up in the distance.
Monday, October 31, 2011
Happy Halloween
Halloween's on a Monday, to which I say boo in the jeering fashion, rather than the scaring. When I was a child, it never mattered what day was Halloween, of course: if it was a school day, you might wear your costume there, and then get home and have dinner, and then get to trick or treating as soon as it started to get the least bit dark. Monday was as good as any other day. But as a grown person, you like your holidays to fall on the weekend: Friday and Saturday are the best nights for parties, you know. I used to throw Halloween parties, but there's just too much that happens, and over the years, the number of events going on has only increased, so that two years ago we threw our last party for the biggest dress up occasion of the year. It was sad, but we had far too many people showing up for twenty minutes before they ran off to another party (often three or four more parties). End result was a party of fifteen people with five or eight wandering through at any moment. Not awful, or anything, but the parties I once threw were big productions, so Halloween quit being worth it.
Now I'm an old fuddy duddy, and I sit in my apartment and look down at the streets below, thronging with costumed revelers wandering about. I do not, myself, get dressed up, but then, since I was a child, I seldom have. And I rather hope that there's no knocking at our door tonight (I think there are no kids in our building, or at least, I've never seen one, so we may be okay) because we don't have any treats to give out. A bit of a grouchy curmudgeon, that's me these days.
Truly, though, I don't object. Happy Halloween, and all that. Enjoy it, if you're able to do so on a Monday, or if you already did over the weekend. I'll be sitting at home, having some dinner, probably watching Cabaret because Netflix sent it along. Inappropriate, I know. Maybe we'll dig up a horror movie we can watch instantly?
Happy Halloween in any case.
Friday, October 28, 2011
You. Yes, you. You're awesome.
Yes, YOU!
Thanks for coming to take a look at our humble - errr, arrogant blog. You may be here because of our current 20,001: A Steampunk Odyssey contest. Which is awesome, and we truly appreciate! Thanks for coming to look for a moment at what we do when we're procrastin - errr, busily planning our next novel. Leave a comment, say hi, tell us about your journey as a writer. Because that is REALLY awesome!
Or you may be here because you want to know where you can find us next (Orycon, Rustycon, Norwescon, etc) for signing and panels and such. Which is awesome, we would love to see you at any or all of our coming events! Come bug us about writing, about epub, about your next novel. We love to talk about stuff like that.
Or you may be here because you want to read what we have to say about Nanowrimo - in which case, check out the very next post - and yes, in that case you're completely awesome because you're a writer and you're considering that month of madness known to mere mortals as November. Hats off to you!
I'm sure there are plenty of other reasons you might be here, and those, too, are awesome. In fact, I'm planning to found an Awesome League of Awesome, and you will all be founding members. With t-shirts, and secret handshakes, and probably some kind of world domination agenda.
And cookies. Because that's how we roll around here.
So thanks again for coming by. We hope you enjoy, and come back soon. :)
Thanks for coming to take a look at our humble - errr, arrogant blog. You may be here because of our current 20,001: A Steampunk Odyssey contest. Which is awesome, and we truly appreciate! Thanks for coming to look for a moment at what we do when we're procrastin - errr, busily planning our next novel. Leave a comment, say hi, tell us about your journey as a writer. Because that is REALLY awesome!
Or you may be here because you want to know where you can find us next (Orycon, Rustycon, Norwescon, etc) for signing and panels and such. Which is awesome, we would love to see you at any or all of our coming events! Come bug us about writing, about epub, about your next novel. We love to talk about stuff like that.
Or you may be here because you want to read what we have to say about Nanowrimo - in which case, check out the very next post - and yes, in that case you're completely awesome because you're a writer and you're considering that month of madness known to mere mortals as November. Hats off to you!
I'm sure there are plenty of other reasons you might be here, and those, too, are awesome. In fact, I'm planning to found an Awesome League of Awesome, and you will all be founding members. With t-shirts, and secret handshakes, and probably some kind of world domination agenda.
And cookies. Because that's how we roll around here.
So thanks again for coming by. We hope you enjoy, and come back soon. :)
National Novel Writing Month
There's this thing called National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for shorter, which I do. Or have done. Or something. I think the first time I did it was in 2004, though I may be wrong, it might have been 2003. All records of the period have grown sketchy, and the computers I wrote on then, which might have contained such information, are corrupted and long dead. In any case, from that point I've given it at least a shot every year: try to write a novel of at least 50000 words in one month (November).
There's been a good amount of success. Two years ago I wrote Engines of the Broken World; a couple edits later, it got bought by a publisher, and looks likely to make its way to shelves in time for NaNo 2012 (or maybe 2013, the timing on publishing being not an exact science). 2006 was Daughter of Cleopatra, which I've epublished; 2010 was Never, which is probably my favorite of all the things I've written, and is also readily available. Other years brought Speech of Angels, being edited and polished, and the House of the Serpent, ditto (though it needs much more editing and polishing). There was the year I was at sea, and didn't finish anything (sad year for NaNo, but hell, I was sailing around the world, and I was pretty impressed that I even gave it a shot).
This year I'm getting married in November. That takes up, as you may know and can certainly imagine, a goodly bit of time in the lead up, and then there's a honeymoon after. So it's not going to be the best month for writing a book. But I'm still going to give it a try, and see what comes. I suspect another failed attempt, and I won't much blame myself for it. One must, however, make the attempt. And so should you, dear readers, if the least hint of being a novelist has entered your head.
One month. One book. It's a hard equation to master, but simple in concept.
There's been a good amount of success. Two years ago I wrote Engines of the Broken World; a couple edits later, it got bought by a publisher, and looks likely to make its way to shelves in time for NaNo 2012 (or maybe 2013, the timing on publishing being not an exact science). 2006 was Daughter of Cleopatra, which I've epublished; 2010 was Never, which is probably my favorite of all the things I've written, and is also readily available. Other years brought Speech of Angels, being edited and polished, and the House of the Serpent, ditto (though it needs much more editing and polishing). There was the year I was at sea, and didn't finish anything (sad year for NaNo, but hell, I was sailing around the world, and I was pretty impressed that I even gave it a shot).
This year I'm getting married in November. That takes up, as you may know and can certainly imagine, a goodly bit of time in the lead up, and then there's a honeymoon after. So it's not going to be the best month for writing a book. But I'm still going to give it a try, and see what comes. I suspect another failed attempt, and I won't much blame myself for it. One must, however, make the attempt. And so should you, dear readers, if the least hint of being a novelist has entered your head.
One month. One book. It's a hard equation to master, but simple in concept.
Monday, October 24, 2011
A Thousand Words
Some time ago - all right, it wasn't that long, but bear with me here - I wrote the Great American Novel. It wasn't set in America, and it may or may not be great, but it was, in very fact, a novel. Weighing in at roughly 111,000 words, it's arguably quite a long novel for the Young Adult Fantasy genre.
I find myself bemused to note that the name of the novel, Grimme, is very close indeed to an eponymous television series that just began serialization: "Grimm." The TV show is all about someone who suddenly becomes aware that his many-times-great grandfather was one of the original Brothers Grimm and he must now go fight monsters (I paraphrase wildly, but you get the gist I'm sure). Strangely enough, this too is modestly close to the ideas touched on by my novel - not precisely, but not so far off either.
And yes, this leads to bemusement for me. Am I, as has been the case several times this year, tuned closely in to the spirit of the times? Does my muse whisper to me what will be popular next season? (Would that were the case!) Perhaps. But in this time I am reminded that there are relatively few truly original ideas left under the sun, perhaps none at all; and that it is how we execute those ideas that makes our writing worthy of being read. The "great stories" are all great exactly because they speak to something universal in human experience, so it is natural that we would go back to them again and again, seeking the truths they contain.
Perhaps that is the case with Grimme, and the new television show Grimm. Or perhaps not. But in the mean time, you are invited to feast your eyes on the lovely map drawn for the alterate-Europe setting of Grimme. Done by hand by the multi-talented Jason Vanhee, it uses archaic or non-English names for many of the regions of Europe. I'm quite pleased by it, and grateful that my writing cohort has such a rich store of artistic ability upon which I may occasionally draw. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but in this case it will help me summarize over a hundred thousand words - and my gratitude is commensurate with that ratio.
Look for more Grimme developments soon!
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