On the positive side, I have already started work on my new manuscript. This even as my beta readers continue to give me their feedback on “Lucky”. It’s a companion piece and I am very excited to be writing it.
However, I am at the excruciatingly slow phase. The beginning. And the fates (and the weather) have been conspiring against me, keeping my 6-year old at home as well as the toddler.
I defy anyone, even the strongest-willed among you, to get anything done with two young exuberant children running around, souped up on ice cream and summer vacation.
It will be as if I am excising each word with a very blunt spoon, but I will prevail.
Ar least until Granny arrives on Monday and then it’s back to business. Bless her!
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SLOW AS A VERY SLEEPY AND ANCIENT TORTOISE
July 2nd, 2009Complimentary Spammers (Insidious minions of Beezlebub)
July 2nd, 2009Personally I like the word ‘Spamsters’ better but I believe the correct name is the one above. I’ve been getting inundated with tons of spam lately, all of which is making it past my filters for some reason unknown to me. In fact, I do believe, my host service said they were updating their filters to cut down on this sort of thing but obviously that hasn’t worked out too well for them. Yet. I have hope. In the meantime I have had to spend a lot of time manually deleting the posts. They are hugely informative and mostly pictorial and if I ever had the slightest desire to cornrow a horse’s mane or do anything else with a horse for that matter I know that these are the folks to call.
The most adept Spammers are those who type in a short message before running their link lists, and it’s usually something exclamatory and pleasant. Like “I’ve often wondered about this very subject. Thanks for explaining it so clearly!”. This knocks my filters for a loop and it also causes me to hover over the delete button until I check out the address and see that it’s for cellular phones or a pharmaceutical.
It hurts me to delete such nice compliments but I’m afraid that if I don’t then, like Tribbles (btw are there tribbles in the new Star Trek movie?), they will surely multiply.
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My Morning Walk (Pt.2)
July 1st, 2009
With all the rain we’ve been having, creeks are spilling all over the mountainside.
This treehouse is at the top of the big hill. From it you’d be able to see all the way across the valley.
A land ship, built over two days by one ingenious man.
Red barn and Overlook Mountain.
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My Morning Walk (Pt. 1)
July 1st, 2009
This is the road I walk up. To the right you can see the Nine Ladies- huge towering White Pines.
Lots of stone here in the Hudson Valley. It’s called bluestone.
These are gorgeous. I think they’re considered weeds. Often they grown with yellow foxgloves which are one of my favorite flowers.
Some passerby delights in balancing rocks on top of one another. The sculptures skulk in the undergrowth and are invisible to cars speeding by. You have to move at a walking pace to see them.
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Jets to Brazil “Chinatown”
June 27th, 2009This song more than any other influenced my new manuscript, Lucky. The video is pretty awful but the audio is surprisingly good. Click on the link to hear it.
Jets to Brazil Chinatown on YouTube
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THE END
June 27th, 2009 It’s simultaneously satisfying and saddening to write those two words at the end of a sheaf of papers, and the culmination of three months’ hard work ( there was another three months when I was sorting stuff out in my mind. Funny how that often resembles futzing around and watching entirely too many movies.)
This morning I printed off a copy of the manuscript for one of my beta readers. She is an important one because she works as an editor and is also a successful published writer herself and her insight and criticisms are valuable to me. I probably would never have the nerve to send a manuscript out at all if it wasn’t for her giving it a thorough going over first. I’m getting feedback from a variety of sources this time. From the mother of a fifteen-year old girl (Lucky is 16), from a grammarian, from a very harsh critic, from someone who loves me very much and thinks everything I do is wonderful. I’m hoping my writing teacher will also have time to take a look. Of course as soon as I had finished printing all 199 pages, I thought of some sentences I wanted to tweak or clarify and I decided to build up the ending a little more. I have done these things now and I am going to be firm about the leaving it alone until I hear back from my readers.
This is harder than it seems, and begs the question, how do you know when you are truly finished with a book?
I will say that although my book, The Curious Misadventures Of Feltus Ovalton, has been out for over two years, there are still things about it that I’d like to change. Perhaps there’ll be a twentieth anniversary edition some day and I can re-edit it then?
I’ve heard that most authors feel this way. The only way to deal with it, is to put it out of your mind and start work on something new.
That being said, I’m beginning to outline my next project today.
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Summer Reading
June 24th, 2009 Although I’m in the midst of revising my WIP…
Sorry a quick aside here re. the WIP.
Current title I’m tossing around is OH LUCKY GIRL! I’m starting to wonder what I was thinking of naming my heroine Lucky because according to Amazon.com and Google, there are far too many books out there with variations on the name. All the coolest ones are taken. But this is an awesome character- feisty yet insecure, brave although she doesn’t know it, blunt and honest and passionate and she deserves to have a book named after her. No doubt it will come to me all of a sudden. Right, Oh Muse?!! Muse? Are you there?
However that’s not what I was going to write about here. I was going to say that although I am hunched over my laptop for much of the day trying to figure out new and exciting ways of describing things (before ultimately deciding that straightforwardness is to be preferred 9 out of 10 times), I still read before falling asleep. I always have and I always will. There’s nothing like a stack of books on the night table and as usual it’s a mixed selection.
I’ve mentioned Michelle Paver’s excellent middle-grade Chronicles of Ancient Darkness series before. OATHBREAKER is the new one and that’s what I’m currently reading.
After that I’ve got the first three Sookie Stackhouse books by Charlaine Harris. These are the novels HBO’s True Blood series is based on. I’ve heard they’re a lot of fun.
I just finished the first SANDMAN comic book by Neil Gaiman, which somehow escaped my notice when it first came out although at the time I was devouring Clive Barker’s TAPPING THE VEIN, another graphic novel (by someone I’ve forgotten) called BLOOD and the x-rated RAN XEROX series by some sick and twisted Italians. Definitely not for the kids.
And to keep me occupied for the rest of the month: LETTERS FROM THE HIVE (Stephen Buchmann)- an intimate history of bees, FOUR TENTHS OF AN ACRE (Laurie Lisle)- a gardening memoir, THE COMPANY (Arabella Edge)- historical thriller, and MAGICKEEPERS (Erica Kirov)- a middle-grade fantasy.
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LUNA MOTH
June 21st, 2009Today on my walk I found a luna moth on the road. It was not damaged but it was dead. I had no idea they inhabited New York State. Having seen them before only in Italy, I thought they liked warmer climes. If you haven’t seen one before (which is typical since they are night creatures and only live for a week or two in the flying insect stage) they are a beautiful incandescent light green color. They seem to glow with an eerie light like swamp gas or marsh wisps. Their wings are very delicate, like a butterfly’s, but with these elongated tips which curve outwards. They are also quite large and can, I believe, grow to the size of a small child’s hands. This particular one fit in my palm. They have a false eyespot on each wing to fend off attackers- although most birds steer clear of moths and butterflies because they taste awful- and feathery antennae. Their bodies are covered in fuzzy white feathers.
If I believed in fairies (of course I do) these delicate, fragile creatures would come closest to them. Many people I know are scared of moths. I don’t know why. Because some of them eat sweaters? Because they flap against outdoor lighting? Because they make that soft thwump thwump sound? Because they sort of bumble?
If you looked at them more closely, you would see that they are kind of teddy-bearish. Soft and fluffy with friendly big black round eyes. And not an insect-ery as butterflies for instance which get all the credit and applause. I like things of the night like bats and fireflies and moths with their muffled wings and their uncoordinated dances.
(Plant persimmon, birch and alder if you want to feed the luna moth caterpillars which are great big lovely green things.)
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WHERE DID ALL THE PRETTY COLORS GO?
June 21st, 2009Something is going on with the website again. You may have noticed that it is in plain black and white now rather than those lovely greens and reds. The magical stars have vanished and you can’t navigate around anymore. I don’t know why, and even if I did I wouldn’t understand it. I firmly refuse to understand why these things happen. Suffice it to say that my WEB DAEMONS are looking into the problem and will be fixing it shortly.
Otherwise I’ll have to get Great Aunt Eunida involved. She already appeared at the foot of my bed at 3 o’clock this morning (giving me an awful fright) but that was because she heard I was making popovers for breakfast. She arrived with her birdcage and a huge block of stinky gorgonzola cheese as big as a cow’s head, and plopped herself down in the only comfortable armchair. She then proceeded to mutter various half incantations and phrases of mystical mumbo jumbo, her beady lemon candy eyes flashing the occasional lurid spark, until I got up and made her a bowl of steel-cut oatmeal with pickled herrings and a pat of butter- just the way she likes it.
Like spam, it seems there is no getting rid of her.
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HELPLESS BABY ANIMALS
June 16th, 2009Just got back from the morning walk. We saw the usual fauna (deer, turkey, squashed frog) but there seemed to be an increase in small baby animals. Those young enough to be on their own (I suppose) but too young to have much fear of humans or speeding cars. If my pockets had been bigger and my knowledge of rabies, hanta virus and other unpleasantries had been less, I would have come home today with a baby squirrel, a baby chipmunk and a baby mouse which crawled slowly over my shoe and pathetically tried to hide under a very thin blade of grass but only after I had practically chucked it under the chin. It had sleek black fur, and huge wobbly eyes and droplets of rain water speckled on its pointy head. It was exquisite. I could have caught all these critters with my bare hands. Later on there was a young, brittle-legged fawn too (no spots) but I couldn’t have gotten that home without a trail of breadcrumbs and the LF (Lucy Factor- now 2+ years old!) had devoured her snack already. Incidentally she took this all in stride. How nice to have a child who expects to see wild animals whenever she ventures out the door.
I am sitting at my desk, having finished my 1000+ words today (total count 57,413- the last stretch) and wishing there was a small, velvety mouse curled up in my pocket or a shriveled, amber-eyed toad or a couple of those burnt- orange colored salamanders with the neon spots.
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Another Awesome Reader
June 13th, 2009This one from England. He looks like he’s enjoying the book, doesn’t he?! I mean he’s not asleep or anything….
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RUSHING
June 12th, 2009So I’m sticking with my new diet of 1000 words per day and it’s going great. Usually I’m finished by noon or 1 pm having put in a good four hours or so of work. I’ve found that I spend less time surfing the editor and literary sites I love so much, at least in the morning while I’m working. In the afternoon I can surf to my heart’s content although I’m also finding that when I’m knee-deep in a new book, I don’t have much interest left over for anything except for BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER and a few new books I bought myself as a reward (GRACELING, MAGICKEEPERS and the new Michelle Paver, OATHBREAKER which I am dying to read but am forcing myself to wait until I’ve completed this first draft.)
The title of this blog refers both to the thrilling feeling I get when I am close to the end of my first run-through, and also the urge (firmly squashed) to rush the process of getting there. Of taking short cuts with the plot or bounding ahead without sufficient preambling. It’s a pun.
I thought I’d be done at the end of this week. I still may. I have 53,000 words and I had estimated the manuscript at about 55,000 but I know I have at least three more chapters left to write and two of them are going to be difficult. Indeed I’ve been fearing them for a long time now. I know what I want to accomplish with these chapters but I don’t want to be too predictable or pedestrian. My aim (otherwise I’ll never get through it) is to write down as much of the action I can and map things out and then continue to the end, put the whole thing aside for three days- (3 days in which I will do nothing but hike, read, watch dvds and play with my kids) and then beginning at the beginning I will work through the whole manuscript again. The first of what will be many revisions before sending it off to my beta readers.
But the best-laid plans, outlines and blah de blah aside, it always takes me longer than I expect it to. Things pop up, relationships between characters need to be clarified, motivations explained, things wrapped up, tension heightened, not to mention writing the end scene which should not be pat or a cop-out or too cloying or any other rotten thing, but should seem effortlessly and perfectly right. I can see it all in my mind, it’s getting it down on paper that is the trick.
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Resting on my teeny weeny laurels
June 9th, 2009I’m going to admit something here in the hopes that it stops someone else from making the same mistake I made.
I wrote my first book in a frenzy. I wrote two sequels, also in a frenzy. After many (mis)adventures and excitement I sold the book. Yay! Jubilation and refreshments all around. It was great. After much editorializing the book was published. It took about a year which ain’t long at all but this was a small publisher and they can make things fly.
Here’s where the laurels come in.
This was the first book I’d ever written. I’d started many. I’d written short stories. I’d written snippets of things. I was the Queen of the 3-page diatribe but I usually didn’t think ahead much more than that. But this idea consumed me and excited me and I started writing and kept on writing. And so, after much work, A Book!
I was so proud and pleased. My parents were proud and pleased. And some other good friends. I waited for something big and exciting to happen with the book. There were murmurs of film deals and rumors of foreign rights licensing deals. It received some notice at Frankfurt and Bologna. I rested. I had put so much into this book and it seemed for a long time that it was about to become something bigger. It had potential. I waited. I didn’t want to move on because that would be admitting that that book was done and it was time for another one. and I wasn’t ready for that yet.
Let me say that I didn’t have an agent advising me to write something else (if agents do that kind of thing anyway). It was just me and my hopes and dreams and my publisher and their hopes. Eventually, my editor asked me if I had something else. And I did. I had 2 more manuscripts about the same hero but unfortunately after all the revision I’d done on the first book, they didn’t work anymore. I wrote a new sequel. It was ok but it wasn’t exactly right. I wrote another one. Now it had been about two years since the first book came out. Not an interminable time but long in terms of how our world operates. And eventually it was decided that it was too long a period of time. I’d missed the bus. I didn’t know there was a bus and I didn’t know that I was supposed to be on it.
And during this time I was not just resting (on my laurels), I worked on two adult novels, as well as the sequels, and I may work on them again but right now I want to write for kids. Oh, yeah I was also having a baby.
I’m nearing first draft completion of a new YA book. I am hoping (after a few revisions) to work on it with same excellent free-lance editor I have worked with in the past, and then to submit it to a few literary agencies. I have an idea for a companion book to it, and also a sequel and I will probably write both of those for my own pleasure whether or not I get something going with the WIP or not. I have three or four other ideas for stories I’d like to make happen.
I intend to be a working writer for the rest of my life.
You can’t force writing. I think that there is probably an optimum time to work on a certain idea, and that probably if you choose the wrong time or you plunge in without the necessary fore-thought you risk mucking up the whole thing and sticking it in a drawer where it will never see the light of day. I am not a work-horse of a writer although I’m digging this 1000 word a day goal and I think I’m going to make it my MO from now on, but I am spilling over with ideas and they excite me and they make me happy and it seems only common sense to write them now.
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Songs in the key of life
June 8th, 2009I’m sure I’m not the only one who listens to music while working on a new story. It helps me get into the mood. I almost feel as if I’m channeling my hero if the CD is the right one. Feisty heroine? How about the Distillers or early Pretenders? Charismatic, cocky, slightly annoying and definitely bewildering hero? Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Jawbreaker, Kings of Leon or Arcade Fire.
I listen to full albums since my husband stole my IPOD and I can’t be bothered to download stuff onto my laptop. This is supposed to be where I work, people! Plus if an artist can’t make an album worth listening to all the way through then they ain’t gonna make it onto the list. (THE LIST!!!!)
Here’s my current playlist for my WIP which is known to me as “LUCKY”. It is an adventure story, and also a love story set in a post-apocalyptic world not so different from our own. I’ve currently got 50,000 words completed and I’m hoping to be finished with a good serviceable first draft by the end of the week. Then I’ll be relaxing for at least two or three days before I jump back in for the revision process.
Here’s the list:
BJORK- POST
COLOURBOX- COLOURBOX
JAWBREAKER- 24 HOUR REVENGE THERAPY
BJORK- HOMOGENIC
ARCADE FIRE- FUNERAL
KINGS OF LEON- AHA SHAKE HEARTBREAK
AMERICAN STEEL- DESTROY THEIR FUTURE
NEKO CASE- MIDDLE CYCLONE
COMMUNIQUE- POISON ARROWS
MAZZY STAR-SHE HANGS BRIGHTLY
PRINCE- HITS
ARCADE FIRE- NEON BIBLE
TV ON THE RADIO- DEAR SCIENCE
JON SPENCER BLUES EXPLOSION- ORANGE
TREMBLING BLUE STARS- ALIVE TO EVERY SMILE
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The Semblance of Bling
June 5th, 2009Back when I owned a gangsta rap label…that’s right kiddies! Jo was a playa… I had a trio of fine rappers from Hunter’s Point, California. Indeed, they were our first signing. They were good guys but they came from a hard and depressing place with no trees.
We did three albums with them and set them up as producers so they could release other side projects. It was important to us to make it possible for them to have financial independence and maybe go onto their own thing in the future. I know this is not normal in business circles but we weren’t about tying our artists to us forever. We looked on it as a partnership not as ownership, and of course we were trying to revolutionize the standard record deal. Unfortunately it didn’t work out but that’s a different story. The current climate of electronic downloads and website promotion has freed artists up to such an extent that the traditional record label is becoming a thing of the past and that’s a good thing in my opinion.
One thing I noticed with these artists was that they weren’t so much about saving money. They spent their advances pretty much immediately. And if they decided to pick up a car for a couple of thousand bucks so they could make the drive from HP to Oakland, they wouldn’t choose that boring but dependable Ford Escort they could pay cash for and own outright. No instead they’d lease a BMW or a Cadillac with the nice leather interior and the big speakers for the low low cost of a few hundred dollars a month for five years and eventually not be able to make the payments. Or if there was a choice between getting a nicer apartment or buying a floor length leather coat or some jewelry, the accessories would always win out. They drove better cars than me. (Actually I walked to work and let my boyfriend drive the ford pick-up to his job). They looked good. They blew their cash in hours. They were rappers. They had a reputation to uphold. Even though they were doing pretty well with us, they had to look as if they were millionaires. As if they had made it to the big time. There was a pressure to present this facade to the world, to their buddies. At one point one of them lost everything except for his car. He was sleeping in it. And another one was close to losing his apartment but he still had the rings and the necklaces and the fedora. And the good haircut. It drove me crazy but now I sort of understand it.
There is a stigma among writers. We don’t talk negatively about our experiences. We are never DROPPED by our publishers. We are BETWEEN publishers or we are looking for a new publishing house, researching possibilities as if it’s OUR choice who we go with. Our sales are always better than they actually are. There is a lot of hype surrounding every new book release- if you’re lucky you actually have a publishing house with a savvy marketing department who knows where to spend the money and how to promote on the web. Hype is sort of like everyone’s most hopeful dreams. Sometimes the two mesh, but rarely, and hype becomes real but so often they are miles apart. Do we not admit to failure because it’s too scary a thought? Because it might jinx the project? Because it’s not true if no one says it? Remember that movie “Field Of Dreams”? Build it and they will come. What is that but an example of someone’s passionate wish turned into reality? Of magical thinking. If my rappers wore the clothes and drove the cars and had all the trappings of huge success, then they attracted other successful people to them. They were perceived to be the hot new commodity and they got guest appearances and offers, and that led to more money and more opportunity. Their rich clothes may have been non-existent like the emperor’s (from the fairytale you know) but if everyone was talking about how fabulous they were, it didn’t matter. Eventually fantasy and reality would meet.
When I started blogging my book had not yet been published. I like to blog. I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t enjoy it. I usually blog twice a week. On Mondays and Fridays but sometimes I need to be flexible about that. I am regular however. Nothing worse than visiting a site and finding the same article posted for months and months. In May my site received 6723 visits and 21,465 hits. Not bad for an unknown author and a two and a half year old book which wasn’t read by as many people as I had hoped. Those numbers, by the way, are taken directly from my web hoster’s tracking device. They are real. But they’re still bling.
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