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Updates, what updates?
Work sucks most of the creativity out of me. There are two...well, I guess three projects I have in the "slow-burn" phase:
1. Untitled space opera. I am basically creeping along at a snail's pace here, maybe 500 words per night if I'm lucky. I have no idea how long it will turn out, just trying to keep the juices flowing. It's an idea I've had for a long time, and I have a notebook I tote around with me to sketch out the concepts, characters, and ideas.
2. "Just for fun" awful dark quasi-adventure that I might try posting on fictionpress or whatever that site is...it's not something I would try to get published. I'm more or less experimenting with third-person present tense, a POV I'm not very good with. Whalers, a sailor, the arctic...basically my three obsessions of the last year.
3. Lusy reading. Friend and I exchanged manuscripts. It's been an eye-opening experience and I guess I'm just discouraged by the amount of work it needs (and it does need it - he's done a wonderful job of vetting the thing).
Lately I've been wondering if writing for publication is what I want to do. It's not that I can't take a critique; I loved the critique itself. Very helpful. I'm just not sure I'm willing to put the effort into the project anymore. If I were unemployed and had nothing else to do all day, sure, I'd take to it like a fish to water. But right now it just reads as one more thing and looms more like a chore instead of a project. If I'm not working OT, I usually want to just kick back and relax (not think more) or spend time with my friends, who I rarely see these days.
It's something to consider.
I haven't touched the thing.
Basically, this is the sort of job where we are typically so busy I feel guilty taking time to eat my lunch without working. This is not good. Also recently got chided for my doctor visits (they didn't find anything - my terrible congestion is a mystery) so now I'm stuck trying to rebuild my initial good momentum. And let's face it, the last few months were very tight, money-wise, so now I'm working overtime when they offer it and trying to rebuild the coffer.
Am staying in this apartment for the time being. The trouble with the house I looked at was three people, one bathroom. Yeah. No. I have my own bathroom here. I don't mind sharing with one other person, or even two others if there is another toilet in the house, but...there wasn't. My folks said, kiddo, you've had a rough go of it, if you need to stay beyond your present roommate leaving for a couple months to find another roommate, go ahead. So right now I'm back to filling the current place.
...man, that was not a pretty sentence.
I've been waking up at 7 the last couple of days. Yesterday it was to clean; today I want to get into work early...but I also want to try writing in the mornings. I think that may be my best bet. The only thing I've written at all since I began work there was this obnoxious little argument about food in Age of Fail between Lex and Harty, both of whom turned to me after the segment was done and went "Really? Really?"
On the plus side, I have coffee.
Well, I started my new job. Been very, very busy. I stare at a computer all day, so I'm not keen on working at one when I get home, which has been a challenge. I stared at the screen all day at my previous job, but there were tremendous lulls in work there...my brain had time to gear up and down. Here it's full-tilt the whole day.
On top of that, I ended up going to an allergist for my congestion. Turns out it may not have been a sinus infection at all. Just awful allergies. Getting to and from the allergist, plus the tests I'm getting, routinely takes a two-hour chunk out of my day (if they'd run on time it wouldn't be an issue, but unfortunately...) so I make up the hours from home. Plus side, she stuck me on Nasonex, which is finally doing something. Down side, two rounds of testing haven't revealed what's bugging me. Woe.
Oh, I'm also probably going to move in the next month. Tried to hang onto the apartment, but it's just too damn expensive these days. I can afford my share, but no real bites despite frequent advertising. The one serious person won't even be able to look at it until the 15th of August, and...well, I can't really wait that long. I've got a room in a house pretty much settled on...just gotta sign stuff...and move...sigh.
In short, no writing.
But! Not all is lost. I went to B&N the other day to pick up part of my mother's b'day gift and...well, I went up to the history area, which rarely - if ever - has anything even vaguely interesting (to me). Of course, I apparently chose the one day they decided to get in a sudden influx of nautical stuff beyond the typical pirate fare inspired by the success of the PotC franchise.
The Sea Rover's Practice: Pirate Tactics and Techniques, 1630-1730 by Benerson Little.
In case I have a hankering to recruit a band of thugs and star in Pirates of Orange County.
Inside the Victorian Home: A Portrait of Domestic Life in Victorian England by Judith Flanders.
Because they were just not as boring as we thought. B&N never has any Victorian stuff so I snatched this.
Empire of Blue Water: Captain Morgan's Great Pirate Army, the Epic Battle for the Americas, and the Catastrophe That Ended the Outlaws' Bloody Reign by Stephan Talty.
Because with a title like that, I certainly could not resist.
Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America by Eric Jay Dolin.
Finally! A real whaling book besides the Essex story! Huzzah!
To Rule the Waves: How the British Navy Shaped the Modern World by Arthur Herman.
Age of Fail, Whalers of the Caribbean and all that.
Yeah, I'd Rather Be Writing, but a steady paycheck has its benefits...like books.
Once my lodgings for the next few months/year/who knows are secured, I'm going to invest in a real bookcase. The one I have now is three years old; a friend and I bought it at Target and put it together. It's always had something of a slant...but after surviving three moves and a lot of abuse, it's become the Leaning Tower of Booka. Am leaning toward picking up one used off CL as I realllllly don't want to put something together on my own. My carpentry skills are quite lacking.
And OK: What's up with SciFi Channel becoming...SyFy? Really?
SyFy sounds like shorthand for some kind of nasty disease.
"I'm sorry. You have...the SyFy."
So I'm sitting at the kitchen table in San Diego trying to figure out how to proceed with Age of Fail and "My Heart Will Go On" comes on, which is a little creepy because not five minutes ago I finished up the final edits on Lusitania and...well, you know, Titanic being the great rival...etc.
I do want to work on Age of Fail, which is not going to be its real title. But before I dig into it there's just one thing I need to even out: first person vs. third.
I've always written it - in its various incarnations - as limited first-person. The narrator is a snarky gal. Her telling the story has never been the problem.
No, the issue lies with the cast. It's a huge cast. In a huge world. I tried switching it to third-person in a completely different story (a sequel, I guess) to better squeeze in the broad range of characters and the world(s) they're from/operating in. It worked out, but then Lex's snarkiness was lost to an extent.
(And no, I don't like the idea of meshing a first-person voice with a third-one in alternating POVs - it doesn't work for me.)
Sadly, this has me at a pretty depressing standstill. Dive into the story third-person? Let it go as first-person? Work on something else?
(I also still have the antibiotic in my system, which hasn't exactly aided in higher brain function this week - I think it's kicked the sinus infection, but I feel like I've been in a haze the last few days. So it's possible in a couple of days I'll have a Brilliant Revelation.)
I am sorry this entry doesn't have more of a point. :)
First off, I got a job. Played phone tag with the HR for a couple days, sat through a "we've changed plans" miscommunication, finally got called into an interview Wednesday, interviewed Thursday, got offered the job four hours later.
It's a 90-day contract position. They've never not hired from contract, and hey, it's a job, and unemployment is apparently about to run dry.
It does throw all my plans into disarray, but hey. Plans are made to be fucked with. I immediately liked the place so let's hope it's great.
Then I got a sinus infection.
Actually, the sinus infection predates the job. I've probably had it for awhile. Have been taking Claritin-D for horrific allergies but was just not able to breathe clearly, and CD is really, really potent stuff. Haven't really slept soundly in...weeks. Finally decided if I'm going to be working at this place I need to be able to focus, especially after waking up this morning feeling like I had a solid block behind my nose. Made an emergency appointment with my doctor in San Diego and she took one look at my (massive, gruesome, black) shiners and shook her head. I'm on one of the mycins - top-line quick-fighting drug - for the next five days. The course should be done by the time I go to work. It explains the mystery of why Claritin was able to zap my sneezing and itchy eyes but was seemingly powerless (as were all other drugs I tried - and I tried a lot) to do anything about the nose. Popped the first set of pills today and I've had some discomfort...a little abdominal pain...but that seems to have stopped and wow, my nose is clear.
So the whole job thing kind of puts a damper on the writing. I'm going to try to finish Lusitania edits this weekend and write a synopsis/polish the query letter. Then I'm going to fire the story over to my lone volunteer and see what he thinks of it, and provided it's a decent response I'll compile a list of agents and start sending it off. From there I have a couple different projects I can look at...I guess maybe Escapist finally needs some attention. I've been putting that one off for awhile.
I'm going to miss having all day to bum around and write, but then again I do need an income. And with California being basically broke I'm wondering if unemployment won't somehow dry up, too.
(Querying: What To Do When You Really Can't Edit Anymore)
I might look at Age of Fail tonight. Um, obviously that needs a much better title. The 'Fail' bit was more or less my general frustration with the piece and how it was coming together; maybe if I have a more inspiring moniker for it...
...maybe I'll try an outline...
;)
The prologue in particular took me. Gorgeous, evocative, mystic, epic. I thought, why can't I write like that?
So I decided to try.
I decided to try that mythic, evocative language in the prologue of Lusitania.
Several months later I'm finally giving it the evil eye. The mythic tone fits nicely in the context of the story and what goes on behind the scenes, but the rest of the novel doesn't read that way. And frankly...while I might eventually learn to write as beautifully as Shana Abe, the prologue makes it painfully obvious that it's not one of my strengths, and frankly an agent might look at it and go "Oh HAIL no."
Thus it must go.
I will save it for tomorrow, when I return to OC. I don't even think surgery can save it; I'm just going to rewrite the entire thing. I'll probably re-jiggle the first couple scenes around, too.
Other than that, I pushed through some of the manuscript and trimmed a few hundred words. I doubt I'll get it down much further, but one can hope.
And now, to fiddle with Age of Fail. I do want to try working on that one again at some point...
I didn't realize how late it had gotten. As I was plodding through the last thirty or so pages I actually had to take a break because the whole thing was such a downer. It tilts up somewhat at the end, but it's certainly not a Happily Ever After for anyone involved.
The story has changed quite a bit since its roots, first as The Flying Dutchman and then as various incrnations of Nemo. The addition of the Lusitania is really what drew everything together and made the story whole.
It also gave me a plot. Which, you know, is a good thing.
There's a few tweaks I still have to make and probably one more run-through on the screen before I decide what to do with it. The story has a gigantic, glaring problem right off the bat: the length. It clocks in at 124,000 words. I'll probably trim it down slightly in the tweaks, but I sliced and diced pretty mercilessly. The stuff that remains is the meat.
Pitching a 124k first novel. Ha ha ha.
I've read various reports about what the "acceptable" length for a first novel is. Typically it runs 80k-120k, so maybe I can slide under the door. In this economy, though, who knows? Then there's the great fun of putting together a query letter, formatting the damn thing correctly, and writing a synopsis. Ugh.
Honestly, I'm proud that I was able to cut it as much as I did. My favorite books tend to be doorstoppers, so I seem to write that way. That I was able to punch out this entire complete story that still manages to feel just a little bit epic (well, to me, anyway) in less than 200,000 words (which I seem to reach at an alarming rate) does make me smile. Which is good, because it's been a horrendously shoddy day otherwise.
This is the first novel I've finished that I actually do think I want to query, if only because I've got to start somewhere and this is the first one I've finished and mostly polished that's been of (fairly) reasonable length that I don't completely hate. All right, maybe hate is a strong word...
I do think it qualifies as different.
So there's that. Am still surprised by how much the ending bums me out, but I'm not sure if that's leftover from today's crap. I'll take another look at it tomorrow, with fresh eyes, and figure out what to do with it.
My roommate, who is slightly more technical-minded than myself, thinks it just overheated. Ran every free hard drive checker/spybot killer/virus hunter I could get my mitts on. Machine keeps coming up clean.
Not sure what else to do right now. If I can get my hands on a transfer cable it'll be easy to just dump everything onto the big machine and install a new hard drive once I get the funding, which leaves me open to a potential problem - what if it's the motherboard?
(Peanut Gallery: Oh, crud.)
In the meantime, I did some plotting, messed around with the Patrol into some more, and am working my way through The Dress Lodger, which is turning out to be a great bore. Hope it picks up soon.
Couldn't resist taking this one
I am:
Mary Gentle (b. 1956)
9 High-Brow, 27 Violent, 5 Experimental and 19 Cynical!
( I gotta check this lady out )
</strong>I would love to read a story narrated by the Torturer of the Dark Lord. =D</span>
ALTARIA: Look, my hard drives are clean.
STORM: But they aren't. You crashed on me.
ALTARIA: Evidently not because of a bad drive.
STORM: And yet you still run with inexplicable sluggishness.
ALTARIA: Look, now you get to be Geek!Sleuth.
It's possible the program lied to me, so I'll try a second one at some point. For the time being poor Altaria is banished to a corner, where she's going to stay until I decide what to do with her.
Oh. Yeah. I name my machinery.
Inevitably when one of my computers throws a fit, someone from the Cult of Mac will smirk smugly at me and say "You should've gotten/should get a Mac!" And really, they are generally very fine computers. I used one at work. I have nothing against Mac.
Um, Mac is totally out of my budget.
Mac is BEYOND out of my budget.
No, the more likely result of my sudden Vista loathing (for reasons beyond the failed disk-scanning software) will be purging the hard drive(s) of it entirely in a fit of rage, formatting, and then downgrading to XP, which I dearly loved. Or going totally batshit and throwing Linux or something onto it.
Meanwhile, it is nearly 2 am and I've been working on the revised chapter one. Which might be good. Or it might be bad. Apparently the secret to whether or not I like my own writing is to not look at it for awhile after it's written, and then later on I can make a judgment call.
And whoa, they totally just forgot about that pirate ship. Better fix that before bed.
There's still some stuff on there, but the writing is safe, thankfully.
Back up, people. BACK. UP.
I've shut it down for now. I have no idea what happened to it. The machine is a year old. It's always worked perfectly. If it's a hard drive problem...well, maybe eventually that's something I can replace, but at the moment I just spent some moolah on the desktop (and thank heavens, I was in the process of moving things TO the desktop when the wee one flipped) so the lappy is just going to have to sit there and think about what it's done.
Gah.
I had JUST finished the Patrol transfer.
It shut off.
When I touch the power button, the drive kind of clicks...and nothing happens.
I am flummoxed.
And a little upset.
Actually, just about everything is backed up on the desktop and various other places.
...except Storm Point. Shit.
I have no idea what's wrong with it, or what I can do with it. It's from Circuit City so obviously any warranty is down the shitter. It was behaving fine all day...
Um, I guess I'm glad the desktop is running again?
shit. I really hope it wasn't a total hard drive failure...
The rest of the MS is marked up anyway. I printed it out after a friend looked it over and made some suggestions; the first pass I made was mostly grammatical, some word tweakage, etc. The last couple of months I've pulled it out at different times and made plot notes, character stuff, and the like.
The net is crawling at the moment because I'm transferring some new music from the lappy to the desktop (which has an ungodly amount of stuff on it already that I'd forgotten about), so I can't transfer the ms over at the moment. The two biggest changes right now are a revamped preludium (yeah, I'm too fancy to call it prologue) and opening chapter, the latter of which, I hope, will fix all the issues with Delaney.
Oh, Delaney.
Generally I like her. I really do. She's kind of rough, a bit socially awkward when it comes down to it, and likes big guns way too much, but two beta readers said that they couldn't really get a feel for her early on. Apparently she's fine in later chapters, but we need more earlier?
I wasn't too thrilled with the opening scenes anyway, so I came up with something that, if I do this right, will transition from creepy to action-y. It'll provide a better look at Delaney and her environment.
I hope.
And from there it's a few scenes here and there, lots of itty bitty technical things...I'll give myself a few weeks, then...who knows...
I did the freelance project and took on a second one from the same editor. I just gotta say...it was so, so wonderful to just do the work and not have to worry about editing it afterwards!
I think this just furthers the idea that I'm not cut out for copy editing. That's not to say I don't make sure I turn in a polished product, but the whole CE thing really dragged me down for 2+ years.
What can I say, I'm excited, and will look into freelancing further.
My bedroom (which doubles as my workspace) is looking much more presentable. My desk is usable, which is a huge deal as usually it's crammed with paper, candles (yikes, bad combo there), bills, and the occasional magazine. Last night I picked up Lusitania and sketched out a new opener, and I figure I'll go through the manuscript today and write down the major edits that need doing, beyond cuts - mostly new scenes and complete scene rewrites.
At some point today I'll do another chunk of the second freelance project, which is due Monday.
Upgraded my desktop, which I'm now using for the first time in almost a year: I installed a wireless card (the chief reason it hadn't been used was that it had no card, and our modem is on the other end of the apartment, and someone once took a nosedive over the cable, and...you get the idea). Also upgraded the RAM and added a second hard drive, and now my two-year-old machine sizzles like any brand-new model on the market. Am very pleased this all went well - last time I tried to upgrade a computer it was a complete disaster. The parts are still in my closet. (I cannibalized screws from them, however.)
Might have to swap out keyboards; I'm using the one that came with the desktop, rather than the full-size I got for the lappy, and it's a little...um...well, the keys stick, and as I am not motivated to actually venture out and purchase keyboard cleaner today, I'll just take the easy way out.
I'm actually getting excited about finally going over Lusy. Hoping I can keep this psyched feeling for awhile.
It's not that I'm a slob. I just have a lot of stuff, much of it books and manuscripts, and they seem to come rest wherever they please. I am not about to ditch 90% of my library as my mother often suggests I do (here I can see the advantage of ebooks, much less space taken up), so often I'm jostling things around. The place is clean, just...really cluttered.
(If I had an apartment to myself, not just a bedroom, I think it'd look a lot different, but anyway...)
Two amazing things happened today.
First, I read this entry from Stacia Kane. And you know, I think that's just the problem I have. I start hating on my work - possibly beyond the normal "Gosh, you annoy me today." Then I pull it out months later and say "Aw, shucks, you're not too bad." Then the cycle begins again, and here I am with, what, four or five completed novels under my belt and absolutely no inclination to query any of them.
Anyway, it made me think - quite a bit. Maybe it's not as horrible as I think? I think once I'm done with the room I'm going to pull out Lusitania - which needs the least amount of work - and do the edit type-in, polish it up...and then figure out a query letter. Because enough of this. It's one thing if other people tell me I suck - I might very well. But I need to give them a chance to tell me. And who knows, maybe my work's not as bad as I sometimes think.
The second thing that happened today was a phone call from a former coworker, one who's still with the bike magazines, offering me some freelance work. They've got a one-off buyer's guide coming up and it needs a fast turnaround. Well, back in the day I was the queen of fast turnarounds, and it's more or less the work I enjoyed - not heavy editing, mostly rewriting copy to make sense, checking numbers, slugging images. I'm going in tomorrow to pick up the disk and he's hoping I can get it done in a couple days. Which should be easy as pie...unless it's an absolute horror.
(Which is possible. A lot of the folks who write ad copy don't seem to, uh, have a grasp on the English language. It's a niche enthusiast publication so we don't need to be crazy about the grammar, but some of these people are bad.)
Am surprised he thought of me - we were good buddies at work but sort of drifted apart as things got worse, and then I was transferred to the car division and we really didn't talk much after that beyond a quick "How are you?" And after that whole February thing...well...I don't think I'm the best CE in the world, but I always thought I did a good job on the bike publications. Still, after months of not finding work and the resume mistake I was beginning to think "Holy crap, I always sucked!"
But I guess I didn't, if he was willing to call me up.
(I guess it's also possible he's so desperate to get this off his plate he's willing to throw it to me.)
So my day has considerably brightened, even though it's gloomy and overcast and humid enough to make my hair frizz while I'm inside.
Also, I've had a lot of coffee. That always makes things better.
I shall preface this sad tale by stating that I might just be here to serve as a terrible warning to others.
( Resume Wackiness )
All that work I was planning to do on Escapist...didn't happen. I think I'm just daunted by the amount of work that needs to be done, and I'm just not sure I want to take the plunge on the story yet. I realize that at some point you gotta say I fix dis and just...do it...(like sending your work out to agents, eventually) but I am just not that strong of mind yet.
Once I actually establish what needs doing it'll be easier. It's just working out that last kink that stands in the way.
(Obviously I'm a bit of a commitment-phobe.)
Oi to the vey.
I already have some idea of what needs work - i.e. a handful of scenes that need cutting, some that need inserting, brushing stuff up, generally fixing the story. I'm going to do a fast one-pass over the printout and make further notations, and in a notebook I'll scribble down what extra scenes I need. Other fixes are noted by "band-aids" in the shape of "lengthen fight scene," "more blood," or "they have sex" (ahem).
I still don't know if this surgery will be successful. If I had deadlines I might not even attempt it; might scrap the story altogether and focus on something else. But I figure, well, I'm not working, it's a tale that has nagged at me constantly, and I might as well see what I can salvage.
(I'm also really tired of writing about sailing ships.)
I do find it's easier to edit when I'm at my parents' place. Writing is somewhat difficult because there's not really a place for me yet; I can put my laptop on the desk in here, but there's so much other stuff on it that it gets crowded. And the kitchen table just isn't comfortable. Editing, though - I plunk down in the kitchen and do my thing. So there's that.
I figure I'll start in on it tomorrow. Might as well rip things apart on a good night's sleep.
I stuck Age of Fail in a corner to percolate and turned to The Escapist.
At least, that was the general idea.
Escapist, as I've moaned about before, has been something of a problem child. It was NaNo '07; I wrote it out, it had a decent plot, some decent characters, obviously some problems related to setting (NYC, a place I visited once) and just those little itty bitty (okay, big gaping) plotholes you get when you write on the fly.
Um, at some point I decided I hated the entire thing and threw it into a drawer.
That's pretty much par for course for me, though. I finish a book. I do a first-pass edit. I realize how mind-numbingly horrible it is and vow never to look at it again. In Escapist's case, I decided (for reasons I'm sure are chronicled here but cannot presently remember) to rewrite the thing set in Orange County and go from there.
I do remember the rational behind moving the setting: I live in OC, not NYC, and there'd be some additional realism...and just about every fucking urban fantasy I've ever read has been set in New Yawk.
Somewhere in between 10,000 words of rewrite and opening up the original ms to see what I could splice in, I realized the original wasn't totally awful and why shift everything out to OC if I didn't have to....?
Not that the poor story doesn't need a lot of work done. I haven't really convinced myself to take it to task yet - just looking over my original edits on the hard copy, I'm guessing I'll have to write/insert at least ten new scenes, do some hardcore research involving NY, and fix a Gaping Plot Hole (maybe it can be stuffed with a subplot, who knows). It'll be a lot of work. It might be less work to just write it set in OC.
What else...finished the edits on Lusitania a couple weeks ago. That one I can't even bring myself to touch (no, not because zomg it's so perfect, but because once I start ripping that one up it's just going to keep going on and on and on...I used to like editing...)
Then there's this thought, which crops up often:
I do wonder - more frequently than not - whether there is a point to all this. I used to have my sights set on publication, but the more I actually write, the less I want to see anything I churn out in print. I don't like any of it enough to want to see it on a shelf in a bookstore. I read my own stuff and think, "Well, it's kind of a cool idea, but badly executed." And to be honest, I don't really see myself improving enough to take a chance on submitting things.
Of course, that brings up the question "Then why edit?" I like writing, I'll probably always keep at it. But there's a serious problem when I look at a completed novel like Escapist or Lusitania and don't think "Wow, I can't wait to show this to someone!" My initial thoughts are always "God, I hope no one ever sees this."
But then I think, well, how can I assume it's Oh So Terrible if I don't even send it around? You know, give people a chance to reject me.
In other news, my unemployment check has not arrived. I have enough money in the bank to last through June, I think, but this is cause for concern, as we've got a 10% unemployment rate in CA and they will cut you off for whatever reason...not that I've given them any reason to cut me off, but EDD apparently is known to fabricate things.
The state is also so bankrupt we're considering selling off our landmarks.
I wish I could make a living off my writing. It'd make this whole not having a job thing much easier to deal with.
- Mood:
thoughtful
