Laziness

As some of you dear readers may know, I'm currently unemployed. As such, my schedule is really backwards, and in an attempt to turn it around, I've managed to make it worse. When I don't get a lot of human contact, I tend to drift off into the netherwhere and stop being productive.

When I was doing NaNoWriMo, I was writing a good 2,000 words a day, but for the past week, I've written a grand total of 300 words. I mean, I've been watching a lot of Korean and Japanese dramas, giving my brain a rest, giving myself plenty of time to do whatever I want that isn't hard. Almost like a vacation. But it's not really what I want to be doing. I enjoy it while I'm doing it, but it's also something that makes me feel like I'm wasting time. I wanted to finish the rough draft of my book this month, but I'm only at 64,000 words--not much more than I had at the end of November.

Is it a mid-book slump? Is it the absence of competition that NaNoWriMo offered? Is it being busy with Christmas party and wedding preparations? Well, if it was the latter, I wouldn't be watching dramas all day. Last week I was at least going to the gym nearly every day. This week, I've only gone once.

I know this is temporary. I'll get over it. This kind of slump happens to everyone once in a while. I think if I can get myself back on schedule, I can expose myself to human contact again, which will in-turn help me to keep things moving. I'm an introvert, it's true, but I'm never going to be a very good hermit. I do need people.

Therefore, I'm gearing up for this weekend's party to be a blast, so I can rocket myself back into productivity-mode!

Star Wars Paper Snowflakes

Star Wars Paper Snowflakes OMG, I can haz?

Revisions...AGAIN?

(<--Raven is concerned too.)

We knew it was only a matter of time: I'm planning to revise "The Mark of Flight" yet again. I'm insane. The difference is, I'm revising by cutting out a lot and consolidating it into about three scenes with much more impact. Notecards will be involved.

So last year, when I rewrote 80% of the book, I spent a lot more time developing the castle and the world and Arianna's reaction to it and her place in it. I added in an element of the court not believing she was physically capable of being the next ruler of Rizellen, and planning to convince the queen to name Arianna's cousin the Heir Apparent instead. I really got to know a lot more about her, and a lot more about where she's coming from an why it's so crucial for her not only to get home, but to prove herself capable in ways even she doesn't believe yet.

Well, that's all going to remain...but as a background to the story. I want it to go underwater with the rest of the iceberg that is this huge and developed world.

Instead of going through five chapters of Arianna's tribulations at the castle, followed by her superficial re-education at the hands of Tashda, and disillusionment thanks to Bay...I'm starting in a slightly more exciting way. After the prologue, we find Arianna tied up in the bed of a wagon, wearing the clothing of a peasant girl, with all of her beautiful hair chopped off. Having backed out of running away with Tashda, she finds herself taken against her will, faith shattered. She's alone. She's terrified. More than anything, our beloved Princess Arianna is pissed off.

This cuts out about five chapters worth of build-up, some of which I might utilize in flashbacks (such as the painting of Alukale and various bits about Serinna, Jeyyson, and the court's mistrust of Tashda and lack of faith in Arianna). But this will allow me to skip Arianna's bratty, petty moments in the beginning and get straight to her very strong will and the fight to get home. This starts her in a much more sympathetic way without changing the fact that she's still going to have her "let them eat cake" moments, and probably cry a lot about her hair.

Well, that's the plan, anyway.

While I'm writing HELLHOUND, I'm only going to allow myself a little time to notecard and plan the changes to THE MARK OF FLIGHT. I need to get it out of my brain before I lose it, and also give my brain a day or two of rest from Helena, Jaesung, Howard, and the modern day. Yes, planning a different story constitutes a day of rest. I am insane. And I want to get published. That's how it goes.

HELLHOUND

HELLHOUND

Shapeshifting "Hellhound" Helena Martin isn't sure who she hates more, the sorcerers who fired the magic-laced bullet, or the cruel master who used her mother as a shield. She always figured they would finish each other off without her help, and if she just kept her head down she might survive them both. But when a battle with the Sorcerer's Guild destroys the spell binding the Hellhounds to their demon-summoning master, Helena risks using her secret aptitude for magic to aid her pack's escape. Finally free of the insidious spell, Helena believes she might actually have a chance to live without the violence and heartbreak she grew up with. But her pack has different ideas.

Not only do they ditch Miami for the winter wasteland of Minnesota, enroll her in University, and saddle her with a stolen book of spells, they also expect her somehow to cut off the source of Gwydhain’s power by closing the gate to the demon realm. It’s hard enough to act normal around her geeky-hot new housemate Jaesung without sprinkling salt around doors, blowing up her window, and getting arrested for streaking. With her stumbling, self-taught Magic drawing the attention of the local Sorcerer's Guild, keeping her Magic-wielding canine status on the down-low might just be impossible.

But as Helena refuses demands to hand over her book of spells, the Guild's methods of coercion become increasingly violent and she realizes the humans that were supposed to be her cover have slowly become a liability, for they give her the one thing she misses most of all--a home. Then her master's agents catch up with them and Helena--untrained, isolated, and with more to lose than ever--has only one chance to keep her pack and her human friends safe: make peace with the sorcerers who killed her mother.

(*Note: This is not the original summary for this post, but the one based on revisions.)


(Cleolinda) Time for a trip to the department of backstory. (/Cleolinda)

So, a couple days before NaNoWriMo started, I was going through Holly Lisle's "How To Write Page-Turning Scenes" book, and I did an exercise scene on interpersonal conflict, which produced a very intriguing scene. I didn't think much of it at the time besides, "Huh. It's not complete, but I wonder if I could use it on Pendragon Variety." Then I got to thinking. What is this character exactly, since she isn't entirely human? Why is this book so important? Why is her Godfather handing the book over to someone who wants to kill her? Who is this RA that has screwed everything up, and why does she like him?

Before I knew it, I had decided she was a Hellhound (which really meant nothing to me at the time) and I had a couple scene ideas in my head. I was willing to ignore it for a while, since I've never really been a huge fan of supernatural fantasy. I played VtM and WtA in High School, but it wasn't nearly as engaging as D&D for me - while it's intriguing to contemplate the definition of humanity and the struggle not to nom the face off someone you love, I'm not generally a huge fan of vampires or werewolves or shape-shifters, at least not as they've become in modern fiction. I heard horror stories of a once-respectable and interesting supernatural fantasy series turning into novel-length sex-scenes interrupted by the occasional criminal investigation. My feelings are best summed up by the following (un)smiley: (. _ . );;

Celtic Warriors becoming Demon-Fighting Hounds? HELL yes.

Don't get me wrong - I'm a fangirl about plenty of things. I cosplay; I surf the internet for macros of my favorite bands; I have been known to read (and write) fanfiction. But when my beloved fantasy section suddenly became saturated with a genre I wasn't into, leaving little room for anything else, my desire to wade through the wave of silvered jackets for something a little closer to "human girl accidentally bonds with a draconian enemy on the brink of inter-species war" collapsed.

Because of my relative distance from supernatural (romance) fantasy, I shuffled the idea aside, because I didn't really want to write just one more book in that wave.

I was planning to use NaNoWriMo to finish the second half of Book II in the Markmasters Trilogy, but as I continued with "How to Write Page-Turning Scenes" I ran across a reference to Holly Lisle's notecarding method. I gave it a shot using what little of the scenes I had come up with. Lo and behold, by the end of the day (Halloween, 2010, to be exact), I had an entire plot for a new novel. I was going to do NaNoWriMo.

No Vampires. No Werewolves. No Fallen Angels, and no Zombies. I am a bit guilty of having shapeshifters, but don't worry--there is no furry porn in my book. There is magic, though. And Celtic warriors. And spirals. And Starcraft. (Hey, the love interest is Korean. And a geek. You know he plays Starcraft.) There *might* be a girl in hound form shamelessly taking advantage of her crush's soft spot for dogs. Hey, if I could become a hound at will, I might shove my nose in a couple crotches too. Just for fun.

NaNoWriMo

WE DID IT! Adryn and I both managed to hit 50,000 words this year on NaNoWriMo, which is approaching the halfway point on both of our novels! At 57,600 words myself, I'm proud to say I'm exactly at the middle, and word-count wise, I'm almost exactly where I wanted to be.

Seriously, the notecarding system really helped me work things out. No more waking up, brushing teeth, having coffee, getting dressed, walking to work, OMGMAGICBATTLE scenes because I don't know where I'm going. I can just start at walking to wOMGMAGICBATTLE.

As for RAVEN (Weiward), she has really utilized the spirit of NaNoWriMo to thoroughly plot and

develop her book. She's disciplined herself to set aside an hour or two a couple times a week to devote to her story, and she's managed to notecard the entirety of the EPIC fantasy that's been in her brain for three years.

Discipline, I think, is the major thing that we've all taken away from NaNoWriMo. For me, it's the discipline to make a mutable outline and stick to it, to force myself not to care so much about editing my first draft as I go. For Adryn, it's the butt-in-chair-fingers-on-keys discipline, which

she has struggled with for years. For Raven, it's the discipline to let go of perfectionism and make the nebulous, awesome idea into something that can actually be translated onto the page. And we did it, thanks to the competitive, productive spirit of NaNoWriMo.

I'm proud of us all.

Thank you, National Novel Writing Month. We'll see you again next year.

NaNoWriMo

I've joined the league of the insane. This year, I've decided, for lack of a job or anything better to do, to participate in NaNoWriMo.

For those of you who don't know what NaNoWriMo is, it's the acronym for National Novel Writing Month. Starting on November 1st every year, writers from across the globe commit to writing 50,000 words of a novel in 30 days. It's a time to toss out the desire to go-back-and-fix, to make a perfect plan before writing. True, it's a bit quantity-over-quality, but at the same time, I think that's positive. Rough drafts are always going to be crap, no matter what you do, and if, at the end of the month, I have a pile of crap that can be lovingly coaxed into something less smelly, than I'll be really pleased with myself.

One of the parts about NaNoWriMo that is so much fun is the community that is built on nanowrimo.org. You can participate on the forums and add people as friends on your main page. As you update your word-count, you get a great little status-bar that shows you how far you are towards your goal, and also a graph that shows you how far ahead or behind you are in your journey, and how many words-per-day you have to write to finish on time.

My favorite part of that is the "word war" widget you can get, which allows you to post a little graphic that shows how you and your friends' word-counts compare. Adryn and I have been duking it out every day. By the time I go to bed, I'm a good deal ahead of her. By the time I wake up, she's written until she's just ahead of me. Grrr.

This is awesome motivation. Not only does it motivate me to write more and more each day for my own sake, but it also motivates me to write more, just so I can challenge her to write more. Adryn is using this opportunity to break through what has been a really tough creative block for her, and I'm doing everything I can to support her.

Raven, too, is using the opportunity to make her story more than a series of thoughts and scenes in her head. Using the "Notecarding" method created by Holly Lisle, the three of us have worked out plots for our stories. I've managed a fairly complete one, Adryn has plotted fully to the halfway point, and Raven has managed to get more than she had ever expected out of her story by throwing away (to an impressive degree, for Raven) the expectation that it all be perfect.

I know we can do this, and I'm really excited to see what the end of the month produces. I have the advantage (in NaNoWriMo, anyway) over both Adryn and Raven by being a jobless loser, so I'm going to take my loser-hood by the horns, break off those horns, and use them as styluses (styli?) to write my novel. /terrible metaphor.

Sketches

This is what I look at during the day. What a nice little office. I've put up a few of my books, some prismacolor markers, my Chanchito, and the pictures I printed the other day are kind of...leaning in their folder agains the lamp.

I'm trying to establish a routine that keeps me healthy a an artist. Being healthy is difficult, because I know I have some anxiety issues that keep me tense and unable to function, but I'm hoping a good routine will help with that. Shauna told me about a woman named Janet Frame, who perceived her creativity as a tiger. When she chattered at the people around her, the tiger

ran away, like there was a loss of energy and nothing for it to draw on. If she kept to herself, and learned how to invite the tiger in, she was able to do her art.

[right: My muse? No, the bad guy in the steampunk novelette.]

I suppose it's like an invocation of the muse, only a ritual

that is done within oneself.

I used to stumble out of bed and go immediately to my e-mail, Facebook, or Youtube. I wake up, and my head is stuffed with cotton and disjointed thoughts and worries and to-do's, and I just shove that all aside and force more stuff into it right away, hoping to cut through the fluff with a focus. Well, that wasn't working.

[left: breakfast]

So I wake up, get coffee and food, and do morning

pages. So far, I haven't done the full three pages each day, because I usually have something I want to get to, but it's working pretty well. After that, I've been doing about 20 minutes of yoga. I know I need something physical to get my blood moving during the day, and yoga is something that I can do inside in any weather. I'm hoping to add walking to that mix, but we'll see.

Next, I take my coffee and bang on the computer keys. I've determined that I want to write at least 800 words a day, or write for at least 2 hours. Whichever one comes first. After that, I proceed with whatever else I want to do that day. I know some days will be 500-word days, and some days will be 4,000 word days. I hope for more of the latter, but we'll see.

My writing needs to shift. I need to figure myself and my voice out, and I need to stop trying to please the ghosts in my past, or at least stop trying to prove myself to them. One of the problems I've identified recently is that I tend to seek feedback too soon and too often. I send out what I write immediately, and that stifles me because I wait to hear back before I start writing again. If I'm in the middle of a work, that's a terrible idea. I know that seems like common sense, but it isn't. Also, this causes me to send the same story to the same readers over and over again. Bless them, they usually respond.

Let's take a journey to the department of backstory. When I was younger, I started a billion stories that I never finished.

They were all long, rollicking epics that never got more than a couple pages onto the page. Then one day, I started "The Mark of Flight". At that point, I called it "White", because of the imagery in what was then the opening scene. I wrote that book until I finished it, and only really did a little bit of fanfiction besides. I wrote other things for my writing classes, but besides that, I never did short stories. I don't like thinking in small, tight packages (Why the hell did I go to Japan, then? Yes, that's right. That's what I meant.).

I wanted to keep plugging away at my books--a lot because books are my love, but also because I was afraid I'd never finish another one. I was afraid I only had the capacity to do one more. I was terrified of going back to the start-stop process that I did when I was 15.

The problem with that is this: I have only one outlet in which to practice my craft--my book. If I want to play with style, or if I have a moment where something sparks a story, I didn't let myself write it. I wanted to corral all of that energy into writing what I wanted to write, not let it dissipate on something else.

But artists sketch. Not everything is a masterpiece. Some pages are scribbles. Some pages are hand studies, or face studies, or rat ear studies (hi, Mrs. Henard :) ).

So why can't I sketch?

Coming to that realization was something that feels like it should have been easier, but I think most artistic breakthroughs are. "Why didn't I understand that before?" people wonder, because it seems so simple. It seems so easy once you say it out loud, or write it on the page. It isn't easy, though. In making this decision, I decided to allow sketches to count towards my 800 words a day. As long as I produce 800 words of something every day, it doesn't have to be on the big thing I'm working on, and that was a seriously difficult thing to allow myself.

Today I wrote over 800 words, even though I had gone easy on myself and only made 600 the goal. It was a fun scene, including witty banter, starry skies, and jumping out of trains. God, I love steampunk.

Journey to the New World

Between packing to leave Japan, unpacking in North Carolina, shopping for things I need in New York/Connecticut, packing for New York/Connecticut, and finally, actually making my way here, I have been moving for a solid month. The actual trip from North Carolina to Greenwich, CN was very nice. Mom and dad swapped spots in the driver's seat while I schlepped (and slept) in the back. Not only did I finish a book I've been meaning to read (Looking for Alaska, by John Green, which was excellent), but I also got to hang out with my cousin Katherine, her two lovely children, and her boyfriend Matt in Annapolis.

The second we walked through the door, we had alcohol pressed into our hands. From a member of my family, I would expect nothing less. Katherine introduced me to a new beverage, which I shall have to make for all mySouthern friends: sweet tea vodka with lemonade. This ain't no

Long Island Ice Tea--this is Southern Booztacular, to be set up next to Strawberry Hill and Uncle Phil's mason-jar moonshine.I know where all my calories are going to come from for the next year or so. Oh hellz yes.

Katherine and Matt live in an adorable pre-depression era house, which was apparently among the first of the SEARS kit houses. There was a stone fireplace running up through it, which Katherine said had the capacity to bring the entire house to 80 degrees in a blizzard. Pretty cool. I fell in love with the two attention-whore cats, one of which fell in love with my mom's coffee the next

morning. (Note to self: steal that cat.)

One cool thing I got out of the experience, is a five-day job! Katherine works for Geneau, which is a French boat manufacturer. They're having a huge boat exhibition in October, and if I don't have a job in NY by then, I'm going to work all five days, for 120$ per day, plus my meals, booze, and the opportunity to party in the evenings, all for working as a booth bitch. "Booth Bitch" is a very official title which indicates a cute girl who smiles and asks people for their personal information. Dude. I thought only sexy reporters got to do that.

Anyway, that was Tuesday. Wednesday rolled around, and we rolled with it, straight up the Jersey Turn Pike, past NYC, and straight to Greenwhich, Connecticut.

As soon as we arrived in Connecticut, Shauna invited us in and introduced me to her pianist, who my parents already knew. She plied us with wine and Irish chocolate, and we yakked for a couple of minutes. Then we begged her to show us a little of the cabaret she's working on. We settled in her piano room with our wine glasses, Stephen at the piano, and she sang us five songs. It was brilliant. We laughed at two of them, and two of them made us cry.

Wine, chocolate, and music, all within one hour. I already knew I was going to like it here. (Do we sense a trend of people welcoming my family with wine? There's a reason, which may or may not be discussed in another blog. Basically, we all love booze.)

The people I'm staying with live in Old Greenwich, and I knew it was going to be really nice, but I don't think I quite anticipated just how nice. It's nice. I'm currently sitting on a four-poster bed with a down mattress and a down comfortor and down pillows, a canopy above me. Not only are they allowing me the use of their house, but they're clearing some stuff out of their downstairs library for me to use as my writing office.

They're giving me a writing office.

In their library. ------->

There is no profanity adequate to make up for my lack of vocabulary on this subject. On top of that, there are three pianos, which I'm free to use. An art studio, which I'm free to use. A treadmill, which I'm free to use. A pool (below), which I'm free to use. A scooter, bicycle, and extra car--all of which I'm free to use.

Further, Shauna is an amazingly hilarious and gracious woman. Also, she is brilliant. ALSO, she has been kind enough to say she will teach me how to use my voice. Finally, someone who knows what they're doing is willing to give me direction. The good thing is that I am also a guinea pig for her, because she is looking to write a book about the road map to learning to use your voice. I feel like I am definitely the one benefiting more from this arrangement, but I hope I can be of some use in this venture of hers as well.

Tomorrow, I'm going to meet Beth Hatton, who is the neice of my mom's clients. Beth works for a law firm, and I think she will be a great contact in the city. Also, if there are any positions available for an administrative assistant at that firm, I would jump at the opportunity to have a great job like that. Talk about working in NYC, this place is a few blocks from Grand Central Station.

So, of course, I have to look smashing. I'm beginning to apprehend the reason my mom wanted me to have the clothes she did--I will need them in NYC. I will need to look smashing.

And I will.

I feel so thankful, so blessed, and so ready to dive into this new life. There are opportunities waiting everywhere. I can feel them waiting to be plucked up. Creative success has never seemed more within reach.

The Pseudonym

So Adryn and I have been developing a new story, which we're working on at present. We've decided to use a pseudonym for our co-authored short-fiction, because it seems less likely that an editor or agent will be automatically put off by the story. I know it seems strange, but I feel like advertising the piece as a multi-author work is an automatic hint of the unusual, which might add an extra picket or two to the editorial palisade. As a pair of untried, unpublished authors, we need all the advantage we can get, so we hide our numbers just in case they think we're attacking with comma splices and unbetad chat roleplays, or thinly-veiled Dungeons and Dragons transcriptions.

At the moment, we're about 1/5th of the way through a steampunk novelette. You can hear us developing the world for the novelette on THIS EXTRA EPISODE of Pendragon Variety Podcast, and you can hear us talking about the challenges of story-and-world-building with a friend...without stepping on each other's toes on THIS EPISODE.

We're not really trying to hide the fact that we're using a pseudonym, so it's not some huge secret. Just a momentary trick-of-the-pen to keep the scales from tipping one way or the other before the reader hits the manuscript. Our working nom de plume is: Adelaide E. Park.

You had to be there.

Reading Fees for Agents? Hmm.

[Listen to Pendragon Variety Podcast's discussion on this topic HERE . ]

The recent twitter hubbub is all about an old argument: should agents charge reading fees for the manuscripts they receive? I learned about the debate from THIS ARTICLE on the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America website, and followed it to THIS BLOG POST on the Wylie-Merrick Literary Agency blog. Very interesting.

I'm not going to give a long-winded explanation of the debate here, so if you're curious about what everyone is saying, go to the links above. Below, is simply my feeling on the matter of agents and novelists, and how they're paid.

I agree that agents deserve to be compensated fairly for the of work they do, but I also agree that it shouldn't be at the expense of the writer (read: novelist). After all, would you expect an actor to pay to take an audition? I have no brilliant ideas as to where that money might come from, as there is only so much room for unpaid interns in the slush pile, and with publishing companies terrified of yet another economic downturn, receiving higher advances for the same quality of work is about as unlikely as a V.C. Andrews novel being well-edited.

Yes, there are thousands of aspiring novelists who would do better trying their hand at trapeze than at writing, and one of the main functions/jobs of an agent is to separate the Barnum & Baileys from the Bantam. That part of the process, however, isn't reimbursed, and nor is the novelist’s hundreds of hours banging out a draft, or the several dozen trips to Kinko’s Fed Ex. It's the sale to the publisher, the commission from the advance and the royalties that reimburses the agent, and the advance and royalties themselves that pay the novelist. Therefore, agents must go through a long and laborious process WITH the author to polish a manuscript and sell it to a publisher, whereupon both writer and agent get paid. At least, that is how I understand it.

So, if Novelist and Agent go unpaid until The Sale, and The Sale does not occur, The Agent has lost money and time spent, and so has The Novelist. Agents receive, on average, 15% commission. That means The Agent must do the same work with roughly 6 novels to receive the same amount as The Novelist. The difficulty is in saying whether or not this amount of work is comparable to the time spent by one Novelist in writing, rewriting, and polishing the manuscript. In my opinion, it's impossible to know, since I believe it's impossible (not to mention an unhealthy waste of time) to attempt quantifying the creative process.

If you think about it, both The Agent and The Novelist are sitting in the same boat. If one were to wax metaphorical, one could say that The Novelist is the rower, and The Agent is the coxswain. The Novelist and The Agent may be sitting opposite on the issue of reimbursement, but without the coxswain’s careful direction and encouragement, the boat will drift aimlessly. Without the rower’s strength and perseverance, the boat would go nowhere at all. Without either one of these two people, the publication destination looks pretty hard to reach.*

So talking of unfairness in reimbursement is an issue I think The Novelist and The Agent have wrongly taken out on each other. The part I’m still unsure of: what to do about it, if anything at all.

*(If we want to extend the analogy, we could say that the Agent is the coxswain for a quad, or even an eight, and the Agent's four-to-eight Novelists are powering the boat towards the finish line. The Novelist must share the coxswain with other rowers, and therefore be respectful of the other rowers' right to the coxswain's attention, because the cox only get's 15% from each. That's kind of like keeping time with each other, respecting the rowers in front of you and behind you by staying with the pattern. Let's face it: a crew boat that carries fewer than four rowers DOESN'T HAVE A COXSWAIN; it's not worth the extra weight. Some rowers are great with that, but many like the security of diving into the physical rush of the sport without worrying to much about strategy and direction--they like the security of a coxswain. Okay. Seriously. /analogy)