In the Virtual Bank Line

I had two distinctly different dreams last night, which is only significant because the end of the first one kept coming into the second one in a kind of "WTF?" way.

At the end of the first dream, my friend Mortaine had a special kind of bell. It looked like a clear glass Christmas tree ornament, but inside it had three bells that looked like finger cymbals. They were one above the other, each with a hole in the middle so that tiny golden beads could trickle through, chiming the bells inside. She held it in her hand and, moving her hand slightly, made beautiful, trilling music with this tiny little thing. She told me that each bell produced a different note, and that the three notes together were especially pleasing. The notes were E, A and N. That's right. N.

I woke up from that dream thinking "N? What the hell does N sound like?" And then went back to sleep, but throughout the next dream, I kept thinking "E, A, N? That can't be right."

In the next dream, the Pirate and I had moved to a cute little neighborhood into a townhouse. All the houses shared walls, and we could all see into each other's yards. Our bedroom was on the ground floor, and the window was right above our bed. The blinds we bought were just a tiny bit too big for the window, and the breeze from the open window (it was hot) made them scrape softly against the window frame. It was right in the Pirate's ear, driving him crazy. I snuggled up behind him and put my hand above his head, holding the blind down to keep it from scraping.
{N? No. Not N.}
When we got up, we had to go to a party at my friend's house. My parents were going to be there, and a lot of our neighbors - it was going to be a big thing. I thought it was just going to be a barbecue, but it turned out to be a trunk show of jewelry - they were still setting up as the Pirate and I arrived. We talked to other guests for a bit, and then I wandered off to look out the window.
{E. A. N. E. A. N.}
The neighbors had caught a fawn and were using it to entice its mother across the creek. The mother was understandably nervous about trotting over, and it wasn't even clear to me whether they intended to capture the mother and kill her or just to get both mother and baby out of the way somewhere else. There was a boy - 8 or 10 years old - who wanted to pet the fawn, but the neighbors kept shooing him away and the boy was crying.
{It must mean something - be short for something. There's no N.}
Back inside the party was underway, and people were lining up to dance. They had a squaredance caller who was calling out the moves slowly so that even inexperienced square dancers could follow along. There were eight couples who were all in a line (instead of being in two squares). Now, remember, this is a jewelry trunk show. And who buys more jewelry? That's right. So, the couple are all dancing, and at one point, the women have their backs to their partners, and they lean back with their partners holding them under the arms, and kick one leg out. The caller then yelled "Now drop 'em!" and the men all dropped their partners, who fell on their butts to the floor. The whole place went quiet.
{If there's a note N, is there a key N?}
The caller came in quick with "Gentlemen, you can make it up to your lady by buying her some lovely jewelry!" And, while most of the women let their partners off with mean looks and expensive purchases, one woman with long, white-blonde hair started screaming at the square dance caller, telling him how dare he make her husband humiliate and hurt her just to sell some cheap costume jewelry! Then she ran into the bathroom and slammed the door. When she'd composed herself, she left the house, got into her car and drove off, leaving her husband behind. I watched the whole thing, thinking "Good for her. He was an idiot to drop her like that."
{E. A. N. N. N.}
The Baby Goddess came running into the room, telling me that I had to come and walk with her to her daycare. It wasn't her daycare in real life. This was a series of small buildings joined by corridors. The corridor that the children entered in the daytime was built to look like a forest path. There were round stones set into the concrete of the walkway, and everything was overgrown with moss. The buildings had columns that looked like giant tree trunks, and in the window of an office, there was a cutout of a kindly-looking old lady with the words "I'm watching you" above her head. Next to her was a video monitor where the children could see themselves walking down the path. (As I was telling this dream to the Pirate and the Baby Goddess, she said "That sounds really scary!")
{bEAN, clEAN, dEAN, lEAN, mEAN, wEAN}
There was a tiny door leading down to a sort of basement looking place, and I asked the BG what they kept in there, and she told me that it was where they kept Sarah. Sarah was one of the little girls at daycare, but because she was small, she stayed in that little room. I opened the door and saw a room that was about 4 feet tall, and perhaps six feet on a side. Along one wall there was a bench, and a tiny table in front of it. The only light coming in was from the cracks in the floorboards above. It was inconceivable that the daycare would be keeping a child in such a hole. As my eyes adjusted to the dimness, a tiny little person popped up and said "Is it time to go home?"
{Where would N show up on the clef?}
I didn't know what to say. It was Saturday afternoon. "Time to go home" would have been nearly 24 hours ago, and yet the girl, who looked to be a very tiny 4-year-old, didn't seem distressed at all. She was still wearing diapers and seemed to be a little addled, but pretty clean and cheerful. I was getting myself all worked into a state, wondering where the girl's mother might have been and how I was going to find the woman. I had changed her diaper and was trying to figure out her tights. They weren't proper tights - they were made out of cotton gingham, fitted to the leg and fastened with buttons all up the outside of the leg. They looked like doll clothes. The feet were much too small for the little girls' feet, which looked bloody from being jammed into too-small tights and shoes, but the little girl didn't seem to notice as I put the clothes back on her. I was getting more and more panicky - so much seemed to be wrong with the situation, and yet I was the only one who was noticing it or taking it to heart.
{THERE IS NO N!}
I woke up with my heart and head both pounding. Apparently, I'm still sick.

Taking Notes

I got the contributor's copy of my little magazine article, but still no word from the agent who promised to get back to me "much sooner" on the second submission.

I think it's time to do another round of submissions, although I must admit, I'm a little upset with myself. Other people I know who are writing have volumes of work that they're shoveling out the door with both hands. Due to my own perfectionism, I tend to have only a few offerings at a time that are ready to go out.

*sigh*

I have started a new writing notebook. For years, I have carried around a little green leather notebook that I have jotted down bits and phrases in so that I could save them for later. I like hearing things that people say that are particularly juicy, like "No hair is okay if you have really bushy eyebrows." People say weird things, and I like being there to chronicle them.

But this particular notebook is where I have been actually sketching out the skeletons of the projects I am working on. I've gotten to the point where my ability to work is so sketchy that it's best if I jot down everything about an idea that I can jot down so that when I do have some time to concentrate on it, I have a good idea of what I'm doing.

Thus far, my book is rapidly filling up with ideas that I don't have time to flesh out. But I'm not bitter.

The Bitter Tang of Success

I know now what it is that's been dragging me down lately.

It's success.

In November, I got word that a nonfiction piece I'd submitted in October had been accepted. The piece was short, the pay nominal, but it's an acceptance and that's what counts. The minute I got word, I started hating my job. I wanted to stay home and be able to get to work on all the ideas I had flitting through my brain.

I finished my Nanovel, but I wasn't all that excited about it. The plans I have need a little more work than I was able to give this one. The contract job I'm working at right now means that I have a boss who thinks that because I'm a contractor, I'm not subject to the normal rules that everyone else adheres to. I should be available 24/7, I should have no life of my own that might require my attention. I must be desperate enough to want to do nothing but work.

I got back on track and buried my head in work, but then along came a rejection that was better than anything I'd ever gotten. I note that actually called my writing genius and expressed deep regret that he hadn't been able to convince other editors to publish my story. Again, I'm sure that the pay would have been nominal, but it would have been something.

That note came on the same day that I had driven into work through one of the worst traffic jams I'd ever seen. It had taken me over an hour to drive the last four miles, and for the rest of the day my left eye was twitching the way it does when I'm deeply stressed and unhappy. A couple of days of working from home has fixed that, but I'm still resentful as hell that I'm working on this and not on something I'd rather be doing.

Back in December, I'd gotten a rejection of my first novel from an agent who said that they loved the work, but just didn't feel they'd be able to sell it. They asked to see something else I'd written, so I sent them another novel of an entirely different flavor - Genius of Want. The December rejection had come fourteen months after I had initially sent them the manuscript, and they promised in the letter to give the next one a quicker turnaround. I sent the next manuscript off two or three days after getting the news from them, and I have no idea what to expect, but I can't help but have some high hopes.

The problem is that those high hopes are making it really difficult to concentrate on making a living. It's not my boss's fault that I have literary aspirations. It's not her fault that I'd rather be creating swirls of magic than bringing my considerable organizational skills to bear on her subscriber communications.

I just can't help but realize that every other successful author I've heard about has bitten the bullet, made incredible sacrifices and NOT WORKED A DAY JOB while they were working on the novel that made it for them.

I keep wishing that something will happen to make that possible for me, but that's unlikely.

In the Virtual Bank Line

It's been a while, but I've had some pretty mundane dreams lately.

Last nights' dream was a little disturbing and I don't even really understand why.

I was jogging through my old neighborhood, back in Phoenix. There's a maze of condos there called "Concord Village," and in the dream, it had been given over to some sort of military training complex. As I was jogging along, I turned down a path and came upon some guys showering under an upturned hose. They weren't in a camp shower or anything - just hanging out in the middle of a public pathway, naked as could be. They started to laugh as I jogged through, but I told them they didn't have anything I haven't seen before and kept running. It was kind of funny, I thought.

As I jogged, I realized I was holding someone's towel. I slowed down as I came to a house that I remembered seeing as a kid. I looked at the front door, and it was open, so I went inside. The place was two stories and filled with rustic-looking antiques. There were three cradles that looked as though they were made from bark, and three trundle beds and three high chairs. They looked at least a hundred years old. I managed to walk all through the house without seeing anyone. It looked like a tiny little museum of old pioneer artifacts, but when I came out the other side, I realized I had left my towel inside somewhere. I put my face to the window and saw it on the stair railing. Just then, a woman in her mid-thirties came out of an upstairs room and saw me. I was going to run, but she opened the door and led me inside, telling me all about how her grandmother had collected all these things, and how she and her two brothers had been the babies who had used them.

I left the woman's house and went back toward my own place. As I neared my condo, a little kid came running toward me, showing me some treasure she'd found. She was babbling on about it, holding my hand as I went toward my place. As we got nearer, I realized that this was a kid who belonged to the daycare just across the passageway.

I went to my place and changed clothes, and the minute I was done my best friend from grade school showed up. She wanted to go shopping for something, but she was being really mysterious about it. We went to a strip mall that had one shop with no sign outside. Inside, the whole place was full of huge chests of tiny drawers. The drawer fronts were all carved wooden filigree with tiny elephants on them whose trunks served as the drawer pulls. I looked inside a few of them and found carved wooden rings, bracelets and necklaces of various sizes and colors. There were tapestries in back, black hangings with bright weaving through them depicting various Latino left-wing heroes. My friend was looking around with her nose wrinkled.

I had no idea what she could have been looking for or how she knew about the place, but it was obvious that she was disgusted by what she'd found. I realized that she was just checking the place out. She was going to report back to someone else, who would then take some action I couldn't begin to predict. I told her that I thought she was a bad person and walked away back across the parking lot.

On my way home, I went through an open-air market. I started going up and down rows of market stalls filled with all sorts of things - food, clothes, housewares, auto parts - and I was looking for something specific, but I couldn't remember what it was.

I was still looking when I woke up.

Another Opportunity to Get My Message Out

Once again, I'm going to be on the radio. I did it last year and it was really fun, even though what I was reading was silly, silly, silly. This year, I think I'll mix my soundbed carefully and practice a lot. I haven't read in public in a while, and I'm feeling out of practice.

It would be even better if, by the time I read, I can tell people that the novel is due to be published....

The Days Simply Fly By

In October, I announced to people that I was definitively NOT participating in National Novel Writing Month. And then, at the beginning of the November, I found myself with some unaccustomed time on my hands and an idea that was just sitting there in my brain waiting to be written. I wrote nearly a quarter of my novel in three days.

I was 60% done by the end of the first week, and then things hit a snag. I had no time, I had more projects in the real world than I could reasonably complete, and besides, I wasn't participating. Why should I worry about things like plot trajectories and word counts if I'm not participating?

But then, just after Thanksgiving, guilt caught up with me. November 26th and I'm still stuck with the same 35k words I'd had for the past two weeks, and not a word more to show for it. I knew that, given my logorrhea, I could certainly produce the requisite 15k words, but would I? After all, I wasn't even participating.

I guess it says a certain something about my character that, given the writing successes that I've had this November, I decided that I wanted to go ahead and finish. The effort sapped my health (okay, that may have been cold season and my proximity to a 5-year-old) and I ended up, at the end of things, in bed for an entire day, but I did finish.

And now, I don't even know how I feel about it. Happy? Not really. More like, not embarrassed that I gave up in the middle of things. Proud? Again, not so much. The first year, I was proud just that I had finished, despite the fact that what I had at the end of the process wasn't usuable. This year, I realized that my novel was not even close to coherent until the last 10k words, which means that to make it usable and readable, I have to pare away several weeks' worth of work and do several weeks more, and that's just writing. Being proud of my effort at this stage is akin to being my age and being proud that one can use the potty like a big girl.

So I guess that my feeling right now is really just relief. Once again, I haven't embarrassed myself. I have been a good example for other people I know who are struggling and who may or may not have finished. I have the beginnings of something workable and ideas for a great many other things that are possibilities. The whole exercise is not a loss, and I do have to say that the ultra-competitive side of me really loves knowing that I'm one of only a handful of people who enter every year who actually finishes. It does make me feel that I am, indeed, a writer after all and not one of those people who thinks that any boob can sit down and crank out a book.

Much Ado About Much

I haven't updated much because at this point I am working a full-time job, raising two children, writing a novel, keeping chickens and keeping up three other blogs about the whole mess. I've been...distracted.

First, the Santa Cruz chapter of Nanowrimo made the local paper. You can read the article, complete with an interview with yours truly here.

Second, just because I'm writing a novel doesn't mean that I'm brain dead. One of the inevitable effects of writing a novel is that I end up with more story ideas than I can possibly manage. I currently have three or four, and they end up falling out of my ears. Here's one of the ways I ensure that I have story ideas that work: I don't write them down right away. The good ones are the ones that stay with me over several days or weeks, popping up in my psyche and demanding my attention. By the time I get around to writing them, they're much more powerful.

Third, just because you're done writing doesn't mean that you're done. A few months ago I went through an orgy of submissions. I do this every once in a while, sending out dozens of copies of work to dozens of markets hoping that something will stick somewhere. As of right now, I have one essay sold, a short story on an anthology's short list and a novel that might be delighting an agent as we speak. Call me a mercenary, but I'm doing this for money too.

I'm two-thirds done with this year's Nanovel, and I'm confident that in a year or so, it'll be just about ready for people to look at. But I'm just as confident that in the meantime, other little seeds I've planted will have sprouted and flowered.

Break Taken

Tuesday last, I woke sick as the proverbial dog. I stayed home from work and mostly slept, but did manage to get a few words down, seeing how it was the beginning of the month and all. Wednesday, more of the same, but I must say that I was feeling the pressure to get better, as my boss was leaving for three weeks and Thursday would be her last day. Thursday I dragged myself into the office, did a few ineffectual things, and then wrote some more when I got home. Friday, I worked from home and did a little writing in between emails.

What this all adds up to is that by the 4th, I was 40% of the way through Nano.

This, despite the fact that I have still not officially committed myself.

Which means that the fact that I was so sick on Saturday and Sunday that I did literally nothing but sleep and zone out in front of some DVDs makes me feel not one whit guilty.

No guilt. None whatsoever.

Okay. Maybe a little.

V-I-C-T-O-R-Y

As some of you may know, my first Nanovel, Mitos del Pueblo, garnered first place for novel at the 2004 East of Eden Writer's Conference. That was a wonderful perk and a great feeling, but it wasn't the end of that particular novel's journey. In fact, it turned out to be little more than a bump on the Road to Publication, which it's still barrelling down with no signs of ever coming to rest.

But I did write about that process, and the resulting essay "Putting the Suck in Success" was accepted by Rambler magazine for publication.

Well, it's a start.

Oh, Naughty Me

It's been months and months since my last post, and here it is the 3rd and I haven't said word one about Nanowrimo.

Honestly, there are two reasons for that:

1. I haven't had time. Since I last posted to this blog, I have been a writing and submitting f3wl, so it's not as though I've been entirely idle. Partially, but not entirely.

2. I still have not committed to actually *doing* Nano this year. Having said that, I must confess that as of last night, my word count is over 13,000. No, it wasn't a typo, it is the third day and I'm already a quarter of the way to completion. But the thing is this: I know that I can do it. You know that I can do it. It's just that I also have many, many other things I have to do this month, and therefore I don't want to begin by oversubscribing myself.

Although we all know, don't we, that I'm incapable of *under*subscribing myself.

The New Project

I've been busy. I've written a couple of short stories and done a flurry of submitting - nothing yet. It's a little discouraging, but I'm not sure what to do.

I've come up with the plot of the next novel/play. When I wrote "Leif the Buddhist Viking," it was originally conceived as a play, but I had gotten the advice to write it as a novel first. It worked well as a novel, but I'm still committed to turning it into a play.

This new work is similar in that it occurs to me as a play, but I should novelize it first. The working title is "Trinity of Days," and it's about the three days that Mary spends between the time Christ is crucified and the time that he is resurrected. The themes are before and after, the Holy Trinity (which, interestingly enough, has no room for her), the stages of grief, and women and middle age. It's a lot to work into one play, but that's one of the things I like about the form. It's elastic.

I've been talking to The Pirate's parents, who are chock full of Biblical knowledge. They're giving me a ton of information - so much so that it's getting hard to decide what to include and what to leave out. I'd like to make the action of the play something that can be staged in a variety of ways. Contemporary, period, etc. We'll see.

I'm happy to have something to work from. Sometimes the ideas come thick and fast, and sometimes not at all. It's always nice to have something.

In the Virtual Bank Line

I was at work helping out with some software testing. For some reason, our software worked just fine on stationary systems, but on a laptop when you switched between one screen and another, it would consistently crash. I was getting very frustrated because this is one of those fields where I know enough to recognize a problem and not enough to fix it.

While at work, the woman who was my roommate was giving me grief. I had just bought a new phone and answering machine and had left myself a note about some expenses on top of it in my bedroom. She called me to discuss the expenses with me, which meant that she had been in my room going through my stuff. I told her that I'd talk to her about it later, but that I would be gone for the weekend. I was going to my other house. Upon finding out that I had another house, she got all bent out of shape because she felt, as my roommate, a certain entitlement to anything that was mine. Whatever.

I left work and headed to my other house. My other house was on a spit of land that was only accessible during low tide. The spit of land had trees on it, and my house was an inn in those trees. To get there I had to wait until low tide and pick my way through the rocks and then along a path into the woods. To outsiders, the house itself was only visible (but not accessible) during high tide, but to the creatures who lived there, it was just the inn.

The creatures who lived there were elves, fairies, trolls, fauns, brownies and all manner of magical creatures. My place was the only building in the whole area, and the only place where there was alway a meal cooking. The minute I walked in the door, I heard nothing but complaints from all sides. The fairies were ripe, and they were into the kind of trouble that only adolescents can get into.

See, here's the thing: a fairy is the larval form of an elf. To be specific two fairies form every elf. All fairies are twins - one good, one evil. The evil aren't so much "evil" as "mischievous." They can take any shape (because fairies are not a species, just a phase) just like elves can take any shape. There are short, troll-like elves, elves with goat's legs, human-looking elves, etc. The fairies all fly (though not all with wings) although they lose that ability when they become elves. They spend the first several years of their lives in this state of fairiness, flitting about and cavorting and learning about things by getting into things. If you have a good fairy attach itself to you, you're very lucky because they're helpful and kind and good-hearted. If you have an evil fairy, you're in for years of bad luck. You can tell when it's time for the fairies to go from larva to adult when the good ones are competent and kind and the bad ones have made enemies out of just about everybody.

There were three at the inn who were ready - a male trollish fairy, a male faunish fairy and a female humanish fairy. When I got in, everyone was screaming because the faun and the girl had ridden ponies into the drawing room and were causing a general ruckus. I came downstairs and told them that if they would put the ponies in the stable where they belonged, I would get their boxes and give them something delicious to eat. That's the trick. Fairies don't eat. It would just never occur to them. To the good ones, food preparation is a skill to learn, and to the evil ones food is another trick to play (spoiling the cheese, putting mice in the flour, etc). The minute a fairy eats a mouthful of food, the transformation begins. They turn into something that resembles a doll - hard and lifeless, but colorful. You must put the evil fairy and the good fairy together in a special wooden box that's pierced all over with holes, and put the box in the sea. In the morning, an elf will have come out of the box like a bird from an egg, and grown to its right size.

I had all six fairies lined up in front of me and had given them each a slice of bread. They hadn't even swallowed the first mouthful when they fell over, cold and brittle. I was just gathering them up and sorting them into their boxes when the dream ended.

The Cost of Productivity

This weekend, I missed an event I had really been looking forward to. My friend Cliff had invited a bunch of us up to his place to watch a movie and hang out, and I had promised to make it.

In the meantime, half of the family has had the same creeping crud that's going around. The Pirate has a rattling cough, and the Baby Goddess has a perpetually runny nose and no energy. This means that I spend my time doing a very few things: working, taking care of someone who is not me, sleeping or editing. I've been utterly heads-down on my editing such that although I had announced my inability to complete Nanoedmo this year, it's the 13th and I've got something in the neighborhood of 27 hours under my belt. I've done some re-writing, some re-arranging, some cutting and a lot of reading out loud.

Saturday I spent the day running around, and got home late in the afternoon and started my editing. I didn't even remember my date at Cliff's house until this evening, and when I remembered it I broke down in tears. My harp needs a new low A string, I need to work out more and I owe about fifty thousand people phone calls or emails. And none of those things is probably going to happen before I finish this draft of my novel.

Will my friends forgive me? I'm sure they will. It's not like they've never done it. Can I forgive myself? I don't know. I've trained myself to think that I'm a superwoman and can do everything, but that's not true. What it's come down to is this: I'm angry at myself for focusing so completely on the priorities I set myself. It's stupid, I know, but there it is.

In the Virtual Bank Line

I am with a scouting mission of five. We've tracked signals to a particular small planet, but we can't decode the signals or tell who they're aimed at.

We land in an area composed mainly of swamps (a class N planet). There appears to be no animal life more evolved than small plants, and there is one structure. It's a three-story house-looking structure covered over with something resembling white ivy and caulking. My particular mission is to find and disable to signal's source. Three will find the person/persons manning this signaling station, the last is the radio who keeps communication with our ship, parked on the other side of the sun from this planet in synchronous orbit (SOP - it keeps our troop carrier hidden until we need them).

I've discovered that the signal source is organic - it's the white webbing that covers the house. It's like an organic web of signal processing and accelerating synapses grown over an artificial structure. By following the whole down to its root, I can knock out the signal. This is why our scans found nothing - it's another organic structure in the middle of a wealth of organic structures.

In the meantime our people have discovered the man stationed here. There is only one, since there is no machinery to maintain. We have found out from whom he is getting his information, but we don't know for whom his broadcasts are specifically intentioned. The fact that it's a broadcast rather than a beamed signal is disturbing. The man gets away, and our troop carrier follows him.

He's gone to an inhabited class M planet, and since his propulsion system is superior to ours, he gets there long before we do. By the time we get there and locate his signal again, he has already constructed a wooden building and begun the process of growing the communication web over it. The tendrils are still young and small, though, so their signal is too weak to leave the planet's atmosphere. However, our scans show that thousands of his troops are in the vicinity.

My advance team of five goes to the planet to find him. Three are out doing recon, radio is with me, and I'm at the structure scraping the new communication lines off the building. We look out over a grassy field next to the house. It's the size of five or six football fields, covered in picnic blankets and umbrellas where the inhabitants of the area are having a public festival. They are getting up onto a stage at one end and taking turns singing for the crowd. Beyond them, in the very tall grass, we can make out the soldiers from the other side. They are just sitting there, waiting for us.

We make our way into the crowd. We've done this before. We talk to the people in charge, telling them that we're just here to purchase supplies, that we don't want to interfere with them in any way. These people are friendly and offer to share their picnic with us. This works to our advantage. Our troops work their way into the crowd, keeping one eye on the soldiers in the tall grass off to one side. In case of attack, our soldiers will be able to rush to one side, keeping the civilians out of the line of fire.

The waiting is the worst part. We sit there for hours, trying to be friendly and interact with the people on this planet, wondering why the enemy is just sitting there. We have the advantage at the beginning of the battle, since several hundred yards separate us and our weapons are all either pulse or projectile, good at longer distances. Their weapons are also based on that white organic goo and are only good at close range, but are more deadly since the white goo sticks and then sends tendrils under the armor. We don't want to rush into a trap, but the waiting is tense.

My job is done. I get into my short-range ship to head back to the troop carrier where I can analyze the white goop and its communication tendrils. As I am leaving the planet's atmosphere, I encounter something else disconcerting. There are single soldiers in individual carriers - hundreds of them - scattered in high orbit. Their carriers are like space bicycles - good only for carrying one person to and from a craft in orbit. They carry only a couple of hours' worth of oxygen and can't hold any cargo at all. The most a person would be able to carry is the gear they were wearing and perhaps a hand weapon.

These troops aren't in a formation. They can't be waiting to be called to the surface - they're too scattered. They can't be waiting to intercept anything coming from the planet - they're not armed. As I pass them (they don't appear to notice my small craft) they are making noises and gestures amongst themselves that indicate that they are a suicide squad. They are there to perform one mission that will take them out along with their target. I just don't know what their target is. Capturing any of them is no good. That soldier would be dead before I got him/her on my ship.

As I head back to my ship, I wonder whether there is a plan of attack that is so subtle and insidious that we're not seeing it, or whether these are the last, desperate moves of this particular enemy. I don't know how the overall battle is going. I'm not privy to that. I only know that I'm still alive, my people are still alive, and that we've been victorious through more than one battle. What I've seen so far - the broadcast signals, the low-tech weapons, the scattered attacks, all look like desperation.

I don't know what this war is for.

Things Sighted, My First Day's Editing

Yesterday, on my way to the grocery store, I was behind a truck that had the following painted on a board attached to its camper shell: "His MOMMY (the Virgin Mother) called him Ye-SHU-ah <-Hebrew. The English translation is Jesus.

I desperately wanted to talk to this person, but it's just not feasible in a car. Oh well.

I spent about an hour editing last night. Got the first 30-ish pages done. Took out many little awkwardnesses, added a little bit. I realized that I refered several times to events that I never went on to include, and I really should include them in order to make the whole thing a little more believable. I know, it's comedy, but still.

Hopefully, I can get another couple of hours in tonight. I know that I should be spending an hour and 40 minutes a day, but that's a tall order in one shot. Perhaps I should be getting up early and spending some time on this. Wow. You know I'm desperate when I propose getting up early.

National Novel Editing Month

Tomorrow begins National Novel Editing Month. I've got my novel all set to go, I've committed to showing up to public events.

I haven't gotten as much done as I'd like to have, but I couldn't tell you why. After the whole let down with the agents, I just lost momentum. I'm sure it happens to other people all the time, but that's cold comfort. I know that I should just stay on the horse, ride it out and keep working, but it's hard. I'm pretty unmotivated by the whole thing.

I need to dust a few things off and shove them the hell out of the house. The only thing that makes it all worthwhile is that I do have stuff out there, on people's desks.

I've bought the new "Writers' Market Guide to Literary Agents," and from what they're saying, I'm on the right track. It's just such a goddamn LONG track.

New Year, New Goals

We're nearly at the end of the first week of the New Year, and there's no time like the present for looking at what we mean to accomplish this year in terms of writing.

In my last post (done nearly a month ago now), I outlined some of the goals I had. Which of them have I accomplished?

I have bought the new Writers' Market and a postal scale.
I have submitted Ressurection to one market.
I have begun the Aurelia Mudlark novel.
I have started sketching my first short for the year.

I'm now up to six out of eleven agent rejections, so we'll see where that goes. I have submitted my novel to another contest, and we'll also see what comes of that.

It's good to be a writer. I love the process of sitting down and creating something that moves people. But if you want to be a writer for a living, you can't stop there. You have to take off the creative hat and put on the business hat at some point. I found that I need to devote at least 25% of my time to the business part of things, or it's just not worth it. I need to make copies, put together packages, look up markets, attend conferences, etc.

I think this year is going to be my year.

My Post-Nano Goals

Every December, I take stock of my writing output and formulate my goals for the coming year. It's sort of like New Year's Resolutions, but a month early and with the prospect of great rewards. Here are my goals:

1. Re-read "Sven" and re-work in play form
2. Submit "Resurrection" and "Temple in a Teapot" to at least 6 markets each or until accepted
3. Write at least 1 new short per quarter
4. Re-work the last 2 chapters of "Mitos"
5. Write "Cuckoo Bee" as a play
6. Buy new Writer's Market
7. Buy postal scale
8. Write the "Aurelia Mudlark" novel

Okay, I think that's enough to last me until November. That's two plays, four shorts and a novel. NO SWEAT!

And you? What are YOUR goals?

What Happens After You're Done?

I've been done with my novel for more than a week now. Crossed the 50,000 word mark on the 20th and decided not to punish myself and my family by keeping up my 2,500 word a day pace. So...what have I been up to?

Apart from the whole holiday thing (made easier by the fact that both girls were out of town for this holiday, leaving the Pirate and I to fend for ourselves), I have been doing a whole lot of NO WRITING. I haven't edited anything. I've barely updated my blogs. If you count all the words I write on a daily basis for work (yes, I write for money), in email, updating my blogs and for actual fiction content, my normal output in November approaches 10,000 words a day. But for the past week, it's been more like 2 or 3 thousand words a day, which is negligible by comparison.

But I have been reading, and let me tell you something - if there's anything that's as important to writers as actually developing the discipline to sit down and write, it's reading. Novels, short stories, news articles, magazines. It's all important. Pay attention as you read to descriptions that are particularly moving or surprising. If something makes you happy, sad or angry, dissect it. Find out how that author was able to manipulate you into feeling what s/he wanted you to feel. If you find something particularly bad, dissect what was so awful about it, and don't ever do it yourself.

I tend to read a lot of magazines, mostly The New Yorker. It has some amazing fiction that has informed my own fiction for quite a while, now. There are things about New Yorker fiction I do not like, and I'm hyper aware of that in my own work. I look at the words and mull over the choices that someone else made and think about how I would do it. I notice how a lot of the stories in The New Yorker have a sort of sameness about them. Part of this is editorial choice - the New Yorker audience is young and hip and experimental, but let's not lose our heads, right?

Find a magazine or book or newspaper whose style you like, and figure out what about it appeals to you. The thing is not to make your fiction sound like their style, but to know how to create mood, to influence, to illustrate.

Crossing Over with Aoibheall

As of last night, I've officially crossed over the 50,000 word mark. I could have done it Friday, but I made a conscious decision that since I can't even validate my word count until Thursday, there was no need to keep flogging myself.

Unless I really wanted to.

Now, I've finished 50,000 words. What am I going to do next? I think I'm going to finish the novel. There are two scenes left to write that will probably add up to a total of about 7,000 words. And then, I don't know. Sure, I've said I'm going to take some time off, but the truth of the matter is that while my intentions are good, I'm not capable of just not writing at all.

But the thing is, during the month of November, I've continued to write down my ideas and generate characters and plots for my next projects, so it's not like I'm at a loss.

In the meantime, though, I think I'm going to stand here with a whole bunch of other people at the finish line, cheering on those who are still slogging through it. GO TEAM!!