Haunted Mirror

Good Writing-Career News:
Someone asked to see more of my poetry, though the one I sent wasn't quite right.
I think I can deal with that.

Because You Always Wanted to Know:
Brahms' Violin Concerto--Music to Mop By!

My Family Now Has a Llama.
There's really no way to expand on that.

I really am trying not to be too easily engaged by the story that header's line comes from. I think I'm failing.

Reviews in Brief:
So I'm reading Skulduggery Pleasant aloud to my younger sibs now. I think it's the funniest book I've read since...maybe Douglas Adams? Seriously good stuff, Ford. Rates more than a "mostly harmless".

Airborn--enter zeppelins! enter fantastical flying cats! enter sky pirates! enter desert-island-stranding!
Good stuff, that.

What else? Oh. The Unknown Ajax, despite revolving around some literary reference I don't know (I have a sick feeling it's Shakespeare) was much good.

I had a thought (which I think is a good one) about revision, about the mechanics of it. My hypothesis:

It requires the same creative synthesis of information to process critiques into a plan to revise as it does to write a story.

The reason I came upon this is in some of my critiques for Knight-Errant, a lot of the same keywords were hit upon, but opposite ideas forwarded as to what needed to be changed. In other words, if I'd simplified the statements down to bullet-points and mathematically set them against each other they would be opposites.

Instead, trying to picture what I could do about the flaws both were trying to express, I came to an image of what both were saying that meant a third suggestion of what I needed to do. It will accomplish the change, though not directly taking what either said.

And that is a process only the writer can do by looking at the advice and seeing the story and superimposing their vision of the story on both and adjusting it until something works.

I think I am complicating a very simple concept, but does anyone else have any thoughts on the hypothesis?

Draft of Seditious Intent done! Though it's a really crappy one, I've decided that's okay. I've got Story, we're good for the moment.

Two books I think everyone who ever drops through here should read:

The Face in the Frost (John Bellairs)
one line press? I just finished reading this and am now insanely eager to OWN a copy. Munnies must come first, munnies must come first...

Women Who Run With the Wolves (Clarissa Pinkola Estes)
a book about love, life, and stories from all over that teach us (especially women) about it.

I'll add reasons here once I'm done reading the chillens more Skulduggery Pleasant.
ETA~ I's back! So, without any further ado,

Anyone want to critique Knight-Errant or Heart's Desire, a fairy-tale style fantasy short story? It's 4k. Help me out if you can!

The people who have read so far have liked it a lot and not given me much to work with for rewriting. *g* Any volunteers will also be welcome to help me get this story a real name!

I think I might finish a book pretty quick here. I also started a new short story in the world of "Kansai Hop" (more generally useful: like a slightly less boys-book Artemis Fowl universe) which I will cut but still put most of the opening here. Despite the fact that it's not Teaser Tuesday or anything.


Larry ambled down to the marquee, bland expression fine tuned so he could internally sneer at the knocked-in neighboring sign for the ugly wonder of a Funeral Home.   ...

 

This is placed in a specific time in bordertown Claremore, BTW. ^_^

To be contrary, since this is the only meme I've seen many times without wanting to get up and do it, even once,
I hereby tag:
topayz4
dawtheminstrel
jeffsoesbe
jeanhuets
ckastens

Let me briefly mention that this ought to be a quick meme--closest book to you and all that (though in my case, which book is the closest? Today it was easier than most days). But actually, I had to save a jar-lid full of diotomaceous earth (sp. non-confirmed) which is a non-poisonous bug-killer of the crushed seashell variety to keep it from being blown over my bed even MORE by the lovely spring breeze.

But Plus for the lovely spring breeze!
 

I went to Eureka Springs with my family yesterday. That was fun, and the place is lovely. I'd love to go with people who shop, and also some sort of expendable cash.

But the real highlight of this trip for me is going to be Pea Ridge, a Civil War historic national park, a totally unexpected sort of thing.

I find the Civil War depressing--reading a book about the overarching politics and basic history was enough for me to feel informed on the issue. Delving into the atrocities and such is not appealing to me. This trip was more than an expedition into forest trails and coming across a great abrupt bluff with spars of rock spearing up below. I read the meatier information blurbs avidly, listened to Mr. Docent when he went into the more fascinating branches carefully.

Someone, I think at a Conestoga panel, mentioned that if you want to learn about war, read up on specific battles. They mentioned a few they thought were noteworthy, but I don't write epic fantasy (*much*) and didn't think more of it.

Until watching the video of the battle here (which in a few ways, including scale is a significant one) then driving and looking out over the actual area and putting a picture together in my mind that was so compelling and new of what it looked like to fight a war.

Generalizations are the bane of Truth, you know it?
And specifics are awesome.

So today's rather-than-writing programme included LotR behind the scenes snippets, The Cat Returns (Ghibli anime--not as wonderful as Miyazaki but I love that Baron), and a few stories out of the Wizards anthology.

I also am behind by about a week getting my thoughts on The White Darkness together here. So.

Geraldine MacCaughrean's YA The White Darkness again tackles a whole different sort of story than she's written before with close attention to how this particular story needs to be told. This one is about a girl who loves Antartica, and especially "Titus" Oates, of Scott's doomed party of explorers. And the story here MacCaughrean decided to match to that historic background. I'd describe it as--



I've enjoyed all the stories in Wizards a lot, so now I know how to look for short stories I want to read. ^_^ Magazines are harder for me to get into.

I just realized why too much time can be the death of a story idea. I had thought I was just outgrowing them.
Wrong. A story idea is not grown out of; it's is the germ of a story, and the cool that comes to it in the writing is all that makes it or breaks it. Something patently ridiculous can be treated so well it becomes classic.

No, it's the "dream" of the story. You know how Bear and others talk about the book you wrote, the book you meant to write, the book that others read as three separate entities? The dream is where the story you were going to write is. Then you write something different, and either try to draft it back closer to the dream, or consent to the new construction of it and reshape it accordingly, before opening it to readers. Who then dream out a story that may or may not look much like what you wrote.

Anyway. You can lose the dream before it hits the paper. The story dies.

I hate it when that happens.

Also: people are writing about the novels they've written.

!?*@*?!                  Just what everyone wanted to know about me!!!!!!

My first novel was a project to create a "Pilgrim" American Girl story. With some other homeschooling girls I was trying to become an American Girls Historian. It was almost completed at 5 pages for a long time--a few years later by "parental pressure" I finished it. I thought (and still think) this gesture rather moot, as I'd already proved myself to write to the finish of a good story.

See, I'd moved on quickly. If Gen sold out at 6, I became a hack at 12, a two-year old writer.

I found out something fascinating and horrifyingly exemplar of the sort of country we have bullied ourselves into having this week. On the lines of "make everyone a criminal, fast!" like Internet

It involves wild horses. I kid you not.

While driving to an Agritourism event, it came up that my boss, legally, can't bury large animals on her property: if you need to bury a sheep (or other large animal) it has to be done more than 100 [ft? yards?] away from any neighboring property, where there is not rain-water runoff, etc. The only other option is to take it to a certain incineration plant, the only one that does large animals, one that's actually got a national monopoly on the trade. (Why?! Why monopolize this? I ask you.)

It's in Oklahoma City, a good 2~3 hours away from here. It costs more gas, time, and heartache to do this than any sheep, no matter how valuable it may have been, is worth when dead. This is irrationally hard work for a farmer who's time and money are at max, and who has enough heartache to live with from the weather, thank you very kindly.

So where do the wild horses come in? They come in because there are horses that would be destroyed because they're not worth their keep (time/money/heartache, again). And if they were euthanized, they'd have to be...

You got it: taken to Oklahoma City. Or whatever your state's monopolizing incineration plant site happens to be.
So, happen it be easier to dump your horse on certain unguarded land... Apparently in Tennessee this is much more prevalent, but there's a known place to do it in this area of OK, too.

Have fun creating that wild apocalyptic novel! Your loss if you can't fit in wild herds of three-legged, one-eyed, angry horses ravaging the land. Too bad for everyone writing as if this wild stuff didn't really happen...

"AND HE'S THE GOOD GUY."

    So, I read this book in the last couple of hours. It was so. blinking. good.

I'd review it, but I'm incoherently happy with it. "There is too much. I will sum-up."
    ~   I read a lot of books I think are funny. I rarely laugh aloud. This kept me laughing consistently in a few different veins of humor. And Skulduggery himself was funnier than he's even made out to be.
    ~   It gets to the action-adventure movie kind of fights blocking...but not belaboured.
    ~   Stephanie, the heroine, has very unusually realistic ways of thinking.

If you can bear YA, try it. If it's not for you, I'll understand--or, not really. But I'm not so cool as to kill you.
Remember this now:

Too many people know I'm a writer now.
This is ironic, as it shocks me when people DON'T know.

It's more that people ask if I've gotten published. This is pretty much the wrong question, but they don't know that and it's fine. I just wish I had a different answer for them. Even just, "racked up 60 agent rejections since last year!" Nope, I've got a few poems submitted to magazines. I'm still writing more than I edit.

Anyone else here with me?

I know some people who don't talk about their writing except to other writers because of this. I'm a naturally open person, though. I want people to know my goals and hopes.
I also would like to get a move on with that dratted manuscript. *kisses WD101s boo-boos, to make it all better* No, no, I love you honey, it's just that you're all covered in mud right now...

But hope springs eternal! I'm writing a portion of my new novel out of chronology to try and buff up to submit to a certain YA epic-fantasy edition of a certain favorite magazine of ours...


And I want to read this (my four-day weekends are too short!) :



Love that tag-line. :)

I had one of those awesome days that isn't anything but a string of good incidents which included:

~ sitting in the midafternoon sunshine on a stack of pallets (for scrap wood) with a fluffy cat in my lap and a fun book to write at hand
~ watching a tear-jerker movie in a tiny box and enjoying it
~ getting things done! Like planting spiny poppies.

People need to share more about these kind of days, as a Xanga-keeping friend reminded me.

It's the rants that give people something to comment on, though; noted that in the entries from last April.
So.
Rant for the day...
Why did I hold off on The Game just because it sounded so run-of-the-mill? It's Diana Wynne Jones! She's never doing run-of-the-mill--it's never been one of her faults, and I should have realized it.
This isn't quite the right sort of rant, since I enjoyed it all the better for waiting until it grabbed me off the pile.

I like picking out titles from stories I'm working on. It's not just a gimmick that makes me feel clever (no doubt leaving everyone confused and uninterested: my specialty) but it helps me pick out the writing that conveys the essence of the story in a short bit.

Can you guess anything from today's quote? I'd think so, but I'm not sure.


As for the new project, I have 5 *blinking* pages. Handwritten, with a half-page really.
I really don't know how to write anymore, or I started too soon on this one. I don't know what's wrong with me...

Today, I wanted to write the beginning of a novel.

If you think my day was a disaster by the tone of that statement, I can't oblige you with hilarity of that (or any) sort. It was a very middlish-of-the-road as a housewife sort of day.

Well, the alarms going off at 6, and then 7, 7:30, 8:15, 8:30, etc. were about pending disaster, and quite obnoxious (also nervewracking: severe weather here is to be taken seriously) but I didn't get too cranky over it. It did rather set the tenor of the day.

While Severe Thunderstorm Warning is pealing out from the weather-watch unit in our living-room at almost noon, our neighbor calls to ask if it's heading our way, and would I go up and feed Auntie and make sure she's not worrying about the Ravaging Winds, Lightning, and Flash-flood capable Rains?

Why yes, of course I can do that.

I did, however, turn out an okay dip with leftover oddsbobs at lunch time with an expanded pea-soup (it came out very well: stock is a great thing) and a sweet-potato-pie that looked picture-perfect and tasted delightful.
No marshmallows. That's a redundancy that steals the potato's glory.


I think my wordcount is around 250. Twice that much if you count world-building words. They ought to count. I had just as much of a headache then!

I am really having trouble being productive on my days off. I think it's because I don't have a novel centering them, which is the usual arrangement. I finished the last novel project I'd been concentrating on months ago. I've been focusing on editing since then, and short stories, but it's just not the same.

And still, I'm not to the place I should be on research. Yet because my days aren't centered I find it hard to get around to the reading that I should be doing--it's what I pad the crevices of my days with.

I find vicious circles rather fascinating. They fall in the same category as paradoxes--the conundrum, I guess. Tautology.

I may have something fascinating to say about Alaska, or the Wild Woman, or quilting in a bit, but for now I pulled this quote from "Women Who Run With the Wolves" and think it's rather a gem:

She cannot develop by standing around being everyone's bootjack.

This is in a discussion of the psyche insights of the story about Vasalisa & Baba Yaga & the Doll her mother gave her. It's so far the most fascinating chapter, but I love the way this book lionizes the feminine intuition at large.

What will dawn on this morning?
The same smiling, weary sun
That opened the day coast to coast
In India, Israel, Italy...Ithaca?

The sky fades with twilight to washes
Of Easter Egg pastel chalks
Between the fiery smears of something alive--
Sunrise?
I think that I can find the Morning Star
If I looked hard enough.

Let us look
Careful, fearful,
In awe of the still, small light.

There it stands in an aspect over us
That makes me wonder
How the sight of earth looks to him

My Morningstar is here.

Look! A burning face at the edge
Of this cold world.
Did I say weary?
This looks like passion dawning
to bring light to life and smite the dark
To wage war on the shadows--
So the sun has risen.

 

[In spite of which we like to think
That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood-
Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.

T. S. Eliot]

Right. Just what I needed: a new, demanding story idea and opener!

Well, I wrote more of it than this, but for the Tuesday that is coming to a close I give you:
Jamie Duluth was considered to be in the world's top tier of Spirituals. He was also going to be a legacy student at Friedenheimer Institute of Higher Attainment. He wanted to be a normal kid. Honest.
...Oh, just leave me alone!

I'm actually in one of my idea-spurts, so this is not totally unexpected.
It is also totally explicable in terms of my reading:

Right now, I'm disappointed with myself.

It took me a bit to realize that's what was going on, because I'm unfamiliar with the sensation, at least as a regular thing.

You may imagine, I'm being confronted with the worthlessness of Beastly without even more extensive revisions and I just don't know where I'm going to call up the ability to make it better, when that's all I've been trying to do the last three times I did major edits, and clearly didn't do much good.

But.

It's St. Patricks Day! And there is green! Not just in the cheesecake I made or with the daffodils on the table, but on Google, and random recipe sites and such.

Also, Irish tenors on boats to "No Cats In America".

*Don't mind the desperate tone in here...