Echoes in a Hollow Space

Two things happened this week: (1) it was the end of the Fiscal Year at work and (2) I finished the second draft of A Rain of Angels.

Yes, I finally gave up calling it the 1.5 draft and realized it really was closer to the second draft. The labyrinth was once more successfully negotiated. It still needs scrubbing, especially the language, but I've got to give it a rest now.

Does it hold up? I think so, but I am so totally not sure at this point. It's seems kind of goopy, kind of goofy—but I'm fresh out of perspective at the moment. I have certain things—comments, et al.—that I highlighted as I went so I could revisit them after I'd reread/reworked the whole thing. I'll try tackling them next week, but not this weekend as originally planned.

Because of the end of the FY thing. Busy, fricking busy, at work and I'm trashed. Some years the FY goes by with hardly a ripple. This was not one of those years. This year was a try-to-cram-five-tons-of-effluvia-into-a-one-ton-pipe kind of year. So it goes.

And those of you whose ms. I am currently reading (all one of you): I'm still reading, but events most definitely overtook me. Soon, I promise.

(Ha! Leon Redbone singing Ain't Misbehavin' followed Ethel Waters, followed by The End by the Doors. There's clearly a message there, but I'm too tired to figure out what iTunes is trying to tell me.)

Okay, ow, of the day: Three rejections in three days. Universe, could you please space them out a bit more? Thank you.

But it's not so bad of the day: That just means I'm sending more stuff out, and once the initial blech was over, I moved on fairly quickly and sent more stuff out.

And finally of the day: I'm finally starting to get excited about closing in on the end of Charged with Folly. I finished off chapter 27 (redux) with a flourish and am actually anticipating the final chapter (or two) with eagerness. Huzzah!

It would be nice to finish this weekend, but I can't guarantee that. I'll just do the best I can.

Books I've just finished reading and will admit to in public of the day: Territory by Emma Bull. Hmm. Not sure what I think about it now.

ETA: Duh! Territory is the first of two books. Everything makes sense now! This book is definitely worth the read: rich and complex characters brought vividly to life; a marvelous melding of Old West and magic without any of the hokeyness I feared might take place; good writing. One of the most original books I've read in awhile.

Random quote of the day:

"For dreaming may be the only method of initiation left to us: each night brings a 'little death' by which we acclimatize to the Otherworld, rehearsing the journey that all souls have to take in the end."

—Patrick Harpur, Daimonic Reality

But I'm not Bitter! (Much.)

I finished up chapter 21 and started polishing chapter 19 to post to the OWW. That will be the last chapter I put up on the workshop. I wanted to leave those who've been critting, and those who have been following but unable to crit, with some sense of closure, if not the end of the story. Nineteen culminates one part of the story that at least some people have been wanting for awhile now.

So now I just have to push on through to the end.

92,500 / 100,000 (92.5%)

This 100k number is pretty much a fiction. Ain't no way I'll wrap this up in 8k, but I am closing in on the ending, and I want to see how far over 100k I go.

92,500 / 120,000 (77.1%)

120k is looking pretty reasonable. There just aren't that many tangents left to get lost in. ;-) Miracles may happen and I may even bring it in under that, and certainly when I do the rewrites there will be enough to cut, I think, to bring it back to 100k. But I'm thinking this first draft will probably go at least this long. We shall see.

It appears I'm not quite done with Dark Ages Britain because I just had to buy another book on the subject, Battles of the Dark Ages by Peter Marren. It arrived from Amazon today. Which I suppose means, by extension, that I am not quite through with Night Warrior/The Making Blood and vampires.

Oh, I'm not looking to do a second draft any time soon, and not looking to write the other two books in the trilogy any time long, but it's still alive inside me regardless of what I say (even though I'm always perfectly sincere at the time I say it).

Ideas, stories, characters haunt us until we give them their do—at least they do me. There are few ideas, partially written books or stories, even some completed novels which ever truly leave me and become a dead issue. The generic quest fantasy I wrote a mountain of years ago is probably a dead issue—but that was a "practice novel," anyway, something I had to get out of my system, something to prove I really could finish a novel. I was dead serious about it at the time, even tried marketing it a little, but I managed to move on from it fairly quickly.

That's the largest of my "truly finished" projects. Everything else, it seems, is still up for negotiation. I could probably fill up the next dozen years with the hulks of partial novels and novel ideas on the harddrive. They're waiting, lurking.

Sometimes when I turn the computer on, I think I hear that shark stalking music from Jaws.

Quotes of the day:

"He who cannot give anything away cannot feel anything either."

—Friedrich Neitzsche


"A human being has a natural desire to have more of a good thing than he needs."

—Mark Twain


Writingness of the day: So I'm trying to complete a new Dos Lunas story—yeah, that series of stories I was just talking about, the ones that have yet to generate a sale. But I haven't completed a completely new short story in well over a year, maybe more like two, and I know from past experience that sometimes I've just got to finish something, anything, in order to bust up that kind of creative logjam and move on. This Dos Lunas story probably has the best shot at getting written of any currently in the unfinished pile.

The other thing I'm trying to get past is that little voice of judgment that's been a pox on my house lately. That mini-magistrate is the voice of doom for finishing projects, always negative, and I've learned that if I don't figure out how to shut it up, I can't create. I'm not talking about creative judgment here, that's always got to be part of the process, I'm talking about that mean little fucker who mocks the first draft into incompletion.

It doesn't matter how crappy first drafts are. The first draft is the one where you just put it on the page, try stuff out, get in there and wallow, go over the top if you need to, and the judge and jury should play no part in it—at least not in my process. Because those negative voices generally have more to do with the people who have put me down in my life, tried to keep me in my place, or make me conform to their version of reality. They have to do with negative programming going back to childhood, as they do in most people's lives who share head space with a mini-magistrate.

We never lose those little judgers. That programming is so integral to the fabric of our childhoods that we can't rip them out of our consciousness without ripping out a part of ourselves. If you like the art you do, the life you're currently living, or even—miracle of miracles—the self you currently are, then you have to embrace the whole package. Everything that happened to you, every crappy little voice, as well as the good stuff, contributed to making you who you are, as an artist and a human being. You'd better learn to live with it all because ignoring it just doesn't work. It comes out in ugly ways if you try to hold it down, and it will come back to bite you bigtime on the ass. You'd better develop coping strategies, otherwise the judgers and the crap merchants inside you will make sure you don't accomplish anything at all.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxDonexxxxxxxxxxPending

Epilogue - 1968xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx✓
Epilogue - 6th centuryxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx✓
Epilogue - 1976xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx✓



I've written a frickin' epic—but IT'S DONE!!!!!

Final nasty page count: 746 SMF
Final nasty wordcount: 186,500 SMF (178,500 in Word)

I think that should count as both novel #4 and novel #5, don't you?

Unmarketable as sin, but for the moment, I don't care.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxDonexxxxxPending

Epilogue - 1968xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx✓

Epilogue - 6th centuryxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx✓

Epilogue - 1976xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx✓


All three local betas have read the final chapter and I received three thumbs up. Which is not to say it won't need work, but encouraging all the same.

This is the first day in about two and a half weeks that there's been breathing space at work. Everyone decided they had to have their research projects done before the Christmas break, stuff they'd been sitting on for months. You know, the usual.

But starting Friday, I'm on vacation until January 3. I am so so so looking forward to it. Inevitably, I'll have to do some unpacking and rearranging on the homefront, but I am also hoping to get a good chunk of writing done. I will not promise anything so rash as finishing the novel...but it could happen. If sloth does not overtake me.

Novel talk of the day: That is to say, talk about the novel, not necessarily anything novel.

I desperarly want to get Night Warrior gone so I can concentrate on other projects, like Charged with Folly. I almost rebelled today and decided I'd work on something else, but no. No, no, no. Must. Suck-it-up. And. Finish. That's what separates the women from the girls, right?

In today's scene there were all these people yapping and yapping and yapping. They've been having a yap party all week and won't shut up no matter how much I pound the ceiling with a broom or threaten to call the cops. All the chitter chatter is because they're trying to avoid the big fight scene—they can't fool me. But today I managed to shove them all the way up to the opening of it before I had to go back to work. They have no choice but to fight now. (Although the way they've been dragging their heels, they may take a notion to discuss the air speed of a swallow carrying a coconut instead.) (I will not allow this to happen, and no smart ass better ask whether it's a European or an African swallow, either. If anyone gets thrown into the Pit of Doom, I'm doing the throwing.) (I am the author, after all, and I'm in charge.) (You hear?)

Fighting, fighting, fighting with the chapter; struggling to make it right. Nothing seems to work and it's like crashing into stone. But I keep chipping away, because that's what you have to do to finish, I keep chipping. Tough because I'm at the place where there are no surprises left, just the chipping. Bit by bit I keep on—until suddenly there's an opening and I'm pushing through! The door to the summer country opens and it's straight through to the other side...

So, I depressed myself last night by sitting down and figuring out the page count for each chapter I've finished thus far, calculating an average page count, estimating how many chapters it will take to finish, and doing the math (SMF). Let us say that it was more than I anticipated. There's not a lot left in the 1968 and 1977 timeframes, but the 6th century has a lot going on.

If you are an organized writer, you might say to yourself, "Pam, shouldn't you have known this before now?"

The answer is no. I couldn't really do an estimate like this before because there is always a certain amount of terra incognito in my novels as I write them. And my plots are always complicated. I'm just now at a point where all the plot elements are coming to fruition, where the lookout has called, "Land ho!" and I can see the entire stretch of water between me and that shore I hope to land upon.

Realistically, I think it probably won't take as many words to get there as my crude estimate suggests, but the thought that it might took the wind out of my sails. Just a bit. The wind has picked up again and I'm still on course. But.

And for those of you kind enough to agree to read this monster in its entirety, I won't be expecting you to read this monster. I plan to do some hacking (maybe quite a lot) before I inflict it on any beta.

And then there's this here post right here by sartorias featuring Rudyard Kipling talking about writing long and cutting down and the work being the richer for it. That was some consolation.