Echoes in a Hollow Space

So, the funky voice problems continue in the first part of chapter 14 of Angels. I'm wondering now if it's just funky voice or if my problem may also involve a funky frame to hang this part of the plot on? I also suspect there may be at least one superfluous character. (Loreo, for those of you reading along at home.) Mostly he just sits around nodding sagely, listening to people talk, issuing the occasional command. I could probably cut him, but then I'd have to shift the job description of someone else around to fill the void, and...

The problem there is that he'll be much more relevant in books two and three of the trilogy.

Aye me. I'm at that stage of pre-submission suppressed panic and nothing seems right. I can't tell if it's because it really isn't right or because I'm looking for an excuse not to send it out. I'll push on with the rewrite and see how I feel about a restructure when I reach the end. I really like the first eleven chapters, anyway, and the ending kicks butt, if I do say so myself.

It has seemed for some time now that the voice I use in Angels doesn't really feel like my own. In parts it does, but in other places it's like I'm borrowing someone else's voice. I ran this by my friend who I've known since I was twelve, who's read...let's see...most of what I've written. "Rereading Shivery Bones has really pointed out how different the voice is between that, Angels, and Venus," I told her. "I think Bones and Venus are more representative of my true voice."

"And I think," she said, "that Bones is more representative of the voice of a younger you. Venus is more representative of who you are now."

She is brilliant and she is correct. That's the dissonance I'm feeling. Angels is pulling between the old and the new and that works fine in places. Others, not so much. I don't quite know what to do with that since I was hoping to start marketing Angels. I was going to push through and start marketing anyway, and I probably will do that, because I just can't trust my objectivity here, but this dreaded middle makes me wonder.

It also occurred to me that I didn't "dream" that book as much as I did the others—and that kind of creative daydreaming, for me anyway, seems to be intimately connected with voice. The voice is a direct result of being intensely inside the idea for awhile before it starts coming out of me.

On a positive note, I've begun posting things to the Online Writing Workshop again. The first three chapters of Shivery Bones because I've thought of a couple of more places to try that book and I wanted to be sure the new prologue/chapter beginning worked with the rest of the opening. I was so burned out from crits when I gave up posting to OWW (going on two years ago) that I wasn't sure if I'd ever post again. But I've enjoyed being back, doing crits. I might even post the opening to Venus In Transit to see if I can poke myself into finishing up there.

But first, the rest of the Angels rewrite. For better or worse.

A Rain of Angels

61,750 / 111,500 (55.4%)

Yeah, I've reached the part of the manuscript that makes me cringe. Chapter 12 and one too many scenes with people sitting around talking. Brain no work so good. Can't think of nothing better. I've lost all perspective—so I'm just going to keep pushing forward.



A Rain of Angels rewrite:

54,250 / 11,750 (461.7%)

Not crazy about this new Zokutou image. It's looks kinda nasty.

She probably won't like it—nobody puts Venus in a corner—but I'm going to have to leave off on this one for a bit. I'm so close to the denouement (climax seemed the wrong word to use in conjunction with Venus) I can see it's house from here, but it's just not moving forward. I've had a frustrating week bashing my head against a wall (actually several, on and off), so instead of doing that very painful thing, I'm going to take a few weeks off and work on revisions of last year's novel.

I want to get that out and about and circulating, plus working on something else will either help me identify why I am stuck or give me a fresh perspective and jolt me forward. I'm not sure if the stuckness is a life thing or a ms. thing, but working on something else is the best way I know of determining that. So.



Venus In Transit

99,250 / 110,000 (90.2%)

From The Onion:

"YOUR HOROSCOPE: Your science-fiction novel will be heralded as a "work of utmost urgency and importance" by critics in a mirror universe this week."

Yep. That about sums up my career.


From Requiem by Graham Joyce:

"The smell of autumn was already in the air, a whiff of damp, green leaves hankering after gold."


From the notebooks, 2004:

She looked forward all week to her Friday night ritual of Turning Off the Alarm. In many ways, it trumped even the other favored ritual of Lying in Bed Noodling on A Saturday Morning. Noodling was not to be sneezed at, but there was something wondrous in the anticipatory thrill that came from shutting off the alarm. At the same time, it was like a great weight had been lifted from her, a sigh of the soul saying, "There, that's done. Another week escaped from."

Probably the darkest ritual of the week was the Sunday night Turning the Alarm Back On. Definitely an occasion for sackcloth and ashes.


From my backbrain:

New words on the WIP! Only 500, but they're the first truly new words I've written since before my mother got sick. It felt really, really good.

This time of year, I'm just putting one foot in front of the other, trying to bull my way through to Christmas vacation. The word count has been reflecting that.

Also, 100k is looking very optimistic—but not as badly out of whack as it usually is at this point in the ms. I'm closing in on the end, unless I'm totally delusional.

Which is always a possibility.



Venus In Transit

94,000 / 100,000 (94.0%)

I missed two of my weekday writing sessions, plus I didn't get any writing done over the weekend. Fortunately, on the days when I actually did write, I had better-than-average sessions, so the word count isn't as pitiful as it might have been.

I was also convinced most of the week that I was writing the current chapter from the wrong POV, but as I closed in on the end of it, I finally saw why it needed to be from that POV and it smoothed out nicely. Funny how that happens. It does me absolutely no good to ask myself, as They recommend, "Who has the most at stake in this scene?" to determine who's telling the tale. Once my instincts decide on a POV, that's pretty much it and I've got to live with it. Every rare now and then I'll switch the tale-teller in rewrites, but usually, not so much. Because most of those times, the instincts seem to have it write. Or right.

Or I could be delusional. Funny how that happens.


Venus In Transit (SMF)

87,750 / 100,000 (87.8%)

The good news is I think I finally have reached that tipping point on the current WIP. The final action just got a kick start and I'm hopeful we'll be plunging towards the ending. Of course, I can never underestimate my ability to smash into a tree branch sticking out of the cliff face and getting hung up, or discover I really have a bungie cord attached to my ankles which will snap me back upstairs, but I'm really hoping I sprout wings and glide in to safety. We'll see.

The bad news is I was reading a novel last week that used the same central metaphor of the novel I'm about to start marketing. That's not so bad, as labyrinths are not uncommon literary devices. But what really burns my bacon is that she used that device in a similar conceptual way. Criminy, she even located it in the same type of geography! What's a girl to do? My book is quite different. I guess. I think. But it does get irritating when you think up something you think is fresh and then starting seeing it elsewhere.


Venus In Transit

81,250 / 100,000 (81.2%)

Today's writing session was actually fun! After weeks of slogging along, looking for any excuse not to write, and low word count, I really appreciated it, I can tell you. I keep thinking the story is about to break wide open and roll downhill to the end, but I've thought that before. So I'll just content myself with saying this time that I had fun and hope to have more fun tomorrow.

And I wonder if I actually am going to bring this novel in at around 100k? Wow, wouldn't that be a big surprise.


Venus In Transit

77,250 / 100,000 (77.2%)

Alas, not a productive week, word-wise. A number of distractions, plus I had to stop and do a "Where the hell am I and where am I going?" outline for the rest of the book. I'm not an outliner, per se, but about once every third of a novel, I get flustered at where the book is leading me and have to stop and reconnoiter the landscape. Is it still possible to get to the endpoint from where I'm currently traveling? The answer is almost always yes, but once that panicky feeling starts, there's nothing for it but to think things through. I may not follow the outline now that it's done, but at least it's done it's job and I can hopefully get back to writing.

I'm definitely at the "this is no longer fun" stage of the novel. But that usually just means I'm close to the hump that will allow me to get on with the downward slide. Not as close to the hump as I'd like to be, can't see over the top, but close. I suspect future drafts will have me telescoping some of what I've written and expanding other stuff, but this is not the time and place to worry about that. Just pushing forward here. I want to get through the current slog and get to those action scenes, but I keep getting distracted by more and more slog.

I do find myself thinking longingly of the next novel I'd like to do, even to the point of doing a good deal of research reading for it. I'm also itching to put the final final final FINAL polish on the last novel so I can start inflicting it upon the world. But I know these sirens do not mean me well. They care nothing about humps and mountains, being largely aquatic. They want me to jump overboard and drown or smash my boring-old-definitely-not- fun-anymore boat upon the rocks. I must stuff my ears with wax and keep on rowing. That's the only way I'll ever see the shores of home again.


Venus In Transit

72,250 / 100,000 (72.2%)

After not getting much writing at all done during the week the stomach plague laid me low, I have returned to the WIP with renewed vigor. Hopefully, I can push through to the completion of this mutha now.



Venus In Transit

66,500 / 100,000 (66.5%)