Echoes in a Hollow Space

I got a perfectly lovely rejection from Strange Horizons today for "Eudora's Song," the kind of rejection you want to paper your wall with. They liked it, but it "didn't quite fit." Alas, it boiled down to "beautifully done" but "too slight." Which seems to be something of a consensus opinion for most of the Dos Lunas County story cycle. And I can't say I disagree. With the possible exception of the first story in the cycle (as in the one I wrote first, the one my gut wanted to expel), "A Tale of Two Moons," I'd say the rest of the cycle doesn't have the oomph that would make them the kind of stories you love rather than just like.

I say that not in an "I suck" vein but in a writer's judgment vein. It's taken me awhile to get to that place, but I rather like being there. A great deal of hard work was involved in achieving some kind of writer's judgment. When I first starting receiving editorial criticism on "Eudora's Song," for instance, I thought, "X just doesn't understand!" With much writing under the bridge, many other projects, I got to a place where I could see X's point of view—because it had also become my own. These stories have some fine writing in them, I think, but for the most part they are more incidents in search of a novel than true short stories.

I'm a long form writer, not a short story writer. I don't "get" short on some fundamental level. However, making attempts at them does appear to be part of my process. This Dos Lunas cycle is searching for a longer plot, but I don't think all of them will ever be folded into a novel, certainly not in their current forms, but they are explorations of some sort. I have a kind of plot for two or three novels based in this universe, but I don't think any of them really holds up, plot-wise. Not yet. At least one of them will get there eventually. There's a novella, "Hortensia's Man," that is already 30k and has some oomph—but I'd say it's currently unmarketable.

But I'll keep trying to market the other stories. It's good exercise—and I have gotten some really quite lovely rejections on some of them. Who knows? Maybe next time.

Quote of the day:

"He who still sees the stars as 'up' does not perceive with the eye of truth."

—Friedrich Nietzsche


Writingness of the day: I've passed the 9k words cut mark, which is almost halfway to my goal of 20k. Unfortunately, I'm on the last third of the ms. So when I finish this read through, which is also integrating the three critiques I received, I'll let the whole mess sit for a week, then read through it again with a concentrated eye on killing words. Kill, kill, kill! Take no prisoners!

But here's an irritating thing: on three different computers with three different versions of Word I get different word counts in SMF--PC using Word 2000, work Mac using Word 98, home Mac using Word 2004. And I'm not talking about a few words difference, I'm talking about a 3-4000 word difference! It's the same file, with the same margins set, but a vastly different page count between the three platforms. I do not understand this at all. This difference pretty much disappears when I use the Word line count, so I may be forced to use that. It's higher than my lowest SMF count (on Word 98), whine, whine.

(And yeah, I did that 60 characters across the page, 25 double-spaced lines down the page to make sure I wasn't doing something dippy.)

So if the SMF word count for Night Warrior/The Making Blood on Word 98 was 187k, that means it's even longer than I thought and that means . . . I don't want to think about it.

In other fascinating writing news (because I know the above paragraphs were riveting), my final cut on "Eudora's Song" is 6,200 words. I've managed to bring it down from the bloated first draft of 10k words. It's a much better story for it. But I still don't think it hits the spot, exactly. It's just done for now and--out it goes.

You're getting sleepy...sleepy...

Here's something to wake up merebrillante:

( Mesmerizing )

Meh. No gain, no cut yesterday. I cut, but had to add in some stuff to make vague things clearer. Clarity is a good thing. I don't begrudge it. The good news is that as I read through this ms. the new opening comes into clearer focus. The set piece I thought I was going to be able to cut from the middle of the ms. and stick on the front probably won't work. I'll have to write something new, but that's forming up. Which will add to the word count, but hopefully not by much. Short is the operative word here: prologue-y short, although I'll call it chapter one because it's in the same time period, et al. The other good news is that these chapters are pretty tight-as-written. I know there's some more baggage coming up in later chapters, but these read pretty well to me, even after all this time.

Today I plan on working on "Eudora's Song." I thought I should probably read it through once more before flinging it at FSF. But I might sneak in more work on Shivery Bones.

ETA: You know what I hate? When you finish a rewrite and you say to yourself, "I think I nailed it that time!" And you lay it aside so you can read it again in a month and gain a little perspective, and you read it a month later and . . . the illusive It remains unnailed. "Eudora" is a stronger story, but the damned middle still sags. I've done what I can for it at this moment in time, but I don't think it's enough. I'm still taking it off the hook and releasing it, though. It needs to get into the water and start swimming. Maybe I'll know better how to fix it the next time I catch it.

Interesting sight of the day: Somebody took out a fire hydrant on Admiralty Way in Marina del Rey. Normally this is a fast shoot winding through the Marina, wending my way from Westchester to Santa Monica. But the opportunities for exiting Admiralty are limited, so we were pretty much trapped there watching the impressive water display. It was shooting up in the air a good 100 feet or so. Since there wasn't a damned thing I could do about it, I went into my zen place and thought about how lucky I was not to be trying to get out of Heathrow today, or flying anywhere for that matter. Finally, the sheriff's department started squeezing cars by in one lane and we eventually merged and moved past.

The merging thing, it's funny. Some drivers are so rabid about being first, even though everyone is moving at a snail's pace. You're not getting ahead of me, you're not getting ahead of me! I'll crash my car into you!" It's chickenshit insane, but what are you going to do? I was in my zen place, so I let the bastard go ahead of me.

Which is not to say I'm not a maniac driver sometimes. It goes with the territory here in L.A. But this morning, apparently, my hormones were in balance and it wasn't a problem. Or maybe it was the lovely fragrance of White Light I smelled for the first time last night.


Quote of the day:

"Fear will always fall to wonder in those who are capable of it."

—Jeffrey Ford, Memoranda

Okay, I'm doing this because Bear did it and I'm a sheep, but also because I wanted to do something today besides whine about The Novel. So, here are the first lines of everything I am currently working on. Technically, I'm only working on The Novel right now, but these are all the things I'm playing with and thinking about on the side. Some of these may have cropped up the last time I did this, but I continue to play with them. And if Venus in Transit and "Ramona! The Chickens!" seem similarly themed, they are. :-)

Venus in Transit

"So, Mrs. Tattinger, you say you first noticed something strange with the chickens five months ago?"


♤♧♡♢♤♧♡♢♤♧♡♢♤♧♡♢♤♧♡♢


"Closes Within a Dream"

JK Montmorency had a dirty little secret.


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"Eudora's Song"

It's the saddest songs that shipwreck sailors, songs of longing and despair, not songs of seduction.


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"Ramona! The Chickens!"

That day when he was--what? Nine?--and Ramona had walked up the stairs ahead of him in some tight jeans... He'd realized for the first time that girls didn't necessarily have cooties, and he'd felt the bone-tingling awesomeness of a well-shaped woman's ass.


♤♧♡♢♤♧♡♢♤♧♡♢♤♧♡♢♤♧♡♢

"The Story Shaman"

"Nothing exploded."

"It's not a story about explosions."

Yaku's grandson considered a moment, his lower lip curling downward, little fingers playing with the rug he sat on. "But I like explosions."

♤♧♡♢♤♧♡♢♤♧♡♢♤♧♡♢♤♧♡♢

"The Green Ones"

A dangerous harmonic sometimes occurs takes place in the proximity of machines: to machine--one humming at one pitch, clashing and blending the pitch of one hum clashes and blends with the harmonic of the ones beside it. You never know what that cacophony might evoke, call forth, but I'll tell you from personal experience: you wouldn't want to be there when it happens.


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"Green Horse Bone"

I don't so much find the bones as they find me.


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Charged with Folly

The angel braced himself on a black-iron lamppost, opened his mouth, and expelled a long stream of light into the gutter.

First platitude of 2006:

"On your death bed, you're not going to say, 'I wish I'd spent more time at the office.'"

—Platitude Woman

Quote of the day:

"It's what you do that makes your soul, not the other way around."

—Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams

Which also strikes me as rather platitudinous. But it's so Kingsolverian.

Writing talk of the day:

I posted another Dos Lunas story to the workshop yesterday. This one features a much younger JK Montmorency, and naughty bits. But I didn't want to label it "Adults Only" under the new labeling choices, because it's hardly erotica. Sex, sure. But sex is not the main purpose, I don't think, not the theme. I generally like the new labeling options, but I didn't want to stick that one on my story. So I contented myself with a adult content warning in the author's notes.

Goofy thought of the day:

Platitudinous platypus. Coming to a screen near you.

I've been in a bit of a null and void zone this week.  Last week I packed up my office of seven and a half years and this week I've been unpacking and adjusting to a brand new office.  Nice office—but it's weird to be doing the same work in a new space.  But it looks like I'll be able to find space to do my writing during lunch over here.  That was a big worry.  For years, I've skulked off to vacant offices and had a precious hour each day in the middle of the day when I could write.

I've been in a bit of a null and void zone where my writing is concerned, too.  I've finished the big revision push of the summer for my novel, Shivery Bones, but I sure as heck don't feel like starting a new novel right now, though I've got several ideas swimming around in the imagination pool.  We'll have to wait and see which one breaks the surface first.

In the meantime I've been revising a story, a short novelette,  I wrote about two and a half years ago:  "Eudora's Song."  Near the time I wrote it, I posted it to the Online Writing Workshop and got some positive feedback, plus an Editor's Choice runner up.  Back in the day, they did reviews of the runner up stories on OWW so I also got one of those.  Oww!  Well, okay, Kelly Link said some nice things about the story—about the language and the concept, the MC.  But she also said there were some other serious problems with the construction of the story, the pace, the non-build to the climax and the limpness of said climax.  One or two of the OWW reviewers hinted at the same thing so I knew I'd have to do some more work on the story, but it's never easy to hear those things.  I made a pass at revision back then, but I just didn't have enough perspective to do the job needed.  I was too close to it, too wedded to the story as written, even though I knew it was flawed.  I  trunked the sucker, thinking I'd get back to it in six months or so. 

That was an incredibly productive time for me so I didn't get back to it that year, and by the next year I was launched on writing The Novel, so I didn't get back to it last year, either.  I finally pulled Eudora out of the trunk back in May or June and at first I was quite encouraged.  The mood, the tone, the writing that people liked was still there, still drew me in (even though I could see a lot of fat that needed cutting) and I was really gratified by that.  Then I hit the point in the manuscript where the climax was supposed to happen.  Oy.  It was so blatantly clear to me just how much the story fell apart there.  I saw everything everyone had said about it so clearly.  For maybe the first time.  I had tacitly agreed before that the flaws were there, but now I could see them, feel them, myself. 

I put the story away.  It contained elements of beauty, but it just didn't work and I didn't know how to fix it.  I wasn't crazy about the suggestions some of the reviewers had made.  I just didn't know if that story would ever work.

Apparently, my subconscious, right brain, whatever you call it, had other ideas.  Apparently, the dark morass of the hind part of my brain had been working on it while I was preoccupied elsewhere.  I just had a feeling this week that I needed to pull it out of the trunk, and when I did I knew what to do.  And coming off four months of very intense cutting of saggy, baggy, flatulent language in my novel, I had my knife at the ready to cut, slice, and dice what needed ridding of.  There's such a sense of virtuous accomplishment when you can finally see and when you can finally do something about it.

I'm not saying the story will be perfect when I'm done.  It may still be flawed.  And the sense of virtue and accomplishment will pass, it always does.  But every once in a while it's nice to wallow in a sense of progress and of doing what needs to be done.  Too often I wallow in the other side of the morass.