Echoes in a Hollow Space

Random quote of the day:

“If you can see things out of whack, then you can see how things can be in whack.”

—Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss), Los Angeles Times, November 27, 1983

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Lucy and Ethel, Justin Bieber, or the Kardashian Klan. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Ever since the Syfy Channel’s new series, Haven, debuted I’ve been in a slight funk. You see, the novel I’m doing revisions on is a contemporary fantasy which involves people in a quirky rural Southern California county where the paranormal is an everyday occurrence and the inhabitants take it for granted. Much like the quirky small town of Haven on Syfy. It was bad enough when their show, Eureka, premiered. That was about a quirky small town in which wild experiments in fringe science took place, causing paranormal-like events to happen all the time. Everyone there pretty much took it for granted, too.

I think the story of my novel is original, but it can’t help but be overshadowed by all this quirk and all these strange towns. I continue to polish the novel, however. It’s what I have; I will market it. It’s a stand-alone, but it’s also part of a trilogy, see, and I really want to write those other books. Maybe even more than I wanted to write this one.

I first came up with the concept of Dos Lunas County, my quirky entry, about eleven years ago. Formulating the concept, the characters, the plotting took awhile, and this novel had at least two false starts before I finally finished it. This is not an atypical pattern for me, unfortunately. For a time I was finishing a novel a year, but those individual novels were often years in the making. One would come on strong, then need restructuring so I’d work on another until I solved the problems. About once a year, one of them would finally click completely into place and I could push forward to the finish. This has, as you can imagine, sometimes worked to my disadvantage, marketing-wise.

If only I weren’t such a slow writer. If only I didn’t think so much. If only I didn’t think up perpetual if-onlys. This isn’t a whine, not really, because I know that the fault, dear Brutus, lies not in my stars but in myself. I could get back to the novel a year pace, I think, but I seriously doubt I will be able to conceive, plot, and write a novel in a year. They surge and wane and surge again, so I’m always a beat or two behind the rhythm of the market.

I write on and continue to market my arhythmic novels. What else can I do? I am what I am, the market is what it is, and the zeitgeist is always pumping out ideas in multiple directions, hoping that somebody will take up the challenge and run (fast) with it.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

I reached a creative low point at the end of last week, so I officially gave myself the week off from any writing. "I'll just read," I told myself and "and not even think about either of the novels that are driving me insane." And that's what I did, and it's been good.

Long about Tuesday, though, things started tickling; ideas that refused to come when I called began a whispering game from under the closed door, "Can we come back in and play? I think you'll like what we've been saving up for you."

I kept the door shut for another day, stuck to my non-association pledge, but the whispers got more and more insistent: "Really, that incredibly knotty plot problem you've been staring at for weeks? We'll tell you how to solve it."

Overnight on Wednesday they sent in one of the characters to act as an intermediary: "Listen, the Muses have said they're sorry and I know they really are. Won't you give them another chance? I mean, look, they've dressed me up in these spiffy new clothes and given me a whole new direction. It's just so inspirational! You wouldn't want to hurt their feelings, would you?"

"All right," I finally said, "but just an outline. I'm not sitting down in front of the page again until I'm sure they're going to behave."

"Really, we swear this time!" they shouted through the keyhole. "Really, really for sure!"

I am happy to report that when I sat down yesterday to start the outline, they were models of decorum and helpfulness. Gordian knots unclenched before my eyes, pieces of plot that had steadfastly sat on the sidelines chanting, "Neener neener neener," now lined up like good little children, eager to fall into place.

So I opened up chapter 9 of Venus today, and lo! One of those newly spiffed characters showed up just when I needed him to deliver the information I so greatly needed to convey. His arrival is a bit too convenient, plot-wise, but I'm glad for his company anyway. I figure we can negotiate the terms of his later-draft reassignment when the time comes. I'm just glad he—and the Muses—have decided to be nice to me again.

For now.

Random quote of the day:


"I see in the twentieth century the sure and inevitable abolition of the great evils which now perplex us; new problems, growing out of a still more complex civilization, will then arise, and new ages will solve them."

—Victor Hugo, "Two Visits to Victor Hugo" by Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen, Scribner's, December 1879





( Illustrated version. )

It's been a week of small and petty challenges.

It started off last Friday when I began a special two week eating program to detox from sugar. I am, and I remain, cranky. I look forward to eating cereal again with a ferocity that's not to be believed. That was the same day my internet connectivity at home went away. It's still not back. I hope to have that problem solved by tomorrow afternoon, as I'm having a cable modem installed. For $10 less than the DSL was costing me. Even after the introductory offer is over, so that's a small victory. But if you don't hear from me over the weekend, you'll know what happened.

Oh, and yahoo has been eating my mail. So if you sent me something and I ignored you, I may not actually have gotten it.

That same Friday evening I got a phone call from my Visa Security and Fraud folks trying to confirm some purchases. Everything was cool until they got to the $500 charge at a Target in San Diego a few days before. Not made by me. I still had the card in my possession, so she explained a scam that's going around. Sales people, et al., she said, sell Visa numbers to scammers who make fake cards with fake IDs to go with them, then sell them on the black market. The sales clerk at Target was alert, apparently, and refused the charge, but the Security person assured me I wouldn't be libel for the charge in any case. It did mean I had to destroy the card and get a new one. This was the same account that was compromised in the Choicepoint hacking scandal a few years back. At the time, my instinct was to close the account and get a new one, but my bank assured me "it was highly unlikely" my account number would be compromised. Uh huh. Should have trusted my instincts on this one, although the Security person last Friday said it was "highly unlikely" that was how my number got out there. Uh huh. I think perhaps my bank/Visa didn't want to go to the expense of closing accounts and opening new ones.

When we mentioned this the next day to our neighbors across the street, they'd had the same scam run on them. Also in San Diego—which does make me wonder about that hotbed of crime and vice to the south. Get this: a guy went into a bank, slapped down his fake Visa and said he'd like $500 in cash. The bank duly forked it over and he left. Apparently, he thought it was so easy he went back a little while later to the exact same branch and tried it again. That teller got suspicious this time and went to talk to the manager. The guy took off.

So my new Visa arrives last night. It looked like the envelope had been tampered with. That happens frequently with packages and interesting-looking mail in my neighborhood. I wonder if somewhere down the line I'll get another call from Visa Security and Fraud?

Then Amazon said my mother's birthday present wouldn't get to me until two days after her birthday, but it arrived last night, two days early. Which was a good thing. Except one of the books was not what Mom wanted. Oh well.

More doctor's visits for more petty annoyances. Nothing too bad, so I'm grateful. And I'm still alive, so I'm grateful. I remind myself, "This is what the living do." Which is also the name of one of my more favoritest poems of all time (and a wonderful book, too). You can read the title poem here, if you aren't poetry-averse:

http://www.blueflowerarts.com/mhowe.html

I am living. I am grateful. The petty sh*t just lets me know I'm still part of life—as much, maybe more so on some days—then the passion and the glory. And there are good and wonderful poems now and then to make me see the world fresh and be even more grateful to be amongst the living.


Random quote of the day:

"Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the yard and shot it."

—Truman Capote


Thankfully, I haven't felt that way about most of mine. But there have been one or two...

So, is there anyone out there who's not on their way to WFC? And why do I think WTF every time I see WFC? I think WFC is a perfectly fine convention and hope to go there some day, maybe next year, but my mind persists in turning it into WTF. I am some funny in the head sometimes.

Unsolicited plug of the day:

Whenever I log onto Amazon it keeps popping up with Magic Bites by Ilona Andrews--iagor. (Awesome cover art, btw.) I get excited and reach for the Add to Cart button, then realize it isn't out yet (March 2007). This is a pre-order nudge. But I appreciate their eagerness to sell it to me. I'm eager to buy it. It looks good. You should check it out.

Writingness of the day:

Eudora's Song got a no-thank-you yesterday, so I did a quick read through, cut maybe another half page, and sent it back out today. It's good to keep it circulating, though I remain as unhopeful as ever. And although that's true, I'm not particularly bummed. I'm writing something new that I like so all's write right with the world. I'm not even mopey over the failure of Night Warrior/The Making Blood earlier this summer--though I suspect that wouldn't have been as big of a deal, either, if it hadn't coincided with my summer mopey season. And I should say that now, with the perspective of time and a new project, I don't consider that an outright failure. It's a problem that needs solving--but that's for another day.

Which reinforces yet again that it's the process that's the most important thing.

Unless, of course, you've got a publisher breathing down your neck saying, "Where's the next book, dammit?" (We should all be so lucky.) Then it's pretty much, "Screw the process! It's the outcome that's the most important part!"


Random quote of the day:

"The truth is rarely pure and never simple."

—Oscar Wilde


Damn straight, 'Scar.

Once long ago, in a lifetime far, far away I read R. A. MacAvoy's exquisite Damiano trilogy—Damiano, Damiano's Lute, and Raphael. The emotional and creative power of it stuck with me all these years. I never reread the trilogy, more because I loved it so much rather than because I didn't love it, if you understand me. But I've been haunted by the brief author's note she stuck at the end of the last volume (no spoilers here). I'll have to paraphrase because the books are still packed away and I can't check exactly what she said, but it was close to this:

"This is the last book of the Damiano trilogy. There won't be anymore. I no longer know what it means."

I was fairly young at the time, though not a kid, and I had an intellectual appreciation for this statement because having read those three books, I could well imagine how exhausting they must have been. But I hadn't written even my first novel then, so although the words haunted me, they didn't quite inhabit me, if you know what I mean.

My first novel was one of those generic Medievaloid quest fantasies and although it seemed a big challenge at the time (and it was), it wasn't as much of a challenge as later novels. Each one's been a little harder, but I can truly say that none of them gave me as much trouble as Night Warrior—not even close, and I was writing it during a chaotic (but not tragic) time in my life, too. Not to be overly dramatic about this, but I think after this experience, I have a little emotional piece of R. A. MacAvoy's statement inside me.

I haven't gotten anywhere close to her achievement, and there are still enormous problems to solve in order to make Night Warrior workable. I don't know if it will ever be a good book, but I do know this: the work transformed as it unfolded, became something I didn't intend, something in the end that was more than I could have done before. The work, and more importantly, sticking with the project even when it made me despair, has transformed me. I don't know what it means anymore—good, bad, ugly, pretty, or indifferent. I just don't know. And it hardly matters at this moment, at the end of a long process. It is what it is.

But (*deep sigh*) I'm glad I finished it.