Echoes in a Hollow Space

The heroine of my novel Venus in Transit has been named Marian St. Cloud for at least ten years, ever since I first started working on the beginning inkling ideas for the book. Now this movie comes along and I’m thinking the whole St. Cloud family of Dos Lunas might have to have their names changed. I’m not going to do that now, because that name is so entrenched in my consciousness, but I assume that everyone will assume that I stole it from the movie.

It looks like a fairly paint-by-the-numbers, dorky movie, too.

Of course, I still have to finish the read-through, the time with betas, the hardcore rewrite, then the marketing of this novel, so considerable time could elapse before even the possibility of a publisher or readers seeing it. Maybe ol’ Charlie will have faded from memory by then. Or maybe it will become a huge freaking hit, what with soulfully blue-eyed Zak Efron drawing in the sighing crowd. I don’t know.

Names and titles. They’re tricky business in the fiction game.

In other but related fictive news: Titles come to me out of the ether on a regular basis, often without a story attached. I keep a file just for those. Sometimes they’re so suggestive that I have to come up with a story to go with them. It becomes an obsession. Blood Geek was one of those. Ironically, sometimes the name that gets me to write the story becomes obsolete with the writing and has to be changed. Charged with Folly was like that. It became A Rain of Angels. Changing titles like that can be painful.

I’ve got another title that popped through the ether the other day. A drumbeat has started in the center of my body. Good stories begin in my brain, of course, but the ones which have to be written always eventually migrate to my core, to my second brain: the heart. I have no idea what this story is about, but it’s already migrated.

We’ll see what comes of that.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

I'm doing everything possible to avoid finishing my novel this weekend, including—gasp!—housework. I don't know why I'm so determined not to focus. I finished a rousing next-to-last or next-next-to-last chapter on Friday and was sure I'd finish the book over the three days I have off. But it just isn't happening. I had a little bit of insecurity about how I'd resolve a certain plot point, but in the shower this morning, I figured that one out. I'm not dreading the ending, it has a nice sweep (I think), my energy is good, its energy is good, all systems appear to be go, but...

Also in the shower this morning I came up with a name change for the novel. Charged with Folly referred to a plot point that has since been "overtaken by events" and isn't quite relevant anymore. I knew I'd probably have to change it but wasn't actively worrying about it at the moment. But the new name popped into my head and it is all about this book: A Rain of Angels.

If I can just get over myself and finish.

There's one or two chapters to go and if I allow for my normal chapter length, the book will clearly go over 120k, but there's a great deal that needs to be fixed and slimmed down in the early chapters, so I'm quite confident I can bring that total back down.

119,750 / 120,000 (99.8%)

Finish, finish, finish!

First the title Night Warrior turned out to be a severely overused title and I had to go through the agonies of finding a new one. Much whining was heard in the land (for months on end!) until a friend suggested another title that I liked. Then the moniker of another of my WIPs, Brother Wolf, turned out to have been used before so after much kvetching and whimpering, it became A Taste of Night. I actually wound up liking that one much better, but it's always difficult for me to reassign titles. They become such an integral part of the book for me that it's akin to amputation. Well, okay, maybe not quite that bad. Maybe just slicing off a little skin.

Anyway, just now while I was peeking at Amazon to look up Magic Bites by the lovely and talented and incredibly dynamic writer ilona_andrews...☺...I saw it had been paired with a book by Vicki Petersson that looked interesting—one of those "Buy both together" things. I clicked through to read up on that book, and saw she had a second one out. It's called The Taste of Night. Lo, and there was whining in the land once more.

At least Brother Wolf/A Taste of Night/Whatever the Hell is a WIP-on-Hold and I don't have to think of a title right away, but damn. This is getting tiresome. And I'm also thinking I might have to change the name of Charged with Folly, too, as the story seems to be evolving away from it. But maybe not. I won't truly know until I get there. And I ain't changing the title unless I absolutely have to.

In other news: Chapter 13 is done and a big chunk of 14 is, too. I also had to rewrite the end of chapter 12 again yesterday so 13 would make sense. I think it does, now.


Random quote of the day:

"The victor will never be asked if he told the truth."

—Adolf Hitler

The day did not begin auspiciously. After a disturbed night, I rolled out of bed with a snatch of Yeats' The Second Coming floating through my head:

WHITEAnd what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
WHITESlouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Off-putting, to say the least.

Wondering if I'd gotten the wording right, I went to see if my Yeats book had been unpacked yet. It had. It's amazing how many books have taken their titles from bits and pieces of that poem.

Then I started thumbing through, settling now and then on an old favorite. Like his poem from the end of his life, The Circus Animals' Desertion, about the reexamination of a life's work. It contains one of my all-time favorite poetic stanzas:

WHITEThose masterful images because complete
WHITEGrew in pure mind, but out of what began?
WHITEA mound of refuse or the sweepings of a street,
WHITEOld kettles, old bottles, and a broken can,
WHITEOld iron, old bones, old rags, that raving slut
WHITEWho keeps the till. Now that my ladder's gone,
WHITEI must lie down where all the ladders start,
WHITEIn the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.

Since I've been feeling a bit foul-rag-and-bone-shop-of-the-heartish lately, that one hit home. I went on to similarly cheerful material from the end of his life, about the death of living memory, of people passing away into nothing but history when the people who knew them pass that way, too: The Municipal Gallery Revisited.

WHITEMancini's portrait of Augusta Gregory,
WHITE'Greatest since Rembrandt,' according to John Synge,
WHITEA great ebullient portrait certainly;
WHITEBut where is the brush that could show anything
WHITEOf all that pride and that humility?
WHITEAnd I am in despair that time may bring
WHITEApproved patterns of women or of men
WHITEBut not the selfsame excellence again.

That one, at least, had a rousing conclusion:

WHITEThink where man's glory most begin and ends,
WHITEAnd say my glory was I had such friends.

I read a few more in a similar vein, then decided that unless I wanted this to be the theme of my Saturday, I need to shake myself loose. I also thought eating something might be advantageous because I was showing all the signs of low blood sugar.

It's remarkable how much better I felt after that. Fortified, I decided to get down to business with a joyful heart and finish reviewing that novel I'd promised to get done this weekend! I opened the file, went to the placemarker I'd left in the text and began to read. Wait. Hadn't I read this part before? In fact, hadn't I finished thirty pages further on from that point? Yet my placemaker and all those thirty pages of comments were gone. I realized I'd saved down the wrong version onto my flash drive. I thought maybe there was a chance I'd left a backup copy on my machine at work, like I sometimes do, but was not looking forward to going into the office on the weekend. I grew once more churlish.

Then I remembered I sometimes throw a backup onto my other flash drive! Praises, praises! There it was. I finished my appointed task in gratitude and a patter of happy, dancing feet, thinking myself well and truly blessed.

WHITEAnd pluck till time and times are done
WHITEThe silver apples of the moon,
WHITEThe golden apples of the sun.

(The Song of Wandering Aengus)

Quote of the day:

"The Romans would never have had time to conquer the world if they had been obliged to learn Latin first."

—Heinrich Heine


But I'd love to learn Latin.

Writing and reading talk of the day:

❶ ☞ As I lumber through chapter 40 and the epilogue(s) for Night Warrior/Born to Darkness, I find myself looking forward to the next novel. It looks like Charged with Folly has taken the lead in that competition. It's the most complete idea at this point, even if I did write 200 pages of Venus In Transit, and even if Beneath a Hollow Moon has some really juicy character stuff going on. The worldbuilding for Charged has come on strong in the last month.

❷ ☞ Someone reminded me the other day that Anne Rice (who I haven't read for at least a century) used the term, "born to darkness," in her novels to describe someone being made into a vampire. I had completely forgotten that. Yeah, that's right, I'm using the same cryptoamnesia excuse that Kaavya Viswanathan used to explain why she plagiarized huge chunks of Megan McCafferty's books (possibly, as it turns out, egged on by her book packager). (See this post.) However, considering the major angst it caused me to come up with Born to Darkness as an alternate title for NW, I ain't changing it again. Let's just call it an homage, shall we?

❸ ☞ The reading I've been doing lately has mostly gone towards supporting Charged with Folly, so I'd say that's another sign that novel might be next in the queue. I've been reading about the geometry and abstruse symbolism of labyrinths, alchemy, chakras, Paracelsus, and string theory. Although reading about Paracelsus also goes towards supporting the world I created for the 18th century cunning man, Simon Jellicoe, that novel isn't ready to pop yet. The string theory might apply to that one as well. Not to mention the Diane Purkiss book I quoted the other day, At the Bottom of the Garden. It all goes into the compost pile, and hopefully something rich and strange comes out the other side.


Miscellanea: And speaking of the windmills of your mind, I always find myself wanting to sing that lyric:

Keys that jingle in your pocket
Words that jangle in your head
Can analysis be worthwhile?
Is the theatre really dead?

Too much Paul Simon at an impressionable age, yah sure.

I've known for some time I was going to have to change the name of Night Warrior because there's an online comic and an anime series, amongst others, by that name. But I've had a great deal of trouble coming up on some variation of warrior that wasn't already taken by games or anime. I'm not wildly crazy about any of the variants I did come up with. And, yes, the friend and I who were brainstorming on this got a bit silly at the end. But what do you think? Comments welcome.

[Poll #651146]

I started chapter 25 of Night Warrior early last week and then got...not stalled, exactly. I just didn't want to work on that novel. Usually in the later stages of a novel I'm kind of RoboWriter—I focus in and stay focused. I may not crank out huge word counts per day, but I crank them out every day, rain or shine, and wind up with a decent average for the week.

But by Tuesday last week I'd gotten all fidgety about things that have little to do with the novel: the market (or lack thereof) for the kind of book I'm writing, mostly, and wondering if this has been a big waste of time. I think there may also have been some reluctance to write the tough stuff in this part of the novel, too. Plus, I've been antsy to move on to other projects, other worldbuilding experiences, and another novel that's been on the backburner for over a year came on really strong last week. So I gave myself a vacation from Night Warrior and started this other novel.

Not the 18th century one I'd mentioned wanting to work on weekend before last, as it happens. Another one, called Charged With Folly—an alternate universe/steampunky thing that's very different from other stuff I've written. It still needs a ton of worldbuilding, but I wanted to play with the first chapter because the opening came to me one night in a kind of half-awake, half-asleep moment and I sat up and went, "Whoa!"

Suddenly wide awake, I jumped out of bed and cranked out about 2000 words fast before my mind finally settled down and I could get back into bed in the wee, wee hours. Well, actually, I thought I'd finished, went back to bed, something else dropped into the slot, I leaped out of bed again and wrote some more. That happened about 2 or 3 times before I finally did settle down.

That was it for awhile. (And looking at the date I appended to the original file, it was June 2003, so it's been two years.) I've played with the idea on and off over that time and it's been a highly seductive siren for me—but a stop and start siren.

That original file, btw, had the working title of Barfing Angel for ever so long. For obvious reasons, that had to change, but it refused a name change for the longest time. I've gotten used to the new title for the most part, but it still wants to be known by the old one.

I made wonderful progress on Charged With Folly last week. Now I've got 2700 words of chapter, plus another 3500 or so of partial scenes, notes, et al. I considered posting a trial balloon on OWW. I may still do that, because I have a near-complete chapter. I still need to write the final scene, but it's time to turn my attention back to Night Warrior. I need to finish that for my own sense of completeness and "keeping promises" to my characters and finishing off that story cycle. Not to mention keeping the promises I made to my local beta readers who I've repeatedly assured that I "knew what happened at the end." They've threatened to moider me if I don't finish. And I think I'm okay with that. Finishing, that is, not being moidered. Vacation's over and I got back to work today, did my usual word count on NW.

But there's no reason I can't play with my siren on the weekends. :-)