Madwriter

Wow, Live Journal, I'd pretty much forgotten that you're owned by a Russian firm until I started getting slammed today with suggestions of entries by pro-Putin apologists who think the Ukraine War was Absolutely Necessary because there are little children giving Nazi salutes and Ukraine didn't let Donbas go off on its own peacefully the way Russia did with...Chechnya, I guess?

I also noticed that nearly all of your "Top LJ Entries" at the point when I logged in a few moments ago were several years old.

* * *

In happier news closer to home, the writing computer I'd been using while staying with Mom died, albeit not without giving me signs for several days that the hard drive was about to expire. That's not the happy news; the happy news is that the literal day after this happened, an old friend of mine sent me a message asking me if I needed a new computer. It turns out that her father has a hobby of restoring old computers, and had some he wanted to get out of his basement. How much? I asked. Nothing, she told me - he just wanted them out of his basement. :)

So I paid them a visit over the weekend, including dinner and many lovins of their dog Sunny Ann, and took home an HP desktop (desktop being my preference), a monitor, and a Chromebook for good measure. None of them, they warned me, were close to new - but then again the computer I had been using was from 2008 or something like that, and my Writing Computer at home is rather older than that. When I mentioned this to my friend's Dad he said, "These aren't that old."

It turns out that the desktop doesn't have working wireless access (after just getting the wireless restored at Mom's house not long before) - which I'm sure is a simple fix, but I quickly decided I wasn't really interested in fixing it. I get more writing done that way.

(Admittedly I haven't gotten a whole lot of writing done since then, but that doesn't have anything to do with the computer. Other things keep shoving in on the one day a week I have to write lately. But I'm optimistic about being able to carve out some more writing time this weekend.)

Anyway, more later, hopefully sooner than another few weeks.

Non-NaNoWriMo total word count: 20,550.

I'm facing another big Kill Your Darlings moment: As much as I like the first two chapters of my first Arizona novel, three years of distance and experience since writing them is increasingly telling me that they aren't nearly as up to par as I'd like. And that if I cut them out, plus changing the first three chapters from the second book into the last three of the first, I'll have a much stronger novel. This would start the book - which I might re-title Wolves in the Desert (currently the name of Book 2) - out with a single prehistory chapter and end with the beginning of Geronimo's warmaking in the 1850s.

I hate chopping that much. But if I finally decide that it makes the book better, I'll be ready with an hatchet in each hand.

And of course, in our fabulous Age of the Internet, if the book sells I can always put those two chapters (both prehistory - the first set at the end of the Ice Age and the second about the building of the great canals near modern Phoenix) online as free reads. This would also then have the effect of compacting my 2nd and 3rd Arizona novels into one book as well. Which means if I ever write the last book, the series would finish as a trilogy.

Meanwhile, I've also toyed with the idea of chopping up my last Shenandoah novel as well - ending it at the beginning of World War Two instead of the present day, then adding to the pre-existing chapters to have a final book more comprehensively covering the 1940s up to now. But that would depend on selling that series, too.

As for actual new writing, I knocked out 2000 words on the For Fun Fantasy Novel today, just to get in a few more licks before the end of the year. It's hovering around 115,000 words now and still not quite close to finished yet. It's a good thing that "Don't pay close attention to your word count" is one of the book's multiple experiments.

A few weeks ago Laurie wanted to attend a Quakers meeting and asked me if I'd like to come along. I did, having been interested in the Quakers for a long time but never having attended one of their meetings - I am curious if nothing else, and that was a good enough reason for me. Plus I suspected I might get a lot out of it. And also, the meeting house is an hour away when you hit all the green lights (in Roanoke, Virginia to be specific) and I work most Sundays, so there was no telling when I might ever make it back there. So off we went.

I left half-an-hour early in case there were traffic issues, of which there were none, meaning we had a half-hour to walk up and down the street the meeting house was on - a street filled with brightly painted Victorian and Edwardian houses. I hadn't thought to bring a camera but my cell phone was good enough to take a couple dozen pictures. I went to the meeting in a good, calm frame of mind. That doesn't mean my mind was quiet. But then, it rarely is.

For those who don't know, Quaker meetings don't follow the traditional pattern of Christian services. There is no sermon, no singing, no passing of the tithe plate. There is, however, a great deal of silence. The people who speak are the ones who are motivated to stand and speak - which can be anyone attending. During the hour Laurie and I were there, three people spoke, lasting a total of about five minutes. The rest was quiet, leaving people to their own thoughts, or meditation, or listening for the still small voice of God, or simply trying to clear their mind. And that was the time in which I discovered that silencing my mind is a lot harder than I thought.

This isn't the first time I've discovered this, by any means. I've always been a daydreamer, or had things running through my head, however you want to look at it. In school as a kid (and sometimes older), in church (ditto), taking walks, even when reading or watching TV. Something is always going on in my brain; as often as not it's a story idea. During times when I was supposed to be meditating, or doing yoga, I didn't have much luck clamping down on my mental livestreaming. Within the first two or three minutes of silence among the Quakers, my brain was automatically playing out the next two chapters of No Word in Death's Favor.

This time I thought I would be prepared. I was going to be in a good, calm, relaxing place. So how could I not keep my brain silent for that little while? But what I didn't realize until I got there was that running like a river under the silence was a palpable intensity of feeling and emotion. I might as well have been in a church where the sermonizing was powerful and the music loud, and all of it right in front of me. I certainly wasn't going to have any luck keeping my mind quiet. But at that point I decided this really wasn't necessary.

At least not at that moment. Sooner or later there is likely going to come a time where I just need to stop thinking, even if it's only so I can get to sleep. But being at the Quaker meeting made me decide that it's not shushing my brain that's needful. The energy is going to be there; I should just put it to good use as long as it's going to insist on running around like a wet toddler escaping the bathtub anyway.

It seems to me that the problem has been that I'm trying to tone down my thoughts or eliminate the thinking entirely. That plainly hasn't worked. Instead, what seems to work better is when I ramp up whatever is going through my head. This sounds counter-intuitive, but so far I've had some success with it. What I have to do is be a lot more selective about what I'm ramping up - or understand that I'll just let this thought have reign for a little while. If a thought is distracting me or it's depressive, not anything I really want to be dealing with, I let it get itself out for a few moments and then I pull a bait-and-switch on it. I wish I could be less vague but I'm still figuring out exactly how the process works. All I can do at the moment is liken it to telling it, "All right, you've done your screaming. Now let's move on to something else."

This doesn't always work, of course. Some thoughts - especially the depressive ones - are incredibly tenacious no matter what I've tried. Those I usually have to ride out - or I find something else to distract myself with. But as I go I'm starting to catalog things to switch over that I already know have power enough to get me concentrating on them instead. Even if I can't knock down a thought process I don't want, I can dilute it.

I'm still working on the complete silence part. The farthest along I've gotten there is muted background thoughts accompanied by quiet music.

In the meantime, and since I haven't done this for awhile, here's a Progress Report on something that's been claiming a lot of my brain time lately.

( PROGRESS REPORT FOR 9/30/14 )

I know I've been off of Live Journal for awhile when it takes me a moment to remember my password.

I've been spending a whole lot more time doing New House stuff than doing new writing, but I have been getting a bit done, and New House isn't the only thing to blame. Since this is the (still-untitled) For Fun Fantasy Novel, I decided to up the stakes and the fun by making it experimental across the board. I still write story notes, for instance, but I've done next to no outlining, writing by pants-seat instead. Trying it out to see how it feels.

I'm also doing most of the world-building as I go. I come up with a great many of my story ideas by writing the story anyway, so this may not be that much of an experiment, but it's still intriguing to see what extra stuff happens to pop in my brain as I'm typing. I've had a few surprises, and many of them have been wound up in the manuscript, or notes to use for later.

I may write out of chronological order - ward off writer's block by skipping ahead to places where I already know what happens. I've usually avoided this because I do come up with so many ideas as I'm writing that things may change radically by the time I get to the previously written part, but it's not without precedent. When I hit a major block during the writing of The Course of Heaven ages and ages ago, I skipped ahead to the last third of the book. That worked spectacularly well; I finished that third, something like 50,000 words, in a month. I'll plow straight ahead when I can, but will hold my breath and dive in to other pools when I can't.

More vaguely, I'm also pursuing parts of the story I might not have if I was writing more typical to my process. Like the lyrics of my entry title say, watering the handsome weeds. I'm a big fan of weeds anyway, especially since I don't consider many of them them to be weeds. There's one thing I'll miss about my Old House, and that's the fact that if you waited a week or so beyond when most normal people would mow the lawn, the whole front yard would explode into a riotous mix of oranges, yellows, and purples...all from what most people consider weeds. If I had consistently mowed when I was "supposed" to, I would have never have seen all those wildflowers blossom year after year.

I'm hoping this book works along the same principle.

All of this makes the traditionalist in me nervous. I spent years building a writing process, and I've had some successes with it, though admittedly not as much as I would have hoped or always in the places I like. With my Shenandoah series, Arizona series, and To Murder an Empire out there, I've got plenty of material to submit to publishers, which gives me a lot of breathing space to play and experiment. So that's what I'll do, while I have the chance.

(I do wish I could think of a title I like, though. That always makes me feel better no matter what other challenges are going on with the work-in-progress.)

So, five chapters in. And the inaugural Progress Report, even though it opens with chapter five:

PROGRESS REPORT FOR 7/13-14/2014

New Words: 4100 (3500 / 600 ) on unnamed fifth chapter. (I may not have chapter names, just the names of the characters they center on.) Royal wastrel Jared, who is also in command of an army company, gets burned (some of his men literally) by accidentally creeping up on the edge of a secret.

Total Words: 17,750.

(Here I almost wrote "Book Year" out of habit. Thanks, last eight novels I wrote!)

Reason For Stopping: Finished the chapter / Added some details, then re-finished the chapter.

Mammalian Assistance: At any given time, Vegas the Writing Assistant and Nate the Fae Catcher test out their new spot atop a small bookshelf beneath the Writing Room Window.

Exercise: One walk with Tucker and one walk with Laurie and both dogs around the neighborhood.

Stimulants: Just apple cider. Non-hard.

Opening Passage(s): I don't really care much for it but it works well enough for filler until I go back through . . .

“Shal’s bones, what is that wretched smell?” the soldier riding just behind Jared whined.

Jared suppressed the urge to pull the young idiot nobleman from his saddle and beat him to death with his own helmet. Jared had ordered quiet, but Ridyard, come straight to their punishment legion from the Shalkarian capital, was green, and well-born, and having trouble following orders from anyone who wasn’t his parents, General Nayim included. They rode through damp marsh-forest where the trail was little better than a cow’s wish, giving an enemy plenty of chances to make an ambush, and the wet would muffle most sounds of the hidden. They shouldn’t be riding at all through country like this, only marching — any rougher and the horses wouldn’t be able to move. But General Nayim ordered them to reach the coast in three days, and they had already burned through half that time negotiating the hoof-sucking path and humid, fetid air that choked the breath out of soldiers and horses alike.

Darling Du Jour: Nothing springs out at me.

Submissions Sent Out In June: 2 to magazines.

Total Submissions Out Right Now: 11 to magazines, 2 to book publishers.

Non-Research / Review Books In Progress: The Oxford History of Britain by Kenneth O. Morgan; Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350-550 AD, by Peter Brown. Also reading a speculative book as a Publishers Weekly review that I'd love to rave about here except I can't tell you what it is.

Things are still rolling along, and so long as they do I feel like I can actually breathe.

Inspections and exterminations of The House are done. Title search is underway and should be finished soon (at least I hope it will, but The House has only had one owner in all its nearly fifty years - the owner which also had it built, and who happens to be my employer). I may have a closing date by tomorrow; for all that, I might've gotten one today except the closing lawyer was out. Nearly all of my books are packed, and I can still walk through every room amid the cardboard box canyons. I've also had two offers of free-loan pickup trucks, which is especially nice.

Only two of our animals have ever changed residences before, and they've long since gotten used to the idea of all the boxes being packed. The others are blissfully unaware and simply think the stacks are cool places to lounge atop. Or stand guard.

Vegas

Nate

Nugget

I still don't have my car back, but the engine has arrived and the mechanic has retrieved his engine lifter, so I'm hoping that won't be much longer either.

Book Snatch posted an interview with me yesterday which was especially fun, particularly the question about the weirdest thing I'd ever done. Even filtering it to only stuff I'd talk about in public, that remained a pretty wide field.

The Still-Unnamed For-Fun Fantasy Novel also continues. It's up to 7300 words at the moment, three scenes that will probably comprise chapters 2 (the first scene I wrote) and 3. I'd probably be farther along except I keep going back and rewriting chunks of chapter 2, and sooner rather than later will change and expand the ending. I'm still in Seat Of My Pants mode just as a fun experiment. Today the book revealed that one storyline will involve about half the characters and the attempt to build a giant library and museum on the edge of the desert. There will be politics and cultural convolutions surrounding that, but so far it's different enough from Pillars of the Earth that I'm not too worried about it seeming derivative.

And it's been consistently warm and sunny for the past few days, which always makes me happier regardless of whatever else is going on.

Anyway, I feel change in the wind, I'm relatively happy thus far with the Triple-F Novel, I've caught myself looking forward to the summer. Please, Universe, don't do anything to mess that up. :)

It's been three weeks now since I've done any writing, at least beyond this blog, and this is not a state I'm happy with either physically or mentally. It seems to be one of the holding patterns that have characterized 2014 thus far - in this case, I didn't want to start writing the next Arizona Book yet, I've only just begun researching the Mississippi River Book, and I'm still waiting for a yea or nay on the Secret Project. So I was wondering what I might write next in the meantime, at least when I snatch time away from packing and the other house buying-related rigamarole.

An odd answer came unbidden to me last night: Write something for fun.

This is almost a foreign concept to me. I mean, sure, I have fun with everything I write. If I didn't, I wouldn't write it. But this wicked notion was to write something only for fun. Not with an eye to publishing, with absolutely no self-editor, but just writing whatever I felt like writing and however I felt like writing it and with a minimum (or no) research involved. Like an extended NaNoWriMo.

It wouldn't be the first time I've done this, though it has been a long time. The last time I wrote a novel solely for the pleasure of it was back in 2005, with my so-far one-and-only young adult fantasy novel The Dark Horse. This was also an experiment to see if I could write YA fantasy. I'm not that great at objectively judging my own work so I still don't know whether or not I can write YA fantasy, as I've never submitted the book anywhere in all that time. (Maybe I should now. But that's another post.)

I say the idea popped into my head last night. But I think it's been boiling for awhile.

I've had various bits and pieces of a fantasy novel drifting into my head over the past few months. Characters, scenes, and locales with a bit of world-building. It seems very loosely based on the ex-Roman Imperial world of the 7th-9th centuries A.D., though not so close as to require huge chunks of historical research. I'm particularly fascinated by an assassin with an extremely unusual specialty. I'm also fond of some various ancient locales built underneath modern locales. But none of those started coalescing until last night's idea...and then further solidified when I happened to wake up with the idea of swiping some characters and countries from a couple of fantasy novels I wrote in the early 90s for it too. Not the old storylines, just the populations. (And coincidentally I found my notes for those books - though not the books themselves - today while looking for something else.)

This would be, to say the least, an interesting experiment. I would write a general outline, a file of characters and places, and my standard "Here's What Happens In The Book" pages of notes, added to randomly as I thought of things. But it wouldn't be intended as a primary project; it would be written around other things, most likely. It would be written in fits and starts as I snatch bits of time for it. It would be written with no expectations - except that it was being done for fun.

I wonder if that's even possible for me at this point. No expectations, I mean, and only for fun, and not with an eye to publishing (though reserving the right to try after the book is done). Just free-flowing, no angst, no headaches or heartaches writing.

And something that would keep me from going three weeks or longer without writing again. That's just untenable for me, and it's gotta go.

And really, I kind of like the idea of completely writing a book off the top of my head, rather than one partly driven by research or another author's notes and outline. The Dark Horse was the last time I did that. This may be the most appealing part of all.

Now, since I seem to be behind on my quota of Internet Animal pictures, here is a picture of Tucker the Big Dog visiting one of his bovine buddies:

Now and again we writers (myself included) mourn what we think of wistfully as the good old days of publishing. There is some truth in thinking of certain eras as good for writers, though like with any such nostalgia I doubt things were completely as good as all that. Groucho Marx just gave me a reminder of this from a distance of nearly fifty years.

I was window shopping for Groucho's memorabilia on eBay when I discovered (for a mere $7,199.10 - discounted $799.90 from the original Buy It Now price) a 1966 letter that Groucho wrote to some fellow named Syd. Syd has just come out with a novel. Groucho tells him that he knows unsolicited advice isn't worth a whole lot, but "since you're an old friend of mine, probably because we don't see each other too often, here's the advice."

If you want to increase the sale, I suggest you go on the Johnny Carson show, the Merv Griffin Show, the Jack Douglas Show and any other show that you can get on. I remember when Louis Nizer had his book out a few years ago, you couldn't turn on the TV set, either locally or nationally, without seeing him plugging his book and, if you didn't see him, you could hear him on radio.

It's not very pleasant work, revealing yourself publicly, but with rare exceptions, this is what writing books has reduced itself to. So dive in and, in the process of doing this, you may become a great actor. With a white wig and a pillow under your vest, there's no reason why you couldn't play King Lear. So think about it.

Groucho himself, living legend that he was by this point, went on talk shows whenever he was hawking a book. Even his brother Harpo did when he came out with Harpo Speaks - and Harpo didn't actually talk, so that was quite a feat of public relations. If Harpo could figure out ways to promote his book by doing nothing more than honking a horn he had tucked into his belt, I could probably come up with some decent ideas myself.

I think the one of the biggest problems with publishing today is just that everything is in so much flux. Whole literary paradigms and ideologies are being rewritten, or outright broken and then glued back together in different shapes. I do understand that for many authors, things were better in the past. But there are also great authors out there now who are getting chances to publish they might not have had a few years ago. I suspect one way or another, things will even out eventually.

Though if anyone can figure out a way to get me booked on the Johnny Carson Show, I'll leap at it.

PROGRESS REPORT FOR 3/15/14

New Words: 1900 on the epilogue of Copper Heart. This finishes up Epilogue Scene 2 of 3, and wrapping up the murderous Blizzard of 1886-87. Characters survived, though not entirely intact.

Total Words: 167,200.

Reason For Stopping: Finished the scene, and did so just as Laurie was getting the dogs ready for a walk that I wanted to come along for.

Book Year: 1886-87.

Mammalian Assistance: Once again, Vegas the Writing Assistant is flaking out on me, wanting to come in the Writing Room when I start work, wanting to leave five minutes later, and then wanting back in as I'm finishing up and leaving for the day.

Exercise: Walking around the neighborhood and campus with Laurie and the dogs.

Stimulants: Turkey Hill Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream.

Today's Opening Passage: The snow was still coming down the next day and wagons were long since useless, so the only cowmen going out in the storm were those who dragged a travois behind them. Owen would go out first and come home last, never allowing himself any rest, violating his mother’s rule about coming back by dusk—that third day, wind howling and the cowmen and their wives taking turns to desperately peal the mess bell, Owen and Puck finally dragged themselves back through the snowdrifts, horse and man with head lowered nearly as far as they could go without falling over, well after one in the morning.

Darling Du Jour: Not exactly a darling, but about as plain and stark as the rest of the scene . . .

The bones of the dead cattle left where they fell were ground up for fertilizer. The fertilizer was sold to their neighboring farmers, starting with those who sold Kate hay.

Non-Research / Review Books In Progress: The Black Fire Concerto by Mike Allen / time_shark; The Pagan Lord by Bernard Cornwell.

I haven't posted many pictures of my writing space before...maybe one or two over the years. But I took a couple of shots today as part of my (potential) post-move reconstruction of shelves, and figured I'd post them here.

These are the changeable spaces: The first picture is a shelf by my Writing Computer that has items related to whatever I'm writing, the second is the top of my computer monitor, which has a mix of transitional and more-or-less permanent items.

All of these items came from Arizona, except two:
The laser-cut Kokopelli was purchased locally, and the pottery sherds are from private land in New Mexico.

The stone-looking pieces lining the front of my monitor are half of a set of Cienega phase artifacts
a friend from Arizona sent me. The other half are lined up at the head of my keyboard.

At any rate, I'm one-third of the way through the epilogue of Copper Heart as of today, and once the book is done, all of my Arizona items will be packed up. As to where they'll go if I get a new place, I'll cross that threshold when I come to it.

PROGRESS REPORT FOR 3/10-11/14

New Words: 2400 (1300 / 1200 ). The death of someone who's been a character since early in Arizona Book 2 (aka Wolves in the Desert) gives Eva an answer to so many Hispanic families being displaced from their farms and ranches by Anglos.

Total Words: 163,600.

Reason For Stopping: Groggy yesterday from lack of sleep and finally took a nap / Finished the scene and needed to get ready for work.

Book Year: 1886.

Mammalian Assistance: None. All the cats were gathered around the open windows letting in the lovely 70-plus degree day.

Exercise: None to speak of.

Stimulants: None.

Today's Opening Passage(s):

Yesterday: It seemed that half of the Pimeria Alta—or at least half of the Hispanics in the land—were turning out for the funeral. This did not surprise Eva. The one they came to pay their respects to, to pray for her soul's quick release from Purgatory, had been so well known and loved in the land for so long, and on both sides of the border, she might as well have been a legend.

The woman herself would have laughed at that and called those people fools who called her legend. Though secretly she would have chuckled fondly.

Mostly, though, she considered dying an inconvenience, an interruption to getting work done.

Today: But when they were gathered, these stones ranging from cobbles to ones Eva could barely carry with two hands, with enough piled to build a six foot-high nicho, she could only stare at them blankly. What was she supposed to do next? She called herself a fool for thinking the knowledge might magically appear inside her head. Feeling exhausted and defeated, she went to bed for the night, expecting nothing more the next day than what she expected from every other ordinary day.

Darling Du Jour: Nothing springs out at me. Or maybe I'm just tired.

Non-Research / Review Books In Progress: The Black Fire Concerto by Mike Allen / time_shark; The Pagan Lord by Bernard Cornwell.

Not much to post about here lately, at least not much I want to - house loan is still up bouncing in the air and mocking me from above, car is still dead and waiting for the mechanic to be able to get to it - and a myriad of great and sundry things have otherwise been commandeering my attention from writing both here, on the novel, and elsewhere. As it is, the Progress Report I'm posting below is four days old - I've only been averaging writing one or two days a week, though at least the word counts are higher to make up for it when I do get to banging away at the keyboard. Volcanic eruptions and all that.

And by the way, if you didn't see this in the numerous other places I posted it, Lest Camelot Fall is the current giveaway on the awesome, fun, and informative English Historical Fiction Authors website. You can enter it by posting a comment with your e-mail address here.

And just because, here is a picture of Tucker the Big Dog rocking out to our recent blizzard.

PROGRESS REPORT FOR 3/1/14

New Words: 3900 on chapter 4 ("The Renegades, 1885") of Copper Heart. Geronimo decides to do his (final) final surrender.

Total Words: 158850. "Yes, the danger must be growing / For the rowers keep on rowing / And they're certainly not showing / Any signs that they are slowing . . . "

Reason For Stopping: The Writing Room is still only heated passively by whatever heat bleeds in from other rooms, so I was kinda frozen.

Book Year: 1886.

Mammalian Assistance: Hayes the Baby Cat (splayed across lap, chest, and shoulder) wanted to guard me from...pretty much anything that wasn't her.

Exercise: Walked around the neighborhood with Laurie and the dogs.

Stimulants: Peach cider.

Today's Opening Passage: Gus was back in the desert, back in Mexico…but this time he felt stronger and more vital than before. Than ever before. It was as if he drew his strength and sustenance from the sun and the wind themselves, as he, Lieutenant Gatewood, and only a handful of others rode alone through the wastes to convince Geronimo to surrender one final time.

Darling Du Jour: There was the passing thought in the back of his mind that he was using up everything he had, all the rest of the years of his life, pushing forward with this effort. That once Geronimo was caught and shipped off to prison in Florida, Gus’ last breath would leave him and he would drop dead where he stood. It didn’t matter. He knew this was exactly where he was meant to be, and that he must see this through, for the span of his life had wholly been urging him to this last ride into Mexico and back.

Non-Research / Review Books In Progress: The Black Fire Concerto by Mike Allen / time_shark; The Pagan Lord by Bernard Cornwell.