Writing

January 2012

Thirteen (under a different title) is out on the rounds of miscellaneous agents. With that off my writing plate, I’m tackling a project about a rich man plagued by hungry ghosts, a poor girl being worn thin by hunger, and a train that never stops. I’m jokingly referring to it as Night Train! Hope it doesn’t drive me to drink. And hat tip to Dana Fredsti, as I’m trying to do a little food porn in the book.

July 2011

My “writing” time has mostly been a slog of revisions lately. I’ve been simultaneously wrestling with The Hornbeam Door, and trying to get Thirteen into shape for querying, which means not only revisions, but somehow pulling a query and a synopsis out of my hind quarters.

8 September 2010

Still waiting on news about Ugly and the Beast. Strange things afoot, with lots of dreams creeping into the edges of my writing brain. A “mermaid” in a circus freak show caught in a drug gang shoot out in a South American backwater. A tiny cocktail sword with magical powers of vengeance. And that old recurring theme: what to do with the body when I’ve accidentally killed someone? What, you don’t have those dreams?

17 March 2010

Better late than never? I hope so. The outline and sample chapters for proposed revisions to Ugly and the Beast took a lot longer than I expected. Two months longer to be precise. Regardless, they are now done and sent off to the (hopefully still) interested editor. This leaves me in a mooshy place of indecision. What to work on now? Edits on Thirteen? The last push to finish The Hornbeam Door? A new project?

23 December 2009

With initial edits on Thirteen done, I’m setting it aside to tackle something a bit ominous: an outline of proposed revisions to Ugly and the Beast to send to an interested editor. The editor loves Axyl, but wants to see some changes to the story. So I must now tackle a form of writing I’ve never been terribly fond of. Outlines have always seemed so restrictive and cruelly brief.

15 September 2009

Now I know where the girl in the hayfield came from and where the man on the motorcycle was going. It became a novel called Thirteen. In the last week, as I started recruiting my beta readers, I’ve been called a machine, a monster, a freak of nature. Yet aside from the lost sleep, I feel about normal for me, despite writing 130,000 words in three weeks. I don’t recommend it. If you have the option, approach writing with sanity and a respect for your circadian rhythm.  It’s why I’ve never understood the allure of National Novel Writing Month–why force yourself to write like a fiend if you don’t have to? I understand it’s only supposed to be 50,000 words in 30 days, but included in those days are Thanksgiving and holiday shopping frenzies, which pretty much kill an entire week.  All the same, with this project drafted, I look forward to some leisurely editing and perhaps returning to work on The Hornbeam Door. I also look forward to going to sleep at a decent hour tonight.

12 August 2009

I have moments where I write prodigiously for a brief period of time. Last July,  “vacationing” at my sister’s house while she convalesced, I wrote the first draft of Ugly and the Beast. 60,000 words in 6 days, with breaks for the necessities like eating and sleeping. Of course it took another nine months to reach a point where I felt the book was ready to see the light of day, but the bulk of the heavy lifting was done in less than a week. It’s happening again. Driving home from a trip to Arkansas on Sunday night, a story idea hit me. It was sunset and I was driving along next to a hayfield in the middle of nowhere. I had this vision of a little girl hiding in the hayfield at dawn. From what, I didn’t know. Coming along on a dirt road that cut through the field was a man on a motorcycle. The girl, there at sunrise, all alone, watching him ride past startled him. He skidded on loose gravel and spilled his bike. Where does it go from there? I’ve been looking into that at the rate of about 7,000 words a day ever since.

8 July 2009

Despite my best efforts to re-commit to the church secretary story (Lie, Lay, Lain), I’ve only gained about 2,000 words.  On the young adult fantasy/horror project (The Hornbeam Door), though, I’m making steady progress toward my original goal of 60K words.  It’s sneaky the way characters seep into everyday life.  I know that a project is in fifth gear on the open highway, when I assess every situation for what my characters would think, do, and say.  I’ve had glimpses of the church secretary and her urge to deflect attention away from herself, but with Oona, the narrator of Hornbeam, I’m getting a steady stream of her increasingly cynical and frightened commentary on the world.  Every kind word smacks of pity to her.  Nothing she does feels natural.  It’s all an act.  Reaching that point of connection with a character is a fun moment and usually the story comes tumbling out after that.  It certainly was with Axyl, although I knew I had to reign it in when I started leering at women’s breasts and wanting a cigarette.

30 March 2009

Well, I ended up going to the store for more groceries.  I finally dipped my toes into the pile of library books I have on gay subculture in 18th Century London.  It’s a marvel of open secrets, subtext, and class warfare.

While I work my way through that, I’m slowly re-considering a series of short stories about an alternate history in which Kansas and Nebraska have been leased to China as a form of debt repayment, turning the inhabitants to global sharecroppers.

10 January 2009

The last few months, my writing has mostly consisted of revising, getting the new book ready to query.  Now that those revisions are done, and the queries sent, it’s time to start writing something new.

In pursuit of that, I’ve been reading through my last journal full of notes.  I’m hoping that something in there will catch my eye with sufficient force that I’ll immediately launch into writing more.  It feels a bit like standing in the kitchen, trying to decide what I can cook without going to the store.  If nothing comes together in the next few days, though, I may have to go buy groceries and start something entirely new.