A Day Full of Blessings

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Seventy-nine degrees, rain. The first time the temperature has been below 100 since June. The oppression of heat breaks for the nonce. Yesterday, when the first gust front came through and the rain began, James and I meandered around outside and ate our first purple grapes from our own vines, then we started experimenting with our new distiller. It's a gorgeous hand-made copper contraption straight out of the Middle Ages and came all the way from Portugal. One might think we were going to try making our own liquor, but we have different plans. I'm not allowed to mention it by name yet.

All week, I took a break from the novel project and thoroughly enjoyed typing up the opening pages of a new project. I won't make too much of it, b/c I've started things like this before and not finished them. On the other hand, these characters and their situation are clicking better than any I've written for a long time, so I'm hopeful that I'll actually get to write "The End" on it one day. I usually hate writing rough drafts, but so far I've not felt bogged down by details or lack of direction. We'll see...

Point is, the blessings keep coming. Such prolonged happiness is a gift.

The only cloud has been my husband's grandfather. It's heartbreaking to see the patriarch so strong and able one day and an old man the next. It puts human frailty and mortality on the table for us all to examine. Hamlet scrutinized a skull. I've been watching a man come to terms with his age. The difference between men and babies being fussed over is that babies have yet to gain a sense of dignity that must be swallowed. A bitter draught.
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Progress Report, 7-21-11, and Tough Going

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I should wait to post this tomorrow, but today is one of those days when the words and I aren't getting along. So I've jotted down some dialog in the hopes that the scene will fall together more easily tomorrow. Therefore, I'm posting the week's progress a day early. I failed to post any kind of update last week, because I wrote so little that there was just no point. Not sure what happened there, but that means I am still working on the two chapters that deal heavily with ships, sailors, and battles at sea. I'm getting a bit seasick at this point and will be happy when I can move on. More, I'm not exactly sure where these two chapters will fall. The chronology is clear, but the placement at present seems ... ungraceful, if that makes sense. I dunno. So here goes:

THIS WEEK'S PROGRESS
Project: Falcons Rising
Pages Revised: 8
Pages Cut: 3 2/3
New Scenes: 1 (the whole last half the second chapter will be all new material. The old version was boring. Went off in a completely new direction. Can I finish it tomorrow? Unlikely. So here's to next week on the open sea as well. Progress is going so slowly b/c I'm practically writing a new rough draft for a story that is a decade old. Ugh! I loathe writing rough drafts. It hurts.)
Bad Things that Happened: Two ships colliding never ends well.
Good Things that Happened: Athna is rescued by a pirate. Wait, how is that good?

But enough negativity. Progress is progress and every word is one step closer to completing the project. There's no way I'm gonna make my deadline. But isn't that a common story? Oh, wait, positive thinking ... positive ... positive ...
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Two Pens Better Than One? - Collaborative Writing

It's an interesting and risky concept, two creative (and egotistical?) people tossed together and expected to cooperate and come up with a story that halfway makes sense. At LegendFire we have an interesting contest going on, the first of its kind that we've ever hosted. People registered as either poets or fiction writers, then we were anonymously paired up by the contest hostess. Now my writing partner and I are supposed to invent the opening 200 words of a story and poetry has to be involved. I'm the poet, he's the fiction writer. He's in Australia, I'm in the US. The entry is due on Monday (Tuesday for him), and we have yet to work out a plot. Much less the poem to go with it.

I'm not freaking out yet, but this is going to be interesting.

So, I'm curious, what were the oddest or least comfortable circumstances that you had to write under?

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Progress Report, 3-24-11, and a Red Rider

YESTERDAY'S PROGRESS
Project: Falcons Rising
Pages Revised: 2
Pages Cut: 1 (Yep, I cut more than half the content)
New Scenes: 0
Bad things that happened: Elves have killer, cold glares. *shiver*
Good things that happened: nothing yet, and it's about to get worse.

I got a late start writing yesterday, but I was able to squeeze in a couple of pages. Today won't be any better, I'm afraid. Still trying to learn the ins and outs of Twitter (along with taking care of LF and other networking business). Twitter is really very simple; it's just that one name leads to a thousand others, not to mention the # marks and lists to explore. Once the birdie is old hat, I'll be able to fly through and get on with writing.

On a sidenote:

Here's an absurd picture for you. Yesterday, a gorgeous spring afternoon with a sky unhazed by field dust and pollen, and this prissy, country-girl writer, sitting on her back patio with her pages to revise; alongside her, a new Red Rider BB gun. A pink Red Rider. Oh, yes, they make them, just for prissy country-girls like me. I filled the barrel with shiny steel BBs and waited, lurking under the trees, looking, oh, so innocent with my novel pages propped on my knee, in my lime green high heels and frosty pink toenail polish. Then lo! and behold, those pesky, loud, hungry cowbirds flocked overhead, landing in the elm tree, thinking they were so clever that they found a sucker who is still feeding the finches. Those pesky, loud, hungry cowbirds cleaned out my feeders in one blinkin' day! So, as I say, they flocked in and landed for another course. Down goes the pencil and up comes the BB gun. My dad taught me excellent form. Those BBs must sting like hell, 'cause off flew those pesky cowbirds for another treetop. That wasn't far enough -- *pop pop* -- and off they flew to some other sucker's bird feeders.

(No pesky, loud, hungry cowbirds were killed in this battle. Though I hope their bottoms sting)

Ah, back to writing...

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Back Into The Swing

Time to get back to it. The novel. Submitting stories.

Head cold is all but over, "Dreamflier" is revised and in the mail (yes, some mags still take snail mail the old-fashioned way), and I've started resubmitting "The Bone Harp" as well. The latter needs a new home. Realms, bless it's papery heart, saw only two issues before it was absorbed into another mag. Then that mag, too, has been shoved into the closet as Black Matrix focuses its attention on publishing books instead of short stories. Ah, well. I knew it was time to try for a reprint when I attempted to find that old copy of Realms at Amazon and got nothing. At first. Then I had to get fancy with the search to turn up the right mag. In other words, no one will find it unless they know what they're looking for, have a hefty dose of determination, or stumble upon it by accident.

Submitting is the part of writing that I dislike most. Trying to decide if this story or that story is a right fit for this mag or that mag, getting my hopes up, only to receive a rejection. The letters that are worst say, "This story just isn't the right fit." Ack! But I spent all that time reading sample stories and weighing YOUR description of YOUR mag against others! Fine, on to the next mag in the line-up. Tedious. One must have an endless supply of hope hidden in the deep recesses to keep at this job. Hope balanced with little expectation is how I've learned to cope with the minuscule chance that a mag will favor my story over the hundreds of others.

On the flip-side, there's nothing like waiting in anticipation for that acceptance.
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Dreamflying and Head Colds

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The title may make it sound like I've been taking too much cold medicine, but I haven't. Promise. In fact, I've hardly slept soundly enough since Saturday to have dream cycles at all. Why do colds wait to strike me in March? I was clean, all through the bad winter months, but now that spring is just about to burst free and the weather is too gorgeous to stay inside, I get laid up on the couch with a head cold. Go figure. Whenever the cold medicine begins to work its benumbing magic, I know it's pretty useless to try to focus on the bigger writing projects. Does anyone else suffer short-term memory loss when taking cold medicine? Well, maybe it's more short-term memory fuzziness.

Point is, I dragged out a short story that's been lurking on the desk for a few months and decided it was time to give her a thorough going-over. A critiquer and an editor agreed that there was too much backstory dumped in the opening pages, so I'm trying to speed things up a bit, weave the important details in later and more gradually. So here's the progress report for yesterday and today:

TODAY'S PROGRESS
Project: "Dreamflier"
Pages Revised: 22
Pages Cut: 1 (goodbye, my darlings! *sob*)
Bad things that happened: A team of dreamfliers get lost in the realm of dreams
Good things that happened: Ambryn, our heroine, is allowed to help rescue them

I'm still happy with most of this story, obviously, and was able to speed through much of the text without altering too much. The tale was inspired by a contest prompt at LegendFire last summer. Unfortunately, I was reading Amy Tan at the time, which means I wanted to write a gorgeous, flowing narrative that bloomed as gradually as a lotus, and opened this piece in that style. But it's wrong for the rest of the story, which is quick-paced, frantic, and bizarre. Had I been reading Gaiman or Martin, perhaps, I might've made a different stylistic choice. But I still have high hopes for this piece. I just have to weave the narrative differently.

If I could choose an artist to illustrate this story, it would be Josephine Wall. Her paintings capture the color, movement, and bizarre imagery I see in the dream realm of this story. A picture is worth a thousand words.

QUEEN OF THE NIGHT

by Josephine Wall

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*groan* I Bit The Bullet

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It doesn't hurt as badly as I thought it would.

Anyone who knows me, knows how I shout slander and all manner of vile things against the privacy-sucking, time-wasting institution that is Facebook. But my friends and family and all manner of writer-marketer people out there assure me that Facebook is my friend. These days, writers must be marketers, too, and one of the easiest ways to spread the word of one's aspirations to sell books is through the Facebook network, so last week, some friends convinced me to set up a fan page on Facebook. I don't have any books yet to sell, only a handful of stories available, but it seems that I need to start building the "fan base" now. I have a small following on my blog, but FB is supposed to help change that, or so they say. So interesting parties may find my fan page here: Court Ellyn

Clicking "Like"--even if you're not a fan--will help me out. So will any tips from FB users who know how to market themselves via that avenue. I'll be happy to return the favor if you provide me a link to your fan page or equivalent. Bribing fans? You bet. I'd throw in a batch of cookies, too, but I don't think they would taste very good when posted here.

On another note, one I prefer far more, is our Art of the Week:

HOBSYLLWIN, THE WHITE GUARDIAN
by Ciruelo Cabral

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Know Your Falcons!

Obviously, falcons in some facet play a big part in my novels (see novel title in posts below). While the time-honored sport of hunting with falcons is mentioned in my story, the characters get into too much trouble to actually devote any scene-time to this noble way of catching one's dinner. Still, it pays to do one's research. Better to be armed with too much information than not enough. So, the next time you take your falcon out a-hunting, you'll want to take along the following:

(this gorgeous sketch is from "Knights"
by Julek Heller and Deirdre Headon, copyright 1982)

Not depicted:
1. "Mews," little buildings where your falcons live
2. Perch, or "sedille" where your falcon will rest when it's not flying or sitting on your arm

Interesting Tid-Bits:
-Only female birds were used in hunting, and only females were called "falcons" while males (smaller and rarely hunted with) were called "tiercels."
-Different sized breed of raptors were used to catch different sized quarry.
-If your falcon fails to catch its prey, you may feed it unsalted cheese or scrambled eggs instead of raw meat as a reward for a good attempt. (I'm guessing you'll want to make a good campfire in the meadow and tote along your scullery staff to cook your bird up some eggs in such a case)
- If your falcon escapes, then is found but not returned (good hunting falcons are hard to come by, after all), or if your bird is stolen outright (some people just don't have the patience to train their own), you may exact a severe penalty on the perpetrator: the falcon is allowed to eat six ounces of flesh from the thief's breast. (You can't make up this stuff, folks!)

So, my question is: What research did you feel was required for your story, but never actually came into play?
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New Ideas, Rare and Precious

It's rare anymore for me to find a story idea that takes hold of my imagination and hangs on till I reach "The End." I feel like I'm floundering about, pretending to be busy with a great idea until a better one comes along. All the while, the mental tentacles are feeling around for that new inspiration. It's a murky sea, with low visibility most of the time.

So I was checking out the upcoming themes list on Duotrope the other day and came across an anthology by Dead Robots' Society that grabbed hold of one of those mental feelers and wouldn't let go. The prompt for Explorers: Beyond the Horizon is "characters forever changed by their discovery of lands and worlds beyond their own." I have rarely found a prompt more suited to my taste. Half a dozen possibilities rose amid a frenzied brainstorm session. I finally went with one and started typing. The only problem is that the word count must be under 5000 words. I have trouble keeping stories under 8000, so this will be a challenge. Even if the anthology doesn't accept the story, their prompt gifted me with the brainfood that those mental tentacles were grasping for.

Granted, I undertook this brainstorm session while sipping tea laced with cold medicine. Does anyone else find that while on cold medicine their inner critic shuts up and ideas flow? Or is that my lame equivalent of an LSD trip? Ah, well.

Here's some art to ponder:

PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST WITH TWO PUPILS
by Adelaide Labille-Guiard, 1785

We don't hear about too many women painters before the modern era. But this one is a jewel. That fact that Labille-Guiard featured the two future female artists under her wing in this grand self-portrait lets us know that they were out there, creating beautiful things in the vast shadows of their male colleagues. Though I seriously doubt these women painted while wearing their finest. :D Enjoy!

(Click on the pic twice to blow it up all the way. The lady even painted the seam in that shiny dress. Fantastic)
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A Worldbuild Sees Its Final Form

As a fantasy writer, I have to love worldbuilding. Taking all the historical and archaeological and social knowledge I've gathered over the years and plunking it down in the middle of a blank sheet of paper. Maps, I love maps, too, which helps.

Years ago, before I ever wrote a single word of the novels I'm revising, I drew the world maps for the stories to come. Drew a couple of circles for each half of the globe and started filling in landforms, rivers, mountains, then kingdoms and cities. Common tale, but I wonder if everyone creating a new uncharted world gets those delectable butterflies in the belly by just looking at those vast, empty stretches of territory, yet unpopulated by humanity? Did God feel that way, looking at all the potential of the little globe spinning around in that vast universe? I think he must've. It's the potential that elicits that feeling, endless possibilities before the nitty-gritty of diving down and making it all work together.

Well, last night my husband finally got our scanner to work, so I was able to scan into my computer all those ugly hand-drawn maps. Then I loaded them into the GIMP program. Wow. While the maps have to be in black and white and fit into a smaller space than the old printer paper they were drawn on, they now have mountains that don't look like jiggly triangles! And the names are in readable fonts! And the water has texture! I must admit, they don't look half-bad. They will certainly work for my self-publish project. It will be so strange to see those old maps printed in the front of a book. And since they came before the first word, it's fitting that they will be a reader's first glimpse of my world.

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How Busy Can I Get?

Feels like I'm being pulled in too many directions these days. But the primary writing focus is still the novel. I have set a deadline of December 2011 to get the project wrapped up and the files uploaded at CreateSpace or some other self-publisher. It's all about closure. A decade sitting on this project, trying to expand the horizons into short stories and other novel projects, but still this one lingers. Once I see it in print and hand it out to family and friends, I'll be able to call it done and move on. What a Christmas present that will be. To open that box and see my babies in their final form. That vision is my driving force, and it makes me giddy.

Did I mention that I'm doing my own cover art as well? Ick. When I was little, I took my crayons and paper and color books everywhere, but I'm no Rembrandt. The love for that kind of expression just no longer resides in my little heart. I have the basic skills to get the project done, but it's the rare day that I can force myself to pick up the pastels and paint another portion of the picture. Not sure how it will look once I scan it into the computer. If it's too terrible, I'll search the web for something appropriate and copyright free, though searches so far have turned up nil. Thus my decision to paint the cover myself. Really, so far, I'm not too disappointed in how it looks. A moody post-battle scene with dead bodies and ravens and a sunrise. At least, I hope that's what it will look like to others. Meh.

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Writing High

Last week was hellacious, in a fun way. At least it ended that way. So I missed another week of posting, but no apologies this time. Life was hectic. In short, I was stuck in a house with eleven family members, half of whom were under the age of ten. Aaaah! Chaos. During the day the kids played with Tinker Bell dolls and watched really cheesy movies like Lady and the Tramp 2 and Alvin and the Chipmunks 2. Whatever happened to the originals that lacked the overdose of cheese? Well, at least in the case of the first above-mentioned movie there was no cheese, just spaghetti and creepy Siamese cats. In the evenings, we made smores around the firepit. Nice.

While I was happy to be with my chaotic family for a few days, the get together fell right in the middle of a writing high. I was pumping through the rewrites on the novel and experiencing that rare and amazing joy, so Monday and Tuesday, while I was preparing for this get-together, I was roaring and ranting and just ugly to be around b/c I was having to cut that high short. "High short"? How about "cut short that emotional high." Yeah, that's better. The inner editor is on key today, folks. Sorry about that. Point is, got home Friday night, so Saturday I dove (dived) back in and got through another chapter. I have only three chapters left until I finish this first half. Then it's on to the nasty second half that hasn't been touched in half a decade or more. I'm scared to see what's lurking in those cobwebby pages. I'll probably die of gag disease.

By the way, it's Monday! So here's some art for your brain:

Telling a Story Stitch by Stitch

Bayeux Tapestry, detail

1073-83

Page from the Belleville Breviary
John Pucelle, 1323-26

When the written word merited this kind of attention.














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Art of the Week, Sept. 7

Meh, so it's Tuesday... It's bizarre, it's surreal, it's Michael Parkes!




THE CREATION
by Michael Parkes, 1989



Parkes's work is so strange, it stretches my imagination to its limits. How about yours?

About writing: Some days it just doesn't happen. The magic belongs to someone else, has slipped off next door or something. I simply could not wake up today, despite two cups of coffee. Couldn't make myself get on the exercise bike either. Typed in some revisions on the novel and stuck it out for many pages, so all is not lost. Now I'm baking a big fat lasagna and mean to veg on the couch tonight and recharge with a good movie. I hope.

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Art of the Week, Comparing

It's Monday already!? Yikes. Well, I wanted to try something a little different this time by posting two works of similar subject matter, but in totally different styles:

GREETING THE MORNING
by Dale Wicks
(courtesy of artbywicks.com)

















ABSINTHE DRINKERS
by Degas


















Early morning coffee and a stiff, hallucinogenic drink after hours. What could be better? Seriously, I love viewing these two side by side. People in repose, moods totally different, styles of human creativity at opposite ends of the spectrum, yet not. Colors and strokes separated into small dabs and small areas to create a whole that works.

About writing. Revisions have begun on "Dreamflier." I can openly write about it by title now. It didn't win the Shredder contest. Ah, well. It was up against some fun entries, so at least the contest made for a good reading and critiquing experience. While I can't agree with the voters who complained about some mysterious grammar issues (I'm a grammar Nazi, after all, and still haven't found anything wrong grammatically), they were right about the opening being less than smooth. I can do better. And now that I don't feel constricted by a word count requirement, I feel free to elaborate on some setting, etc. to fill out the picture. Can't wait to submit this one!

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Stories and Falling Stars

I'm so pumped! Yesterday I finished the rough draft of the story inspired by the LegendFire contest prompt (can't mention the title as voting is still underway). It's been a long time since I've been this excited by a story idea and this pleased by the results. Not sure I've ever written a story this quickly either. In other words, it's been too long since I've experienced that magic that happens when the story falls together and tumbles out virtually without effort. A couple of brainstorming sessions and the thing flowed like silk. I couldn't decide which ending I was going to go with until the day before I wrote it; if I couldn't predict how it would end, likely a reader won't either.

And when the author feels this optimistic about a story, my hope is that an editor will pick up on that, too. I mean, I've written some crap stories. I knew they were crap, and they're still reeling in rejections. The only issue is that this story is 3000 words longer than what I had aimed for. 8k is an average length for my work. So while I'm not surprised, it would've been nice to keep the word count down a bit. Still, the story has meat, and that matters enormously to me. So 8k it is.

Last night was also the night for the best viewing of the meteor shower. Comet shower? Meh, whatever. So a little before midnight, my husband and I drove out to the middle of nowhere to count shooting stars. To the northeast we have terrible light pollution from OKC, but we were still able to count 17 for-sure shooting stars in little less than an hour. Others in the peripheral vision or right after a blink may have been legit too, but we didn't count those. Cows lowing in the distance, crickets and an owl, along with the wind in the high grass made for a lovely hour under the stars.

(Next writing project, while I'm slogging away on the novel revisions: another Lucien Levenger story, inspired by Sam's Dot anthology idea about Potter's Field. Whether or not I'll submit the story to them remains to be seen.)

Art of the Week, Aug 9

THE CALLING OF SAINT MATTHEW
by Caravaggio, 1599-1600

The contrast of light and dark, the realism, expressions, movement, are all reasons why Caravaggio is one of my favorite painters. (If you've not had a chance to examine this one, please expand it to full size and indulge)

His work appeals to me as a historian as well. I mean, check out the costuming. My historical fashions reference books don't come in color.

And a bizarre combination of clothing it is. Doublets and hose you might see in a Romeo and Juliet play up against what I assume is more what folks in Jesus's time might actually wear. An artist's license, I suppose.

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About writing... It's wonderful when one word inspires a great idea, the brain cooperates and runs with it, and things fall together. At LegendFire, our irreplaceable Bird is hosting a contest in our Shredder forum. The deadline for submissions is today. The entry I wrote for last year's Shredder contest has yet to go anywhere. But this year's entry is blooming like a garden. It's been a long time since I've been this excited and optimistic about a story idea. I've come to a place near the middle climax where my vision is less clear, and so I'm stalling on diving in today. Clearly. I'm blogging instead. Shame on me. Well, now that I've confessed there's nothing to be done but get to it.

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