Chillsgiving
I meant to post this yesterday and didn't get a chance/forgot to.
Things I am thankful for today:
The Icons of Animation auction catalogue
Friends at the Stines'
Vegan Thanksgiving
Broccoli casserole
Books
Tours
Anne McCaffrey
Shannon Hale posting her wordcounts
Neil Gaiman
Simpsons ep "The Book Job"
Having lots of work to do - I’ll never be bored
Marx Bagels
My pumpkin icebox cake
Small and chill Thanksgiving
Lego Harry Potter 2
Though honestly, I can safely say that I am really thankful for 2011. It has been so much kinder to me than 2009 or 2010, or 2008, for that matter, though I was happier in 2008.
...
When I was eleven or twelve, my mom worked at a local library. One day she brought home some paperbacks for me (from the book sale or something, I guess). They were Anne McCaffrey books--if I recall correctly, they were The White Dragon, All the Weyrs of Pern, The Chronicles of Pern, Dragonquest. I remember looking at the covers a lot and really liking them, but I don't remember reading them. Maybe I tried to read them and couldn't get into them? I put them in an old briefcase in my closet.
Then I read Dragonsong and that was the end of it. The complete end. I consumed the rest of the trilogy (Dragonsinger, Dragondrums) and then moved on to the rest of the series. I collected all the books. (I still have them!) I fell instantly and completely in love with Robinton. I totally wanted to be Menolly. Those books are so cheesey but I love them still.
They were my first brush with world-building, I think. I credit Anne McCaffrey as being the author that made me want to be a writer (I always liked writing, but I don't think I saw it as a career until I read these books), and also as the author that got me into fantasy. I always liked fantasy too, but this was, like I said, world-building, and good world-building makes the fantasy. (She always firmly stated that she was a science-fiction author, and Pern definitely takes a science-fiction turn later in the series, but the Harper Hall trilogy and many of the other books can be read as straight fantasy. I think The White Dragon has some science-fiction elements, but it doesn't really get into that until The Renegades of Pern and All the Weyrs of Pern. I mean, she wrote books about dragons. They were genetically engineered for fighting a planetwide natural disaster, but still. Dragons!)
I tried reading some of her other books, but none of them held the allure for me that Pern did. I feel like I tried Restoree? And I definitely read Freedom's Landing. Oh, and Acorna. I just didn't like them as much.
My brother and sister-in-law loved her books, so much so that they named their daughter Rowan (in part after McCaffrey book The Rowan and in part after, I believe, Rowan of the Mayberry Witches?). They had a hardcover copy of The Rowan and in 2003 we went to Dragon*Con and managed to be one of the few people that McCaffrey (in a motorized wheelchair which she said she couldn't control and she gave a general apology for anyone she might have run down) autographed books for. I was wrestling with the camera as McCaffrey signed and Rowan looked on, but she looked surprised and delighted by Rowan's name, and I stood two feet away from the woman whose books changed my life and wrestled with the damn camera.
I collected her Pern series obsessively (I have all the art books and the first CD--I still want the second one--and the companion, and the comic books, and most of the books in the series). When she started writing them with her son Todd, I stopped buying the new books. They weren't the same and it wasn't worth it. (Dragonsblood was, IIRC, strange, which Todd McCaffrey wrote by himself, and then there was Dragon's Kin, which they wrote together and I just could not bring myself to care about it. Strange, I thought I had both those books as part of my collection, but now I don't see them...sacrificed to Half-Price, no doubt...)
She was a pioneer for women in science-fiction (and, by extension, fantasy), she was a hero of mine, and this week she died. I am so thankful for her and for everything that she did.
Part of me just wants to spend the whole month of December rereading all my favorite books like The Dark Lord of Derkholm and the Harper Hall trilogy and Castle in the Air and the Immortals quartet and the parts in The White Dragon and Dragonquest that made my heart explode, and Shannon Hale and Patricia Wrede...even though there are thousands of books I want to read and haven't gotten the chance to yet. (Why haven't we invented technology where you can just download books directly to your brain?)
...
Right now, I'm tentatively working on AEFB. It's hard to gauge how much work I'm actually doing because usually I gauge by how many words I put out or how many chapters I work through, but now I'm taking words away and sometimes I'll only do half a chapter. I'm kind of gauging by how many words I take away, but even then, it's irregular.
Just that I knew AEFB was long, and I knew that publishers would be unlikely to accept a long book from a new author, but when I saw Shannon Hale's post on her book lengths the other day, it really put me to shame. AEFB is (or was, before I started breaking it up and taking it apart) 140,000 words; The Goose Girl, which is Hale's first and longest book (save for The Actor and the Housewife, which is an adult book), meaningful and lovely, is 91,000. That just really made me ashamed of myself for not being able to tell this story in under 100,000 words. Missing Pieces is 93,000 words; the shortest novel I've ever written was Pieces of History (which I still think has potential), at 86,000. I mean, it's just ridiculous.
So I broke AEFB up into chapters and I'm eliminating a thousand words from each chapter. At twenty-two chapters, this will hopefully take the wordcount down by at least 22,000 words. (I'm hoping for more, obviously.) It's slow going so far; I did a few passes on the first two chapters and still have a ways to go. I've been more successful with chapter three but still have to cut at least two hundred words from it. I basically need to cut an entire book from this book. (Well, a kids' book.) Crazy!
I've never worked so hard (if not always intently) on any of my stories before, and I know that if I ever want to submit to an agent or a publisher, I need to do this. And I would really like to be able to submit in the next year or so. (If only I worked on it consistently!)
You know, I think part of the problem is chapters. Chapters kill me. I hate them. When writing, I just put them in wherever, but then I get really OCD about how many pages are in each chapter. When I was younger, I tried to make every chapter ten pages, and if I ran out of material, I would just BS until I had filled out the ten pages. What is that all about? Missing Pieces has no chapters, only section breaks, which I think is very good, and I'm thinking about taking all the chapter headings out of AEFB and taking natural pauses in the story and then putting the chapter headings back in later. Also, I am inclined to start each chapter anew, i.e. "the next morning, she had some coffee." I don't like that. Maybe it's breaking up my narrative?
Anyway. I'm tired, and tonight is the first downtime I've had in a week. I did my finances and worked on the new BUST crossword puzzle and watched House and due South and did some writing. Tomorrow: working the tours. Sunday: being photographed. And maybe some LHP2, if I can get my act together enough to not feel guilty about it. (We're at such a frustrating stage that I just want to get past it; I don't want to pace ourselves.)
Also: tonight's dinner was leftovers: smashed potatoes, turkey with salt and pepper, green beans, and--my favorite thing--pan-fried stuffing. Then most of a Betterfinger by Sweet Peace Bakery. :) And my finances weren't bad. I feel pretty good about life tonight. Just tired.
Things I am thankful for today:
The Icons of Animation auction catalogue
Friends at the Stines'
Vegan Thanksgiving
Broccoli casserole
Books
Tours
Anne McCaffrey
Shannon Hale posting her wordcounts
Neil Gaiman
Simpsons ep "The Book Job"
Having lots of work to do - I’ll never be bored
Marx Bagels
My pumpkin icebox cake
Small and chill Thanksgiving
Lego Harry Potter 2
Though honestly, I can safely say that I am really thankful for 2011. It has been so much kinder to me than 2009 or 2010, or 2008, for that matter, though I was happier in 2008.
...
When I was eleven or twelve, my mom worked at a local library. One day she brought home some paperbacks for me (from the book sale or something, I guess). They were Anne McCaffrey books--if I recall correctly, they were The White Dragon, All the Weyrs of Pern, The Chronicles of Pern, Dragonquest. I remember looking at the covers a lot and really liking them, but I don't remember reading them. Maybe I tried to read them and couldn't get into them? I put them in an old briefcase in my closet.
Then I read Dragonsong and that was the end of it. The complete end. I consumed the rest of the trilogy (Dragonsinger, Dragondrums) and then moved on to the rest of the series. I collected all the books. (I still have them!) I fell instantly and completely in love with Robinton. I totally wanted to be Menolly. Those books are so cheesey but I love them still.
They were my first brush with world-building, I think. I credit Anne McCaffrey as being the author that made me want to be a writer (I always liked writing, but I don't think I saw it as a career until I read these books), and also as the author that got me into fantasy. I always liked fantasy too, but this was, like I said, world-building, and good world-building makes the fantasy. (She always firmly stated that she was a science-fiction author, and Pern definitely takes a science-fiction turn later in the series, but the Harper Hall trilogy and many of the other books can be read as straight fantasy. I think The White Dragon has some science-fiction elements, but it doesn't really get into that until The Renegades of Pern and All the Weyrs of Pern. I mean, she wrote books about dragons. They were genetically engineered for fighting a planetwide natural disaster, but still. Dragons!)
I tried reading some of her other books, but none of them held the allure for me that Pern did. I feel like I tried Restoree? And I definitely read Freedom's Landing. Oh, and Acorna. I just didn't like them as much.
My brother and sister-in-law loved her books, so much so that they named their daughter Rowan (in part after McCaffrey book The Rowan and in part after, I believe, Rowan of the Mayberry Witches?). They had a hardcover copy of The Rowan and in 2003 we went to Dragon*Con and managed to be one of the few people that McCaffrey (in a motorized wheelchair which she said she couldn't control and she gave a general apology for anyone she might have run down) autographed books for. I was wrestling with the camera as McCaffrey signed and Rowan looked on, but she looked surprised and delighted by Rowan's name, and I stood two feet away from the woman whose books changed my life and wrestled with the damn camera.
I collected her Pern series obsessively (I have all the art books and the first CD--I still want the second one--and the companion, and the comic books, and most of the books in the series). When she started writing them with her son Todd, I stopped buying the new books. They weren't the same and it wasn't worth it. (Dragonsblood was, IIRC, strange, which Todd McCaffrey wrote by himself, and then there was Dragon's Kin, which they wrote together and I just could not bring myself to care about it. Strange, I thought I had both those books as part of my collection, but now I don't see them...sacrificed to Half-Price, no doubt...)
She was a pioneer for women in science-fiction (and, by extension, fantasy), she was a hero of mine, and this week she died. I am so thankful for her and for everything that she did.
Part of me just wants to spend the whole month of December rereading all my favorite books like The Dark Lord of Derkholm and the Harper Hall trilogy and Castle in the Air and the Immortals quartet and the parts in The White Dragon and Dragonquest that made my heart explode, and Shannon Hale and Patricia Wrede...even though there are thousands of books I want to read and haven't gotten the chance to yet. (Why haven't we invented technology where you can just download books directly to your brain?)
...
Right now, I'm tentatively working on AEFB. It's hard to gauge how much work I'm actually doing because usually I gauge by how many words I put out or how many chapters I work through, but now I'm taking words away and sometimes I'll only do half a chapter. I'm kind of gauging by how many words I take away, but even then, it's irregular.
Just that I knew AEFB was long, and I knew that publishers would be unlikely to accept a long book from a new author, but when I saw Shannon Hale's post on her book lengths the other day, it really put me to shame. AEFB is (or was, before I started breaking it up and taking it apart) 140,000 words; The Goose Girl, which is Hale's first and longest book (save for The Actor and the Housewife, which is an adult book), meaningful and lovely, is 91,000. That just really made me ashamed of myself for not being able to tell this story in under 100,000 words. Missing Pieces is 93,000 words; the shortest novel I've ever written was Pieces of History (which I still think has potential), at 86,000. I mean, it's just ridiculous.
So I broke AEFB up into chapters and I'm eliminating a thousand words from each chapter. At twenty-two chapters, this will hopefully take the wordcount down by at least 22,000 words. (I'm hoping for more, obviously.) It's slow going so far; I did a few passes on the first two chapters and still have a ways to go. I've been more successful with chapter three but still have to cut at least two hundred words from it. I basically need to cut an entire book from this book. (Well, a kids' book.) Crazy!
I've never worked so hard (if not always intently) on any of my stories before, and I know that if I ever want to submit to an agent or a publisher, I need to do this. And I would really like to be able to submit in the next year or so. (If only I worked on it consistently!)
You know, I think part of the problem is chapters. Chapters kill me. I hate them. When writing, I just put them in wherever, but then I get really OCD about how many pages are in each chapter. When I was younger, I tried to make every chapter ten pages, and if I ran out of material, I would just BS until I had filled out the ten pages. What is that all about? Missing Pieces has no chapters, only section breaks, which I think is very good, and I'm thinking about taking all the chapter headings out of AEFB and taking natural pauses in the story and then putting the chapter headings back in later. Also, I am inclined to start each chapter anew, i.e. "the next morning, she had some coffee." I don't like that. Maybe it's breaking up my narrative?
Anyway. I'm tired, and tonight is the first downtime I've had in a week. I did my finances and worked on the new BUST crossword puzzle and watched House and due South and did some writing. Tomorrow: working the tours. Sunday: being photographed. And maybe some LHP2, if I can get my act together enough to not feel guilty about it. (We're at such a frustrating stage that I just want to get past it; I don't want to pace ourselves.)
Also: tonight's dinner was leftovers: smashed potatoes, turkey with salt and pepper, green beans, and--my favorite thing--pan-fried stuffing. Then most of a Betterfinger by Sweet Peace Bakery. :) And my finances weren't bad. I feel pretty good about life tonight. Just tired.