Haven’t updated

Eli has been out of school with a cold since last Friday (which is only actually two days: Friday and today), which means that my ability to get anything done is hampered by various mommy duties. The cold is getting better, finally…it was one of those that gets into the eyes and makes them produce copious amounts of green gunk. I did a lot of nighttime eye un-gluing this weekend. I think he’ll be able to go back to school Wednesday.

Then of course, there’s the “I’m still recovering from the hard drive crash” excuse, but at this point, I think I’ve exhausted that one. I did a once-over of the first book of Shades, and did a little writing today.

Mostly, I’ve not updated because I really haven’t felt like it. Not from a lack of exciting or interesting things to report…in fact, I think it might be due to too many things to talk about. I’ve read several books since Wednesday, all of which were good enough to merit a blog-nod, at least. But…meh. I don’t feel so much like reviewing anything right now.

I’ve actually felt like sitting down and writing some erotic Shades fanfiction. (I suppose I can hope Shades will be enough of a hit someday to merit fanfiction…and it can be fun to anticipate what people are going to come up with. Dear gods, the slash will probably be awful).

One, to see if I can actually bring myself to write an erotic scene…what words I can/cannot get on the page, where evocative turns into gross/cheesy/unrealistic/just plain bad, etc. Shades does not need such scenes, and won’t contain any, but I can think of a couple of places in my Tindaari epic that might. (Celeste is a whore, by profession. Nuatha’s relationship with her is intimately *cough* tied to both his own sexual awakening and to his character arc. Some of that growth is going to take place in the bedroom…and I’m just going to have to get over it.)

Two, Saeli and Raphel’s relationship is grating on me right now. Not on a writerly level…I’ve just reread the whole manuscript so far, and I think I’ve got the level of sexual/antagonistic/partnership tension about where it needs to be. But I think it’s safe to say that I’m more emotionally attached to these characters than anyone else could possibly be. I want them to get together because I like Raphel and I’m a lot like Saeli, in some ways. Pure wish fulfillment. Something I know I can’t do in the story itself without destroying it, but something I *want*, nonetheless. (Hey, that’s what fanfiction is for, IMO. Pairing off characters just because the fans want it, not because it’s in any way hinted at in the canon.) This is actually a sign to me that I’ve Saeli’s and Raphel’s relationship right in the story, because part of the tension lies in the fact that they are, in some ways, perfect for each other…and yet, it just can’t work. I want the reader to hate that. I know this probably sounds ridiculous, but I want the reader to fall in love with Raphel and despair. It’s the major underlying problem Saeli has to overcome.

So, but okay, writer-me is satisfied, but fan-me is still grinding her teeth.

I may do it, just because. Maybe in between the actual finishing of the last chapters, in that time when I’d normally be checking Facebook or something. This is not something I’d be posting here, by the way. I know too many people that read this that I probably wouldn’t be able to face again, if I did. ;D No erotica on Nightphoenix’s blog, sorry.

I’ve decided I need to go back and read The Society of S by Susan Hubbard. I think, out of all the YA books I’ve read recently, that story’s pacing most closely resembles mine; a bit less action, bam-bam-wham, a bit more literary. (This is only compared to today’s popular YA, which tends to read very, very fast.) Since I enjoyed Society of S, despite its slower pace (or maybe because of it), I should go back and pay attention to how that was done.

Not much else to report. The spring forward thing is killing me. We didn’t eat supper tonight until like 8:30, ’cause I just couldn’t get my act together. Now it’s nearly midnight, and we have to go to bed soon. *sigh*

Tags: life, Raphel, Saeli, Shades

Reluctance

Getting back into the writing groove is, well…mostly not really happening this week. I’ve been irritated at myself, which doesn’t help my productivity level at all. But I think I’ve finally put my finger on what the problem is.

I’m reluctant to produce any new writing right now, because I think I’m afraid of it disappearing in another drive crash, or some other technical crisis I haven’t thought of. Part of my mind is sitting there going, “What’s the point if you’re just going to lose it again, and have to rewrite it over and over?” Then there’s another part of my mind that is still hoping there’s a chance of rescuing the stuff I lost. I feel like I’m stuck in stasis, unable to mentally move on because I’m still hoping for a computer miracle. Moving on in my writing would be tantamount to officially declaring that hard drive as a loss…and I just don’t want to do that. But I really need to, because the chances of coming up with an affordable way to save that drive are next to nil.

I discovered that among the stuff that hadn’t been backed up was all my conference notes. Including the names given to me as potential agents and editors that might be interested in my stuff, once I’m ready to query. That’s probably the biggest overall loss I’m looking at right now, and it bothers me more than the missing chapter. There’s no way I can get all those notes back, and there was a lot of good information. Also all my GMC work I’d done on the Mask of Eldarmarch is gone, though honestly I’ll probably be able to put that back together without much difficulty. It’s still a pain, though, you know? To redo something you know you’ve already done.

So I’ve been doing what I tend to do when I can’t write, which is read. I picked up several YA books and have proceeded to gobble my way through them in a matter of days. Yeah, I can tell myself that’s at least semi-productive, but it’s not what I need to be doing right now.

It is times like these when I wonder if I’m really cut out to be a professional writer. I don’t deal with setbacks very well, for one thing. Also, I cannot seem to keep my nose to the grindstone for more than a few weeks at a time. After that, I will inevitably hit a point where I just cannot work on my current writing project for several days. I haven’t found a working rhythm yet, because inevitably once I do start to establish one, something happens and I am thrown off. And I know that once I have editorial deadlines to contend with, I won’t be able to take days and weeks to get back on track. I need to figure out something that works for me, NOW, while I still have the luxury of flexible time.

The hubby and I discussed this a little during supper. I decided that I needed to find some sort of ritual, something I can do when disruptions happen, that will allow my mind to get past the setback and move on. The “just get over it” school of coping obviously doesn’t work very well on its own, as I’ve been trying to “get over it” for a week now. The hubby suggested that maybe what I’m dealing with here is a kind of grief, and that going through the stages of grieving would benefit me.

I think he’s right. My stories are my babies; even losing a chapter is hard for me. I cannot even begin to imagine what my reaction would be if I lost all of Shades, for example. *shudder* At least I know I have the ability to recreate what I lose. I guess the next step for me, at this point, is to do a little research on the stages of grieving, and see if I can find some tips on how to get my creativity back on track.

Tags: business of writing, Shades

Computer fail

So I’m sitting on the hubby’s computer right now, because my hard drive crashed yesterday. And of course, hard drives only fail when you haven’t backed up in a while.

Wednesday’s Wisdom: Back up your stuff. Often.

Luckily, I had just sent a copy of the second draft out to my critique group, so if worse comes to worse, I’ve only lost a chapter (and some pictures). I’m not looking forward to the prospect of rewriting an entire chapter, especially since I was almost freaking done with the story. The hubby thinks the drive may just have a bad head, which means the data is probably okay. Replace the head, and we can get my stuff back. However, we don’t know how expensive this endeavor would be. It has to be done by a professional, so it could be prohibitively so.

In happier news, I finished the bird decal I’d been working on for the lid of my computer. I’d post pictures, as it’s Thursday, except for the whole not being on my own computer problem.

I’m a bit irritated because I’m really not going to be able to write until we get my drive fixed, or call it a loss and put in the other drive. Seriously, yesterday I was ready to swear off digital storage and just start printing hard copies of my chapters as I finish them. I mean, we’ve only had that drive 5 months, and I haven’t been that hard on it. But apparently hard drives, even the best ones, can literally fail at any moment for no reason at all. No matter how long (or not long) you’ve had them. That kind of makes you nervous, you know? At least paper is relatively permanent, unless your house floods or burns down (a much less likely occurrence).

So we’ll see how things go.

Tags: advice, business of writing

Behind again, but for good reasons

So, let’s see. I think I hunted around for some art to post in here last Thursday, but realized that the one thing I’d been working on was something I hadn’t taken pictures of yet. In cleaning the apartment, I found an unfinished mail-holder, and remembered that I’d once intended to use that to replace the little plastic drawers we’d been using for the purpose of collecting mail. So I drug it out again, and started working on it. Some of it is painted, and some of it I’m going to woodburn. I got to distress a paint finish for the first time, which was fun. I may take some pictures of it so far, and post those. I just haven’t gotten around to it.

Last week was good, in terms of writing, which is really why I’ve been neglecting the blog. Also, I gave myself a half hour in Books-a-Million last week to go through the YA section and pick out all the books I think I *need* to read, eventually.

Here’s the list I made:

Going Bovine ~ Libba Bray
I read her Gemma Doyle trilogy and loved it. She’s actually won some awards for the above, so it must be a pretty decent read.

The Demon’s Lexicon ~ Sarah Rees Brennan
I got lucky, and the West Melbourne library had a copy of this, which I snagged. I finished it last night, actually. I like her writing style and the way she characterizes her people. Sometimes the interactions between characters were a little hard to figure out, but I don’t know if that was just me not understanding teen angst, or what.

Hush, Hush ~ Becca Fitzpatrick

Beautiful Creatures ~ Kami Garcia/Margaret Stohl

The Host ~ Stephanie Meyer
Yes, that Stephanie Meyer. I did enjoy the Twilight series, even if I take issue with some of the characters’ actions and lack of real literary flair. They were enjoyable. I decided to put the above on my list simply from the back cover blurb, which looked interesting.

Wake
Fade
Gone ~ Lisa McMann
I read Wake last week. Actually, I finished it the same day I checked it out of the library. It is yet another novel I’ve found recently that is written in the present tense…is that becoming a trend in YA literature? Present tense sounds odd in my head when I think about it, but when I’m actually reading the story, my brain just ignores it after a while. The story was well-crafted and the premise was interesting, so I definitely want to get my hands on the next two at some point.

Vampire Academy books ~ Richelle Mead

Blue Moon
Evermore
Shadowland ~ Alyson Noel

Sabriel
Lirael
Abhorsen~ Garth Nix
I’ve heard nothing but good things about this trilogy. I think it’s time I discovered why.

Vampire Diaries books ~ L. J. Smith
This is almost the same kind of story that Twilight is, but these actually came out before Twilight (and may have been an influence). The moral, conflicted vampire boy falls for a human girl and the problems that result therein.

Shiver ~ Maggie Stiefvater
I think she even has another book out after this one, but I can’t remember what it’s called. The bookstore didn’t have it, at any rate.

Leviathan ~ Scott Westerfeld
Westerfeld is becoming one of my favorite YA authors. I just recently happened across a book called The Last Days in the library, which I discovered is a sequel to Peeps. (I didn’t know Peeps had a sequel.) I’m in the middle of The Last Days right now. Leviathan is the first of a new trilogy he’s working on, and I hear it’s as good as his others.

Some literary books it’s probably time I read, or read again:

Lord of the Flies ~ William Golding
One I managed to avoid reading during high school, but since it is the most classic and popular use of the kids-alone premise, I should probably give it a shot.

To Kill a Mockingbird ~ Harper Lee
Another one I wriggled out of in high school. I think I even attempted it on my own once, and found it boring. Time for another try.

Catcher in the Rye ~ J. D. Salinger
Now, this one I did have to read in high school, and all I remember about it was that I really didn’t like it much. But as a writer, I might find it more interesting. It’s kind of one of the original YA stories.

Wicked ~ Gregory Maguire
Not literary exactly, but I’ve heard his Wicked Witch books are good. Plus, I’d like to find out how he makes the witch a sympathetic character.

When they come out:

White Cat ~ Holly Black
I liked Tithe, Valiant, and Ironside…and I hear that Jace from Claire’s Mortal Instruments series makes a cameo appearance. (These gals all know each other, and their characters sometimes slip into each others’ books for fun.)

A Clockwork Angel
City of Fallen Angels ~ Cassandra Claire
Carries on some of the characters from her Mortal Instruments trilogy, which I am a fan of.

The Season of Risks ~ Susan Hubbard
The next book in the Society of S vampire story, which is probably the most different and interesting take on vampires I’ve seen yet.

Lies ~ Michael Grant
The next book in his Gone series, which uses a premise not unlike that of Lord of the Flies. I have a story in the queue that also uses the idea of a bunch of kids with superpowers surviving on their own without adults…so I remain curious as to where Grant will take his story.

Yeah, it’s a long list. But it will keep me busy for a while, I hope. I also intend on finishing the Wheel of Time series as the last books come out. Speaking of, while I was at the library, I checked out a book by Brandon Sanderson, who has been entrusted with finishing the Wheel of Time since the original author, Jordan, died. (I do not envy him that project. At all. If you’ve read the Wheel of Time, you’ll understand why.) Sanderson also does a very informative and entertaining podcast called Writing Excuses with two other guys (took me a while to put two and two together, and realize that Writing Excuses’ Brandon was THAT Brandon). The premise of the book I picked up sounded fascinating (and keep in mind, very little in the fantasy genre sounds fascinating to me anymore), so I decided to find out if he’s as good a writer as he seems to be.

I also checked out a book called Gathering Blue by Lois Lowry, who wrote The Giver and Number the Stars, two books I enjoyed from my childhood. Apparently Gathering Blue is a pseudo-continuation of The Giver, and in the last book, the two main characters from each meet. And yeah, I totally just looked that up online…I didn’t know the two were related when I was at the library. Lowry is a prolific and well-respected childrens’ and YA author…so it would behoove me, as a writer, to read the best in my genre, right?

Today I head back to Books-a-Million when they open at 10AM, and continue writing on Shades.

Tags: books

An update, and some art

Well, I never did get around to posting something in here yesterday. Alas, alas. However, I’ve been pretty productive with my writing, so I say that makes up for it. I finished the chapter that was bogging me down, and am a good ways into the next one. I find myself making Raphel much nicer this time around, in the way he says things..which is interesting, because I’ve apparently also been making him meaner, too. There is a definite disconnect between his words and his actions, and the gulf is growing as the story goes on. He will do something awful to Saeli, but then he will list all his reasonable, unavoidable reasons for doing so, and show himself to be as worried and frustrated and human as she are, and he doesn’t like doing stuff like that, but…and Saeli finds herself nodding her head in agreement without a clear idea of how she got there. It’s all very underhanded. He knows if he’s outright mean, he’ll scare her off for good.

I’ve also been working on a book cover idea. It’s a scene that doesn’t actually appear anywhere in the story, but is rather a nod to the initial dream I had that inspired the story in the first place. I was with some dark-clad people, and we were hiding in a big city from a group of cold, white-robed people marching down the street, chanting like monks. I wasn’t one of the dark people, though, and I had the impression that I was actually supposed to be with the white-robed ones. But I wasn’t really one of them, either, though I was more like them than I was like the dark ones. But the dark ones weren’t really so bad, I found. (Thus, Saeli’s unique position in the world was born). Originally I had called the two groups the Blacks and the Whites, but it was suggested to me that those names were much too un-politically correct, and I agreed.
 
Scan:

This is the scan of the original drawing I did. It’s cobbled together from a bunch of different sources, which I put together in Photoshop and printed out. I then did what many might consider cheating, and traced straight from that composition using a lightbox. I would torn my hair out trying to get that architecture right otherwise. I’ve had to tweak the image sufficiently that I no longer feel guilty about it. (Wait…no. I never felt guilty about it. Oh well.) It looks weird at the bottom because the drawing is bigger than the scanner, and so I had to scan it in two pieces. The drawing isn’t going to show up on the finished piece; it’s only a guide for my Photoshopping. The figures in the foreground are Raphel and Saeli (if that wasn’t obvious). That is the High Priestess leading the line of professors; I haven’t decided who the others are (if anyone). That’s supposed to be the city Temple in the background.
 
Value sketch:

I learned about the concept of an underpainting in one of my Stetson classes, but I think this is the first time I’ve ever actually *needed* to do one. The purpose of the underpainting is to figure out where all the lights and darks will be. Because my source images came from so many places, my source composition had no consistant value scale whatsoever. (Plus, they were all daytime images, and this is a nighttime picture). The final image won’t be sepia-toned.
 
Where I’m at now:

Here’s where I’m at in the coloring process. I made the scene take place in the purple hour, Saeli’s favorite time of day. Right now I’m just filling in the flat colors; I will go back in different layers to put in the shadows and highlights. White buildings at night are interesting, to say the least. Black and white clothing isn’t much better. I’m trying to make it so that the grays on the left side of the image are made from purples, and the grays on the right are made from yellows, so that I have a warm gray/cool gray contrast. Saeli is pretty dead neutral.

The amount of work I can get done when I’m not at home is astronomical compared to what I do at my desk. I wish Books-a-Million opened earlier than 10AM. Places like Panera Bread and various coffee shops open early, but you really aren’t supposed to just sit in there without buying something (some places have a policy), and that could very quickly get expensive. I suppose I could sit outside and work (maybe when it gets a little warmer, heh). I got a lot of writing done Monday…if I can do that on all the days when Eli is at school, I can have the first book of Shades done by the end of March, which is my goal.

Tags: artwork, Raphel, revisions, Shades

Welcome to the blog!

You have, perhaps by luck, fate, scribblings on the back of a business card, or the arcane power of Google, happened across the writer’s blog of the Nightphoenix. Welcome! Feel free to look around the site, but do try not to step on the M&Ms.

If you wish to read the more detailed entries about specific projects I’m working on, you can click anywhere it says “register”, and follow the directions. Or, if you’ve one of my business cards in hand, you can simply use the visiting_writer login. The Blog Security page at the top has more details about this. Don’t worry, I won’t come knocking at your door.

So much for no politics…

But I saw this last night and it made me very, very happy. Remember those Westboro, “God Hates -X-” nutcases that go around picketing soldier funerals? This is the best counterprotest I’ve ever seen.

When you compare statements like “God Hates Fags” and “Where’s Waldo?”, yeah, there really isn’t much meaning to either, and I think that was the point. It’s really an ingenious protest, IMO.

Here’s the article itself.

Tags: humor, snark, the real world

Back from the SCWG conference, back to the world of the living

It was a long weekend. It was also an excellent, inspiring weekend. I imagine it will take a number of weeks before I even get through all the notes I took there, although I already have plans to implement some of what I learned into Shades right away. (Note to self- I must find some index cards.)

I did get the program done in time, by the way, and it turned out quite nice. Being me, I noticed one or two little mistakes I made…transparency inconsistencies, spacing a little off in places…but I doubt anyone else would see them. Of course, by the end of Friday, I was asking myself why we bother to place people in rooms beforehand at all, as the schedule of the day never actually matched what was in the program. Ah, well. I think everyone managed to get where they needed to go.

Part of me actually does not want to rehash the whole conference blow by blow, because I’d feel the urge to make a clever, witty narrative of the event and I’m too tired to do that. I met some great people this time around (not that I didn’t last year), and was actually able to have some lengthy chats with them. Denise Little and Debra Dixon were especially great…just all around fun gals to hang around with. I had my editor appointment with Denise, and she gave me some names of people to target and good advice. Katherine Sands was there again (I remembered her from last year); another great gal. I also got to see Susan Hubbard for a few minutes (she writes some of the best vampire books I’ve ever read), and I talked bad literature and bad movies with a gal my own age for about an hour on Friday night.

One of the things that I’ve taken away from this weekend is the urge to really start making use of this blog. You may notice that I’ve added a blogroll and a whole bunch of links. I tried to stick to writing and fantasy related sites, but one or two political ones may have crept in there. (By the way, if you read this and you have a blog, shoot me an email and I’ll go check it out.) One of the perks of reading and writing mostly YA is that most of the current authors are hip with the times and keep blogs, or at least have an online presence of some sort.

I want to start posting something in here every day. I’m also quite sure I’ve said that at least four or five times before, on various online blogs I’ve kept, and it just never happens. The problem is, I don’t necessarily have something to say every single day, and I’m the type of person where if I don’t feel I have something useful to contribute to a conversation, I keep my mouth shut. Given that tendency, what I may do is give myself a topic for every day of the week. That way, if I can’t think of anything else, I can at least post a song, or movie quote, or something. No issues, though! I do not want this to turn into a political blog. There are enough of those out there already, and I really don’t like talking about hot topics. I also have a hard time making myself stop once I do start thinking about them, which distracts me from things I’d rather be thinking about, like my stories.

So, look for that.

What else. The Goal, Motivation, Conflict workshop that Debra Dixon gave has really inspired me to go back through Shades and make sure every scene is pulling its weight. The most encouraging thing I took away from that talk was that I do GMC with all my characters pretty instinctively. I’m a character-driven writer. When I start to write a story, or when I go to turn a conceit or dream into a viable story, I usually start with one, maybe two characters. I ask myself what they want within the context of the conceit, and give them a bare bones reason why they want it. Then I make up another character who wants something that puts him or her in direct conflict with the first characters. Then I mentally plop those characters into the conceit and happily watch them create problems for themselves. Backstory arises from plot and motivation problems that come up (as in, I need this character to do something, therefore I must give them a damn good reason to do it). If I make the characters vivid enough, the plot writes itself. For instance, three or four years ago I had this vague milieu for a story and one really, really strong character, and decided to sit myself down and construct a basic plot. Two hours later the first initial outline of Shades was done. Two days later I had four chapters written. (Can you guess who that character was? *shakes a fist at a certain copper-haired Cowl*)

Instincts being what they may, I can already see how going though this process consciously will help me on initial plotting, and on rewrites. And I now have a much better grasp on Mask of Eldarmarch (that was the story I chose to work on during the workshop itself). It was interesting trying to work out goals and motivation for a character that I have to essentially treat as two different people in the story itself. But the split between Dustin and the Piper is the emotional crux of the story; they really do have different goals at the beginning, and are very different men. Only towards the end do those goals start to align…and once they merge, the mask becomes the symbol of that united purpose (instead of the symbol of living a lie). I’m not sure I would have ever been able to pin that down in such plain terms, had I not done that workshop.

Today, I’m going to get some writing done on Shades. Haven’t been able to do that for most of January. I’m also wallowing through a slow spot, which doesn’t help. My goal (!) is to have the first book of Shades finished by the end of March. It took me about two months to get halfway, so I’m figuring another two to complete it. At worst, mid or late April. I may need that extra month to polish. My bigger goal is to have the whole trilogy finished by the end of the year. As I’m hoping the later chapters won’t need as much work as the earlier chapters did, I think that goal is doable. But as always, we’ll see.

So, to sum up: Links! Blog goals. Writing goals. Here’s to productiveness.

Tags: conferences, goals, Mask of Eldarmarch

Writing Projects

I have heavily updated the Writing Projects page. It now has all the ideas that have cropped up in the last few months, plus some more choice music. Go check it out.

This is great, so I must quote it

“To All My Democratic Friends:

Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasion and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all. I also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2010, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great. Not to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country nor the only America in the Western Hemisphere . Also, this wish is made without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wish.

To My Conservative Friends:
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.”

Tags: humor