Posted by Mistress of Feathers on May 23, 2011 in
Input,
Music,
News No, I did not go to anyone’s prom. It’s been a long time since I was in high school, you know.
However, last week I did take myself to the movie Prom, on the justification that it was a teenager movie and I write stories for teenagers. I ought to keep myself familiar with how they dress and talk and act around each other if my books are going to contain any amount of realism. And…sometimes I like a simple young toothy love story. And the guy who plays Jesse is kinda cute *cough*…
Anyway, it was pretty much what I expected. Nothing deep or riveting or complicated. But it did affirm why the young adult genre appeals to me as a whole, and also reminded me that it’s been a while since I was a teenager.
I like the immediacy. People tend to mock teenaged angst, how everything that’s happening is so dreadfully important and a big deal all the time. How ups are like mountaintops and downs are like the end of the world. It’s true that young people lack a certain amount of perspective that comes with age and living life. But you know…sometimes I think adults could use more of that immediacy and significance. Young people care, immensely and deeply, and that kind of passion can do amazing things in the world, if channeled. We, as adults, need to remember how it feels to care, and to love, and to ache…to not let those things slip away with the years.
I like the sort of on-the-cusp, anything-is-possible vibe that seems to permeate stories that involve teenagers. It’s both exciting and scary to be making momentous decisions that will affect the rest of one’s life, and it makes those characters stand out in a way that wise, mature, rational adult characters sometimes don’t.
But watching that movie, I noticed something. Many of the problems between characters could have been easily and quickly solved, if the characters would only talk about what was bothering them. It amazed me how many times I was sitting there in the theater thinking, “Just say it! Why can’t you just speak up??” I found myself sometimes getting frustrated with how easily they would sometimes just give up and go along with the crowd, or follow orders, or do nothing.
But see, I’m an adult. Been there, done that, you know? I’ve learned from experience that getting things out in the open is usually worth any possible repercussions. I’ve learned to express myself, and I’ve learned that voicing my needs and feelings is far better in the long run than hiding them. I’ve had a few years to hone what I’d say, and how I’d say it, and I’m no longer so insecure about what people will think of me if I speak up. It takes some deliberate effort on my part to put myself in a teenaged mindset. Thinking like that not an automatic thing for me.
In other words, I don’t remember what it’s like to be a teenager quite as well as I think I do. And I’d do well to keep that in mind.
In other news, I’ve started another blog. I was very adamant that this blog was going to be for writing, and only for writing, and that I wasn’t going to get into religion or politics here unless it directly related to my writing. But more and more I’ve found myself needing a place to vent on certain issues…because otherwise they just bother me and bother me and I don’t get anything done for like a week. If you really want to know where I stand on such topics, you can head over here and poke around. There’s not much there yet, but it’ll probably get added to pretty fast. I will warn you, sometimes I may not be very nice and I’ll probably be doing a lot of picking on fundamentalist Christianity in particular. Not because I have a problem with the Christian faith…actually, I like it very much, which is why I’d like to see its blind spots and idiocies and dark sides exposed and dealt with. But, if that sort of thing makes you uncomfortable, then you should probably leave exilemusings alone. 
Tags: movies and television, the real world
Posted by nightphoenix on May 11, 2011 in
Process Writers often speak of “playing God” with their characters. Because of course, the writer must have a better grasp on that character’s strengths, flaws, past, motivations, fears, hopes, goals, etc, than anyone else in the story world, even the character himself. You can’t write a convincing person if you don’t know who they are. But an interesting side effect of this knowing is that sometimes a character will do something the writer didn’t expect. Something that flows out of who that character is that maybe the writer didn’t notice the first time around. But you, the writer, kinda have to go with that, because forcing characters to follow an author’s agenda inevitably drains the life right out of them. Paradoxically, you have to know your characters so well that they quite literally start taking on a life of their own.
But fiction, like life, has conflict and pain and sorrow and people that fall. In fact, one of the first things one learns as a writer is that fiction NEEDS conflict, or it becomes boring and lifeless. True conflict, the kind that grows and breathes and expands in directions you don’t always expect and changes characters you care about…this is hard to write. It is hard to ALLOW this kind of conflict in a story, because it means surrendering some of your godly writerly power to do whatever you wish with your characters. It means sparing characters you’d rather destroy, and destroying characters you really, really wish you could save. True, you could still have the villain have a last-minute change of heart…you are the author, and it’s your story. But you know, and your audience will certainly know that the change wasn’t real, didn’t flow out of who that character was. Such authorial fiat…even when done for the benefit of the character…it invalidates the character as a person. Their choices no longer matter. And they cease to be real.
And the story fails. Read more…
Tags: musings
Posted by nightphoenix on May 10, 2011 in
Novels,
Output Yesterday I had the interesting and depressing experience of having two rejections land in my inbox on the same day. The second, naturally, appearing having gotten up from the brief nap I’d taken having been down about the first. Both were typical form letter rejections, the kind that give no insight whatsoever into why the agent passed up your work. What was especially depressing was that I’d mentally tagged one of those agents as a particularly good fit for Shades, given their online description for the sort of story they are looking for.
It’s so easy to take it personally. It’s easy to start thinking things like, “Man, my work must really suck if an agent who wants that exact kind of story doesn’t even want it.”
But I know that’s not true.
One’s taste in books is a highly subjective matter. I know this, because I know how picky I am about what I like to read. For example, I just finished the last book in Melissa Marr’s Wicked Lovely series…and I found myself mildly disappointed.
***Spoilers below***
Read more…
Tags: agents and editors, business of writing
Posted by nightphoenix on May 5, 2011 in
News I’ve given the Projects page a massive overhaul. Switched things around, added about five or six new ideas and some new music. Some of the “new” ideas have actually been sitting on my computer for months…I just never got around to posting them up here.
You may notice some little things that have been updated.
I changed the name of the last Shades novel from Hearts, Like Glass to Dreams, Like Ashes…also ganked from a song, and I just think it has a better ring to it. “I watched the city burn, these dreams like ashes float away…” Updated the explanation to reflect my current progress.
Changed the title of Kailar to Fire Into Frost…because Fire and Ice is too cliched, as badly as I wanted to use it.
Changed the title of The Waters to This Chosen Fate; hard to come up with. I toyed with something like Beyond These Shores, but I didn’t want it to sound like I was equating the Waters to the afterlife, or that Lauren had died. The story is all about choice and fate, so.
Updated To Wake a Windmaker to just Windwaker. I was reluctant to give the book the same name as a Zelda game, but I think the story and format are different enough that it will be okay. And it gives Quintin more of a focus: he’s not just some random guy looking for answers, he IS the answer, he IS the Windwaker. No longer a journey to the saviors, but the journey OF a savior.
Changed some music around. Also, you may notice that some of the new ideas don’t have any explanation other than the pitch. That’s because…I haven’t put my thoughts together yet. I may do that in a few individual blog posts.
Tags: the blog
Posted by nightphoenix on May 5, 2011 in
Input,
Life,
News Yes, it has been too long. April was a month full of surprises and changes.
My car died. Like, permanently. Poor old Pontiac. The only thing worse than driving an overheating car across Melbourne was then having nightmares about driving said overheating car across Melbourne that night. Which, I now know, was not a wise thing to do…but alas. Thankfully, I have the most wonderful dad in the world, who funded the Hyundai Sonata I’m driving now. 
We now have a cat. The hubby heard him crying outside one night after those two huge April storms we had. I, of course, had headphones on and didn’t have a clue. So we’re sitting there working on our computers, when the hubby suddenly gets up and walks out the front door with no explanation. He then calls my phone and asks if we have anything we could feed to a cat. I cut up some hot dogs and take them outside, where I find him with a very skittish orange kitty in the downstairs breezeway. We debated what to do with the cat, as it was raining and we didn’t want to just leave him outside. As it was around 11 in the evening, our options were limited. We ended up bringing the cat up to the apartment for the night and made plans to call animal control in the morning.
We got some basic supplies and discovered that the kitty was housebroken (litter trained and everything). Also, this cat really, really liked my husband. I mean, he couldn’t even leave the room without the cat trying to follow and put its paws up on his ankles. I stayed home with the cat the next day until animal control came, and that part was absolutely horrible. My son was home on spring break, which made it even worse (how do you explain to a five-year-old why someone is taking kitty to the pound, when every single child’s movie that features a pound portrays it as a BAD PLACE??)
Well, we debated, and debated, and finally decided that we couldn’t bear the thought of this cat getting possibly euthanized if no one claimed him. After a week, we went back to the animal shelter and officially adopted him. His name is now Kansuke, and he is settling in very nicely (after he got rid of the cold he caught at the shelter).
I have been writing, despite all this; working on Promises, Like Tears and This Chosen Fate kind of in tandem. When I hit a block in one story, I switch to the other. By the time I hit a hard place in the other, I’m ready to continue the first one. I’ve also spent quite a bit of time on Amphiptere’s Vision, tweaking the skillsets. “Sandboxing” them, I call it; where instead of coming up with a straightforward list of abilities, I create a set of “tools”, skills that can be combined to create the individual abilities. It gives the player the opportunity to create their own “style” of fighting, hunting, building, etc. It also forces the player to think about what the various tools do, and to anticipate what might happen if one tool is combined with another. I want the player to “know” his skillsets nearly as well as the character does, and to be creative in how he employs them. Breaks the bash-bash-bash-loot monotony of grinding that most MMO’s seem to have.
I’ve heard back on a few submissions, mostly the standard not-right-for-us-at-this-time letters. The few more personal notes I’ve gotten have been encouraging, however (as is the fact that I’ve even gotten personal notes at this stage in the game). I’ve sent out a few more and hope to hear back in the next few weeks. The agent hunt continues.
That’s about it on the real life front. More to come later.
Tags: agents and editors, business of writing, the real world
Posted by nightphoenix on Apr 2, 2011 in
Output,
Process This week, being spring break, I knew I wasn’t going to get much done in the way of actual writing. So, instead I’ve spent a little time concentrating on Amphiptere’s Vision, the MMORPG the hubby and I’ve been working on. It was inspired partially by World of Warcraft and by a turn-based, cartoonish RPG called Dofus, plus a heavy dose of experience from playing Achaea, a text-based MUD. The game I imagine is what’s called “sandbox” style: heavily role-playing dependent, where players can directly affect the world. Players build the houses, towns, roads, and cities; players create and run the organizations; players generate the big conflicts in the game. There are 61 discrete sentient races, 21 of which are playable. The abilities are many and varied, and a lot of the skillsets require creativity and imagination to use. Read more…
Tags: worldbuilding
Posted by nightphoenix on Mar 21, 2011 in
Process Actually, this post is about dreams. Specifically, the small and sometimes nonsensical details that dreams create.
Many of my story ideas come from dreams. Usually two or three dreams that have been fleshed out, expanded upon, and changed where needed to make a coherent plot. Most often, the main element a dream will leave me with is a mood. How does this story feel? What emotions does it evoke? The more detailed dreams will provide me with several characters and maybe even some plot elements, but that mood is what I take the most time in analyzing and writing down.
But often, my dreams aren’t coherent enough, detailed enough, or removed enough from life to really use. What I call “story dreams” actually happen only once or twice a month, if that. Dreams where I wake up and say, “Man, that would make a great story!” and I rush to write it down. Such were the beginnings of Dragon Singer, Briar Rose, Dreamcatcher, Mask of Eldarmarch…the list goes on. Honestly, if they happened any more frequently, either I’d need to be a much faster writer, or my queue would be much, much longer (than it already is).
However, even the fuzzy, wacky dreams can yield ideas in the form of details. Details of life, of people, of feeling; stuff that sort of passes you by when you’re awake. Sometimes things like that are easier to notice in dreams because they occur bigger than normal, stranger than normal, or simply out of context.
For example, I’ve been having a lot of dreams lately relating to the nuclear problems they are having in Japan right now. Radioactive stuff and refugee type themes. Radiation frightens me. You can’t see it, hear it, smell it, or feel it, and you don’t sense anything off if it’s hitting you. Plus, nothing but distance can shield you it. And it kills in a rather painful, horrible way. That’s up there with velociraptors and tiny dark spaces on Nightphoenix’s DoNotWant list.
The latest in this dream series involved me taking care of a bunch of hairless rabbits who’d been exposed, and then trying and failing to stop some overlord from taking over a small imaginary country. (Yes, even in the dream, it was imaginary. And yet, its loss was terrible. Hard to explain.) I was traveling with the refugees, and this monarch of a neighboring friendly nation was giving the refugee children little bags full of tiny toys and candy. Specifically, red apple-spice candy. There was a moment where I was watching the line of sad refugees shuffle along past me, and all around was this miasma of sweet spicy apple-y scent on the air. For some reason, it was that smell and everything it represented that really made it sad for me. That’s what really stayed with me when I woke up.
That’s what good details do. They call attention to what’s really important in a scene in a subtle, in-world way. They meld all those abstract, powerful emotions into an object, a texture, a moment, something tangible the audience can take away with them. “That was a great love story” isn’t nearly as powerful as “I bawled my eyes out when he handed her that ring”. They might not remember anything else about the story, but they’ll remember the ring and the feelings associated with it. Think about the Phantom of the Opera’s rose with a black ribbon, or Joker’s joker playing card. Significant details often become symbols, reoccurring themes that crop up again and again in a story. (And any details mentioned when describing a room, or object, or person, ought to be significant: ie, if the protagonist always wears a blue headband, that should play some later role in the story…if only to identify or mark her).
So, today, I am reminded to mine my dreams for details missed in the waking world. Like hairless rabbits. And apple-spice candy.
Tags: brainstorming, dreams, ideas
Posted by nightphoenix on Mar 14, 2011 in
News You may have noticed that some of the categories and tags for the blog have changed. I went through and cleaned house a bit, as it were. I’ve decided to take the blog in the direction of documenting the creative process, both in general and specifically in my own work. I’m not retroactively changing or deleting any posts…just giving things a direction to take from now on.
In the tags, I deleted a number of redundant and rarely-used ones, and combined a few others. Notably, got rid of both the artwork and Mortal Instruments tags. Made the artwork a category instead of a tag, and the other…well, for some reason the MI tag was getting hits every day (almost since the day I created it, mind). There was only ever one post in that tag, making the sheer number and consistency of hits a bit mind boggling. I suspect a bot was responsible. I really don’t like bots snooping around. Don’t worry, the post hasn’t gone anywhere…I just nixed the tag.
Categories have been redone to reflect the new direction, and are, I hope, somewhat self-explanatory. Input is what I absorb in the form of books, movies, TV shows, etc…that which fuels the process. Output is whatever I’m working on, the results of the process. And there’s the process itself; how influence, inspiration, and imagination combine to make something new.
My next goals are:
1) Update the Projects page. Add some story ideas that have emerged in the last few months. Reorganize to reflect the current queue.
2) Update the Wands page. Add pictures as needed. Start the process of writing descriptions for each wand.
3) Make the first “official” creative process post.
Also I may, in the future, create a separate artwork page that showcases a bit more of my art.
Tags: the blog
Posted by nightphoenix on Mar 10, 2011 in
News I just realized I haven’t updated this blog in about a month. That’s both irresponsible and inexcusable of me.
I’ve been productive, which I suppose is part of the updating problem. Have plotted out the Waters story, and decided to give it an actual title: This Chosen Fate. Have also written nearly a full chapter of Promises, Like Tears. I’m getting a much better handle on Naeth’s character this time around. He’s actually supposed to be sort of annoying and not really all that likable when you first meet him, which will make his later improvements stand out all the more. I’ve been debating theology with friends, which easily turns into a time-sucker with me.
Also, one of the blogs I follow regularly, Slacktivist, moved to a new internet home last week, which sparked a…ruckus. Very quick sum-up: Within the community of commenters and lurkers that follow Slacktivist, many people had objections to the content of the new home site, Patheos, and felt that they could not in good conscience support such a site. The community seemed ready to split over the move. This is the type of situation that moves at internet speed and can only be kept up with if one is willing to follow 1000+ comments or so across the space of about 5 separate threads on two different websites. However, the community seems to have settled on a compromise: Fred will stay at Patheos to be a sort of light in the darkness, per se, but he’s handed the old space over to a few of the regulars from the community as a safe space for those who don’t want to or cannot bear to deal with the vile stuff on Patheos. Which, I have to say, is pretty awesome of him. But…following all the drama has taken up a lot of time this week.
Have also been cleaning the apartment, which is of course a never-ending job.
However, the truth is…I’m not sure where to take this blog. I definitely want it to remain about the writing, but really what it’s become is a sort of “update on me and my writing” space. Which is great (if a bit narcissistic) for me…but how interesting is that for other people? I’d like to give this place more of a direction, so people can come here and know more or less the sort of topics to expect.
I have two sort of hazy ideas. One, have the main theme be “the creative process”. The process of getting ideas. Turning those ideas into stories (or art, or…well, those are my two areas). Brainstorming. Worldbuilding. I could get even more specific, like: The Creative Process for Fantasy Writers. Or something. This could also incorporate the “real life meets writing” and “how such-and-such impacted me as a writer” posts that I do every so often.
The other idea would be to focus on the more nuts and bolts aspects of writing, like GMC and problematic plots and such. And how certain books and movies either succeed or fail based on these things. That’s kind of what Writing Excuses is, which makes it really interesting to me…but it’d essentially make this into a how-to blog. Dunno if I like that.
Anyway, I’ll be giving this more thought over the next few days. Just wanted to check in and say, no, I haven’t fallen off the face of the planet.
Tags: goals, ideas, the blog, the real world
Posted by nightphoenix on Feb 10, 2011 in
Input,
Novels,
Output This week I started shopping Hands, Like Secrets around to some agents, and believe it or not, I’ve already had a request for a partial! I actually heard from this agent the day after I queried them. In case you aren’t familiar with the publishing business, such a response is jaw-droppingly fast. Of course, I’ve also already received my first “form” rejection from a difference agency, so I guess it all balances out. But again, fast.
Interestingly, the agent who requested the partial was one who requires a writing sample with a query. The agency I got a rejection from only wanted the query itself. This means that the one who was interested saw some of the writing itself, and the one that wasn’t, didn’t. If this pattern keeps up, that will tell me that my writing is compelling and my query is not…meaning I’ll need to revise the query letter. But I’ll climb that ladder when I get there, I guess. I’m cautiously optimistic at this point.
Meanwhile, I’ve begun the process of revisiting the first draft of the second and third books. The first thing I noticed was that the writing isn’t as bad as I was afraid it was. Having said that, yeah…it needs a whole lot of work. Second realization was, man, how this story has evolved since I wrote this draft. Still using mage and cleric as terms, still third person, still working out kinks in Raphel’s character, for instance. Most of my scenes don’t have nearly enough conflict. Stakes don’t feel high enough. Motivation feel very contrived in places. Things work out too neatly.
Having said that, general pacing is okay. Secondary characters are believable and generally deep enough…no major tweaks needed. Scenes are more or less in the right order. My main tasks are going to be raising stakes, revising Naeth’s character, and revising the Keeper’s character. I will also need to weave bits of Caosgi in when my characters are on Dheu, and bits of Dheu in when they are on Caosgi…otherwise, it’s going to feel like two smaller books smashed together. I need to weave some flashbacks or dreams about Saeli’s Aschamon days in there, too, so the second book will connect back to the first. Tie Saeli’s feelings about Brendan to her feelings about Naeth.
It feels like a lot of work, but I think once I really get going, it won’t be so bad. Been working on this story long enough that I have a pretty good handle on where it needs to go.
I’m also going to start brainstorming and plotting The Waters, so I have something else in the works if the trilogy doesn’t get picked up right away. I chose that one because of the ones I’m really itching to do next, it’s the most straightforward. I love Raphel to death, but he makes me want to write an awesome “bad boy” who actually is the hero…not just masquerading as one. Alex Merrett is that character. Then I’ll do Windwaker, or maybe by that time I’ll be ready to work on Mask of Eldarmarch again. Dragon Singer is so complex and will require so much research that this is not the time to tackle it. Like Briar Rose, it needs to percolate for a while longer.
Again, apologies for the sparseness of posts. I’m going to make an effort to post something at least once a week, but I’m not promising anything. I’m not one for “check-in” posts…I only post when I have something to blather about.
Now…back to work.
Tags: business of writing, editing and revisions, goals, Shades
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