scribbling damselfly @ LJ

I've just come from catching up with my A&U editor, who said so many lovely things about my writing that my ego is currently too large to fit inside my rather humble apartment and is consequently perched on the rooftop throwing stones at passersby and singing bawdy songs at the top of its metaphorical lungs. Everybody should have the chance to work with such lovely people is all I can say.

Of course, I'm sure I'll be gnashing my teeth over all the squiggly, niggly, consequence-altering changes I'll need to wrangle into submission by the end of the edits. Not to mention all the stupid little writerly habits that plague me. Exhibit A:

first page of the manuscript and already a reminder to avoid repetition of words - oops!

I have been so astoundingly successful in not thinking about Pledged that I have genuinely forgotten everything and anything that happens in the manuscript,¹ and thus I managed to inspire no small suspicion in my editor that I was simply pretending to be Deborah Kalin and had the real author locked up in a basement somewhere. Er, oops. Still, can't accuse me of not doing my best to come at these edits "fresh"!

One thing I was sorta refusing to think about was how the ending of Pledged would be received. Because I love the ending, love it in a hill-I'll-die-on kind of way, and I so wanted my editor to love it as much as I did, and what if she didn't…?

But look!²

BOOYAH

1. Truefax. Just this Saturday gone Tessa eyeballed me in alarm and filled me in on the ending I'd apparently written. I plead, er, distraction. Or something. [↩]
2. And no, blood is not the last word of the book. No spoilers here. Tess, I hope you're proud of the restraint I just showed. [↩]

Tomorrow, it begins.

"It" in this case would be the publication edits on Book 2 of The Binding series. Just in time for Christmas! Which is good, as it means there'll be a whole week during which I only have one job, not two. Almost like a real holiday

It's also just in time to coincide with a rather high-pressure period at the dayjob, otherwise known as a two-month examination, during which period I need to get a minimum of 95% to pass. This is distinctly less good. But unavoidable. C'est la vie.

This means tonight is (probably) the last night I'll be able to get words on the faerie novel for a whiles to come. Poor faerie novel. It's been picked up and put down so many times now… No wonder I have no idea what's going on in that story.

And, because these articles rock, I give you Justine Musk on why you need to write like a bad girl, part one:

We are all born into ways of thinking that we take for granted. We are raised within certain belief systems. We take the dominating voices of the adults around us and internalize them until those perceptions of us become what we are to ourselves.

But when you become your own rebellion you say a healthy Fuck You to all of that.

And part two:

The double standard for selfishness still amazes me. The same culture that celebrates Ayn Rand’s “virtues of selfishness” will turn around and call women selfish and not exactly mean it as a compliment. Call a man ’selfish’ and he’ll shrug his shoulders; call a woman ’selfish’ and she’ll feel so shamed and cut to the core she’ll twist herself inside out to prove otherwise.

And to be a writer, or any artist, is to be inherently selfish. You must claim time for yourself, away from family and friends and jobs and so-called productive activity. You must claim that your art is important because it is important to you. You must make it a priority even though years will pass before you achieve anything that other people might recognize as ’success’, assuming you achieve it at all.

Yowzer! Can you believe I was worried, when I set up the giveaways, that nobody would actively request my book? Clearly, I underestimated the lure of free stuff.

In the interests of tab-closing, your writerly link of the day is to BookEnds on writers and their process:

What I told her, and what I’m going to tell you now, is that these revisions and working with her editor this way, as well as working with me and her critique partners, was simply a part of her writing process. It was how she worked to create the books she wrote and to make them the best they could be. I also told her that I’ve rarely met an author who was happy with her writing process.

I particularly like that last part. Jessica goes on to compare a handful of different processes (I fall most closely into the latter category she mentions), and once again I'm reminded that my constant carping about the inefficiencies of my process is simply a "grass is greener" malady. The inefficiencies exist in other processes, they're just at different stages.

Writers. We ALL suffer from our own brains.

And, to redress the unbearable cuteness of the kitten video I posted the other day, I now give you cats on a slide:

Today I have most excellent news for people what like free books: I have some to give away!

I found some spare copies of Shadow Queen I didn't know I had,¹ and now they must be sent to good homes.

Since we all know what happened last time I tried to choose random winners,² in the interests of sparing myself some pain, I've set up the competition through Goodreads, who will choose the winners for me. If you're not a member over there, it's free to create an account in order to enter the draw.

I've set up two separate giveaways: one is open to residents of Australia & New Zealand, and one is open worldwide.³ The winners of each giveaway will be chosen by December 20 (Goodreads time), and I aim to have the books in the post by December 22 (Australian time).

There are four books up for grabs, two trade paperbacks and two mass market paperbacks — I'm figuring one winner of each giveaway will receive the trade paperback version and the other will receive the mass market paperback version.

So get to it⁴ — and good luck

ETA: It looks like the actual pages for the giveaway aren't visible yet, hopefully only on account of not yet being approved by the powers that be at Goodreads. That should only take another 24 hours at most.

ETA2: Okay, links are now most definitely live. Go!

1. they were lurking in a box where I oh-so-conveniently packed them for the move down [↩]
2. namely, I failed abysmally at it [↩]
3. because I feel for my poor international friends who want to read my book but can't get their hands on a copy [↩]
4. at the moment the giveaways are pending approval by Goodreads staff, but as I understand it when they go live, throwing your name in the ring is as simple as clicking the button marked Enter To Win. [↩]

First: I cannot resist this kitten.

Second: I appear to have acquired a Google Wave account. Um…what do I do with it?¹

Third: how many of you are on GoodReads and how many are you are on LibraryThing? Or some other type of service of which I am ignorant? I ask because I have found a couple of copies of Shadow Queen which have been hiding in a box since the move, but it is clearly time they stopped skulking and started earning their keep by being out in the world and being pretty, damnit. Just because their author is shy and retiring does not mean they are allowed to follow suit! So, I am contemplating the best way to distribute them into the wild, and I have been thinking that a GoodReads promotion might reach more people than blog readers.² Thoughts? Suggestions? Totally unrelated comments?

Finally (for now): Lately a lot of people I know have been making comments about feeling guilty for reading my book without paying for a copy. So I've gone and added it as a FAQ. Short version: don't kick yourself. The point of a story is to be read, and there's more than one way to pay an author.

1. The username, for those who are interested in these things, is my name all run together. I know you're clever enough to work that out. (Are we supposed to protect google wave addresses from harvesting the same way we protect email addresses? Am I showing my ignorance here?) [↩]
2. Who, let's face it, are ALL OF YOU very good children who have already read the book, right? [↩]

A strange and wondrous thing happened yesterday morning: my apartment block has finally limped into the 1990's.

That's right: I now have honest-to-god TV reception.¹

And once I'd dutifully tuned all the channels, it took me all of TEN SECONDS to discover that there was absolutely nothing on but strident and condescending advertising.

Man, I have not missed that bombardment of sitcom-studded advertising one bit.²

1. Not, you know, the digital channels. They're beyond the reach of my doddering old TV set. It's not just my apartment building that struggles with embracing the future, it seems. [↩]
2. Bet I fall back into the habit of having it on in the background anyway. [↩]

Here's a malapropism that made me chortle all day yesterday:

"…in other words, the [object] is [a thing], as succinct from [that other thing]"¹

Succinct? SUCCINCT?

OH, MR ATTORNEY. YOU MEAN DISTINCT.

Now, I'll grant you, there's a passing aural resemblance on account of that -inct suffix business, but I don't care to admit that as a valid excuse for gettin' it wrong. Not when we can safely assume that the author of the sentence in question passed not only primary and secondary education levels but also some (usually respected) form of tertiary education. Surely, somewhere along the way, he learnt the difference between a word that means clearly distinguishable and another that means concise?²

1. Boring technical terms have been changed to lovely, bland, non-identifying labels for the sake of, you know, keeping my job. [↩]
2. And after writing the above, it occurs to me that the attorney, after all that schooling, probably has dreadful handwriting or is Far Too Busy and Important to waste time writing and typing his own letters, so he probably has them transcribed via dictation and a legal secretary. But you know what? I'm not cutting that secretary any slack either. Secretary at least passed high school, secretary should know better. And the attorney should proof-read his correspondence. [↩]

Yup, it's a signing opportunity:

When: Tuesday 22 December 2009 @ 10:30am
Where: Angus & Robertson @ Westfield Kotara, Newcastle

I'll be available for at least a good hour¹, so if you have a copy of Shadow Queen or Postscripts #18 you'd like me to scrawl on, then stop by and entertain me.

There may also be a signing in Brisbane, since I'm going to be up that way over the Christmas period, and another down in Melbourne in the new-ish year — I'll let you all know more just as soon as I know it.

1. it may be two; I can't actually remember offhand how long I promised them — I'm organised that way! [↩]

Today's grocery bill: $33¹
Today's alcohol bill: $60

Now, granted, it was a most half-hearted grocery shop, and will not last me an entire week (and follows on the heels of a rather more thorough stock-up type effort last week), and the alcohol will last longer than a week, but still…I can't help but feel that my calorific priorities are not shown to best advantage this week.

But you know, I can live with that.

1. At least $5 of which went towards the purchase of a corkscrew, which will come as no surprise to those who follow my Twitter stream [↩]

Today I realised — entirely out of nowhere — that I can't remember my student number any more.

I don't know why this surprised me. It has been an entire decade since I graduated from uni,¹ after all, and it's not like I've needed to know said number even once since then. But that number marked everything to do with my days for so long, I quoted it so often, I scrawled it on papers and assignments and theses, that it felt like it was part of my DNA.

And now I don't even remember when I forgot it.

(I wonder what the memory cells dedicated to remembering my student number have now been put to use remembering in its place?)

1. actually, this month marks the decade – hey, lookit that [↩]

Today's word I didn't know before is unasinous, which is not appearing in any online dictionaries for me, but apparently (according to my local newspaper) means "equally stupid".

I like this word. I plan to use it at the first available opportunity, preferably one that also involves the chance to get a nice, scornful twist in my lip as I do so. I may even throw in a disdainful sniff. We'll have to see how it plays.

Serendipitously, this word rather aptly describes every possible direction I can currently think of for the faerie novel. I suspect this feeling is caused in no small part by the suspicion that every single word I have written over the past three days is nothing but backstory, and painfully dull expositiony backstory that has no fate except to be cut at that.

I tell you, the dreaded middle-novel-blahs is lasting a long time on this one.

Clearly, it's time for something (or someone?) to explode.

Courtesy of a recent dental visit, and Melbourne's current baking climate (and my non-possession of an airconditioner or windows that open), I'm afraid my brain has melted. Or at least, something is dribbling out my ears. Could be some other body organ that has liquefied and risen to the top, I suppose.

So, in lieu of content, I present to you text messages I have sent:¹

• i shall regret nothing! we shall fight them on the beaches!
   
• there is no cheese! moar wine will solve this existential crisis!
   
• Can only conclude that I have developed super powers. AT LAST!
   
• Nope, you cannot distract me with your ludicrous theories of visualisation. Clearly I am god. Bwa-ha-ha!
   
• I find you safe passage through the marshes!
   
• Oops. Trivialities, the downfall of so many a tyrant in training.
   
• I found chibi!

(Be very glad I do not have your mobile number. (Except, you know, those of you whose numbers I do have.))

1. entirely devoid of context, because they're more fun that way [↩]

Good writing day on Saturday, dreadful one yesterday. So it goes. (Here's hoping this afternoon's words are a little less stubborn.)

I blame IKEA.

I have not been inside an IKEA store since, well, I'm not sure I've ever been inside one. If I have, it was many, many years ago. And by that I mean at least one decade, if not two. Which, given my memory archives are labelled "Today," and "ALLLLLLL other times" (and both drawers are equally empty) I'm sure you'll agree may as well count as never.

I have been in the Helsinki airport, during my increasingly bemused exploration of which I recall wondering if the plane hadn't perhaps made an unscheduled landing in an IKEA store instead of the airport it promised me, but that's another story.

Although that other story also features the same complete inability to find an exit. At one point, I genuinely considered sending a text to my fellow Melbournites: in IKEA. Doors suddenly all fake! Cannot even find door I entered by! Real exit an urban myth! Beset by sentient furniture or delusions, can't tell which. Send search & rescue, stat!

And the people! So many arguments about the choice of bookshelves and bathroom cabinets! My favourite was the woman berating her mother: "We're here to get rid of stuff, Mum! Not clutter the house up more!" Oh! And the woman berating a poor salesboy after learning that the furniture did not come pre-assembled. "What? It's ALL flatpack? Even the rollers have to be put on by hand? But that's ridiculous!"

I mean, seriously. Where has she been living this past, what, forty years? Even I know IKEA's selling point is THE JOYS OF FLATPACK!

In an experience I suspect is common to many first-time and even veteran shoppers of this behemoth of a store, I managed to acquire exactly none of the items I wanted, and a handful of items I…didn't know I wanted. Including a peace lily. Of COURSE I wanted a peace lily, right?

Last weekend, a friend gave me a 3D card in the shape of a bird.

Have you ever seen one of these? I hadn't. Folded one way, it's a flat, stylized head and wings motif, with space for some writing. But unfolding it opens up the web of paper that forms the bird's body.

I hung it on an empty curtain hook in my living room, so it could see the sky. Because birds like the sky, after all.

And every day since then, at least once a day, I catch a glimpse of it out of the corner of my eye — usually moving in a stray draft — and without fail the following train of thoughts run through my head:

Fark! What's that?

Did something just scuttle behind the curtain?

No, wait, there it is, the brazen bastard of a bug is setting up shop on the curtain hook. Damn, and I don't have any bug spray.

Hang on, that's too big to be a bug — oh fark, don't tell me an actual mammal has got into the flat…Oh.

Wait.

It's the paper bird.

I remember now.

I think my cup of tea is giving me hayfever. Can you develop a sudden and inexplicable allergy to tea? Oh farkit, if I'm now allergic to tea that's it, it's all over.

Go on without me! I'm done for! Save yourselves!

Ahem.

I have been meaning to post for a couple of days now, but I've also been trying to get my days' words before posting. This hasn't been going all that well, of late. I don't know what's up with the book (or my brain, or some no man's land where the two are attempting to meet), but it's like pulling teeth. Deep-rooted teeth. Bones of the world type teeth.

So today I come bearing writerly links. Given that it's NaNoWriMo, the internet is full of them! The theme appears to be outlining, the reason for which will doubtless become clear if it's not already.

Justine talks about the book in her head vs the book she wrote, which post came as a bit of an epiphany for me.

When I first started trying to write novels that process really bothered me. It drove me nuts that I couldn’t capture what I’d been imagining on the page. I thought it meant I was a terrible writer. But now I know it’s just part of the process and I enjoy it.

I've been obsessed with outlining and planning in advance, lately — a mindset into which I routinely sink any time the current alpha draft hits a snag and I can't figure out what's hobbling me. If only I had planned it out first! If only I were more efficient as a writer! Next novel, I'm definitely doing an outline! If only this, if only that. I need to remember that outliners face inefficiencies too (different ones, obviously) and comparing the two when I only really have experience of the one is foolish at best. Give me however long it takes me to push through this current phase of the blahs, and I'll start another novel without an outline.¹ I'm incurable like that.

Glenda Larke explains how she writes a novel:

People ask me how many revisions I do – honestly, I dunno. Some parts that don't work well have too many rewrites to count. Other scenes hardly change at all from the moment I wrote them. One thing I can tell you – for me, writing is not easy. Nor quick. And everybody is different.

I like this post, because it's very similar to my process — and there's nothing I like more, particularly when I'm not happy with the way I'm working, than to hear that my process is not singular. Although I don't, as a rule, go back and read what I've written — because if I do that, I invariably get caught up in revising.

Diana Peterfreund talks about the four-act structure:

I am a fan of the four act structure. I think envisioning your story like that is one of the easiest ways to avoid the “sagging middle.” Even if you do it naturally, going back and making sure that this is what you have done can often help you avoid later complications from bad planning. (I’m a big planner, by the way. BIG.)

And another link from Diana, which I discovered when I stumbled across her post on the four-act structure: plot boards.

That last link is actually to a category page, rather than a single post, but there's a wealth of material in there. The idea of the plot board appeals to me: it's outlining, but it's outlining AFTER the alpha draft, which is about the only time I can do any detailed outlining. Plus, all those post-it notes and bright colours speak right to my stationery-loving, obsessive-compulsive soul. This is one of the reasons I wanted Scrivener, back when I didn't have a Mac, because the corkboard feature lends itself beautifully to this. The faerie novel isn't up to a full plot board yet, obviously, but I'm trying to be virtuous and fill out those little plot cards as I go. It's going to make starting those revisions so much easier!

And, if you have any links on outlining you think might help me in my efforts to procrastinate from the darn faerie novel share away!

1. Although I do have a nebulous idea of what the story will involve in my head before I start, and I usually develop a nebulous approximation of an outline during the writing of the alpha draft. [↩]

For some reason, the scar on my cheek is burning burning burning today. Perhaps I am developing mutant powers at last? Here's hoping. (Dear mutating genes: I don't need invisibility — I've pretty much already perfected the art of not being noticed as it is. And mind-reading is right out, I really don't want to know what anyone else is thinking, it's quite noisy enough in my head as it is. Flying, on the other hand, would be awesome. Or maybe some sort of camouflage/chameleon schtick? Or even just telekinesis.)

Consequently (the logic of this thought progression makes no sense, even to me), I have decided it's time I shared with you my position on a few matters that are utterly trivial and can make no lick of difference to anyone, even me. Ready?

1. Beards: In general, I don't like them. But this is because the vast majority of beards are dreadful. A good beard looks great — but a good beard is a lot of work, and it involves more finicky shaving than just shaving your face clean can ever involve. A good beard, as far as I'm concerned, is kept trimmed short, and doesn't grow up to your eyeballs and down to your shirt collar. A beard is for outlining your jaw, not for attempting to pass as some kind of human version of a woolly mammoth.
    
2. Romantic Comedies: Constitute cruel and unusual punishment under the terms of the Geneva Convention, and should be outlawed. Misogynistic, patronising, and actively involved in setting up unhealthy role models of what a relationship should be. Give me giant exploding robots any day.
    
3. HAN SHOT FIRST.
    
4. This amused me. Mainly because any chart that puts me at the position of "least geekiest" is (apart from obviously leaving out a large portion of society) alright by me.
    
5. I want piano stairs! Okay, not in my apartment block, because that corridor is plenty noisy enough already, but there needs to be more whimsy in urban design.

The ironing of bedsheets, followed by silence on the blog? You guessed right, I had house guests this weekend. I'll spare you the details, except to say 3 year olds, even when sick, have enough energy to power the turning of the world.¹

Today started with a visit to the post office to pick up a package which turned out to be from Allen & Unwin, and to have the size, shape and heft of a manuscript. Edits on Pledged, I thought, and dutifully lugged the package in to work so I could lug it to the library after work and get started this very night. I'm smack in the middle of a persnickety, detailed, involved and quite frankly annoying report at the dayjob, and between trying to sort that out in time and the distracting thought of the edits lurking unstarted on my desk, the inside of my head today has been a bit of a warzone. Concentration and focus were the first bystanders caught in the crossfire; coherence has been mortally wounded, and cogency currently thinks it's a duck.

Luckily for the sake of my sanity, when I knocked off work and opened the package I found, not the edits, but the edited manuscript for Shadow Queen, coming home to roost.² So glad I carried that halfway around Melbourne and back today.

1. In fact, have scientists investigated this? It's not the vestiges of the Big Bang, or gravitational forces, or the great battery that is the sun pouring energy through the world that keeps us spinning — it's all those blasted 3 year olds. With their running and dancing and gasping and jumping and squealing and singing and just the sheer, impossible wide-opened-ness of their eyes. [↩]
2. Er, what do you do with these things? So far I've abandoned it on the living room floor. This should remain the status quo for, oh, at least a week. [↩]

I have spent the past two evenings washing my bedsheets (not because there's a huge quantity of unwashed bedsheets that have been quietly attempting to achieve sentience in a corner of my laundry, but because I have so little hanging space to my name I have to wash the few sheets I have in batches) and last night I even caught myself — you may want to sit down — ironing them.

Now there's a facet of my personality I wasn't aware existed.

I'm afraid (cover your ears eyes, children) I had to have a wee drink to cushion the blow of that revelation.

Next thing you know I'll be thinking activities like vacuumming regularly and dusting are worthwhile ways to spend my time, and I might even start thinking of cooking as a fun pastime AND IT'LL ALL END IN TEARS BEFORE BEDTIME. No, wait, that's not how that morality tale goes, is it? Oh, close enough.

This follows on from my electronic spring-cleaning spree last weekend, which saw me upgrade to Snow Leopard. I opted for the wipe and fresh install option, and am still finding bits and bobs I could have sworn I had backed up but, uh, apparently not. (Note to self: there's a reason why the upgrade option is easier.) Still, my hard-drive has been restored to zingy and error-free status, and it's all just decluttering, right? Right?

Today at work I pointed out a tagline that was aiming for — and singularly failing to use — the plural possessive. Worse, I did it with frustrated hand gestures and even (oh dear lord) finished up with a wordless cry.

You know what this means, don't you? That's right: I've cemented my reputation.

In TV-land, girls cement their reputation by doing dreadfully uninhibited things at office christmas parties. Me? I point out apostrophe atrocities.

Oh yeah. I live on the edge.

Since the move to Melbourne, I have been living sort of sans TV. I say sort of because these days most of the TV channels put some or all of their shows up on the net, so I've been watching the odd show via broadband. I also have a TV itself (the problem is not ownership so much as lack of reception compounded by a deep-seated apathy which prevents me from bothering to find even a simple solution to said lack of reception)¹, so I do watch some TV via DVD.

Lately, hip and alert-to-the-pulse-of-the-now creature that I am, I've been watching Buffy The Vampire Slayer.

There's a lot I like about the show — a female superhero not least among them — although there is also a lot of moaning talking about the liking of boys in between the slaying of vampires. So far there's enough sharp characterisation and humour — and vampire slaying — that the talking about boys hasn't overly worn me out, at least.

Normally I watch TV shows and movies just for a break, a chance to enjoy a story without worrying about editing it, or analysing it, but watching Buffy has got me thinking about transitions and the balance of information between writer and character and audience. Nothing coherent at this point, so I won't treat you to my muddled, confused ramblings just yet.

One thought I did have, however, which is utterly inane and therefore clearly worth sharing: do all American shows feature at least one christmas miracle episode?

I'm trying to think of Australian series which go in for the christmas miracle episode malarky, and I'm sure there are examples out there, but they're not coming to mind. Maybe it's because christmas falls in our summer, which is reruns season; or maybe it's because our TV channels are mostly chock-full of American and British series; or maybe it's because I'm absent-minded.

1. This last fascinates pretty much everyone. How can you live without TV? I hear pretty much on a daily basis. The answer is, er, I don't, really, and also, there's a whole lotta crap on the air waves. Watching TV via the net filters out so much in the way of advertising, and also in the way of shows that I have no interest in, but would have watched simply because the TV was on in the background. Frankly, there is not that much incentive to concoct a coat-hanger antenna just to bombard myself with yet more advertising. [↩]