Thursday, December 3, 2009

Five Things Make A Post

Update!



1. The novel is done.

No, I'm serious. Like, submitting-it-for-copy-editing-proof-through-CreateSpace-as-we-speak-because-it's-cheaper-than-printing-it-at-Monk's sort of done.

I don't think my hands have stopped shaking since yesterday morning.



2. Speaking of which! Although I am highly tech-oriented, when it comes to PDF's, I become like any clueless twat in high heels sitting on her car in the hopes that some brave person will come and save her. I.e., calling all techies. I need to resize a 8.5 x 11 MS Word file into a 5.06 x 7.81 PDF file, pronto. I'm having issues with an image file as well, but I think I can fix that myself. The document itself is the thing giving me a headache.

Anyone who thinks they have the answer should whip me an email, a Facebook message, or a text. Much appreciation in advance.



3. Right now I am reading:
  • Science Fiction and Philosophy
  • How I Paid For College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship, & Musical Theater by Marc Acito
  • King Rat by China Mieville
  • The Saga of the Renunciates by Marion Zimmer Bradley
  • Shakespeare's Twelfth Night
  • Tolstoy's War And Peace
My brain is full.



4. Speaking of brains, I'm letting mine have a few days off between projects. Calder's story is scratching at my subconscious like a dog at a door, but him and I both know that after writing a complete novel in 31 days, you need a break. It'll give me a bit of impetus to rewire my brain back into sci-fi mode, as well. A month of writing about gay sex and the Devil can really mess you up!

So far I have the impression that this project isn't going to be an art-and-words thing like most of my previous novels. I know what, for instance, Calder and Margot look like in my head, but it doesn't feel like a thing I can (or want to) translate to a sketchbook.

Another bit of the story that isn't really relevant to the quest appeared, through a look through an old sketchbook. It isn't really relevant to the quest, but it certainly provides some local colour. All I know about it is the acronym SuRGE, which I have inferred means something to the effect of Society for the Use of Responsible Genetic Experimentation. The end result is that I get to write about monsters and freak-people, so I'm happy no matter what the damn acronym actually is. (It's coming across as a very weird symbiosis of MCA Hogarth's Paradox universe and Mieville's concept of the Remade factories. Not that either of those references mean anything to my readers.)

I am also amused by Calder's existence as a character in general. I recall, as a very young writer, promising that I would never give a character such a mundane name as Nick or Anthony or Mitch... and, well, in Whispers we have a Nicholas and a Felix and an Anthony, and in the Brickyard project, we've got a Mitch Calder, an Ernest Taylor, and a Margot Stephenson. This is a far cry from my early days of unpronounceable character names -- one memorable story had a Chenarachck and a Kherrylchna, for chrissake. (Granted, things in the tyl universe are still named things like Tymmeickanamaleik and Hashashyyimsolhanathol, but I don't expect people to actually be able to say those. Especially if I can't. Tam and Shay will work just fine, thank you.)



5. Twenty one days and four hours until Christmas!



That's all I got.

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

VICTORY!

NaNoWriMo is over!

Final wordcount for November 2009: 77,121 words.

Number of essays written for school in November: 5.

Amount of caffeine consumed: Unmeasurable.

Level of sanity: Hovering around batshit fucking crazy.

Victory song: Dragostea Din Tea.

Words left to write: Approximately 13,000.

Bedtime: NOW.

Monday, November 30, 2009

Writing and Brain and Such

1. I was talking with a friend about the novel yesterday, over dinner. I explained some of the theme sort of like this.

A lot of the inspiration for the world model, and for Nick himself (i.e., the Devil) came from such works as Daimonic Reality and American Gods, as well as religious myths from all over the world. I was noticing a trend -- which was applied magnificently in American Gods -- that implied that gods are not all wise, all knowing, or omnipotent. Gods can be killed, they can be tricked, they can be manipulated, and they don't necessarily know everything. Mythology has them going on quests to attain knowledge and omnipotence. When they do become omnipotent in the stories, it's often flawed -- humans can sometimes trick the gods into revealing things that they know. Now, you could argue that with true omnipotence, the gods would know that the humans were going to do such a thing, but that just makes us question whether the gods are in control of their own destinies.

The premise I've created for Whispers In The Dark is that even the gods don't know everything about the world. They each have a flawed, egocentric view of it, warped by their personal mythologies and the things they created. Nick isn't necessarily a god, but he's close. He tells Gunnar what he knows about the way the world works, and it's left up to the reader to ascertain whether the Devil is lying. The friend I was speaking to is very pro-tradition, at least as far as mythology goes, so he was a little iffy about the concept of a Devil that had no Hell to rule over, at least in the most literal sense. It's implied that Nick is able to rule over mortal lives with some level of jurisdiction, making their lives awful or wonderful by a wave of his hand, and equally implied that earthly existence is a Hell of sorts, just without the endless fires. I'm not sure how readers will react to this concept.

It's a literary concept I've enjoyed, even before American Gods was published: that the existence of gods is possible as long as people continue to worship them. In the Whispers universe, Nick will never cease to exist, because people will always allot more concern than not to matters of the flesh -- sexuality and crime, for instance. Nick loses a little power every time someone outright denies him, but it's never enough to affect his existence; conversely, he gains power whenever someone pledges their soul to him. The concept here is that no human can withstand living for hundreds of years, especially hundreds of years with Nick, and that after a while, they take a final way out of the deal. Where their souls go after that, no one knows -- the gods all have different answers. It's almost pseudo-humorously bleak.

I suppose we'll see what happens in the editing phase.



2. I keep (predictably) breaking my promise to not think about the Brickyard story. My primary thoughts sort of follow as such:
  • Would the story function better in the Bizarro/New Weird genre, or should it slot itself not-so-neatly into classic Science Fiction? Some elements of it are very trad-sci-fi, including and beyond faster than light travel, a snarky but lovable protagonist, an AI who expresses disturbingly human quirks, and a quest in space. However, as far as I know, the ship is built from the reinforced carcass of an intergalactic whale, the quest's premise is based on penetrating the Lovecraftian killing-ground dimension of space known as the Brickyard, said snarky star pilot is into guys, and there is no romantic element. The soundtrack is more Michael Jackson than Klaus Badelt. Hence, the impasse.
  • Aside from the whale-things, are there aliens? Specifically, intelligent aliens? The answer is mostly yes, since this is a Lovecraftian sort of thing -- the dimensions beyond safe-space are full of strange gods and star spawn -- but they're not really life-as-we-know it, so the question is a little moot. There won't be any aliens the way I usually write aliens. No tyl, no Philosophers, no tahar, no k'sanii, no oolundon, no rekkiks. And that's firm.
  • Novella or novel? I guess that one will be answered when I actually get started, but I'm thinking novella. The current novel is just such a big freaking thing that I don't think I can handle another full length work so soon.
  • Calder's speech. In my head, he sounds like a cross between a docker, a pirate, and a cowboy. Transposing that is more difficult than it sounds, especially since using dialect in modern fiction is generally frowned on. I wouldn't have so much of a problem with it if his story wasn't first person, but there's no way I can change that and keep the right tone. I'm not going the overt route with something like "Ah ain't gonna do it, Mistuh Taylor." At the same time, I don't want him to end up sounding just like Monette's Mildmay the Fox, despite the fact that Mildmay was a major inspiration for Calder's speech. Yet another impasse. (This one will be more easily solved. Characters tend to start talking and just give me their speech patterns on a gilded platter.)



3. Like I wrote elsewhere, I am sick again. It must be November! Oh well, this gives me an excuse to stay inside for a few days, catch up on homework, and write like a madman. Even if it does mean I'll likely miss the Thank God It's Over NaNoWriMo Party -- but I'm not terribly upset about that. Crowds and me have been very iffy lately.

I get phases in my capability to handle social situations and various forms of stress. Some of you may recall a previous instance in which I had something like an antisocial panic attack every time I was in a group of four or more people. It's a form of claustrophobia, really, and paranoia combined with a sort of mutated fear-hatred for humans whose intentions I'm not entirely sure of. When an attack comes on, I become very distanced, very quiet, very tense. There's a lack of ability to deal with the situation in a form conductive to proper social behavior, so escape to be on my own or with a single person who doesn't trigger that paranoia is usually the first option. The longer I stay in the situation, the more I'm tempted to lash out, get angry, to tell people to just seriously fuck off or I'll break your fucking arm; which, obviously, isn't particularly endearing. The problem is that I don't necessarily feel like being endearing during an attack, so unless I want to say something I may or may not regret later, I have to leave. (Often, however, the things I end up saying are things that I don't regret, since they're the sort of things I would say honestly if I was a less reserved person. Which is equally unpleasant.)

Long story short, my brain and its assorted issues are being a little testy lately, so I'm quite happy to keep my distance while that gets sorted out. It will, because it always does -- it's just going to take a little time.



4. 72,000 words. Technically speaking, it should be at about 82,000 before I move into this part, but I made the decision to go back and add material rather than slog through it when I'm really not ready for it. What I am ready for is the last stages of driving Gunnar mad, and segueing into the climax. I hate what I have to do to the characters, but it's necessary. I'll be starting the first stages of that today. I'm starting to rethink the genre of this damn thing, because I doubt there's going to be a sex scene for the next 8000 words or so. There will be one more, of sorts -- the book basically ends on one -- but the climax is something else entirely. After I "finish" the book, I'll probably be going back to add a bit of exposition to the first page, and definitely getting that critical tension build-up between the 70K and 80K markers (as they stand at the moment). I may leave the beginning until after my first-readers get their hands on it, to see if they like how it starts, or if they feel the action is a little sudden.



I think that's all I've got at the moment. Further updates pending in a few thousand words -- although it's possible there won't be another update until I'm onto the going-back-to-add-tension-after-finishing part. This is going to take up most of my brain space for the next week, I can tell.

Saturday, November 28, 2009

Mothership Has Landed

WORDCOUNT:
  • 70,000!

READING:
  • King Rat by China Mieville. Still. It's slow going.
  • War and Peace by Tolstoy. Yeah. Really. I found a three-volume set, and I'm 1/3 through the first one. I like this translation much better than the other one I had -- the one in which the translator decided to demonstrate the Russian soldiers' lack of education... gave them Cockney accents. Jeebus.

WRITING:
  • 70K and stuck. I'm finding it very hard to slog through the forecasted 10,000 words of foreshadowing and dramatic tension, so I'm thinking that to keep the work process moving forward at a good clip, I should leave an obvious gap, segway into the climax, finish, then go back and add the tension in light of the denoument events. I work better out of order anyway.
  • Sorting 500+ vintage science fiction paperbacks for work was awesome, but it also got my brain stuck on the Brickyard story, which CANNOT HAPPEN ARG until Whispers is finished. I just know Calder is going to freaking sandbag me with his story as soon as my brain is free.

ART:
Zip, zilch, nada. Unless you count the paper ornaments I made for Sister's and my improvised Christmas tree (*cough*pine bough from neighbor's yard*cough*) that we decorated to cheer up a friend.


FUNNY THINGS:
Last night I made Zeppelinphan laugh so hard she had to pull the car over. I was kind of stupidly impressed with myself.


SCHOOL:
All caught up and working diligently at Their Eyes Were Watching God. I don't hate it, and it's a brilliant work, but the dialect really bothers me. It slows down my comprehension and enjoyment when I have to stop to decipher what the hell the characters are saying. I get why Hurston wrote it like that, and I appreciate how amazing her grasp of language is, but it's not my bag baby.


WORK:
While I'm not complaining about the sudden access to several hundred vintage science fiction novels, I am perplexed. The Boss has gone on for the longest time -- long before I started working there -- that he won't deal in fiction because it doesn't sell. And now we've got all these boxes upon boxes of used sci-fi, and shelves cleared to put them on. Can I get a huh?


EXCITING THINGS:
Zeppelinphan bought me the most awesome ring for Christmas. We exchanged presents early because we're impatient and don't like sitting on gifts for more than a week. Funny story behind it: Sister and I know that Zepp is coming over to hang out with us. She shows up, promptly gets on one knee in front of me, and holds up a ring box. "I've been meaning to ask you this for a long time," she says, and pauses dramatically--

"Bryi, will you be my best friend for ever and ever?"

I cracked up so hard I almost forgot to take the ring.


NOT-SO-EXCITING THINGS:
My mother's sole purpose on the face of this earth is apparently to cook food, clean laundry, and to act as a hindrance to everyone she comes into contact with. I imagine that Sister will vouchsafe this fact for me.

I would be a lot more accepting of her lack of a logical opinion if she didn't demonstrate it by walking around the house slamming doors like she is right now. And toilet seats. And the microwave.

Thursday, November 26, 2009

Sixty-Six Thousand

66,000 words, and it's raining fit to bust. Lovely! ♥

That means I made another 6000 word push today, and closed up Part Three. That brings us up to about 220 mass market paperback pages. That's already bigger than Their Eyes Were Watching God, and I'm not even close to finishing. Hoorah!

I've finally got to the point where Gunnar is getting some serious shit thrown at him -- the last 500 words I wrote tonight were hard. Harder than anything I've written so far. Conveying Gunnar's inner torture without making him sound like a whiny bitch was only part of it. I am learning, slowly, just how difficult it is to convey (at a realistic pace) the deliberate devolution of someone's mind into brokenness. I have to get Gunnar to this mad place where Nick's final act of manipulation is enough to send him over the edge, and make his shattered, dramatic reaction to it seem appropriate.

The other day I realized that someone dies, which depressed me for a while. I was hoping for the protagonists to have a happy sort of ending, all things considered. They'll be implied to get their happy ending, further in the future, but I'll be ending the book on a glorious sort of agony. It will hurt, but if I can do it right, it will soar.

My only homework tomorrow is taking a couple of exams, so I've got my fingers crossed for another productive writing day.

Of course, that would preclude figuring out what happens between now and that climax, but I'm sure my subconscious will throw me a bone during the night.

At least, I hope. And, you know, that's the writer's disease. No hope, no novel.

Wish me luck!

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

OH GOD

Sixty thousand words!

That means I wrote 6000 words today, and that doesn't include the two essays I wrote for English Lit.

Productive Bryi is productive!

AHH DENOUEMENT APPROACHING

GO INSANE FASTER, GUNNAR

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

NaNoWriMo and Things

I'm still sort of dazed about the whole "winning NaNoWriMo eight days ahead of schedule while generally keeping up with homework" thing, so while my brain recovers and I begin Part Three, here, have a generic news post.


READING:
  • King Rat by China Mieville. So far I am not overwhelmed, but I'm not disappointed either, so it's fair game. King Rat was also his first novel, and nobody's first novel is a sprawling masterpiece in my opinion. (It's also getting me to listen to Jungle, which is a sort of non offensive ambient techno with lots of funky sounds, but that's neither here nor there.)
  • Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, for school. The first paragraph has me absolutely hooked. Which is good, because I've been ambivalent about the other longer works I've read for this course -- y'all remember me complaining about Streetcar Named Desire. (The next longer work is Twelfth Night, which I am looking forward to with especial glee. Shakespeare!)
  • The Satanic Bible by Anton Szandor LaVey. Don't judge me. Nick was falling flat, so I needed a little inspiration from the man what done it all. (Nick is also batshit crazy, so, you know, double-plus-good for reference material.)

WRITING:
  • 54,000 words!
  • I have picked up my act. The sex is back, in the appropriate places, and some of it is lovely. (Others, not so much, but I played on that by showing character disappointment.) The drag queen is also back, much to my enjoyment, and is an utter joy to write. Peach is a person who loves without reserve or fear of loss, and therefore, is the perfect foil to Gunnar's uncertainty and paranoia.
  • Driving Gunnar to breaking point is tougher than I thought. But, luckily, a spontaneous literary decision on my part has become a jumping point for a later scene that I was worried would give me utter hell trying to tie in, so it evens out.
  • On another front, I am barely holding the Brickyard story at bay until Whispers In The Dark is complete. Mitch Calder keeps popping up with little snippets of scenes from all over the project, making me intensely curious about it, but I refuse to let myself write about it until Nick and Gunnar are safe and sound behind their side of The End.
  • I got my NaNoWriMo Noveling Machine tee-shirt in the mail today. Watch me ooze contentment.

ART:
I actually sketched something the other day. Wonder of wonders. It was basically to remind myself that Gunnar and Anne Marie get a happy ending, of sorts, when it's all over.


SCHOOL:
Finished that essay I put off for two weeks while doing every other possible thing in the unit. Finally. Fuck. I hated the hell out of that essay, and I did a terrible job on it, but at least it's DONE. Now I can get back into my stride with Their Eyes Were Watching God.


WORK:
Nothing to mention.


BRAIN:
Some stuff has been going on lately that I'm cagey about mentioning, so we'll chalk it up to NaNoWriMo insanity and see how things are once the novel is done. Or, if the Brickyard story takes over my brain like Whispers In The Dark did, maybe after THAT one.


EXCITING THINGS:
  • CHRISTMAS IS COMING OMFG. Seriously, guys, I get so excited about just the decorating and the lights and the displays and the slight possibility of snow that it's hard to keep me contained from December 1st onward. Never mind the presents. Those are nice, but it's not like things are that important. It's things like walking down the main drag of town at 9pm and looking at all the window displays with my father. It's things like sitting with Schmizenheighmer and stirring brandy into our hot chocolate with candy canes. It's things like walking into work to find a six foot Christmas tree on the table, covered in ornaments as old as my grandparents -- and knowing that we own a lot of similar ornaments courtesy of my Nana. It's things like putting on a corset and a one-hundred-year-old skirt and jingle bells and greeting guests for dinner.
  • Xethavosh is starting up a D&D game soon. As I am a D&D virgin, but very curious, I'm going to give it my best shot. Last time a game was almost set up, we rolled some awesome n00b-luck stats for this chaotic neutral Satyr, so I think I'll stick with her for convenience sake.


NOT-SO-EXCITING THINGS:
I have two big exams this week. Blek.


FUNNY THINGS:
Considering my plans to be a Navy reservist somewhere in the world -- likely the UK if Sister's plans work out -- I was reading over my copy of the Skippy List and wondering just how many Skippy-esque things I'll be able to get away with. (Answer: probably not many.)


Off to homework and finishing that scene with the candle wax. God, I love being a writer some days.