Susan needs

Laziness this morning. Here's the meme where you search for your name and "needs" in Google and list the results. Mine were so amusing (to me) that I had to share.

1. Desperately seeking Susan needs all your love and money. (Why not just start out asking for it all? {g})

2. Susan needs to understand that she needs to be building up her language production. (Does that mean writing? How did they know?)

3. I'm thinking that Susan needs a set of t-shirts graced with silly cliches that, nevertheless, exemplify her willingness to step off the cliff of safety (I think this is better than I Ching or the Magic 8-ball. Write! Be daring! Buy T-shirts!)

4. Susan needs opportunities to practice literate speech (writing again)

5. Susan needs a tray, six inserts, center bowl and metal spinning rack (okay, maybe not this one)

6. Susan needs to succeed in the face of and despite this madness (YES!)

7. Susan needs cash on run (Hmm.)

8. "Susan needs to make a choice," the planner says. "She can keep the house and go without six-month stretches in the tropics or sell her house" (Wait a minute...give up my 6-month stretches in the tropics? WAAAHH)

9. The next question that Susan needs to ask herself is this : Is my goal realistic? (I ask myself this all the time)

10. Susan needs to understand that each employee should be supervised according to his or her own needs. (Less interesting. But I am a supervisor. Hopefully, I do that.)

Starman Analysis

I watched STARMAN on TV last night, and was reminded again what a good story it is. (Yes, Jeff Bridges does some really strange acting in it--my husband did a wonderful impersonation of the stare, and had me rolling around laughing--but it fits.) This time I was noticing how well the plot was constructed.

It's really a relationship movie, and it's a hard relationship to portray well. In 3 days the woman has to go from encountering an alien who looks like her dead husband (she watches him grow from a freaky alien BABY, for goshsakes) to wanting to stay with and help him, to being completely in love with him enough to want to (a) have his baby and (b) venture off to a different planet, if he'd let her. Wow. That's some transition to try to get viewers/readers to buy into. Here are some of the reasons why I think it worked, and is still a good movie lo these many years later:

• There's a really good reason why Jenny doesn't shoot him at the beginning, even when she's scared to death and is holding a gun on him: he is the image of her dead husband. As a new widow, she just couldn't shoot him until she found out more about that.
• She really does try to get away. She doesn't just give in and happily say "okay, alien, I'll help you." She nearly hits another car just to get the driver's attention; she leaves a note in a gas station bathroom; and even when she's beginning to like him, she plans to dump him and catch a bus.
• You can see her decide to stay, and understand why. It's only after she witnesses him perform an unusually caring, miraculous act (bringing a deer back to life) and then sees him get beaten for it that she understands that he's an amazing being, that he can't do this without her in a world so strange to him, and that she will help.
• The love comes gradually, but is visible. There is a transition: fear, interest, respect, gratitude, friendship, love.
  
• Each of them takes risks for the other. She stands up to a group of bullying (big) men for him; he carries her through a fire, and brings her back to life. She tracks him down and gets him away from the cops; he gives her the gift of a baby who will be part him and part her husband (so he's giving her back a part of her husband, in a weird way).

So it works, at least for me. There are a couple of moments that are clearly parallel to the Jesus/Mary story as well, I think (the woman is left with an "unexplained" baby who will "know all that I know and become a teacher"), which gives further food for thought. But mostly on this watching I was picking up hints for how to pull a short-term, high-transition love story off in fiction. {s}

The Forest (for the trees)

Diana Peterfreund has a wonderful post today about pacing, holding onto readers, looking at the story as a whole...well, you read it.

I feel like I am mentally pulling back from TMT enough (FINALLY) to see it as a whole. I see now that I didn't spend enough time on rewrite dealing with plot weaknesses, with pacing problems, with being utterly ruthless. I didn't necessarily make scenes pull double and triple duty like I should have. I left things that I wasn't quite happy with, even after strengthening (like Richard). It's better, but it's still not as good as it could be. I didn't go deep enough in revision, allowing the possibility that maybe I needed to drastically change some things instead of just tweaking here and there.

Mind, I don't feel bad about this--I really did the best I could from where I was at the time. Hell, it's my first book, I don't know what I'm doing. I'm figuring it out as I go. Yes, I've sent it out to quite a few agents and been rejected, but I don't consider them "wasted" queries either. Of 14 queries, 6 agents read a partial and 2 read a full. All but 2 of those gave me personal, detailed feedback. I've applied quite a bit of the feedback, and I'm getting closer...but now it's time for me to take a totally different approach, from the bird's-eye view, and make it shine. This time when I send it out, I want to be really happy with it, to know that it's STRONG. And then if it doesn't work out? I'll accept it, and keep going on Book 2. A few of the agents who rejected TMT asked to see my next work, so I have a couple of chances here.

Anyway, I'm making notes on things that I want to do with TMT, points I want to strengthen, subthreads I want to lay in. But I'm also going to print the whole thing out and edit it that way--not line by line, but scene by scene. What is happening in this scene? How can it work better? I'm also going to change much about the beginning, I think. Make Richard come in sooner. Make the break with her father much stronger, with deeper and additional reasons. Make the beginning matter more.

Make it shine.

Medieval Word of the Day: grusnen: To cry out with fright.

Birthdays

Today is the birthday of two of my favorite people, writers both--Happy Birthday, Linda and Daryl!

Actually, a very high percentage of my favorite people, many of them writers, have birthdays in January and February. Kinda makes me wonder if there's really a preponderance of aquarian/pisces writers, or if I just notice them more because I am one.

The chicken, or the egg?

Give a shout out if your birthday is in January or February too!

I just updated the TMT excerpt, for fun. :)

Good Things

I'm here, I'm just distracted!

We got back in very late Saturday night/Sunday morning, and spent the weekend lazing around, playing, doing laundry, grocery shopping...stuff like that there. It was a nice vacation, but it's always good to be home too.

Oddly enough, it's much warmer here than it was in Sacramento. Our last couple of days it was about 30 degrees and foggy/damp; right now it's sunny and 52 here. Of course I vastly underestimated the heat, and I'm dying in a turtleneck sweater in my steam-heated + outside-heated office {pant}. Mental note: wear layers tomorrow!

1 Good Thing: people seem to have simultaneously (a) noticed that I was gone and missed me and (b) managed to limp along all right without me, with no major crises.

2nd Good Thing: I just scarfed a yellow cupcake with dark chocolate fudge frosting that Child and I made together yesterday. Yum.

3rd Good Thing: Pandora Internet Radio. Does anyone else know about this? It's free. You tell them one or more artists or songs you like, and they create a playlist for you. Then you give them feedback and they refine the selection, or you can add/subtract artists you like. It's awesome, and I'm addicted. I started out with Cole Porter, then added Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, and I'm pretty darn happy with the results. Yes, I am a throwback musically, and that's okay. One point about it that I love is if a song comes on that I don't like, I just hit the thumbs-down symbol and it immediately stops and never plays again. Cool.

I am limping a bit with the writing goals, but still progressing. Never give up. I'm also working mentally on how exactly I'm going to chop TMT up and put it back better, so that's coming down the pipeline.

Back to work now (and sweating).

Medieval Word of the Day: hidel-like: Secretly.

Status

Hola!

I may be very sparse this week as I am actually in Sacramento with Child. I'm typing on Dad's computer just now while Child is asleep in our room. We had a helluva trip to get here: 1 delayed flight (with us "circling"), 1 cancelled flight, a 3-hour or so wait in the Salt Lake airport, and of course our luggage didn't make it until the next day. {sigh} But we made it in the end, hubby is off doing business stuff, and we are happy here in an excellent grandma and grandpa house, with everything a 4-year-old could possibly want. Today we went for a walk by the American River and just hung out and played--tomorrow, the Science Museum.

That's it for now folks. Must go have other people's ice cream bars. :)

Nana's House

I got my assignment done yesterday, because I rock. {buffing fingernails} Back to regularly scheduled work.

On Sunday we're heading out to go spend a week with my dad in Sacramento. He hasn't seen Child in a while, and I haven't been back to Sac since we moved to Montana, so we're going to get in some quality grandparent time.

This made me think of my own grandparents, and how I loved going there when I was a kid. As an exercise for myself, I wrote this little bit this morning describing what it was like to wake up there. Well, starting to describe. I have an inkling that this might be the beginning of that short story I was talking about the other day. In any case, here's what I came up with this morning:

From Nana's House, copyright 2007 by Susan Adrian

The bed is warm, and snuggly if I don't move too much. When I try to roll over the 30-year-old springs creak and poke at me, protesting. So I stay here, on my back, staring at the saggy lump that is my brother in the top bunk. I hope the bed holds, that he doesn't come crashing down on me, but I figure there's no reason it should break right now. Except it would make an interesting story.

The grown-ups are moving out in the family room, talking, making more and more noise. They always do that when they think we've slept enough, and they're getting impatient for their breakfast. If I don't get up soon they'll start to make comments about it. "My goodness, are they ever going to get up?" "I don't think you ever slept this late when you were their age." My grandmother wakes up at 4 or 5, so by 8 she feels like she's been up for a whole day already. That's what my dad says.

Actually it's just me they want. My brother is 14 now, so for some reason he's allowed to sleep through breakfast; he's a teenager. He'll emerge, with rumpled hair and marks on his face, in a couple of hours, yawning. They still wait breakfast for me.

I sigh and push back the blanket—the electric kind, yellow with a shiny strip at the top—and swing my feet onto the floor. It's cold. It's hard tile, gray-black, and it always feels cold in the morning, even in summer. I hop to the rug and just stand there for a minute, blinking. A little light filters in around the edges of the shade, but mostly it's dark, that brown-dark that tells you it's really daytime even if you're trying to sleep. The room smells of dust and chalk, and old books, but I like it. That's just how a grandparent's house should smell.

{end snip}

Medieval Word of the Day: knapscall: Some kind of helmet or headpiece; generally worn by persons of inferior rank; perhaps originally by the servants of the men-at-arms.

Run in run out

I got thrown another get-it-done-in-one-day project, so I'm busy accomplishing that. But I know you all must have your:

Medieval Word of the Day: hoten: promised.

Maybe more later, maybe not!

My card? Why yes, of course

Just to clarify, yesterday's post was primarily a joke. I do get burnt out on research periodically; it's part of the process. But I'll write a short story to clear the system (I already have one working in my head) and I'll be all good. I'm not really that pitiful! {g}

On to new diversions. I love this:

Isn't that cool? I made it here. I may keep a small version of that on the blog, I like it so well. I am a word, book, and library geek.

The free books--Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife and The Birth of Venus--are going out today.

And back to the

Medieval Word of the Day: poustie: Power; spiritual power; might; authority.

Historical Burnout

I'm afraid I may be suffering from a case of Historical Burnout.*

***

*Historical Burnout: A disorder common to writers of historical fiction.

Symptoms: Violent envy of writers of contemporary fiction, who don't have to worry about endlessly researching "real" dates or places, or when exactly bloody certain rooms (or "chambers") were built, or what palace was used when, or what frigging shoes or headgear people were wearing, or drinks or food they were eating, or even which #$@% words they might or might not have been using at any particular time. Disillusionment with research. May manifest itself in:
(1) moments of bitterness towards writers of non-historical fiction ("those who have chosen the easy path");
(2) an explosion of brackets within the writer's current manuscript (e.g., [check drink]);
(3) a sharp increase in swearing within those brackets (e.g., [who the frig cares what frigging gypsies were wearing on their heads at this point, but bloody well check it anyway]); or
(4) a careless disregard for historical facts or conventions; the writer may, in extreme circumstances, choose to include the word "brat" without brackets, because it conveys the character better than any historically correct word.

Diagnosis: A quick glance over the writer's recent work will allow for an easy diagnosis. Symptoms can also be seen in conversations, emails, and chats, particularly with other writers. Watch closely for clues in conversations with non-historical writers, or occasionally in blogs.

Causes: This disorder is usually caused when a writer is attempting to write a book based in a completely unfamiliar time or setting. Unfortunately it can recur while writing the same book, and even when cured can often recur with the next historical.

Treatment: For mild cases, a diversion into contemporary short fiction can be effective. This treatment can (1) distract and/or energize the writer and (2) correct the common delusion of this disorder that contemporary writing is in any way "easy". Some writers find successful recovery by introducing a time-traveling modern character. More severe cases may require a break from the historical or the simultaneous writing of a contemporary novel. Unfortunately in the most grave cases the entire historical, or even the entire genre, may be shelved, and the writer may veer off permanently into writing hot urban fantasy.

****

I think it's just a mild case so far, so we might try the contemporary short story. {g}

P.S. Medieval Word of the Day? Who bloody cares??

And the winners are....

Jen and Julie K.

Congratulations!! Send me an e-mail at susan . adrian@yahoo.com, and tell me which book you choose and your mailing address.

Thanks for playing, everybody! That was so much fun I may do another one soon.

Double check your entries please!!

Two people have told me that they had entered over the weekend and their comments didn't take...so please double-check to make sure that your comment is visible on the entry post.

I'm going to extend the contest for another hour so you can re-post if yours didn't get recorded. Sorry about that!!

No, there is too much, let me sum up

Yay, lots of entries for the giveaway! This makes me inexplicably happy. I'll do the drawing at noon today and post the winners, so check back.

This weekend I:

--wrote about 1000 words on Book 2 (rock)
--made chocolate chip cookies with Child. Between us we consumed almost half the dough before it even got near the cookie sheet. (what?)
--took Child with me to the salon, where she got her First Ever Haircut by someone other than me. Just a trim, but it's groundwork, baby.
--went out to dinner with friends, and had lots of Chianti
--pulled Child on a sled around our yard (wheee) and made snow angels. It was gorgeous yesterday, clear and sunny.
--went to a concert to see The Watercarver's Guild yesterday with hubby and Child. A father/sons folk-y trio. Good stuff!
--plus errands and stuff that are, frankly, not interesting.

Busy, eh? But good busy. Today it's back to work for me. Hubby is home with some kind of weird low-level illness he is finally going to see the doctor about, so we'll keep an eye on that.

See ya in 3 hours for the drawing! (Er...that means 3 more hours from...NOW...to enter if you haven't. Just comment on the previous post.)

Medieval Word of the Day: evenlength: The time of year when the days and nights are of equal length; the equinox.

The Book Giveaway!

Here it is, my 200th post!! Blabby thing, aren't I?

To celebrate, we're going to do a book giveaway contest. Here's how you enter:

1. Grab a nearby book or manuscript. Writers, feel free to use your own work! Turn to page 200.

2. Post the first line you find at the top of page 200 in a comment to this post. Make sure to include your name if you post anonymously.

And you're done. {s}

Rules:
--you have until noon Mountain Standard Time on Monday, January 22
--one entry per person
--two people will win, by random drawing
--each winner will get to choose one book from those pictured below, and I'll send it along to you
--if you have questions, feel free to email me at susan dot adrian @ yahoo.com

The Books:















What? Apparently I had a Jane Austen theme going on there for a while. {s} Anyway, I highly recommend all these books for various reasons. I'll be intrigued to see which ones the winners choose.

Have at it!

Relaxin' Jackson

Good morning!

I have coffee, my brochure is done and sent out on time (WHEW), I got some writing in last night, it's already 20 degrees, and it's Friday. Aaaahhhh.

As I mentioned yesterday, I'm going to do a book giveaway today to celebrate my 200th post (this is #199). Look for details in a little while. Don't touch that dial!

I'm also starting to go back and label my posts. The writing ones are mostly labeled "craft".

Medieval Word of the Day: shewel: A scarecrow. Also in hunting, something hung up or set up to keep a deer from entering a particular place, or from going in a particular direction.

Hmm, that one might be useful.

Good news (and a little slacking)

Speaking of discipline or the lack thereof...{cough}. I didn't write at all yesterday--instead I brought in my copy of TO SAY NOTHING OF THE DOG and succumbed to the temptation to finish it at lunch.

This is why I have to be careful reading pleasure books when I'm trying to write! However, I have to say it was worth it, as I got to finish without interruptions (rare at home!) and truly enjoyed the end. So there you go. Back to it today.

I have developed a strange addiction lately to listening to 80s music at work. I think it's because I'm doing layout work, which doesn't require me to focus on editing text. 80s music just makes me feel happy, anyway. Though high school sucked, I guess I enjoyed the tunes. {g}

One news item before I head off to the brochure that's due today. Though I don't think she reads this blog, I'm sending a shout out of huge congrats to Jo Bourne of the Compuserve Forum, who announced yesterday that her agent just secured a two-book deal with Berkley for her historical romances. Woo-hoo Jo!! She's been a tremendous influence on me and everyone else over at the Forum, and she deserves it! Yay!

I also just noticed that I'm coming up on my 200th post--this is #198--and to celebrate I'm going to do a giveaway contest. Look for it in the next couple of days!!

Medieval Word of the Day: gisarme: A kind of battle-axe, bill, or halberd, having a long blade in line with the shaft, sharpened on both sides and ending in a point.

A day with the gypsies

Welp, got caught up in (pshaw!) work yesterday, and only got it to 6900. More today. Poor Isabella is now being carried upside down in a sack by a bunch of gitanos (Spanish gypsies). I have no idea how or why that happened--is this a frigging historical, or what?--but we shall proceed from there. I do know she's only gone for a day. I guess she wanted a little adventure.

Second term starts today, but in spite of the temptation to load up with classes I refrained, and kept to my 4 units. Discipline, people! Sometimes it pops up in me unexpectedly. I don't want to lose the momentum I have going on Book 2, and the plans I have for TMT revisions. Which I will get on as soon as I finish reading TO SAY NOTHING OF THE DOG.

I got this postcard in my work mail yesterday, and put it up on the wall directly. Diligence is what will make it all happen.



More later--must get back to the legislative brochure now!

And then what happened?

I got some great work done on Book 2 yesterday, and added some more today at lunch when I wasn't hampered by eating. {s} I'll try to work on it a bit more later and get it at least to 7,000 by the end of the day.

Yesterday I realized a trick that I pull on myself to keep my motivation going, and thought it might be useful for someone else.

When I stop for the day--which is usually because of time constraints with me, but sometimes just because I've done enough--I try to stop in medias res. Right in the thick of the scene, often even at a cliffhanger. I don't wrap things up neatly at the end of my workday, with a resolution or with the character going to sleep.

Why? Well, I hadn't even realized I did this until yesterday, but when I thought about it for half a minute it was clear. When you're reading a good book, what keeps you going? What keeps you turning the pages after you meant to go to bed, or keeps your thoughts flying back to the book-world during the day? Tension, and uncertainty. So I do the same thing when I'm constructing a story. To keep myself thinking about it and intrigued enough to tackle it the next day, I end with a hook for myself.

Yesterday's hook for the end of the day was:

I stopped when I saw the gypsies, but not in time.

So today I had a fascinating place to start, and I was eager to get back to it and find out what the heck was up with the gypsies. I wonder if this also helps to make sure there is continued tension in the book--if I'm constantly trying to interest myself, maybe it helps to keep readers there too.

Tricks we play with ourselves.

Medieval Word of the Day: Hock-day: The second Tuesday after Easter Sunday; Hock Tuesday: in former times an important term-day, on which rents were paid, and the like, Hock-day and Michaelmas dividing the rural year into its summer and winter halves. It was also, from the 14th c., and probably earlier, a popular festival, signalized by the collection of money for parish purposes by roughly humorous methods.

The Sensation of COLD

This morning it is -24 degrees. Fahrenheit.

It's difficult to describe what that kind of cold feels like, but for the sake of an exercise, I'll try.

I bundle up of course; you have to. I'm wearing silky long johns under jeans, a long-sleeve shirt under a hooded sweatshirt, boots, a lined coat, gloves, and a hat. I never wear a hat unless it's really cold, but at this temperature it's necessary or there's a very real danger that my ears will get frostbite. It's happened before--with mild frostbite the lobes turn a mottled red and the skin flakes. Yuck. So I'm wearing a pale blue tuque that I got, unbelievably, at a San Diego Padres baseball game. Much more useful here than in San Diego.

I also have a soft black scarf wrapped around my neck and over my mouth. I wish I could wrap it over my nose too, but I wear glasses, and that means instant fogging up. Not good to be stumbling around outside when the goal is to get IN, as fast as possible.

Even with all this protection it's still painfully cold for that top half of my face that's still exposed. The worst, really, is my nose. The instant I step outside my nose hairs freeze--I'm not kidding! It's a nasty sensation. Tickly, but sharp, like hundreds of little doll-size needles inside your nose. I try not to inhale very much, or very deeply. My cheeks and my forehead ache with cold before I take ten steps. My glasses freeze and the metal frames become heavy; I'm aware of each point they touch my face. In spite of my gloves, the tips of my fingers ache and tingle, sending a warning to my body that I recognized even when I was a newbie at this. ("This is ridiculous! Why are we outside in this? Get the hell in!")

Cars, even new, fancy cars, don't start when it's this cold. Our CRV did, but only reluctantly after a couple of tries. Once you do get on the road every car pumps massive clouds of steam out the tailpipe, a rolling chain of fog. Everyone goes slower, because you have to wait for the car-cloud in front of you to clear before you go. If you stop somewhere for an hour or so the warmth inside the car, from your breath or the remnants of the heater, freezes inside the windows, and you have to run it for 10 minutes or so or drive anyway, peering through patterns of ice.

But we're in Montana, and we're supposed to be tough. So everybody smiles at each other once we're in, rubbing our gloved hands, stomping our feet. "It's a bit cold out today," someone says. "But actually not that bad," someone else answers. "Remember when it used to be -40, for 3 weeks at a time? We have it easy now."

Yeah. We have it easy.

Medieval Word of the Day: inlaw: One who is within the domain and protection of the law: opp. to outlaw.

(Okay, I had to laugh at that one. That would be confusing for time-travelers, wouldn't it?)

Go get it!

Oooh! EOS is giving away 20 advance copies of Vicki Pettersson's SCENT OF SHADOWS. Go! Go! Go now!! Everyone will like this book.