Robynettely

The opening scene of Essence of Angel takes place in the local roadhouse, present day. Vivianne is sitting at the bar. Let me show you what she is wearing: She wore an extremely full gown of gunmetal grey silk. It looked so out-of-place at the bar. Probably ten meters of silk went into that skirt. But the bodice was low-cut, and the sleeves were long. Some of the hair was tied back out of her face, and the rest hung in long golden waves down her back. Oh dear. And this is a person who, according to about ten chapters later, doesn't want to stand out? She wore a grey sweatshirt and jeans. Her sandals seemed a bit light and casual for April in Toronto, without even thick soles to insulate her feet from the pavement, but at least they looked like the sort of thing she could walk around in. Much more believable.

I might have mentioned I've been typing out Essence of Angel. I’m trying to do 10K per week. Typing it serves two purposes: I can fit it on a CD or a USB key and stick it in my fire safe, and eventually in 10 years when everything is typed, I will no longer need the giant filing cabinet (yeah, right) I can edit it if it’s typed; I can't really edit longhand I’ve got about 41K. Last night I was typing chapter 18, and I realized, if I broke the chapter in half and moved part of Chapter 13 (which is exceptionally long -- maybe 5K) into the middle, then a lot of character actions would make more sense. Except it would entail rewriting the first part of Chapter 13, and then I'd have to give Chapter 14 a completely different reason to be there... You'd think that would be disheartening. All I thought was "Yay, I'm moving things around again!"It makes me feel like I'm really editing.

Why I read it: Nadine recommended it. (She also had lent me "About a Boy" the movie, which is based on a Nick Hornby book, and "Slings and Arrows" which is a TV show with nothing to do with Nick Hornby which I watched Season 1, Disk 1 of on the weekend, and really liked). Tastes like chicken: It's not fiction, it's not non-fiction. It's a collection of essays from Believer magazine where every month he wrote a list of what books he bought, and what he read. It's very funny. Bookmark: Store receipt from when I traded in something I got two of, and got this for 5-cents difference. What I liked: His approach to literature is refreshing because it's not snobby at all. Either he liked a book, or he didn't. And there were plenty he abandoned. Not so much: Too short. Lessons learned: He spent an entire month on David Copperfield, and he read some books that are less literary, but also a good mix of bio and memoir and the like. I would be more...

I have a note at the bottom of my computer that says "Despair is an integral part of the rewriting process." I think I got it from somewhere via Justine Larbalestier . Anyway, I'm pretty sure other people don't suffer this much despair. What was I thinking? How is this story ever going to work? I can see now why I don't try editing things, like, ever. On first glance it looked good, but WTF? So many scenes missing. So many unnecessary scenes written. Yesterday we went to the zoo (the boy sulked his way through the outing, carrying his coat even though it was -1, because teenagers are impervious to cold). One of the animals we saw was the golden lion tamarin . And I thought to myself, Vivianne could have hair that color. Then she would be a Mary Sue.

Vivianne is one of the main characters of Essence of Angel. Today I am wondering if she is a Mary Sue. I just watched a travel program about northern Iran on BBC. Apparently Zoroastrians don't believe in burying their dead, because it pollutes the earth, or in cremating them, because it pollutes the air. So instead, they used to take their dead to this tower outside the city and leave them for the vultures. That's awesome. Every six months they would switch to "the other tower" and sweep all the bones into a pit, and then dump acid on them or something. Not so environmentally friendly, I'm thinking. Unfortunately, due to a decline in the Zoroastrian population, a lot of the vultures have moved on. Now they bury their dead in graves lined with concrete. If Vivianne had a pet vulture, then she would be a Mary Sue.

Why I read it: One of Ed's coworkers lent it to him. He was raving about the neatness of the magic, so I picked it up when he was done. Ed has subsequently read the sequel and bought book 3 in the series, though he lent it to that previously mentioned coworker, and I don't think he's got it back to read yet. BS is apparently currently working on the final installment in The Wheel of Time, so it was interesting to see what he's done before. Tastes like chicken: Some Raymond E. Feist books I read years ago. Bookmark: Chapters receipt for gift cards. What I liked: Ed was right, the magic was really cool. The world has some sort of ongoing environmental problem where ash falls from the sky and all plants are brown. The social system is feudal -- serfs called skaa and nobles who claim genetic superiority. The skaa are supposed to not have magic (allomancy), but some have noble blood, and have one of the eight talents. These talents involve the ability to process (burn) m...

The above quote is a headline in my local newspaper. When I read it, the first thing I thought was, why is my local newspaper now writing articles aimed at gerbils? And the second thought was, I didn't know gerbils could do that. Ahem. The typewritten Essence of Angel was up to 20,000 words on Sunday night, but Monday I devoted to converting the first chapter to third-person, and taking out the bits that are inconsistent with the mythology I'm building into the story now. That took my wordcount down to less than 18,500. Still, I wonder if the first draft might have been over 200,000 words. Must learn to be more efficient with my first drafts. Yesterday we went out walking in the golf course and the grassy areas underneath the highways and major roads near our house, and wow. Toronto is just full of culverts. I think interesting things would happen in those. I need to get a headlamp. Culverts are dangerous. Watch out for thunderstorms, and lycanthropes.

That's the title I'm going with now. Maybe it gives away too much of the first few chapters. I typed what I chose to call "Chapter 3.5" last night. Maybe tomorrow I will re-integrate it with Chapter 3. For some reason, when I re-started in 3rd person, I started numbering chapters again at 1. There are so many things I did that I did not think to explain to my future self. Also, the chapters seem very short.

So I said to my colleague, who was reading a book at lunch, "What'cha reading?" and I found him remarkably reluctant to show me the cover. It was this Robin Wasserman book. He was about 15 pages in. It was something his daugher was into. But what he said got me (other than the comment on the length, and the size of the text): "I could pump out 20 of these a week." Um-hum. I rewrote the first page of QotU last night. Third person it is.

A week or two ago on Dumb Little Man I read 10 Surefire Ways to be a Complete Failure at Everything (love the balalaika in the photo). Yesterday I put away about eight editing projects, so I can just concentrate on the one. Well, okay, two. Three. Because if there's any one thing on that list that I do, it's "Start 17 projects". And this killed some clutter, too! Though I bet no one else thinks the dining room seems tidier, I know it is. I'm still trying to figure out what to do about that sudden restart part way through Chapter 3. Though last night I was looking in my filing cabinet, trying to figure out how long this thing is (answer: no way to tell, I don't seem to have believed in numbering pages on this project), and I came across a stack of sheets, one per scene, with Goal, Resolution, New Goal type information on them. Wow. Back in the olden days, I sure was diligent.

I was typing away merrily on this novel that I wrote out long-hand and then put in the filing cabinet to "age" not THAT long ago. I didn't finish it this year, but it's not exactly juvinilia, either. Anyway, so I was typing along on Chapter 3, when all of a sudden the story stopped in the middle of a page, and then restarted on the next page (I wrote this in a series of spiral-bound notebooks), with the same two characters in a different location, maybe even having the same conversation, except now it's in 3rd person. What was I thinking? Except that I mentioned a couple of days ago that I was having a problem with at least one of the 1st person sequences, and was going to need to revise it somehow. But this is going to be harder than I thought. So I stopped and did some research. You know, when you type "Lucifer rebellion" or "Young Earth Age" into Google you come up with some pretty wacko (and contradictory) things. No viruses this time, like...

So anyway, in my ongoing plan to get to Viable Paradise, I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I had gone into the giant filing cabinet. Eventually giving up on finding the short story I was looking for (it will turn up in three years, like that stock did, when I've forgotten all about it or written it off), I picked something I had fond memories of, and I started typing it, and wow. Wow, it was a pile of crap. So I picked something else. I've now typed up about 7000 words of a lacking-a-title novel. Not nearly so bad. That's two chapters, though. My theory that I write 40% more than I should is being pretty much proven out again. That stinking pile of crap, though? At least it had a title. I printed out the 3000 words I managed to type. I think I'll keep it around for scene-writing exercises. Three thousand words of no scenes. My god, how did I do that?

Why I read it: I read a review of it I think in Salon (though I can't find it now) and thought that any book with such a long title must be worth reading. This book follows Burt, a man in his sixties whose wife died two years ago of cancer, and whose adult children are estranged. Burt is obsessed with the middle ages, to the point of almost always wearing a tunic rather than "normal" clothes, drinking mead, not driving, etc. He's gone to Germany ostensibly accompanying the Medieval chant group he was forced to join as an "anger management" tool (when he had a DUI charge whilst stealing his lawyer's BMW). Really, he's sold all his possessions and has no intention of going back to upstate New York (where he's been I guess living in the empty bed-and-breakfast his wife owned and ran). His intention is to find his son and make things right. Tastes Like Chicken: A cross between "Darkmans" by Nicola Barker and "Briar Rose" by Jan...

So we'll see how I do. The boy was casting about for a book to read a few evenings ago, so I gave him a pile of things he hadn't read before. He asked which I recommended, so I pulled out Uninvited by Justine Musk. He read it. He liked it. He said he thinks there ought to be a sequel. Rachael Ray should be paying me a commission. I have raved about my RR meals so much that two of the people who sit in my area at work have bought a RR book in the last month. Last night I went through my giant filing cabinet. My god, I have a lot of first drafts that have never seen eyeballs again. I had come up with the crazy idea that I should apply to Viable Paradise , so I was looking for something to brush up and send in. My brain had fixated on one particular story, which I never found (however, I did find the stocks I was looking for about three years ago). I guess when you write a page per day for 15 years, that piles up. Ugh. A lot of the books I read come from the library. Unfortunate...

Why I read it: Part of the Cybil awards last year. I'd requested it from the library on January 2, 2008 (1) and about five days ago the library website started listing it as "in transit". You know how ominous those words are to me, after the Nicola Barker "Darkmans" episode. Anyway, so yesterday was Kagami Baraki in my dojo (I kept calling it Kobiyashi Maruk, but I know that's wrong), which ran from 10am until 6pm. The only time I can ever get to the library is on a Saturday (it's across the street from karate, which is why I request books be sent there, since I go there 2x per week). So I wasted half of my lunch break getting out of my gi and running across to see if the book was there, because if it was, then the clock starts ticking, and if I don't pick it up within the seven days or whatever (and I'm not totally believing of when those days begin, because I've had some bad experiences in the past) then I go to the back of the line. And I...

Why I read it: I am beginning to evidence a little bit of a theme here. First a vampire book with no vampires in it, then a Very Popular YA vampire book, now a less-well-known YA vampire book. I can stop any time I want. Oh, okay, just one more and then I'll stop. I bought this for the boy for Christmas 07 not because I thought he would like it, but because I fell in love with the title, and it was an excuse to bring it into the house. I'm not sure he finished reading it. He may have found it disturbing and creepy. Tastes like chicken: The Black Company, The White Rose, Shadows Linger (actually a series I read because of the fabulous title of that last one... There's only one other book I can think fo that I read because of the title: "Rumors of Spring") And those books go back to that bio of John Hawkwood that I read a couple of years ago and totally recommend to anyone who wants a history of the basis of fantasy literature. Stylistically, a lot of the Garth Ni...

Why I read it: The boy read the entire series twice, and then he saw the movie, which he said was bad. I didn't let him know I was reading this, because he'd forbidden it to me. Naturally, that made it all the more intriguing. Also, a lot of people on the internet have opinions about it. Bookmark: Envelope for a yarn gift card from the boy. Tastes like chicken: I hate to say this, but it reminded me a lot of my dad's novel. Mostly that's because I felt like they came from the same place -- the ongoing soap opera in our heads that tell ourselves over periods of months or years, to entertain ourselves when we're bored standing in line, or before we fall asleep at night. (Everyone else does that, right?). The same way my dad had many, many references to the tear in Fiona's sweater, Twilight had many, many references to Bella's clumsiness. I get the idea. What I liked: It was certainly a quick read. The boy read it the first time in the car on the way to Mai...

Several years ago, I received what was perhaps the worst piece of fortune cookie advice ever, "keep your plans secret for now." The problems stemming from this advice are myriad. When does "now" end? Which plans? Secret from whom? Okay, maybe not myriad, but three. Somehow I chose to keep all my plans secret from everyone forever. Which makes it kind of hard to act on them, you know? It's easy to not move forward, not even make plans, if I'm keeping them to myself. There's no commit there, no failure to live up to promise. It's too easy. So now, for the whole world, I say this: I have a novel (okay, I have about seven, and they're all in rough draft). I plan to edit it, and get it published. Mmmm, black belt. Me want. A little scared of how it might change me, but we'll work through that. There, not secrets any more. That felt good.

Why I read it: I read her blog, which is entertaining because of the celebrity stuff I suppose, but also because she is very open about her life. Also, she did Tai Kwon Do. A couple of days ago, she said she writes "vampire books with no vampires in them". Excellent. I got the book for Christmas from Ed (because I'd provided him with a list of "a book by..." type items). Bookmark: Envelope from a Customs questionnaire I received back in August, the last time I crossed the border. Tastes like Chicken: Tough one, this time. (Edited later to add:) I think if Tim Wynne-Jones were to write a different book than the two I read that were exactly the same, it might come out like this. That is a good thing. What I liked: So very much. The voice was good. It made me laugh. I found Kelly really believable as a teenager, I found her parents believable as parents of teenagers, I found her brother believable as someone who had expectations placed on him that just weren...

Thoughts some people seemed to be thinking whilst driving home after karate last night in the snow: It has snowed an inch in the last half hour! I shall drive faster, in order to get home quickly, in case conditions get worse! There are three lanes on this street, and one other car. Perhaps I should tailgate her. One of the sweetest moments of my life was one evening last winter when I was driving to band practice. it was snowing. I glanced in my rear view mirror, and there was an SUV driving way too close to me, the way they do. I glanced at the road in front of me. I glanced back in the rear view mirror, and the SUV was now facing the wrong direction in traffic, maybe 50 meters back, and miraculously, no one had hit it. Sometimes when I just need a smile, I think of that.