What We Talk About When We Talk About Writing Software

by Liana Posted on December 27, 2012

So I have discovered that I love Scrivener, that I can figure out how to make it work for me, and that it makes life so much easier to write a short story. Now, let's see if I can finish adapting the method for novelling.

So. Details.

I finished an almost 7000 word Christmas short story in the nick of time for Christmas reading, then finished editing it in 20 minutes. The formatting was a pain, due to one serious frustration: it is literally impossible to merge text items or compile them without separators. I'm a controlling type when it comes to my formatting. I was using a different glyph for every scene separator and had several scenes split up into several text files. Needless to say, manually batting cleanup after Scrivener was. not. fun.

I tried reorganizing The Rothnen Cycle and Vardin project into the same format I had done the Christmas short story (and related stories) and immediately saw an improvement in my workflow. I label the draft "Current" and keep separate folders for Imported Files, Sketches, Working Files, and Compiled Stories. Within "Working Files," I keep a file folder for each story and treat those as my draft documents. It gets messy. Under "Sketches," I put the original story sketch that I duplicate and split to get working files. This allows me to keep a record of how my muse works and stories I'm not ready to flesh out yet. When I'm done with a story, I duplicate the working file folder, merge it all into a single text, and drop it under compiled. If I ever want to go back and plunk in more edits (like newly discovered typos), I update the working files and remerge. The current is where I plunk any compiled doc I want to compile to print or pdf. Works beautifully.

How goes your writing process?

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Then there's the problem of muses...

by Liana Posted on December 22, 2012

The Scribbler's Own Business Manager

So I've been thinking today, and there are still posts I want to get written about creativity and I have not forgotten my last iteration of ideas of where to go with this blog, but... I also started to think about my focus as a businessperson and how much of this blog is just me being me. I need to get all my fiction, poetry, and what-have-you into some sort of monetization (need to eat and all that), and that is something I have been wrangling, that line "Where Art Meets Commerce," neatly addressed by Kristine Kathryn Rusch.

The Audience Speaks

Oh, how the clamoring tides request completed fanfiction! I'm still not sure why the sudden rush upon my fanfiction, but the reviews and alerts and favorites keep pouring in, and a part of me itches to get it all catalogued on this site. But, ahem, it's not precisely the first priority in a mercenary world, not with the muses alive and active and so much reading still to do for friends that I have not done. :hides face in shame:

The Muse Speaks

And then there's the problem of Ryven, a character in this mess of a Vardin book that I just located in the very worst place I could have written him. I didn't want him far apart from Abigail in age, and certainly not of Rhiannon's generation, but somehow he got into "Gone Hunting" before I realized it and gave me a gift scene (not shown) that opened up the whole idea behind The Rothnen Cycle to me. I was not pleased.

Oh, I know, dear muse—who worked overtime to make these manifold, disparate threads come together—, I should be grateful. You gave me the whole story, the subtext, the key to interlocking these pieces, but it requires that Ryven be in his early thirties and Abby her late teens when they meet. Did I mention they were supposed to marry a year or so later?

Ah, muse, you are at times a fox, the trickster, with your 'gifts.'

But so is Whisper, my muse says, almost puzzled. You like her.

She's not my fox, I point out testily, at which the muse wisely refrains from further comment.

Snippet of the Day

Port City, Vardin, is a city satisfied with itself. The people are happy in their business, still familiar with that old way of locomoting about town: walking, and going in and out of unmarked buildings with a perfect understanding of where it is they frequent. This is a city where to not know the occupants of an establishment nor be recommended by a friend or friendly acquaintance is to not know where to go for anything you might need.

I am kidayet here, an outsider, in a place that speaks a hundred foreign tongues and has never learned the meaning of the word 'tourist.'

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Bookish Traditions: Reading and Writing

by Liana Posted on December 17, 2012

Written Work of the Day

The muse has kept her promise, though she must keep on with keeping it, and here is a snippet of genuine new material within this mishmash of sketch that's coming together.

Philip was glad to see Josh. It was good to see Josh. He was justly surprised at how many others held his time.

“Enough women?” he asked after the last bag was unpacked, their parents were in bed, and the hostess complimented.

Josh chuckled. “There's men too, but in Vardin, women are responsible for people.”

“And you're people?” skeptical.

“Got it in one. The men...” Josh's face closed. “They have their work.”

Philip prodded. “Which is?”

“Ivrat.”

“English, Josh.”

“There isn't English. Not for that.”

The sketch is moving forward oddly and the word count is doubtless thoroughly incorrect, but here it is anyway.

 
41158/120000 words. 34.3% done.

Vardin Word of the Day

ivrat. householder: household (law, culture, tradition, or customs)

Rec of the Day

Rabia Gale is offering a giveaway on her gorgeous new book coming out, Mourning Cloak. Please go check it out!

Mourning Cloak by Rabia Gale

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Today's Favorites Inflicted: Snippets and Recs and Hugs

by Liana Posted on December 16, 2012

I'm feeling Christmassy (and sleepy and too sleepy and more than a little ready for significantly less stress), but today, I feel like sharing some of my favorite things around the web and my world.

Rabia Gale posted a lovely little rec post for her guest post about "The Lone Woman," a sale on Rainbird, which I love, and one of the most important indie publishing/writing articles I've lately read.

The lovely xenokattz is offering New Year/Ephiphany fanthings and prompting from holiday music and video.

I'm sending out Christmas cards this year, as soon as I can prop open my brain cells enough to do it.

And today, I unearthed this snippet, discovering anew how much I liked it:

Arienne stood upon the balcony of the Household of Vishet, looking toward the port and the golden edge of the sunset glow. About her neck hung a heavy chain of Vardin silver and the five sapphire links at its heart. Her bare fingers pressed into the stone frame. Her eyes took in the breadth of her city, to her the nation.

"I cannot do this alone," she said suddenly in a quiet voice.

There was no answer behind her in the royal chamber. Her guard and servant, bound to her in all the ways that did not matter, stood there near the wall. He would never be parted from her, even in this most intimate and fearful of moments. But he did not speak. He could not offer her comfort.

The princess glanced down and touched the silver and sapphire chains. Her gaze fell further, to the bare back of her right wrist. Slowly, she clenched the hand, knowing the weight soon to settle there.

Heavily, she whirled about in her heavy skirts and turned toward the guard in his uniform, even darker than her own. His eyes were averted.

"Where is Cayden?" she asked. It was not a question expected of her.

But the guard's eyes closed and she saw his jaw tighten in concentration. A moment, his eyes opened; he looked at her, saw her. "He is coming."

Arienne studied him, impassive in expression if not within her heart. She nodded royal acknowledgment and turned away. "When he arrives, leave us." She laid both her palms against the rail and returned her study to the city. It would be her only burden now.

Vardin.

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Dear Muse... When was the last time you and I sat down and had a chat?

by Liana Posted on December 16, 2012

Dear Muse,

I've been thinking lately, which I know you know, about why we freak out about committing to a large project and have to constantly wander off into other fields in any other place than the one we're in. I've been thinking lately about why I don't do meta, why my worlds are so thoroughly immersed, why I write about broken people who have to sacrifice so much to have any part of what they want and can never seem to have it all. I've been thinking about why perfection and perfect happiness always seems so far away, not even near in those crystal moments we wish we could keep by holding on, why it's always so hard for the ones who belong to claim each other, let alone maintain the claim, why I love romance, why I hate it, why I'm bored and full up and restless and writing and not writing enough all at once.

Let's sit down, my muse; let's chat.

I see you sitting shyly, uncertain and wary as most of the girls I like to peek on in a hundred worlds and spiraled worlds faceting the others. I see you wondering if perhaps I'm digging too deep this time. You know, analysis doesn't always help. Sometimes it's overkill, scribbler. Sometimes, you just need to let things flow.

But they aren't flowing. Oh, we could pretend, we could say they are, and sometimes you give me something, throw me a bone and even maybe add some flesh on that bone, but so many times you run away when I most need you to knuckle down and do. You run and I'm here and if I only wrote what you handed me, I'd have very little finished work to show for it. Why, muse? What is it you need or I need to do to help you?

Maybe it's these constant interruptions and difficulties getting into things, but surely we already proved that that wasn't the real big deal and I've heard the stories about those meat and potato writers: sit down, show up, the muse is attracted to a working writer. Is that so? I wonder sometimes what attracts you to me.

You'll dig.

Is that what you want? You want me to dig? But when does it stop being digging and just turning over the soil? When do we see some harvest from all this seed-planting? Muse, I want to write the stories you give me, but there's a little mess of a problem if you can't stay focused long enough for me to do it.

You give me fodder. It's hard to stay focused on the mix we've got when you throw more things in the mix.

The reading.

The music, the movies, the ways you keep working things around again. It helps; you know, scribbler, that it helps, but it hurts too. The well's too full. The cup's running over. Do you really want to shut off the flow.

I want to direct the flow.

Then stick with me, just me, for a while. I know we can work this out together.

I do have a couple of reading assignments for Rabia, for pygmymuse, for in_the_blue, for BookRooster.com.

Let them go and write with me. I'll give you something. I promise.

I'll hold you to that, muse; you know I will.

Love,

the scribbler

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A Improperly Behaved Muse in a Properly Behaved Day

by Liana Posted on December 13, 2012

Story of the Day

So my muse had a heydey. It talked to me about two stories too sprawling for me to want to take any time to write just now, with other more important stuff to read and write on my plate, but oh! how it talked. The potential in the premises, the possibilities!

May I remind you I have The Rothnen Cycle to write, City of Glass to sketch out, and a heap of a lot of writing/publishing work for my other pen name?

Duly reminded, my muse's response went something like: Write it down! Write it down! We'll do it later and it'll be big and we can make a series of it, and we could do this and we could do that and...

May you all be blessed with more tractable, less distractible muses than mine!

Vardin Word of the Day

hieret | hyeret [ HEE eh ret ] or [ HYEH ret ] from h - l/y - r (etym. )

b. a. #n. behaving oneself properly within the traditions or demands of society, household law, etc.

In short, what my muse has not been.

Written Work of the Day

I did accomplish something worthwhile on the actual main attraction of my writing world, but I shall present a snippet from the muse's illicit love affair instead.

On the corner of Fifth Street, on the north side of the Kingdoms in the City Beshet, stands a small, dingy grey building, almost a shack rather than a building, but the walls are of moldered brick, not wood, and the glass is still quite good, so perhaps it is still just a building and an engraved brass sign hangs over the door: "Hero for Hire—Inquire Within."

Through the glass, we can see that just inside is a tall, drab grey desk stands with a man sitting pulled up to it in a chair overlarge but comfortable. He at least has escaped the drabness of his shabby, grey world and is dressed rather smartly for a man down on his luck in a fine blue sweater and respectable slacks. A pair of glasses perches on his nose, but these we must assume he removes when swashbuckling as a hero ought, and overall, the look of him inspires confidence. His name is Cameron Wyatt.

He could even be successful with such an air about him, but alas! The clients sit and cross their ankles or arms and offer jobs which he must patiently explain—over and over—are for villains, not for heroes. It is quite clear that few in this brave and fractured world even understand the difference. The young Mr. Wyatt's face grows grim as he opens his daily mail—mostly bills, we surmise—and finally, we see through the glass that he has turned inward, toward the secretary's desk in the corner, and told her something.

The next morning, a small sign appears in the window. "Now hiring, villain. Inquire within."

I suppose he grew tired of leaving money on the table.

Rec of the Day

A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan

A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan

This book has excited me since Marie Brennan first started talking about it, and now there's an excerpt and it's a delight, in keeping with the word of the day, about a young lady who is anything but properly behaved (more power to her).

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Vishata: Beginnings, Sketching, and the Writing Process

by Liana Posted on December 12, 2012

Story of the Day

Today was a day of beginnings—the Vardin kind, the kind that will hopefully start a new way of living my world.

On the mundane fronts, I had a job interview today, a job interview yesterday, and a very busy life trying to get thank you and Christmas cards written. Turns out that I'm behind on everything, especially reading other people's books, but I'm hopeful that come January, I will be gainfully employed and financially independent. Yay.

On the writerly front, I was talking (f-locked) to trovia and also to Kira Butler about sketching and layering as a writing process.

I write it as if it's fanfiction, as if everyone in the world knows exactly what I'm saying, then on the next layer, I really think of the ambience and context from my character's POV and layer in more and anything I think must be understood by the reader, then last I really think of the uninitiated reader and tuck in all the necessaries to help them along. Ship to beta, go back and layer in with answers to all her questions.

It got me to thinking, and I decided to do something I hadn't thought of before, hadn't dreamed of—just. write. the. story. down.

Forget the fancy words, the narrative, the dialogue, the beautiful scenes; just get it down! It's a lump of telling just now, split into paragraphs at the appropriate junctures with the occasional nugget of real written story begun. I'm not incorporating the mess of material already written because it bogs me down getting the whole big picture on paper. When it's finally down, we can layer from there.

Vardin Word of the Day

vishata | vishahta [ vi SHAH tah ] or [ vi SHAH tuh ] from v-sh-t (etym. Old Vardin)

ht. n. #p. 1. originating historical events, usually presented in a series or set of stories; 2. the set of records detailing the stories of the founding members of the Houses of Vardin.

vishata, hunter plural, the happenings which cause or originate a particular period of time, usually the present era.. s. vashet, pl. vishata. [from Old Vardin, v-sh-t.]

Written Work of the Day

Yesterday, I began work on sketching out The Rothnen Cycle. It's a sketch, not an outline or a draft in the traditional sense, though it will be once that sketch is fleshed out, so I arbitrarily set 120,000 words as the book word count goal (this is perhaps an understatement), and I will be regularly posting progress counts (unless you all announce that you would rather I not, in which case, I'll throw them on a page somewhere—like my sidebar—instead).
1369/120000 words. 1.1% done.

And a scribble for good measure:

It was a late wind—too blustery, too wintry for the turning of spring to summer. Keisleh closed her mouth against the cold, ragged tickle it left in the back of her throat.

Rec of the Day

So M.C.A. Hogarth has a Pinterest at last!

M.C.A. Hogarth on PinterestAnything new going on with your muse or writing process? Any special things you've read or places you've visited?

Something attempted, something done,
Has earned a night's repose.

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The Next Big Thing: Rothnen Cycle

by Liana Posted on December 5, 2012

Rabia Gale tagged me for the Next Big Thing meme, wherein I wax eloquent on matters of this big novel I'm supposed to be writing next. I've got a few issues with picking a project, something about the fact that I've had two of them for a while and have had yet to nail my focus, but I'm going to just pick one and run with it.

1. What is the working title of your next book?

The Rothnen Cycle

I learned something about myself over the course of failing NanoLite: I kept trying to segregate out the different plot threads of City of Glass, of The Rothnen Cycle, and kept failing miserably. I couldn't find and keep my focus, so I kept not getting anywhere with either of them, despite knowing way more about both stories than a girl ought.

Job hunt put me on the right direction: I'm a detail-oriented of the whole big picture kind of gal and I kept losing the forest for the trees. Thus, the title of the book is technically what I thought was a series title because it gives me back my focus. It's a rather expanded version of the Vardin story.

2. Where did the idea come from for the book?

Vardin was born from my fandom tendencies, the exposition of the theories I developed regarding gifts and powers, and this story itself was born from the way I acquire characters, make them my own in the premise of my making, and all the dynamics and tightly interwoven relationships that emerged from playing them out in the Vardin world. The Rothnen Cycle covers not even the tip of my personal storyworld iceberg, but it captures a big picture of a fragile time when the outside world 'discovers' Vardin—which has always known about the outside world—, the people involved in that discovery, who cause that discovery, and who are most affected by it. It covers the couples who are bound, whether they know it or not, and yet held apart by the distance between baseline human and gifted human and how those bonds affect Vardin as a whole.

3. What genre does your book fall under?

Science Fiction Fantasy. It's really science fiction, but I've never liked to limit myself and I write it in a firmly fantasy style half the time.

4. What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

I plead the fifth. Seriously. I've been 'acquiring' characters since I was five years old and now, they are truly mine, but I wouldn't exactly want to hand out to the world who each character was based on. Though I think only a handful will be obvious to those in the know.

5. What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

:blinks: Might I mention that this is cruel and unusual punishment to try to even shoehorn an almost series-length book into a single sentence? Duly mentioned, here goes:

The Queen of Vardin is dying, a team of explorers has ventured upon the land's hidden shore, and the whole world is about to discover a place where people are divided between the baseline and the gifted, where dragons and mythical creatures are real, and where the balance of power in Vardin can affect the entire world.

6. Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

Self-Published

7. How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

Still working...

8. What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

I wish I knew, but I really don't.

9. Who or what inspired you to write this book?

See #2. Also, Kirsten of A Scenic Route. She liked a snippet from Storm, the first part of The Rothnen Cycle, and startled me into realizing I had found the Vardin voice.

10. What else about the book might pique the reader’s interest?

To create a one-sentence summary makes the whole story seem so big stakes, big picture, but the truth is that this is a story about individuals making choices, commitments, and sacrifices based on their love for significant others, for their families, for their nation. It's about a Queen who can either care for her people or marry the man she will always be bound to. It's about an outsider who learns the terrible secret of Vardin and must choose between the world he's always known and the one that embraces him as its own. It's about a girl raised as an outsider but born to Vardin and wishing as hard as she can that she could be both. It's about the hard choice between forcing the guardians to remain hidden in their own land or allowing them to reveal what they really are—and put the whole world at risk of repeating Vardin's worst and most terrible mistakes.

 

Tagged: in_the_blue, lithiumlaughter, pygmymuse, and xenokattz. Fandom perfectly permitted.

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