Snagged from likeadeuce:
Pick a character* I've written and I will give and explain the top five** ideas/concepts/etc I keep in mind while writing that character that I believe are essential to accurately depicting them.
* Try to make it someone I've written either often or recently in order for me to answer. Original or fandom permitted. Multiple requests permitted.
** May not actually be five.
So I've been writing poetry again. Not just "The Darkness Cleave," but also "Shards of Heart," "we dreamless keep" (thank you, lithiumlaughter!), and "A Lady and a Dragon" (which I probably should have called "A Lady in the Dragon's Court."
After spending so long immersed in fiction, I'll admit to discovering an oddity about this recent bout of poetical bent: they're all from characters. "The Darkness Cleave" was Pyro from The Returning story arc and "Shards of Heart" from Kitty in the same. "we dreamless keep" managed some straight up cummings inspiration but only attached to the story lithiumlaughter told of her student moved by it. "A Lady and a Dragon" is from Vardin character Jhemet, who really was a lady in the dragon's court.
I'm not sure why I'm writing poetry right now, except sometimes I still want to evoke and not smother in details of worlds too well formed, sometimes I want to layer in concrete, vivid images and ideas instead of just more words, words, words. I love words, but paint them spare as often as you paint them rich. I want to capture the essence of these characters at those exact moments and prose isn't cutting it because I'm not after a moment in time. I'm after an emotional moment, an inner state, a cusp of transition, a cold remembrance.
This is not to say I've been proseless. "Breath from a Stone" headed over to in_the_blue and bounced back with appropriate amounts of editing to be done. ( :headdesk: ) In short, it is my usual over and over again, but this one I expected. More. This more had a direction for me though and I'm more glad than ever that I have a wonderful beta.
Y'all writers out there: if you can stand it, get a beta who loves you and understands your writing better than anyone and won't cut you slack on a single comma or sentence fragment they think detracts from the story. Get a beta and a backup beta. She will be your favorite person very, very quickly.
In Breath, I've just discovered a whole new part of the world with a whole new mythology and perspective, and let's face it, every time I'd revisit Vardin, the story was deeper and richer as I was less afraid of throwing the reader headfirst into the world and telling the mess out of it. (Don't believe who ever said show, don't tell—it's show and tell, y'all.) So I ship off Jaguar and my beta ships back questions, good questions, the kind that tell me all the things I left out—some because I didn't know and some because I was afraid.
And that's just it: the balance I'm striking between poetry and prose right now did one of those stark unveiling moments for me. I'm afraid of my short stories in fiction, that it won't be enough, that it will be too much, that no one else will love it, that there won't be the heart that moves people, just a story, dead story, written in dead words on the page. And fear doesn't belong anywhere near my fiction.
I haven't succeeded at Nano-Lite yet. I've got so much more to write, to accomplish, though I do have words to add to that counter on my sidebar. But... If this month has helped me face my fears and just get. work. out. there—(2 shorts | 3 poems)—then this month has done its job. I need to let go of fear and trust the process, write and trust my beta will tell me when the heart is not painted on the page, write and edit and ship out those stories and poems and let. them. go.
So there you go. A bit of poetry and prose and which and why and wherefore the scribbler writeth.
Has your writing challenged you recently? Helped you grow as a person and not just a writer?
She was a smaller child than Monkey when first her people left her alone beneath those leaves and ordered her to bring home meat. A tiny thing, she was fearful of the dark, for her eyes were black and human, prey not predator.
Yellow eyes startled her out of the night. The jaguar shifted forward from the undergrowth and picked his way on great paws to breathe against her shoulder in a voice she should not have been able to understand. "What is this soul and skin you wear?"
That was when she knew she was Jaguar, when she lifted her small hands to his great shoulders and embraced the beast, breathing back, when she learned how the jaguar hunt.
— from "Breath from a Stone"
So today, I struck a deal with my muse that went like so...
Dear Muse,
Under the circumstances of dire duress, I permit you to write anything you want during this November period under two conditions, as follows:
definitive meaning reliable, fully-formed, and complete; and significant meaning important and of sufficient volume to be worth my while.
Any failure to comply with the above conditions will result in immediate and summary dismissal of your input regarding which project I am working on.
Thank you and regards.
Sincerely,
the scribbler
As soon as you commit it to one story, it flies to another. Breath from a Stone and now the unexpected The Dance of Souls are beginning to fill in a cohesive picture, filling in and explaining even more details from stories I already knew in the world of Breath.
This last story began as something in my head, a premise if you will, that did not want to resolve into any of the settings I had already developed. This may be because it came attached to its own and I refused to hire the storyworld. So, the story bounced about, determined to be hired, even if I'd already rejected its setting. I thought it was going to settle nicely into the Alliance, but that didn't happen because with the Talons and the Medes, there was no way I wanted to dump in another serious Clan premise with ethnic warfare or even conflict.
Then along comes this idea that fits neatly into Falhaer, a mountainous region of the world of Breath, and quickly drags along the characters, then basic situation, then story that I'd been thinking I might just skip.
Suddenly, of course, I want to write it, finish both stories, and thrill in how it even pulls in Sellenyn, whose story I already knew. Except I don't. I'm supposed to be writing City of Glass.
From our muses, preserve us!
I have loved being off of Twitter. I'm not sure I'm going to really do a lot on it besides reenable crossposting when I'm ready. I love not worrying about it, not getting distracted by it, though I've found a lot of people and learned a lot from it. I guess that makes me a
Oh, well.
I also have temporarily reneged on further work on the Ficlet o'Clock pieces—and my Heinlein Challenge work. NaNo is enough for me and I've pretty much settled on the lite version of 800 words a day. I just have too much else going on right now to do otherwise. I guess that makes me a
I've been an Unrealistic Overachiever for enough of my life to breathe a sigh of relief at the change.
Gone Hunting, the collection, and a bunch of shorts have been ready to put into print for a while now, but I haven't had time to wrap up the formatting and mess of getting them published. In a way that bothers me because nothing new is entering the pipeline to turn into an income stream. But I cannot tell you how much I desparately would like to finish. writing. a. novella. Seriously.
And I voted. Early. It bothers me a lot to hear photo ID is supposed to suppress voting. It bothers me more to hear people talking about this effort to stop Democratic voters and steal the election through measures against "nonexistent voter fraud." I say this as an independent with conservative leanings. Why? Because both parties have perpetrated voter fraud in their long and mixed-bag history. Both parties are preparing to battle this out legally if they don't get their way. Claiming that everything wrong with voting is due to Republican conspiracy is partisan, just like it was when Republicans claimed the same of Democrats last cycle.
Please, just vote. Vote for the candidate you believe in and the path you want America to take. But please stop bashing each other. Please?
What's on your docket?
So... I'm just getting started on this NaNo business for the year and have decided to post all updates on the matter on my LiveJournal. The tag is, predictably, "Nano 2012."
...for all those affected by Hurricane Sandy. Be safe. God bless.
So, I've been wondering if I can pull off finishing a full-length book (novella, novel, who cares), and then Nano rolls around. Brilliant! But now I have to pick one.
City of Glass
A serialized novel about glass, nanotech, and space. The women of the Alliance seem bound by the world they live in: space ships and colonies, schools and councils, the cities of glass and steel. What happens when the glass cracks?
Storm
A family she never knew, a lover she never wanted, a power she never dreamed of.Alexia Henry knows her father is remarried, but it comes as a surprise when he takes her on his journey to explore a mysterious phenomenon in the French Pyrenees that may lead to her mother’s homeland. Dreams comes to life, long-forgotten stories become reality, and the only way to Vardin is through the storm.
Either? Neither? Something else you've been wanting me to write?
