Attract Mode

I fell down today and twisted my ankle! Ow! My dogs were not sympathetic and now I am sitting, foot up. No swelling but it hurt a stunning amount for a while. Less stunning now. Still very hard to walk.
This is the year of writing! I don’t think I can do a meaningful wordcount though, because I’m doing it in such stages…. writing a summary, dictating, cleaning up dictation, eventual rewriting. But goal-wise, I’d like to finish three books and may aim to finish four. Well, by ‘finish’, I mean ‘in rough draft form’. I’d like to do detailed world creation for two settings. And I’d like to submit the TFN trilogy by September or so.

Um. I have a lot of self-doubts. My reaction to hurting my ankle was to lounge around on a couch playing a video game, instead of soldiering on. I haven’t met any deadline I’ve set yet. I have a role model self inside but I’ve fallen down on pressuring myself to measure up to her. Hoping too much for external pressure, I suppose. And falling prey to too many distractions. I WANT to stay aware of the world, want to pursue external adventures, but I think especially without medication, I need to utterly lose myself. I will probably be able to post about myself when I feel like it and I think I should since I forget my past otherwise, but… wow, tuning out is hard.

I HAVE been very sleepy lately, and in my sleep, dreaming again. Yay!

my current mode, inspired by anime and superpowered epic fantasy: wherein one undergoes character growth and is rewarded with power growth and plot progression in response
George R. R. Martin: undergo character growth, be punished by plot /regression/

I’ve just realized I forgot to outline the second half of one character’s Thrones plot arc.

I’m feeling the old familiar sensation of ‘this is too hard, this is too messed up, best bet is to throw it all away and start something new’. Yucky yuck.

Edited to add: Still, I have to take some deep breaths. It’s more important to nail this part of the development cycle than the next part. Oh lord, the dogs are bickering again.

So, I’ve hit a snag on the outlining that will require a slowdown– some worldbulding, some re-consideration. My self-imposed schedule, as you might recall, is very tight. Even tighter, since I was aiming for finishing the outline on the 30th so I could have a day to breathe before launching into the text.

I get all panicky when I think of my schedule as a hard deadline, as ‘must have X by end of November’.

But when I think of it like I was taught to think of deadlines at work, as ‘I think I can have X by the end of November, but of course events may revise that’, I feel calm, relaxed, as if it’s achievable.

I have to remember my theories about not rushing. But I also have to balance those against various unavoidable time limits. Juggle juggle.

I’m basically done with my ghost draft! Go go meeting milestones! I even got a taste of the bang-smash ending thrill.
I think I’m better at coming up with justifications and explanations than I am at being spontaneously original.  Or at least, it’s much more satisfying and rewarding.

Having a two-story house creates climate control problems!

I hope I don’t always have an excuse. We’re almost out of the old house, almost done with that albatross. Then it’s just the unpacking. But that’s no excuse. I can’t always have an excuse. I mean that in an abstract intellectual way; that I can’t turn things I hate into excuses.
That’s about not writing.

But I haven’t been posting here so much kind of ’cause of Dante. My sleep schedule is messed up ’cause of him and all my posts used to either be right after I got up or at work.

On Dante himself: I’m happy with him, except for the cat situation. Yeah, he destroys stuff, yeah, he fucks up my sleep schedule. Yeah, I might complain. Yeah, there’s stuff I’d change and yeah, we’re working on some of those. And yeah, I’m making it harder on myself than I have to in a few ways. If I kept him locked up in a very small space anytime I wasn’t ready to fully focus on him, things would be easier. And he might not even mind. Instead, I sometimes put him in the office when I leave home, or put him outside on a tieout line for a while during the day (and keep the door open and a close eye on both dogs) or on the other end of a leash I wear around my ankle. And I think, when it’s a baby, some of these things won’t be legal.

Of course, it takes two humans to get a baby and just one human to get a puppy.

Anyhow, might be time for my morning nap now.

A friend doesn’t enjoy reading fantasy novels but will happily snatch up fantasy movies and fantasy comics. Why?
I think it has to do with establishing setting rules. With a non-familiar setting, pictures are worth a whole lot for establishing the basics. The sky is blue. The roads are paved. People carry guns. So many things can be established without ever drawing attention to them. But in most prose fiction, the convention is that setting details should be established through narration, and incorporated into the story itself. Show, don’t tell. This requires a lot more words than conventional modern fiction.

I admit it, I’ve bought into the vague idea that fiction set in pre-existing settings (Star Trek, Werewolf, Forgotten Realms, fanfiction) is somehow not as cool as stuff set in an original world. It isn’t as prestigous. I suppose I’ve picked up some of that idea because the quality control on some licensed stuff doesn’t seem that great; like the publishers are relying on the license to sell books rather than the stories and writing. And I suppose that’s probably true.

But now I’m wondering if there’s a confusion of motivations; if the readers aren’t embracing it just because it’s a license they’re attached to, but because with all of the setting basics pre-established, the stories are a much more enjoyable light read than ‘original fantasy’. This connects to the pleasure I’ve always felt reading stories set in comfortable well-established settings and my own interest in incorporating original mythological resonance in fiction.

Okay, so, let’s take this as true: speculative fiction’s barrier to entry is the amount of setting internalization required of the reader (which usually neccesitates lots of dense prose that is difficult to make interesting without incorporating ‘tours’).

Now, the challenge is to think of ways to present that setting information without incorporating it into the narrative. Comics and movies do it with images. Games do it with a dry presentation of the setting material that is then incorporated into RPG experiences. The trick there is getting people to read the setting material, which, in my experience, a lot of people don’t really want to do. It’s dry, it’s boring, they read the parts that relate to them (maybe) and make the GM help them figure the rest out later.

I have some ideas, though.

I’m in a strange place writing-wise. I could blame dog-house-move but I think I’d be working on TFN2 even so if I was enthusiastic about it.

Instead I feel stuck wondering if it’s worth going on. The depression I anticipated coming with quitting seems to be focused around feeling like I’m an insignificant ant with nothing to make me stand out from the crowd of nobodies and wannabes. My blog posts aren’t entertaining enough, my stories aren’t gripping enough, I don’t have the artistic or technical skills to make other kinds of projects stand out.

The beta reader situation is as follows: 2 readers have completed it, with minimal comments and general praise. 2 readers are very slowly slogging through it (that is, less than halfway through after a month or two). 2 readers have it but have not yet started it (as far as I know). Of the readers, one finished is my husband and one is somebody who may or may not prefer that genre, but I think enjoys close cousins of the genre. Of the sloggers, one definitely doesn’t read the genre, and one does. Of the yet-to-readers, I think both are familiar with the genre.

I think about this stuff because it matters to how I weight reactions. While my husband is an invaluable resource in improvements, he has reasons other than ‘this is a good story’ to encourage me to go on with the project. (Admittedly, probably so does everybody else involved, but less immediate day-to-day reasons.)

Originally, I was going to do the three books of the trilogy because it was going to be good practice. And I still think three practice novels is a good idea.  I’m just no longer convinced a trilogy is right. I mean, if the idea just isn’t working, maybe I should put it aside and start fresh? So I have a chance to apply my studies to multiple kinds of stories?

This might just be mid-story writer sloggy-slog-slogness. No longer fresh and shiny, still lots of work. I dunno. Maybe I shouldn’t have sent book 1 out for comments and feedback. Previously trying to get midstory feedback has been a mistake… I guess I thought it would be different because it was a whole book, darn it. And I’d done some pretty crazy things in it and I /really/ wanted to know if they worked.

Mope mope. Stay tuned for something more interesting though. Well, as interesting as I can make these things.

Everybody who investigates writing a novel learns about plot and characters, about dialogue and description. I think that’s reasonable, but not as comprehensively useful as it once was, before the internet days. I have some ideas of my own about what goes into good writing. Consider these components like the face/vase optical illusion; they exist simultaneously and in the same space as the traditional components. Also note: I am not a published author. Those who man the gatehouses of commercial publishing may not agree with me. But heck, I’d love to hear from people about this.

Wordcraft

That is, using written language to successfully accomplish goals. This includes not just the basics of grammar and spelling everybody graduates from high school with, but a sense of cadence and an extended understanding of vocabulary. To understand vocabulary, you need more than a big list of words (because a lot of great authors do wonderful things with a relatively small list of words). You also need to understand relationships between the words chosen, and making deliberate decisions in using those relationships. This category further includes layout and word arrangement, which should again be considered in light of the vision one is trying to communicate.

Here is a simile to explain why wordcraft is important. The book or webpage or whatever that somebody is reading is like a window to another world. As most windows contain glass, the medium contains words. If a writer ignores the words, the glass ends up smudged and dirty, blurring and distorting the story beyond. Refining wordcraft is like polishing the window to make it as transparent as possible.

As far as I know this skill is developed by the usual tactics of much reading and writing– but also, much reading of what you write.

Alone, all it produces are eloquent but not very interesting blog posts.

Storycraft

Fundamentally, this is skill is about learning what to show, and when and how to show it. A story should not be presented the way our lives are experienced, with every moment of a character’s life (through the story) described. Even reality TV skips the boring stuff. A basic rule of thumb is to exclude every detail that does not advance the reader’s understanding of the story you’re trying to tell.

But that’s the most basic level of storycraft. Just as the point of wordcraft is to keep the window transparent, the point of storycraft is to keep the reader curious and interested. This is a technical skill and one that can (I believe) be studied in order to gain basic competency. As a technical skill, it’s been developed and refined and passed down, and techniques can be learned from others. It is NOT about what is being observed through the window, but about organizing and presenting the observed matter so that the viewer remains as entertained and interested as possible. Storycraft shares basic concepts not just with pedagogy and marketing, but also with visual artistry and aesthetic design.

There are a great many variations built upon the foundations of basic storycraft, but you have to have the foundations first.

Refined storycraft alone produces comedy, best presented verbally. Have you ever heard, “It’s all in the timing?”

Ideas

This is the bit a lot of people think about when they think about creative writing. It’s what’s beyond the window, it’s the vision. There are many many sources out there that suggest ways to learn about ideas. Most of them are grounded in observation and speculation. Look at the world around you, ask questions about it, and come up with answers. Your observations will rarely be original. Your questions and answers might be, but it isn’t required. The more you observe your world and the more questions you ask, the more ideas you will have.

It’s important to know that if you come up with a different answer to a question that has already been answered convincingly, you’ll have to do a lot more work to support your idea– which usually involves coming up with more ideas. At some point you’ll rest your construction on ideas your readers are already familiar with. These familiar, shared ideas are much of what comprises ‘genre conventions’ and influences genre expectations.

Ideas alone produce either daydreams, or are cloaked in a mass of forgettable and confusing prose.

Persistence

Oh yes. You have to keep going. You have to keep writing. All of the above without persistence results in a lot of pretty, gripping, clever story fragments, or, in the best case, occasional brilliant short stories.

On the other hand, persistence alone doesn’t make a good story. It can and does produce vast manuscripts. Unfortunately.

Flexibility

What flexibility means in this context is that you have to be willing to read and change what you write. None of the first three are finished and done in one go. No, not even ideas. They are all improved by reading your work, thinking about it and experimenting.

I don’t think you end up writing if all you have is flexibility. Maybe you get involved in some other aspect of novel-production?

I’ve been playing WoW a lot. I haven’t been working on my novel much. I’m going to have to rebuild my schedule but I hope to still have a finished readable edited first draft by the end of the year, if not sooner.

The reason I’m playing WoW so much is that it’s my current anti-brooding device. I’ve been doing a lot of brooding lately when I’m not involved by an anti-brooding device. A lot of things are going on and most of them are good, but it doesn’t change my circumstances at present.

In some ways, a long descent that I predicted many years ago is reaching its conclusion. As with a diving airplane in a movie, we wonder, Will the plane pull up in time? Will it crash and burn?

We’re getting awfully close to the ground. And it shows. Many things are going well, so since I can’t obssess about my personal life (much), I get irritated by… almost everything. I spend a lot of time hating the state of the world. I develop and nurture new pet peeves. For example, one of my pet peeves is poor reading comprehension. Another pet peeve is the national tendency to prioritize risk-mitigation over… almost everything else. Sometimes, taking a risk is the right thing to do.

Anyhow, I don’t like hating the world, I don’t enjoy being irritated, these are not my preferred states of mind. So I seek constant immersive distraction. It has short-term negative consequences, but, I believe, future positive consequences. Because brooding is bad for me. I pick at scabs and create wounds where once none were. And I have to hold myself together for a while longer yet.