Distance, where I’ve been, and getting personal

03 May 2013 5 Comments

by PartlyPixie in The Novel, unsticking Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Shadows at the tide pools.

Forgive me for rambling, I'm rusty at this.

I've been away. Away from the blog, away from home, from myself, even from writing.

I needed a vacation.

Irowboat's birthday is in April, and we decided to celebrate with a road trip in my new car to California – traveling to San Francisco and down the coast to Los Angeles, finally ending in San Diego for a few nights before heading home. It was a chance to see friends (including a visit with the fabulous people of The Office of Letters and Light), to eat marvelous food, stare at gorgeous coastlines, and to research some locations for The Novel.

We had an amazing time. There were long walks, speakeasies, The Golden Gate Bridge, winding roads with no cell phone reception, tide pools, ghosts in hotels, caves used by smugglers and pirates of yesteryear, beaches at sunset, books by Douglas Adams on the car stereo, time with each other. And, of course, amazing friends, new, old, and in-between.

There was a day spent glued to television and twitter when bombs went off in Boston, the surreal contrast of our Great Vacation against the horror and fear of the news.

There was an impromptu stop at Monterey Bay Aquarium, hunts for clam chowder on the coast, adventure.

I barely wrote a word.

It gave me distance, this trip. It gave me time in air thick with history and wonder, time in the places my characters know and love and remember. Time away from myself and who I'm used to being.

That distance gave me the chance for all this writing, all this dreaming to change me, and I've returned different. I'm new, born into myself from the new reality of writing, wanting to write, afraid and excited by all I have to learn.

I can't help but think back to last year at this time. I was frightened, troubled that I might not make it. My insecurities lashed at me like tide on sharp rocks, catching me up in waves I thought might drown me. I knew I would never be the same – I could feel it as I wrote myself real. I've been feeling the changes in me, feeling the strain between who I was and who I am yet to be.

This trip, this distance from my everyday, has broken the bond with the past. I'm floating free. I don't know how to do anything anymore, not like I used to. I don't remember how to blog or to write, I have piles of emails to reply to and comments to answer and things I want to write and share here and elsewhere. And a novel to do.

I don't know where to begin. Not even a little. So I begin here, with you.

What is clear to me is that I'm ready to more myself. Here, elsewhere, anywhere. I can feel it, the desire to hold things back. I've given in too often, and fallen silent instead of saying what I wanted to say. But the time for that is over.

Now it's time to get more real, and more serious. Time to do What I Never Thought I Would.

I'm ready for this, whatever this is. I'm ready.

 

I’ve Been Up To Something…

08 Apr 2013 3 Comments

by PartlyPixie in Camp NaNoWriMo, The Novel Tags: , , , , , ,

I haven't been around the blog as much as I like lately.

It's because I've been up to things… Several to be specific, but one thing in particular. And I'm excited, and a little bit frightened. And that usually is the best combination.

As I've mentioned a few times, I'm working on one of last year's novels, slated to be self-published around November/Devember (and a lot of you are getting copies thanks to your contributions to my causes).

This novel has taken a lot of research, and along the way I have been collecting snippets and ideas for back story and history of my characters, things that don't need to be in the novel, but are in my head all the same.

And so, I have launched a blog for the prequel of The Novel, and I am using the momentum of Camp NaNoWriMo to get it written (edits take a little longer).

The story is about vampires, about what we become to survive, about love that lasts through changes and separations, about friendship. And it all centers around a girl, found in Ireland, with a destiny to become one of the most feared beings the vampire world has ever known.

Here is my first entry. The rest can be found at cultofthesun.wordpress.com if you want to follow along.

Ireland, 1904

If only she had forever to live, if only she had more than seventeen years to become brave, she might have found the courage.

But she killed him anyway, the vampire.

The stake, carved for her from the rung of a baby's crib, did not go in smoothly the way she hoped. She knelt at his sleeping side, and her arms shook when she raised it above his death-still chest and plunged down at his heart.

His eyes opened, bright with shock, and he scratched at her; his nails dug long channels into the pale terrain of her flesh, across her chest and down her arm, and red bloomed, further staining the torn silk of her gown and mingling with the pooling black blood of the vampire. The scratches burned like when she backed up against her mother's oven, hot with breaking bread.

She did not scream. And she did not stop.

He clutched at her, bucking and writhing, noises coming from his blood-drenched throat. She closed her eyes and pushed harder against the stake, thinking about butchering lambs in the frost, how they made sad, small sounds and steam rose from the blood, caught in troughs for the season's offerings. She felt his ribs break and give way, like branches under heavy boots. His heart did not resist, and when she penetrated it at last, his body shivered and went limp.

She moved away from the bed slowly, wary of him rising again. Distantly, she knew that her bones ached, that her blood ran hot along her skin, that her lip was split and swelling, and worse things had happened–things she could not think on–but she couldn't feel any of it. She sat as far from the bed as she could, back against the wall, fingered the cold shackle around her ankle, and waited for morning.

 

Month Twelve Reflections: Write What You Write

11 Dec 2012 6 Comments

by PartlyPixie in 12 Month Reflections, December, unsticking, Writing Tools Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

We hear about how zombies are over and how fairy tales are in, we hear about agents and we worry about if we can one day sell the thing we have scarcely typed five paragraphs of.

We ought never end a sentence with the word of. Or to. Or with.

We think we should write science fiction because smart people do that, or we should give up on literary fiction because vampires are where the money is (even though some writing magazine just told us the vampire craze is dead – haha dead, get it?), and what if that isn't where the money is and everyone is still stuck on serial killers and zombies after all?

But young adult is where the real market is, right? We should take a class on that, we should join a writing forum, we should have a writing group, except writing groups are bad for originality, or is that reading?

We should not read while we write because it will influence us, or was that we should read as much as we can while we write so we stay fresh?

We should never write cliches, we should only write things that have not been done, we should give up and write whatever, we should cut our teeth on fan fic and not worry about all that pesky character development. Maybe we should skip the publisher for that novel we haven't written yet and go straight to kickstarter, and maybe if we just read the latest magazine article on “5 Sure-Fire Ways to END Writer's Block NOW!” we can finally get started…

Stop

Just stop for a minute.

We are all here because we are writers, we want to be writers, or artists, or creatives. We have a need to express things that are within us, sometimes buried deep from years of shoulds and should nots, or just beneath the surface and waiting to be discovered.

Sometimes they lay like seashells in the sand and beg us to pick them up and hold them, smooth and cold like porcelain, to our ears, and listen.

We will never get to what is inside by reaching for what is outside. We will never be fulfilled as writers, never find that peace we write to seek, if we listen only to the bustle of the world going by, and not the seashell in our hands.

We must write what we write. We must come to the page, the canvas, the world as we are, and no one else. We must dive into our obsessions and burn through them, write into them, explore every unflattering angle and beautiful crevice of the things we cannot stop thinking about.

Whether it is cliche or obscure, if we do it honestly, we will offer the world what we are here to offer. And when we let go and admit to who we really are, the art is a little freer to make, the blocks not so blocked, the time not so long before we can feel the idea giving way and letting us slide into the heart of things.

And if the waves come and take a seashell away, wipe out what brilliant idea we had, it is easier to find another one just as brilliant, just as fine, because we know what to look for.

It does not always come easy.

When I began this year, I thought I was a science fiction writer. I had dabbled with all sorts of things, from some hard boiled crime to short stories dealing with Christian mythology, and of course, my beloved science fiction I thought I was meant to do.

I thought I knew what I wrote.

But what poured out was not expected: vampires, immortals, fairy tales and black magic, a tower that only stands because of the blood poured at it's feet, enchanted swords, underground owl men who tell your fortune in the bones of their pellets, exiled fairies, greek myths and conspiracies, and even more vampires.

I clung on for dear life as I wrote on and on, things I never dreamed I could imagine, anyone could imagine.

I can see the struggle in my early drafts, the fighting with myself, trying to steer the story to normal, all thrown out when the word count was too low, and I had to face myself as I am. I started many months with the hopes that maybe this time I would find sanity, the previous bloodbath of a novel was a fluke, but I was wrong.

I know better now, and I am a better writer. I look forward to what darkness lays before me, what evil deeds will await, what fairy tale I can twist.

I write what I write, it's just easier that way.

Write what you write, live as you live, let the rules that work for you find you.

And spend that money you save on writing magazines on a good pen, or some chocolate, or wine. Whatever makes you happy.

 

Guest Post: Your character may be a mugger if…

16 Oct 2012 3 Comments

by irowboat in NaNoWriMo, October, Slightly off Kilter Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Written by irowboat

 

I was going to respond this comment from dawnstarpony, but it ran considerably long, and PartlyPixie made me turn it into a post. dawnstarpony asked:

Do you consider character planning/-izing/character personality sheets as outlining and wasting time?

I've encountered two general populations of writers when it comes to characters:

  • Those who are caught off-guard and mugged by their characters in a dark alley, who wake up in cold sweats, imagining that the character is watching them from every shadow, scheming to take their plot to terrible, undreamt places;
  • And those who are portrait photographers, casting the right character to tell the desired story, supplying props, dressing the set, controlling the lighting, and posing the character.

Neither of these are The Right Way™,but nor are they incorrect, for just as a photographer can still take a blurry photo even given the best circumstances and nearly unlimited control, those that are mugged can endlessly describe—in searingly vivid detail—the one or two distinguishing features they were able to make out in the dimmest of starlight and sodium-arc shadows.

There is promising research into the possibility of a third population, which has not yet been granted an official registration from the Writer Taxonomy Bureau; some argue it is simply a hybrid or mutant population and may be sterile. This population is the fashion photographer, who shares attributes of the two other populations: they control the lighting, provide props, cast the character, and provide minimal direction, but have little (or no) control of how the character actually interacts with the setting and props.

With a little luck (and the experience of the photographer), mediocre settings, marginal props, poor lighting, or the occasional blurry shot, the character can work the camera – producing unexpected and wonderful results that could never have been planned. Moments often noticed only when everything is done and examined in review.

Snapshots of serendipity.

 

Unstuck: What to Write When You Don’t Know What to Write – Retell a Story

11 Oct 2012 6 Comments

by PartlyPixie in NaNoWriMo, October, unsticking Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Retell a fairy tale.

When I was a little girl, we had an in-wall space heater in the basement rec room, the kind I've only seen in cheap hotels, but I am sure that the original decorators thought it was the height of interior design.

Anyway, in the winter, my dad and I would pile blankets next to that space heater and turn it on, and pretend it was a fire, and we were camping. We'd open up bags of marshmallows and cinnamon bears, and my dad would tell me stories.

I always requested some fairy tale or another.

My dad is a patient man, and he always complied. Of course, it gets old just telling the same stories over and over, (or maybe because they had me a little late and is memory was slipping… love you, Dad!) he never told me the same version of any story twice. Robin Hood had many impromptu adventures, Little Red Riding Hood was a mugger out to rob the wolf blind, and the Seven Dwarves once ran a speakeasy.

The stories were never the same. As far as I'm concerned, my father is a master story teller.

So, when our creativity is on the fritz and the stories aren't flowing, when ideas for NaNoWriMo are thin, when we just need to feel fiction happening.

Tell a fairy tale.

Tell it straight, with castles and fairy godmothers. Tell it crooked, with black magic and twisted endings. Tell it modern with no magic, where Jack climbs the corporate beanstalk, or sleeping beauty is a woman in witness protection until her boyfriend finds her.

Don't be afraid of not being original. Fairy tales are important, they are myths that bind us all together as a culture, the stories we cannot get enough of. Ask any hundred people to tell you the story of Cinderella, you will hear one hundred ways of telling it.

We are none of us original, and all of us unique.

Hell, Robin McKinley retold Beauty and the Beast twice. Twice. And the two novels might as well be written by two very different authors.

Let's be inspired by this.

When we're stuck for ideas, when we feel like frauds, when we simply can't pass through the static – no matter how many times we describe our laundry pile, when we just need a good idea to roll with through NaNo, and we simply want to write without worrying about plot, we can turn to the stories we have lived telling since childhood.

Try it; rewrite a fairy tale, or a folk tale, or a myth. Create a greater intimacy with the stories we only thought we knew.

You'll be amazed at just how original the same old songs can be.

Seven Down, Five to Go! (Reflecting on silence and

04 Aug 2012 8 Comments

by PartlyPixie in July Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Yes, I finished last month, and on time. I just didn't talk about it.

I've written over 350,000 words of fiction since January first.

It's been three weeks since I have blogged, and it is because I have nothing much to say. I can think of lots of topics and witticisms, many strings of words to display, but they are hollow; the echos of thoughts I've had in the past. And I am no longer sure if I think those things.

So silence remains.

The silence is born from outgrowing the old format of my writing, my life, my blog. I no longer know what I want to say. So I am quiet. I quietly go about my job, my workouts, my writing. Old conversation happens like a habbit, and I can taste the stale crumbs. There is a sweet melancholy to this, a mourning period in which I sit and wait to see what creature rises from the ashes.

And as I wait, I still write. Fiction, at least. The story rolls or skips or is forced out and I manage to each month end with some small amount above 50,000 words.

My stories reflect the complexities I am discovering in myself. I am a much better writer than I was when I began, and now I challenge myself each month more, with greater plot points, more characters, much more difficult problems to untangle. It gets harder, not easier, the farther I squeeze through this rabbit hole; I can no more ease up on myself than I can stop breathing. I must grow, I must push my own limits.

I read somewhere once that “writer's block” can actually be a period of silence in the growth of a writer's skill and craft, a void from which a new universe must bloom. (We all know that universes need voids to incubate properly.)

I know one thing, now. I want to have a different conversation about writing than we have been having.

I also know that things around here are going to change a little, to make room for whatever comes next.

I know I sound dark now, but In the Beginning there is always darkness.

And then there is light.

 

Living Multiple Realities

13 Jul 2012 3 Comments

by PartlyPixie in July Tags: , , , , , ,

Reality is a subjective thing, especially to us writers.

We see things multiple ways. We sit on an old stone bridge and look down at a length of pipe sunken to the bottom of an icy stream, and in a blink we see a sword, golden and forgotten, lost, waiting for a hero to come and take up the fight again.

We see her, the hero, bending down and at the edge of the stream in our mind. She is wearing jeans and a blue shirt; her dog got lost in the woods and she’s been searching for him, calling out his name. And then, she finds herself called to the sword, her birthright. Her cheeks are rosy from running. She reaches a hand into the stream and hisses through her teeth – the water is cold from spring runoff, the snow melting into perfectly clear water – and her fingers close slowly around the freezing metal hilt. Then, in wonder and fear, she pulls the blade free from the mosses and reeds out into the sunlight.

We see the story, there, waiting in the middle of the “real world,” hanging ripe like fruit from the tree of imagination. We rush home, we must write her; we must find out what happens next. What does she do with the sword? Where does it take her? We’re swooning with possibility as we rush to get the images down, the character. We want to know who she is, what she likes, how old she is.

We fall in love with her, her flaws and her talents. We find out who she has a crush on, and who she is dating. We follow her around her life and see her go to her job at the frozen yogurt shop where she gets in trouble for giving out too many sprinkles on the samples. She is distracted by images of a golden sword she has hidden in her laundry pile at her apartment, and it is hard to concentrate. Her boyfriend stops in to say hello and get a free cup of vanilla yogurt, and he can tell her mind is elsewhere. He leaves, jealous and upset. This will come back to haunt her later. But by then, a dangerous and handsome stranger will have come to town, looking for the girl who has heeded the call.

Like a polaroid, it develops. And like magicians, we turn the images into words, alchemists of language.

It is our jobs to see the world two, three, one hundred ways at once. We are the translators of possibility, telling the stories that open the hearts of our readers, fold open the curtain and give them the hope that there is so much more than what is in front of us. We open them, we open ourselves. We make reality greater than the sum of its parts.

And as we follow our stories, we write ourselves real. We forget to be us, and we become gods, for just five minutes or five hours each week or day or month when we find a corner of time to sit down and tell the story. We write to make what is within us known to the world. We have something to share.

And we must be bold enough to tell the world however we see it, shining and glittering or dripping with vampire venom. We see the world as what it could be, should be.

And we make the world magnificent with our dreams.

When FILDI Kicks In

26 May 2012 3 Comments

by PartlyPixie in May Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Day Twenty-Six: Aprox. 20,000 of 50,000 words

Last Sunday’s inspiration post mentioned something called FILDI, which means “Fuck it, let’s do it!” It is that beautiful moment when we suddenly remember that everything is temporary anyway, and if we don’t get it done, it never will have a chance to suck and to just do it for the sake of doing.

Which all amounts to saying “Fuck it. Let’s do it.” I am about to say it. I’m about to do it.

I have only 20,000 words written. I need another 30,000. It is the twenty-sixth.

Failure. Is. Not. An. Option.

Fuck it. Let’s do it.

This month has been less enthusiasing than expected. I thought that blogging my novel would be an extra push of difficulty and fun, and in many ways it has been. It has also re-aquatinted me with a dear old nemesis. The delete key.

Little vixen. So tempting, especially when I know what I am writing will be read. Gulp. The tool of the perfectionism gremlin, sitting in the corner of my keyboard with it’s harmless looking arrow with a little x in it, promising redemption if only I get rid of the crap I just wrote and try again.

Because this time, it is for real and available to be read.

I write, then I realize I really ought to make more sense than usual, and there needs to be a plot told in order, and maybe I should make sure the spellings and such are all are corrected and there aren’t any major errors. This all takes time. Lots more time and energy than just banging things out fast and furious and unhindered by fear of judgement like I have become accustomed to.

I expected this issue. I did. I knew that the pressure of posting fiction online would push me to new ideas and maybe greater insights. The vision I had was that I would turn out posts on a regular basis throughout the month, and then have maybe another month of just automatically posting the rest of what I had written if anything had not made it. I imagined things streamlined and fairly carefree overall.

What I got instead was the sudden and overwhelming need to do other things, from the other novel insisting in being written instead to doing a cleaning overhaul of a good deal of my house. I am so very reluctant.

I fully intend on extending the posting of the articles I am writing and keeping them going until the story finishes up. I fully intend on finishing this month even though I would just about do anything else, including continuing to clean my house, maybe take up a hobby of sticking nails through my cheeks and making funny faces.

I want to leave this project and just skip it, write the story I’m already working on or move on to the next one or even give up on writing and run off to train exotic animals for movies. I want to quit so badly. I am sick of the story and the research and I am sick of myself being sick of it and avoiding it. I want this month to just be done already.

But this is that moment. The moment that separates the writers who get things done from the ones who remain unfulfilled and not writing.

This is what we do the practice for, the daily or weekly or monthly goals. This is why we work at making relatively well formed sentences and paragraphs. It isn’t for the good times. It’s for the times we hate and wish we could be anywhere doing anything else.

We work hard and get good at doing it so we can keep going when we would rather do anything else.

If I keep going, I will be uncomfortable and maybe amused and maybe brilliant and maybe miserable for the next five days and 30,000 words.

It will probably suck.

For five days. Maximum.

But if I quit now? I will feel the sting for years. Maybe a lifetime.

Because these are the times that show us who we are capable of being.

So here we go.

Fuck it.

Let’s do it.

Never miss the opportunity to be greater than you are.

Inspiration #17

13 May 2012 Leave a Comment

by PartlyPixie in Inspiration, May Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Every Sunday, I choose a passage of wisdom from someone who knows better and much more than I do about writing, life, the universe and/or everything.

Share and enjoy!

“As a writer, you must maintain your basic integrity: You must be true to what you believe in, nd you must write mainly for yourself. If what you write pleases your editors and readers, that’s fine. That’s the goal. But first you must please yourself.

“Hey!” you tell yourself. “There’s a big market out there for junky romance novels, so I’ll write one. My stuff can’t be any worse thn what’s already getting published!”

No good. If you compromise your talent, if you deliberately write something you consider “junk,” two things will happen: 1) You will have contempt for yourself and suffer subsequent loss of self-respect for your talent; and 2) You won’t sell your “junk.”

Why won’t you’ve able to sell your junky romance novel? Because if you talk to successful writers of published romance novels, you will learn that they believe in Wht they’re doing. They have genuine affection and respect for the genre they are a part of…

You, too must have pride in what you write. If you feel contempt for your work, your effort at writing-down to the market will be transparent, and you won’t be able to sell. If you attempt to write what is false to you, you’ll never achieve writing success.”

~ from Let’s Get Creative: writing fiction that sells, by William F. Nolan

On Babies and Bathwater (so to speak)

09 May 2012 5 Comments

by PartlyPixie in May, Writing Tools Tags: , , , , , ,

Day Nine: Go here to follow this month’s project

We’ve got to be willing to throw it out.

All of it; every blessed word, every hour of blood, sweat, and misspellings. We have to be willing to put it all in the recycling bin if we have to. We have to be wiling to cut any paragraph, any idea, no matter how much you believe it would cost you.

We have to be willing to let go.

Writing, being a writer, demands that we not be greedy. Writing is often a selfish and self-contained act, but being a writer itself demands that we give our stories out to the world—that they become no longer ours, but a part of the great complexity that is the human experience. We nurture a story, grow it, keep it hidden and close as we shape it and shape ourselves into the person who can tell the tale as it must be written. It feels like a part of our body, part of our personality, our soul.

And then, if we are to give it true life and breath, we have to let it go. Into the hands of editors and publishers and then into the minds of those readers we both want and fear. Once our stories have been read, they are in some way not ours anymore. They belong to the people who live the story as they read it just as much as they belong to us, the minds that put them into words.

In one of the most beautifully honest moments of my life, I was sitting at a local diner with my best friend and her new baby. We were watching the new little life figure out fingers and what they do by dropping Cheerios into my coffee cup, and out of nowhere my friend put a hand on her stomach and said, “Sometimes, I wish she was still just mine.”

Once fiction is born, it isn’t just ours anymore. Other people have a say in what they see, they can point out typos and inconsistencies, they can offer suggestions – both good and bad. They can say they love it or hate it, and they get to have those opinions.

If we are still attached to the story, still feel like it is a part of us, we mistake the story for ourselves. And if it is rejected, then we feel rejected. We can get depressed, decide that everything we do is awful and give up.

And take up crochet, even though we hate crochet and the yarn always gets messy and tangled before we finish anything, and all we can make is scarves because really we’re writers and writing goes back and forth, not in loopy patterns like hats or sweaters. Maybe, once everyone has too many scarves, we will get back to writing. Or making everyone afghans.

Or we can remember that this story is the story we wrote, not us ourselves.

We can be willing to let it go. We can be willing to throw it out and start again.

Because every time we write, we become better writers.

Even when we write shitty first drafts. Especially when we write shitty first drafts.

We didn’t just spend an hour writing that blog post to have a post on a blog, but to learn how to blog better for next time as well. We didn’t use those ten years writing and perfecting a novel just to have a novel, we did it to learn what it is to write and perfect a novel, so we can do it again, better, no matter if the first one is ever published.

Every time we write, we become better writers. No matter if what we have done in the past is successful in the world or not. It’s not us anymore, just something we did that we can sell to sponsor the time needed to write more.

Thinking of it this way, publication is not a goal, but a means to the end of being able to write. Rejection isn’t a failure, but a way to know that more work needs to be done, and we need to keep the day job a little longer at least.

But it doesn’t matter really. We’ll keep writing either way.

 

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