Traveller's Tales

There are lots of reasons to love the wintertime: snow, fires in the fireplace, lots of excuses to eat awesome food, and hot cider with rum. Mmm.

Leaving the house for work while it’s black outside, and coming home in the same visual state, however, are not reasons to love the winter.

So today, I’m pleased to announce we had a sunrise before I left the house.

To hell with the groundhog, I say. Winter, have your last big snowstorm this weekend, and I’ll toast your timely departure with one last hot cider and rum.

(Edit: as ever, the Dee does a much better job of capturing these things than I do (though, to be fair, she’s also using a much better camera and not bumbling down the road while she’s shooting): check this shot out for a better idea as to what it looked like.)

Now that the edits are over — for now, at least! — I’m working on the second book again.  I’ve been doing what I always do when I’m working on a new story, which is writing all the cool scenes that come to me.  What eventually happens is I take those scenes, toss them back into the framework I created in the outline, and then stitch them together with all the other cool scenes until a novel happens (yeah, okay, it becomes a little more complicated than that at some point, but that’s the general idea).

(Tangent: new character alert, which means you should probably expect a new character interview in the next few days.)

(Second tangent: I once tried writing in linear fashion, beginning to end, but I just can’t do it — too many things pop into my head and need to get written; different scenes generate higher energy levels on different days, and while it’s all still forming I think it’s important to let the scene that’s screaming the loudest have the pen for the day.)

Anyway, the neat thing that happened today was that, for the very first time, I saw a scene from the third book.  The last book in the first part of the story; the end of the beginning, and I just saw how it ends.

It was awesome.

I have no idea if I can write it so it’s as awesome as I saw it, but when I saw it while I was sitting on the bus, stunned and watching it in my head as though it had been cast, filmed, produced and projected directly into my skull, I knew that’s how it had to go.  Because it was so totally awesome.

I’m excited because while the end of the overall story doesn’t come with the third book — this is a story of three threes, for reasons that become immensely clear — still, it represents a serious hard stop; the world changes viciously, violently and irrevocably at the end of the third book, and it’s a big enough leap, barrier, shift or evolution that it may almost feel like a new story when the second three kick in.  Anyway, while I always knew where things were heading, and what in general had to happen, the specifics were veiled to me.

Well, not after today they’re not.

Anyway, I love it when I see new pieces to the puzzle like that.  I know it’s going well when the scenes are revealed to me so clearly that all I have to do is sit my ass down and write as fast and as hard as I can before I forget what I just saw.  The psychotic break does all the hard creative work for me; all I have to do is take notes.

So while I’m not going to give in to the temptation of writing more of the third book, it really gives me another really cool thing to shoot for, you know?

Love this writing thing.

I don’t have any writing or sales updates to provide, but I do have an awesome link from a colleague of mine — Niki Smith, a very talented artist also agented by Colleen Lindsay of FinePrint Literary Management, was looking for some practice concepts and materials to work on book covers.  After sending her entirely too much information, she’s done an execution which is totally nothing I would have considered doing, and also totally cool (hence the subject).

So stop gawking here; go read the article and check out the art.  Check out the rest of her site while you’re there, she does some great work.

I’m noticing something odd:  ever since I got my new little netbook and started writing on the bus, my job has gotten easier to stomach.

Now, maybe it’s a coincidence, which is entirely possible given it hasn’t been all that long since I started using it, but I’ve got this weird feeling that giving myself more time to do my own writing is resulting in me being better able to deal with the massive piles of bullshit that tend to get flung around at work.

So now I’m wondering if there’s a direct correlation between one’s personal artistic frustrations and one’s ability to do the “day job.”

Let me elaborate a little.

With all my time consumed by work during the week, I’ve grown resentful of all the time the paycheck steals from me, and the rigors of the job itself, combined with a not-negligible commute, have resulted in me often coming home too tired to write, or waking up too late to steal half an hour before the last bus shows up.

Enter the netbook.  While I can’t write for part of the ride (yes, I do get mildly motion sick, and the twisty windy rural roads near my house are way too twisty and windy for me to keep my lunch down if I’m trying to write), the latter part is smooth sailing, and I can get a good 30-45 minutes of writing in before we pull into NYC or leave the highways.

So now that I’ve done that for a week, I’m suddenly finding a bit more energy available for the job, find myself willing to make a bit more effort to keep things rolling along.  Which in a way doesn’t make sense, because I’m doing more than I was, but in a way it does, because I’ve recovered some great opportunities to do what I love to do.

So I guess I do think there’s some sort of correlation between having time for artistic expression and being able to deal with the mundane crap we all do to bring home the paycheck.  Don’t get me wrong, if I win the lottery I’m still outta there — but for now, this is a nice little discovery, and it’ll do nicely.

Finally, by way of backhanded review: my Acer netbook is the best money I’ve spent on myself in a long time.

(And no, I still haven’t installed World of Warcraft on it!)

Finally picked one up; they had a model that lists for too much money on sale for just barely cheap enough for me to consider, and then when I convinced myself I’d actually write on the bus with it, I finally succumbed.

So there it is, the little devil — and to justify the expense, I have actually been writing on the bus with it!  Well, attempting in some cases, as there are definitely some lessons to learn when trying to use it.  Like, those twisty windy roads near my house?  I shouldn’t try to use it when we’re driving on those.  And when some rude SOB leans all the way back in their chair?  Yeah, it’s not real useful then.  Especially because the keyboard layout is a little modified from the usual — scale is slightly smaller, and keyboard layout is scrunched a bit, so typing blind won’t work until I’ve relearned the keyboard.  Soon, but not yet.

Aside from that, though, this morning was a great proof of concept.  I napped until the highway, then broke out the little beast, lit up OpenOffice and went to town.  Already knew what I wanted to do, and while I didn’t finish, I certainly made enough of a dent to know I’ll be using this even more.

If I can snake some lunchtime I’ll pop the hood open and do some more, but at least I can start reclaiming some of the travel time I thought I’d sacrificed forever to the gods of Transit last year.

…must… resist temptation… do not install… no WoW… no WoW!

So, wow.  Stared at TGL’s manuscript yesterday night.  Flipped pages, pondered paragraphs, tinkered with sentences, but all in all was pretty much a zero-sum on the writing front.

I’ve suddenly realized it’s time to read the damned thing front to back and see where I’m really at.

This is part of the curse of non-linear writing: sometimes, I have to stop myself, get my head out of the weeds, get a look around and figure out what I was doing. It’s not that I don’t know where things are going, but the interactions between all the different threads is getting a bit fuzzy in my head and I really need to be precise about how they wind together.

So I guess that  means I get to read for a couple of days!

I keep wanting to say something, but I’m not sure what.

I’ve learned some things in the last couple of weeks.  I’ve learned explicitly that the will to live trumps comfort or convenience every day of the week, without exception.  I’ve remembered that the only thing that matters in life is communication.  And I’ve had it demonstrated to me all too personally that, sometimes, cures kill.  Yeah, it’s been a tough couple of weeks.

I’ve also learned that some of my advice is actually pretty good, having had an opportunity to swallow it in context.  I still believe that, no matter how a relationship ends, if it doesn’t hurt like hell you were doing it wrong.  I believe that beautiful things can’t die; when we mourn, we mourn only the loss of potential, because whatever we experienced before that loss can never be taken from us.  And, finally, I believe that when you knew what the right thing to do was, and you didn’t do it, you’ve done the worst thing you could have done, whether you did something or not.

I’ve reaffirmed that my loved ones are precious to me, and learned that when people threaten them seriously I feel absolute eye-popping spit-snarling breath-stealing rage, the kind that generates massive adrenaline surges, heroic surges of strength and coordination, and really bad decisions — undoubtedly it’s from Mom’s side of the family, where the Scots hang out.  Probably not the most useful reaction it could evoke, but not one I’m ashamed of, either.

I’ve learned that “Fading Lights” by Genesis holds up better than I thought it would.  Don’t just google the lyrics, it’s not the same without the music.

And finally, I’ve reaffirmed that no matter what else, I write.

So where am I going with this?  I don’t know, really.  2009 has come in hard and heavy, and it’s warned me that there’s change in the air, but it’s also reassured me that I know who I am and what I believe.  Maybe that’s enough to weather the coming storm.

So today, I needed to get my awesome go-getting literary agent a copy of the one-page synopses that detail what happen in the second and third books of the series — The Grey Lord, which I’ve mentioned here before, and The Grey God, the third book, which I haven’t.

There is, of course, an excellent reason for me not having mentioned The Grey God before, and that’s because, well, I haven’t really thought much about it yet.  Oh, sure, I knew it was the end of the first big story arc, and it was going to be awesome and have armies and fights and climaxes and heroes and villains and dark evil wicked cool things in it, and I even wrote one scene of it as a prologue to the first book that I’ll probably leave out, but aside from that it was a bit… oh, amorphous, I suppose.

Anyway, I had a one-page synopsis already written for The Grey Lord, and it wasn’t even all that bad, so I sent that along quickly with a modicum of spit and polish (light on the spit).  I was delighted to discover, as I went through my files, that I had also dutifully written a one-page synopsis for The Grey God at around the same time as I’d written the one for TGL.  Eager to send it along, I popped it open to see what I’d come up with, and immediately saw that it was Cack.

The reason it was Cack, of course, has something to do with not having thought much about it yet.  I’d even go as far as to say that it had a Lot to do with it.  Quite a lot, in fact.

So that’s what I’ve done, from mid-afternoon until, well, about twenty minutes ago: I’ve thought long and hard about The Grey God, and ultimately come up with some stuff I really like.  New places to go, new things to see, new research to do and, most importantly, some great conflicts to mark the end of this particular cycle in the story.  Hopefully, I’ve also come up with a one-page synopsis that is not only Not Cack, but is also a reasonably good representation of where I want to take the story and how I intend to get there.

So that was my day, which was awesome, providing yet more circumstantial evidence that I really do enjoy this writing thing.

As for the reasons I’ve been away for a bit, I’ll cover that in a later post.  Not quite ready to talk about that other stuff yet, because I’m superstitious, but I’ll get around to it.

but then the spacemen abducted me, used a maser on my brain to alter my perception of the passage of time, and fed me chocolate.  It was very good chocolate, which is always nice during an abduction, but as a result of the very good chocolate, the only thing I can remember for certain is the fact that they did in fact have very good chocolate.

Damn those sly spacemen anyway.

In other news, nobody at work can function without me being physically in the building, so I have not yet been able to indulge in actual vacation time yet, despite having been scheduled to indulge in exactly that kind of time for the entire week.  In this regard, the aforementioned chocolate is not quite as effective at making me forget details, which is both a good thing and a bad thing.  Primarily bad at the moment, as it results in much weeping and gnashing of teeth, but I expect it’ll be good in hindsight.

Lastly, someone whose work I quite like is showing a preliminary interest in the manuscript.  This is actually an incredibly cool thing and something I’d much prefer to turn into a headline while leaping from one tall building to the next (with or without a cape), but I must reasonably temper this news because (a) “preliminary interest” is not equivalent to “ready to purchase lock, stock and barrel,” and (b) I still have a quantity of residual chocolate to consume.

That is all.  More when the chocolate lets me remember I need to post again.

The last few months have been hell on my creative drive.

As much as I like to bitch (check the size of the ‘bitching’ tag on the left), this actually isn’t one; it’s an observation, and perhaps a diagnostic, but not a bitch.

I’ve always been fond of saying that the job is a paycheck, not Art, which is code for giving myself an excuse for not getting incredibly stressed out to the point of going bug-eyed and wondering where the sharp cutlery is when I deal with the inevitable brats, idiots and egotists at work.  I’m in advertising, so not only do I get those separately, they often come in cunning combinations of the three — which is why it’s so important I maintain that distinction.

Lately I’ve come under the guidance of a Man of Business.  I am not categorizing him in this in this way to mock him, nor am I engaging in the art of sarcasm in any way when I say that.  I say it, because this is a man for whom his job IS his art.  Having made this observation, it’s actually profound to watch him in action, and proof positive to me that for every medium, there is an Artist.  Subtle nuances of human interaction are the clearest indicators to him; shifts in process alert him to emergencies buried deeply in complex projects, and for one of the very few times in my life I find myself constantly learning.

It has, however, been my great misfortune to join forces with this fellow at precisely the moment the business decides to collapse in upon itself with all the fury of an obsessive-compulsive chasing after a white whale.  As a result, the Artist has gone manic in an attempt to save said business from consuming itself in a cannibalistic orgy the likes of which even the Donner Party would have balked at, and my life, as a result of that association, has gone from the casual contemplation of a paycheck to furious reactionary firefighting.  Given the current economy, and the fact that my first manuscript sale is unlikely to make me independently wealthy (sure, I can dream, but I can buy lottery tickets and not win, too), this is probably a good thing long-term… but with the aforementioned Artist demanding so much of my energy, as well as demanding ever-higher levels of performance and observation from me as we go, it’s a full-on brain screw when it comes to the imaginary world in my head.

Acknowledging that the work situation is not going to change any time soon, the simple truth is that business will never be my Art — there’s never been any question about that, and if that’s a self-imposed limitation, I can live with it.  With that established, then, the key to reclaiming my own Artistry has to be regaining control of my own time, and the only way I can think of to do that under the pressures of work is by adopting and maintaining a strict schedule.  With regular 12-hour days sapping my energy, nights are lost except for mindless media consumption, so I have to claim the mornings as my own.  This means resisting the siren song of online gaming for overly late evenings, it means not throwing the alarm clock at the wall during the early mornings, and somehow working out how not to get wretchedly motion-sick while writing on the bus (something I’ll gladly take hints regarding, if anyone has any).

…of course, it’ll be much harder to establish these habits this holiday season, as I fully expect to engage in some bad behavior (and, by the way, have thoroughly earned the opportunity to misbehave over the last year!).  But when the New Year comes and the feces begin to impact the rotating oscillator yet again, at least I know I have a plan.