• Father's Day was wonderful and took priority this weekend.


• I got my fic in yesterday that was due, even if I was halfway through the fic I was actually writing for the fest and having enough trouble that I wrote a brand new one instead. I'd still like to finish the one I started. We'll see.


• I defaulted a couple days ago on a remix fic due to it just giving me plain enough fits that I didn't foresee getting it done in time. Going to try to wrap it as a treat before works reveals.


• I got my femmeremix assignment and love it. :grins: I've already picked the story.


• I'm all set up and planned out on my Invisible Ficathon assignment. I'm considering a treat too, but I'm trying to be good about not doing that if I have other things of a higher priority.


• Of all these things though, the ones I'm going to try to wrap particularly in the next few days are my Couples Big Bang, the book I'm reading, and updating the prompts masterlist for my friend.

1. Favorite Poems - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow


2. Selected Poems - Emily Dickinson


3. Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair - Pablo Neruda

1. American Sniper - totally research; I keep writing about this character who's a sniper and it caught my eye four or five times


2. Bourne Ascendancy - I like the Bourne fandom, so when I saw the mass market at a nice, low price, I snagged it


3. Dealing with Dragons - P.C. Wrede - to get to free shipping on a Christmas present, and because I originally bought this book for less than two dollars at a thrift store and mourned it when it got lost in a move, so lovely to have it back


4. Whimsy, Ink, and Love - a collection of my own poetry for a Christmas gift for family, not to be published


5. Ella Enchanted - Gail Carson Levine - for this fic I'm writing (and shall now get back to)

I just reread A Ring of Endless Light, foregoing dozens of books I've been wanting to read for months, proving once and for all that mood figures in more than I'd like when it comes to my reading choices.

Also confirmed why I'm having a hard time reading my collaborator's other works right now. It screws with my ability to write the collaboration. Guess which I'm giving priority? That's right. Writing.

Discovered the new home on the web of one o' my internet besties and adored so many posts I wanted to reblog almost the entire first 12 pages of the tumblr. Go figure. She's one of many awesome people I know. Speaking of which, lithiumlaughter, I just reread A Ring of Endless Light, so we talked about talking about Zachary Grey. :hint, hint:

On publishing, I got my updated covers into review for both trade and mass market on Createspace. If they check out as covers, I order a proof for the mass and okay the trade so I can order copies for my betas/readers. Can I just say I'm HUGELY excited about this?

Tied up a bunch of social/personal loose ends. I know I'm supposed to write first, do other things later, but I've been needing to get some of this stuff done for months. I regret nothing.

So I was supposed to go and write today after all this and just ran out of umph and had a pain in my throat. I declared it a health afternoon and gave up.

Word Counts:

• Fiction: 0 words
• Poetry: 0 lines | 0 words
• Blog: 254 words

( Read the rest of this entry � )

Originally published at Liana Mir. You can comment here or there.

One of my big goals for the year was to do more reading again, so here goes a little list of what I read book-wise in the last month (let's not bother with the online reading, re-reads, or anything reading-in-progress; I do too much of that):

1. Return to Me by Lynn Austin - mixed feelings
2. The Tenth Circle by Jodi Picoult - loved
3. Open Minds by Susan Kaye Quinn - liked a lot, want the next one
4. Delirium by Susan Kaye Quinn - excellent; bought the whole season based on it
5. Agony by Susan Kaye Quinn - slightly annoying, lots of setup, but interesting enough to keep going
6. Debt Collector, Season 1, by Susan Kaye Quinn - mixed feelings, stayed interested
7. Wild Seed by Octavia Butler - fascinated by it and will reread often
8. Mind of My Mind by Octavia Butler - loved it at first and hated with fiery passion the ending, will never read again and try to expunge it from my memory banks
9. The Drought by Allowyn Nyrti - had a hard time getting into it at first, then fell back in love
10. Honor of the Queen by David Weber - as good as Basilisk and loaded with great characters on all sides, loved
11. The Queen of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner - I read The Thief when I was fourteen and taking a writing course at the suggestion of my instructor. Adored the book and this follow-up just blew it out of the water.
12. The Flood by Allowyn Nyrti - Sucked me right in, but I procrastinated on finishing it because I didn't want the story to end just yet. Bad me. Awesome stuff then ended on another cliffhanger. I'm getting an amicable grudge against this author.
13. The King of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner - Not enough Gen but I loved every second of this book
14. Conspiracy of Kings by Megan Whalen Turner - Again, amazing, if much harder to take
15. The Short Victorious War by David Weber - loved
16. Field of Dishonor by David Weber - wept and hated and loved

This breaks down to:

• 14 novel-length books*

*Delirium and Agony were parts of Debt Collector, Season 1, which is itself equivalent to one large novel-length book, though it is also an omnibus and thus a series.

which break down further to:

• 1 stand-alone novel
• 2 complete series
• 3 first novels in a series
• 1 finished a previously started series
• 2 reading through a series
• 1 stopped reading a series

Genres:

• 1 Biblical Fiction
• 1 Literary Fiction
• 1 YA Science Fiction
• 5 General Science Fiction
• 3 Fantasy
• 3 Military Science Fiction

Publisher:

• 9 traditionally published
• 2 indie published
• 2 not yet published

Originally published at Liana Mir. You can comment here or there.

So I wrote a lot and did a lot, even though I definitely didn't write enough. Ah, well.

Lessons Learned

1. Apparently, it takes me a while to really fully recover from heavy emotional blows.

 

2. Publishing slows me down if I mix it in with writing. I knew that but forgot it. I didn't even finish getting Dowse and Bleed published and will have to rethink how I fit publishing in the schedule.

 

3. Layering in on top of stuff I've already written pretty much requires me to go into a bubble. Writing a quick, rough novel draft goes much faster if I can bounce it off of someone else whenever I hit a wall. Writing a quick, rough short draft pretty much requires knowing too little or too much; it's that semi-ignorance that stops me cold.

 

4. Reading to 2 o'clock in the morning is a very bad idea. Stop picking up novels at 11 p.m.

 

5. Reading can radically alter which story I can write. Be very careful of what you read when.

 

6. I had forgotten my old style of story creation when I was just a wee thing. It went like this: I had certain kinds of stories I liked, which usually involved special powers and often romance. I would create a premise and plunk in my favored pairing of the moment and all their family dynamics with others, then play it all out in my head for weeks on end. Eventually, I got too good at this. I could play through an entire story in a couple of hours because my brain had dissected the inevitable path. If you'll recall my rule of story process:
   

   Know your characters, the rules of your world, and a handful of outside factors to fling at them. The rest will be unpredictable—even to you, but inevitable.

   The instant of predictability killed the story for me because it would wrap too quickly. So I got very, very good at adding more twists, more obstacles, more cultural or biological issues to get in the way, more trauma, more angst, until I could still play out my stories for weeks because I had backed my characters into some awful corners and inescapable difficulties.

   Which means that outlining kills a story for me because the instant of predictability, I lose all interest in a story unless I've already hit the home stretch of writing, from the end of the middle through the climax and denouement. Which is also why I tend to sketch instead of fill out a story the way I ought to. :headdesk: Lesson learned.

 

7. I write waaay better and more if I do not browse the industry blogs first. I write waaaay better if I do not read someone else's fiction first. New rule of thumb ought to be, Write first.

 

8. Self-discipline is a virtue. Learn it!

Word Counts

January 31, 2014

• Fiction: 0 words
• Poetry: 85 words | 21 lines
• Blog: 33 words

January Totals

• Fiction: 17,392 words
• Poetry: 498 words | 102 lines
• Blog: 8030 words

Completed Pieces

1. Poem: "Before My Eyes," 220 words | 47 lines.
2. Fanfic: "Mistakes," 1397 words.
3. Poem: "Writer's Social Therapy," 32 words | 4 lines.
4. Poem: "Blanket Statements," 8 lines| 48 words.
5. Poem: "Friends Like These," 24 lines | 121 words.
6. Poem: “Empty Spaces,” 7 lines | 20 words.
7. Poem: “The Soundless Scream,” 5 lines | 22 words.
8. Poem: “Like a Light,” 9 lines | 43 words.

Originally published at Liana Mir. You can comment here or there.

Well, to be honest, reading The Drought, Honor of the Queen by David Weber, and getting ready to dive into The Flood while also working on getting all formats of Dowse and Bleed ready for publication while trying to resurrect my dead-in-the-water home computer (registry error).

I'll get back to updating after I start scribbling again instead of just percolating and tech supporting. Did I mention tech is not my color?

Originally published at Liana Mir. You can comment here or there.

I didn't rush into anything and I took my time and here I am.

Today, I skipped reading The Drought like I was supposed to and read Mind of My Mind by Octavia Butler and the collaboration fic so I could write in it.

Writing went well and is continuing. I also created the mass-market book cover for Dowse and Bleed. I like it better than the trade. I'll do the interior tomorrow.

So tonight, I added 19 sentences to Splintered Gates, which came out to 150 words. Now, I can go to bed.

Word Count

• Fiction: 1263 words
• Poetry: 0 words, 0 lines
• Blog: 324 words

Splintered Gates

• Today: 150 words
• Total: 2325 words

Collaboration

• Today: 1113 words
• Total: 2724 words*

*written by me in 2014

January Totals

• Fiction: 6585 words
• Poetry: 212 words | 45 lines
• Blog: 6347 words

Completed Pieces

• Poem: "Before My Eyes," 220 words | 47 lines.
• Fanfic: "Mistakes," 1397 words.

Originally published at Liana Mir. You can comment here or there.

Experiment number one: no internet reading, commenting, etc. until after I type up the morning side of this status report, then write at least a thousand words for the day. If I’m going to get my sleep cycle turned back around, I need to not write or read between eleven p.m. and one o’clock in the morning!

These posts are getting rather long-winded. Anyone want me to split out the reading from the writing? I doubt most people are interested in the writing, and I don’t really know if anyone’s interested in the reading. I just plug this stuff here for my own accountability.

Reading

Last night I finished out Debt Collector, Season 1, by Susan Kaye Quinn. I had mixed feelings by the end. The story was very good, just like in Open Minds, and I loved the main character, but.

Lirium is twenty years old and that is well established. When dealing with men or enemies, he acts like it. Unfortunately with women and in several other situations, he is consistently portrayed with the emotional and cognitive maturity of a teenager between the ages of sixteen and eighteen. There is a cognitive shift in the brain between that age and Lirium’s stated age that makes this unbelievable for me; thus, my annoyance with the series. Also, there was some rather problematic objectifying of women and using them as rewards for the main character, something I would rather not have encountered.

In short, this read very much like a tv series, and in that respect, structurally, it was amazingly well done. It’s one I would like but not watch next year until I could buy the whole season and I wouldn’t cry my eyes out if I didn’t get to watch it for some reason. Further note to self: the first episode’s title was too iconic for the series. I keep calling the entire series Delirium instead of Debt Collector. Next season is supposed to be about a different collector. I might not buy it. The fifth season will have all the collectors that were introduced, meaning to me that there will be Lirium. I’ve got other books to read and will probably skip out on Season 2 for the time being.

A long time ago, I read an SFF writing book by Orson Scott Card that included tantalizing snippets from Octavia Butler's book, Wild Seed. I've wanted to read it since. I just did. Wow. Still processing this book. It's grappling with tough questions and ideas. I did love it.

Next on my reading docket: The Drought by thecatisacritic.

Publishing

So the formatter needs my cover file. :groans: I might not be able to get to that until Saturday night, but he did say I should get my Dowse and Bleed Kindle file around Tuesday of next week. I’m really excited about all of this, as its my first major professionally done book launch. Usually I treat it a lot like fanfic: post it and get back to writing. This time, I did categorization and metadata and careful typesetting and hired a formatter and really tweaked the cover until I was satisfied, etc. It’s a good feeling. I’m going to try and make a system of this.

Publishing Plans

I do want to publish twelve pieces this year as you might remember, but that means finishing eleven more pieces. I’m going to start trying to choose between my options for the eleven stories I want to flesh out and complete. The collaboration, fanfic, and short stories don’t count. As much as I like shorts, I was surprised by reading Debt Collector to realize how dense I pack my work. I don’t think shorts are enough to do what I want them to—I want more fiction like Rachelle’s—and I don’t think I’m going to magically start writing looser fiction either, so I suspect I’m about to get very happy in the novelette/novella word count range.

Writing Goals for the Day

Today, I want to get the antagonist side of things hammered out on the collaboration, enter my notes on Splintered Gates into my working file, then sketch or flesh out another good-sized chunk of words on it.

I’m thinking I’m going to take a break from the Laurie fic, simply because I still don’t feel equal to canon. I know the piece I want to write, and I don’t feel like I can do it justice yet.

Writing

First I wrote 755 words of brainstorming on the collaboration. It’s not fic, but it’s a start. Back to no internet until we get more written. I think we’ll do the notes on Splintered Gates before we try to write any more new stuff.

Procrastination

So that didn’t work. At all. But I stuck to The Passive Voice, Dean Wesley Smith, and one post of Hugh Howey’s, so not bad, right? Then, I screwed up and peeked on LJ for a reply from my collaborator. None, of course. I had to make myself close the browser window. Self-discipline is vital, but it’s harder than it looks.

Writing Again

Forget typing. I need to distract myself from distraction with new words, not compilation. Got 174 words on Splintered. At fifteen sentences, I’m thinking I’m technically good for the day. I can technically spend the rest of the day plotting out what I want to do for the year and how I want to do it and whether I want to go ahead and do a series or not—that is until my collaborator tells me whether I’m on the right track or barking up a tree.

Brainstormed with collaborator. We both like the same ideas for the most part, so time to get some words on page.

I sketched and tossed and will need to rewrite. Not counting them.

The Fangirl

The Giver by Lois Lowry is being made into a movie? :nearly faints: :makes grabby hands:

Word Count

• Fiction: 174 words
• Poetry: 0 words, 0 lines
• Blog: 1700 words

Splintered Gates

• Today: 174 words
• Total: 2175 words

Collaboration

• Today: 0 words
• Total: 56,380 words

January Totals

• Fiction: 5232 words
• Poetry: 212 words | 45 lines
• Blog: 5958 words

Completed Pieces

• Poem: "Before My Eyes," 220 words | 47 lines.
• Fanfic: "Mistakes," 1397 words.

Originally published at Liana Mir. You can comment here or there.

Publishing

Today,  I ordered my proof of Dowse and Bleed. I cannot tell you how excited I am. Also, read Kristine Rusch’s post about branding and am thinking of reassessing Vardin’s covers—again. I really do like “Portrait of a Butterfly,” but the rest… :shrugs: It wouldn’t bother me to change them. The covers for Breath are good, I’m pretty sure, even though I don’t keep author placement the same on every single book. I move them about for genre and keep them identical for series. I’ll probably stick to that because I love the Kingdoms and Thorn covers and the Breath covers and don’t really want to change them.

Ideas for Fiction in 2014

I am seriously considering going through When the Clock Chimes and just seeing how many of those stories I can flesh out, but I also want to start finishing what I start and that means the projects on the MyWriteClub screenshot I posted earlier. I’ve also thought about series fiction vs. storyworld fiction for a long time, and I keep side-eyeing following up Dowse and Bleed from the next morning. Not sure any of those are actually good ideas, but ah, well. Uncertainty is fairly typical for me.

Writing

Yeah, that thing I’m supposed to do today. Self-discipline is something I need a lot more of, so let’s see what we can do. Be disciplined. Open the document, apply words! I finished the first gift-fic at 1397 words. :throws confetti: She liked it! :throws more confetti:

Ahem. Right. That collaboration. A writer’s work is never done. :shakes head ruefully: And I am woefully behind on it. This is largely because I have it all broken up in Scrivener, which is proving a lot easier for me to deal with something so big and uneven. (Uneven because my collaborator tends to flesh out her work when she writes, and I tend to flesh it out a lot later.)

Reading

So I paused when I got home (due to feeling pretty sick) and read, in this case, Delirium and Agony by Susan Kaye Quinn. This is research. I've wanted to write a season-style fiction series for a while and this is one I want to read.

Writing Again

So two scenes popped into my head while I was in the kitchen because I kept thinking I didn't want Splintered Gates to be just a romance to me, and then I was thinking give me plot and I got a denouement snippet and a major climactic event type snippet and wrote both when I got back to my tablet. 244 words. I seem to sketch more on the tablet and do full fleshed-out writing on the desktop. Need to work on that.

And unfortunately, a return of sickish feeling reminds me of the need to finish catching up on sleep, so I'm going to stop. I stopped making progress ten minutes ago anyway.

Word Count

• Fiction: 1065 words
• Poetry: 0 words, 0 lines
• Blog: 528 words

Gift-Fic

• Today: 821 words
• Total: 1397 words

Splintered Gates

• Today: 244 words
• Total: 2001 words

Collaboration

• Today: 0 words
• Total: 56,380 words

January Totals

• Fiction: 5058 words
• Poetry: 212 words | 45 lines
• Blog: 4258 words

Completed Pieces

• Poem: "Before My Eyes," 220 words | 47 lines.
• Fanfic: "Mistakes," 1397 words.

Originally published at Liana Mir. You can comment here or there.

I came to a sudden realization the other day when I was working on Dowse and Bleed then the collaboration and also thinking about all the aggravating articles recently claiming the three-act structure is the only one: I really don't care about plot.

Now, this doesn't mean I dislike plot or that I don't think it's important, but I do mean it's not even a secondary consideration for me. I care about structure because structure is fun, especially for a poet, but I don't take any time to analyze my own plots or even to develop them. That holds no interest for me, and I don't look for a particular plot in books I read. In fact, that's why I adore love stories and am so totally sick of romances. I'm not interested in the "how did they fall in love" and we're done here. I'm interested in two separate people and then how they interact together, etc.

I wrestled with this for another day before I finally came to the conclusion on how I could not care about something so fundamental to story. Most writing articles and books address characters that drive the plot and plots that are born out of the characters' struggles. That makes for a good story, but I'll probably never, ever write that kind of story ever.

I love plots that illuminate character. And that's probably why I tend strongly to the literary side of genre and love Jodi Picoult's books, even though I've heard some genre writers sneer at them. Her books are complicated messy stories about characters. The plots reveal the characters, rather than characters driving the plot.

Dowse and Bleed is the most incredibly plotty story I've ever written in my life. When I wrote that first draft, it was a quick ramble through a decent, engaging plot, but when I came back to it, it was with two questions: whose story is this and why is it her story? Out flowed something considerably deeper and much more 'me.' The plot is secondary because it exists to reveal something about Rachelle and no other reason.

This is also why I haven't been able to get through Collateral Damage yet, I'm pretty sure, or any of the other Special Unit fics percolating in my head. That revelation, that core idea, isn't there for me yet. I wrote Dowse and Bleed from a prompt about the sides of love:

I've looked at love from both sides now / From give and take, and still somehow / It's love's illusions I recall / I really don't know love at all

"Both Sides Now" by Joni Mitchell

It's not this perfect match with Rachelle, but it was close enough for me to devote a story to this relationship she has to love and the idea of love. It was an interesting revelation for me.

Originally published at Liana Mir. You can comment here or there.