First Book Release as Editor: Purple Haze by George Hudson

I've mentioned a few times that I have been editing for a local publisher. It's been about a year since I first met with the senior editor and founder of Savant Books and Publications. I've gone through the interview, the training, the waiting for a manuscript, and the lengthy process of editing an unfamiliar story and working with a new author (in the midst of teaching, and for a time, editing someone else's psych dissertation).

Well, I am stoked to announce (though I am keeping the squeeing to a minimum), that today marks the release of my first edited work with Savant: Purple Haze by George Hudson. You'll be hearing more about it over the next few months, but I hope you'll take some time to check out the description. You can buy it directly from Savant, or through Amazon.

Purple Haze is about a murder investigation set in Tennessee. A skull is found in a lake, and a thirty-year-old mystery is brought to the surface...

Purple Haze

An Observation After a Week of Progress

So for all the stories in various states of undress, I added a new one in recent months, a collaboration urban fantasy. Since it's a collaboration, most of the work on it has been relegated to the meetings with my fellow writer. But that means I have about three to four stories currently running around in my head (four if you count one that I have completed but am not actually working on except in my head).

Now lately, my focus has been on editing Hounds, one of my urban fantasies, since the clockwork ghost story has been so tricky.


Here is my observation:

As I make progress on one, I am motivated to (and actually do!) make progress on other stories.

Although I'd been spending my free moments trying to rearrange and rewrite Hounds, as I found scenes to drop, or chapters to rewrite and combine, I had realizations about scenes and chapters for these other stories. As I edited that more, I wanted to write more, and spent more time on the bus writing the opening chapter of the collaboration...instead of listening to music and zoning out.

So my advice (as always, take with a grain of salt and "to each their own," since everyone's process differs), is that if you are stuck in one story, try switching to something else. It may help break through the block, and you can return to the first story with rejuvenation.

I don't switch from one to another every few minutes, but as I work on one, I keep the others in mind, and make notes of changes and new things that can help those others for when I do work on them, later that same day, or maybe the next.

Happy writing, everyone.

Birds and Short Stories

I was chatting with a new friend about the birds I can see outside my room. Just half an hour ago, the more common visiting black cat chased away the newly visiting gray one. Then the waxbills came out (I'm sure that's what they are now, I really didn't know before). There's about half a dozen birds that flutter around from twig to twig and on the ground between me and the straggly bush.

The waxbills and Japanese white-eyes quickly jump from one branch to another to the ground to a flower pot. The bulbuls come in quick then fly off. The doves mosey, strut around on the concrete and show off to the ladies. They all have their different personalities.

Different personalities and when you want to photograph them, it requires different approaches. Cats and swift birds need to be snuck up on, you have to be ready at any moment, but if you move too fast, they get away an all you have is a tiny, blurry sasquatch. The slower birds need patience because they'll sit with their butt to you for a while, then just get up and leave.

I think sometimes dealing with stories is like this. Not every story is the same (shouldn't be, IMO, despite finding unintentional similar themes or motifs on occasion). Every writer finds the process that works for them, but I think that process doesn't always work with every story.

I think, for me, there's a big difference in how I write short stories compared to novels. I'm trying, on the whole, to have a better idea where a story is going, rather than just starting with an idea and running with it. But when it comes to short stories, this is even more important. I need to know how it begins and ends, and I need some idea of the middle (compared to knowing the beginning, some of the middle and a vague sense of where events need to end up for my novels), unless it's a short story with no set word limit. If I don't know the ending scene of a short story, it's just a blurry cat photo. >_<

Each short story is also slightly different. Some need every detail planned out, others need two or three strong images and I get through it. The halloween story I'm working my way through is actually trippingme up, because it's a small, flightly bird story--I caught an idea and it stuck around, but if I sneak up too fast, it's slips out of my grasp and hops out of reach, taunting me. I have to turn it around, view it from all angles, and slowly come up to it, until we're face to face.

Happy writing, everyone,

Sabrina

So sleepy, darn these morning schedules

I'm a night person, really I am. But I live with people who are, due to jobs and school, day people, and since getting a job, I must also wake up at a reasonable hour. And then I'm on my feet for at least four hours six days out of seven (yesterday was eight hours, and tomorrow will be seven--we have no chairs for employees). So the fact that it's 9:30 p.m. right now and I'm on the computer does not bode well. I'm already yawning, and even though I may be awake until 11 p.m. or midnight, working on the computer requires a functioning brain, which watching TV and reading manga does not.

Anyhoodles, I'm just about to edit five pages for my writer's group tomorrow. I won't have time to do it later because of my hours. In terms of the whole manuscript (I am behind my new year resolution goal), I'm on page 101. It really does a number on the flow when I'm working on editing a select few pages from chapters 12 or 13 (where I'm at with the group), and then trying to switch gears and look at stuff from chapter 7. I feel like "Wait a minute, I was just looking at this stuff, haven't I edited it already?"

It feels too familiar, although I haven't looked at that chunk for months. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, though I'm inclined to think the latter since I've been stuck on the past couple of pages for a while now. I just need to buckle down (even on one day off) and take the whole day to read through the manuscript. I'm trying to read for flow and pace, which is difficult when I allow myself to stop after only two or three pages. I think I justify it by saying, "Two or three pages better than nothing."

So I'm off, and I hope all of you are writing and having fun as you write. Happy writing.

Thunderdome: Paper versus Computer

I love writing with a pen and paper. Or pencil, even though it smudges. With that, I am not bound to any one spot when the writing bug hits. I can be in my room at my desk, as I would if I wrote via computer, or on my bed, or sitting on a chair in the backyard staring at the orange tree in my neighbor's yard, or at the town center, sitting at a bench across from the bookstore, watching the different people going in and out with small children, while old men sit as a table nearby, just talking.

With paper (loose or in a notebook) and a writing utensil of your choic, there are absolutely no limitations.

With a computer, especially for people like me who don't have laptops, they're basically bound to the places that have desktops. And perhaps even more limited, if also like me, they're particular about which computers they use.

I will use my dad's if necessary, and there are computers at the library up the street and at college, there were a handful of computer labs I could go to (as well as the computers in the newsroom, where I worked, I used them a lot, for research and articles mostly), but I've always been most comfortable with my own little desktop. It's old and kinda slow, but it does what I want it to do most of the time and I like it. It's mine and I can type up anything I care to and save it without thinking I should only save it to disk and never leave a copy on the hard drive (as I'd think with the library and computer labs, a post about my paranoia coming soon to a blog near you).

I can't take this desktop to the park or chill out at a cafe with it. Too bulky; I'd give myself a hernia or something.

Generally, this isn't too big a problem for me. I tend to take some form of paper and at least one pen with me whenever I leave the house, if wearing a jacket or bringing a shoulder bag, infinitely more than one of both. My problem arises when I start something on the computer, then have the urge to continue working on it when I'm away from the computer, or even just not in the mood to turn it on. I can take notes, but without the exact few lines on the file I don't like to jump straight into a continuation of the scene.

Here's my solution: I've taken to printing out the last two pages or so of whatever I'm currently working on. Not everyday, and usually just when I'm on a roll, but can't stand the computer any longer. If I don't feel like printing it out but feel like I might want to work on it more later, I may also just write down the last paragraph on a clean sheet of paper, so if the muse hits between then and the next time I get on the computer, I know where I left off. If I don't, then the next time that situation comes up, I just skip a line and write down the new last paragraph on that same sheet.

It's a funny little solution to projects that really get under your skin or that you're alternately working on via computer -and- longhand, but it works. I tend to do more thinking about the story and more note-taking by keeping that little one or two-line reminder. I can't use "I don't know where I left off -exactly-" as an excuse.

Because let's face it, a writer can love writing, but we're horrible when it comes to coming up with excuses to not write. (You'll have to pardon the repetitive words there.) Chores, other people...I use my need to have a social life and not give in to an utter hermit-like existence as an excuse. And it isn't a matter of not loving to write. I don't know what it is. But for this excuse: "I'm not on the computer, so I can't write," this is my solution. And maybe I'm the only one with that excuse, but there you go.

Viva la papel!

Random stuff:

375 words on a first-person backstory of Rei, my main character for Book B, abbr. title "Hounds" (because I'm tired of referring to it as book B). In my head I know where she's been and what she's done the past 8 years, in a general sense, but it doesn't hurt for me to see the words and revivist her voice. It's helping already.

10,917 words total on Book C, abbr. "SH." Haven't been working on this too much, but have been thinking about it a lot, and I'm currently working out the climactic scene in my head. I think I may have introduced a character too soon and thta's stalling me in the writing. I'm thinking about the structure and plot too much for it being a first draft.

On page 85 of "The Lie that tells a Truth." I was talking about this book with my older sister, also a writer (after I came home with it, she said she'd bought the same book a while back), and we agreed that the nice thing about the book was that reading it made you want to write. Writing exercises aside (I hate the term 'writing exercise' sounds like work, even if his suggestions for them are good), ignoring the exercises, just reading the text makes you at once want to keep reading, and yet put the book down and pick up a pen and paper. And that, I think, is why this is a successful writing book.

Will now be off to edit the second half of chapter 11, because writing group is tonight. Last week's was okay, but we never got around the writing prompt and I wish we could get through a whole chapter each week (but we spend to much time talking for that). Oh well. Anything is better than nothing.