A Fluttering of Wings

I was thinking about...I don't actually know. I got up, had my coffee, sent a few emails, then picked about online for a while, visiting a few blogs. The last blog I looked at was about writing/editing and a few words snagged my attention. Not in the way you usually think of that phrase--they were so striking I will remember them forever, or at least long enough to write them down.

Instead, they were words that immediately, almost before their meaning sank in, sparked something else.

But spark is the wrong word.

Have you ever watched something, or been having a conversation, and go, "That reminds me," then switch to a seemingly unrelated topic? The commercial, show, or conversation before that point actually -did- remind you of something, but not in a way that you could have clearly drawn the lines from one to the other?

The connection is hard to grasp, hard to perceive sometimes. Like an invisible bird, taking flight beside you. You can't see it, but you can hear the fluttering of its wings, feel the wind kicked up, react to the brush of a wing tip against your chek, but when you look, you don't know where from it came.

It's inspiration, or something akin to it. You can't predict it, you can't always trace it back to its origins, but it does something for you, something that leads you down a new path, throws a few breadcrumbs for you to find. That fluttering draws your eye, your attention, and you look at a place you didn't notice before.


(Photos are by Russ Hansen, Allison Trentelman, and wikipedia, respectively)

Magick for Terri--Giving Thanks

Terri Windling is a name that pops up a lot when I think of fantasy. She has a blog I enjoy reading and am inspired by, I've read some of the anthologies she's been a part of, and through knowing of her work, I've found countless other writers. Terri an artist, a writer, and an editor of fantasy, bringing us (with others), the Year's Best Fantasy series, Bordertown, and a number of other anthologies. She is part of a huge community of writers.

And now, she needs some help.

Magick for Terri is an auction-based fundraiser for Terri, who is having some financial difficulties, and offers books, perfume (BPAL), site designs, cookies, and a whole host of other goodies from fans, friends, and fellow writers, including Ellen Kushner, Wendy and Brian Froud, Tamora Pierce, Pamela Dean, Nalo Hopkinson, Neil Gaiman, Holly Black, Charles Vess, Charles de Lint, and so many more your mind would be blown.

Tons of auction information at the LJ page, so if you want to show your thanks for everything she's done for the genre or for you, you can visit Magick for Terri and you can like it and get updates on facebook.

I also hear a certain writer with a charmed bracelet is offering up ginger jack cookies. And if these are the same I've had, you'll want to start bidding now.

The Month of Writing Novels

Well, 50,000 words worth of one, at any rate. I've known about NaNoWriMo for a long time, but this is the first time I've actually signed up for it. I have started writing as of today, but my goal is really just to 1. type up all the hand-written scenes for this story, and 2. finish the zero draft before Christmas. 50,000 words will get me most of the way there, if not to the end (I have no idea how many words are written on the story at this point, though I think even 10,000 is still a low estimate).

I call it a zero draft because I know trying to finish it in a month, well, it's gonna be pretty rough, too rough to even fairly call it a first draft, and I'm okay with that. But I need the words on the page before I can do anything else.

So is anyone else doing NaNo this year? If you are and you want to connect for encouragement's sake, I am SabrinaV there.

Happy writing, everyone.

The Forest for the Trees

Yes, I changed the look of the blog. Much like my personal spaces, I occasionally get the urge to rearrange things.

It's also thematic.

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about the different paths and roads I've taken to get to where I am in my writing--how far my skill has progressed, what process works best for the way I write, what actions I've taken thus far to get better.

1. Mapless--I started writing stories by the seat of my pants, no idea where to begin, definitely no clue how to end, and often sparked by a single image or character. I started a lot of stories this way, but eventually finished one or two.

2. Obsessively marking my path after I've walked there--Like Gretal and her brother leaving breadcrumbs in their wake, or someone buying a postcard in every town they come to, I shifted slightly, still no clear objective of where I was going, but starting to keep track of where I'd been. I have one story with a separate file with chapter-by-chapter descriptions, another with scene-by-scene descriptions (and scene titles! I was listening to a lot of My Chemical Romance at the time, too). Helpful, but not quite the best route for me.

3. Not leaving the house without a map--well, more like, taking a few steps outside, realizing I had no map but did have a long way to go, and rushing back inside to rummage through things until I found a map. That's where I'm at right now. My clockwork ghost story is one that I wanted to write after I knew where I was going with it. What's the climax and what are a few of the main events? I had a beginning, I had hints and plenty of characters, more than I knew what to do with, but no clear plot. I left home, walked a bit, and hit a forest with far too much undergrowth to see any path, right or wrong.

This Thursday, I had a meeting at work, so got to spend a hour an a half on the bus. I decided that was a great amount of time to stop piddlefarting around and finally figure out what this story was doing. I drew a timeline. I marked the beginning of the story X, then starting filling in the information and events that I knew, X-18 years when our protagonist was born, X-23 when her parents met the greasy Cunningham, X+2 days when she hints her first big break, and promptly collapses and nearly dies. And so on. By the time I reached my destination, I knew where I was going (in the story). It's a great feeling, and it seems like this story I'd been dancing around is finally ready to be written. I am now doing my ~happywiggle~ dance.

None of these is the "perfect" method for me (assuming perfection exists). Even #3 took far too long to be reasonable. So I have not found my ninja way, but I'm getting closer. Ultimately, this just emphasizes the reminder "There is no one right way to write."

Find the way that works for you, but even as you search, keep writing.

Happy writing, everyone.

[I don't know why I can't see my followers anymore, though. Sad. I still <3 you all, though.]

The Twelve Dancing Princesses, Persephone, and an Herbalist walk into the Underworld...

Just wanted to send everyone to look at a recent "The Big Idea" post by John Scalzi. Various authors write about their recents releases, usually with some really interesting background about their inspiration.

This one: The Big Idea is about Merrie Haskell's The Princess Curse, which stems from some of her own fears, and loves.

Check it out. I am going to be on the lookout for it when I next go to a bookstore.

August disappeared, but hey, what about books?

With all the Borders closing, I am beyond irked and upset by their lack (in so many ways). I'm pretty sure this weekend will be the last for the Borders left on the island (the Waikele location closed earlier due to a different reason).

Without Borders, there will be two B&N left on Oahu, neither anywhere close to where I live.

So I get to thinking. I reach under the metaphorical bed for a dusty box I remember but haven't thought of for years. I dust it off, smile at the corner of a picture poking out from under the lid like a tongue, then I open it and rifle through the old, younger dreams of a me gone cynical and tired.

Is it so out of the realm of possibility and success to even vaguely consider in any whimsical, hypothetical way, that I might have the skills and resources to open a small bookstore nearby and in some way fill a tiny part of the footprint left behind Borders' departure?

SAD makes me irked

Seasonal Affective Disorder usually refers to a tendency for people to become depressed or sad during the winter holidays.

For me, it usually manifests with irritability during the summer. (Not that I am diagnosed with it. It is just a trend in my moods.)

I am not a summer kind of gal, said the person living in Hawaii for 20 years. But we're getting towards those hotter days and it's much harder to concentrate on anything.

On top of my weather-induced mood shift, there are a number of things that will make it hard to get any writing done. But I plan to try.

My aunt is coming for a long visit soon.

But, despite a nice-looking work schedule (sure I won't be able to eat for most of my Mondays and Wednesdays, but that's not really new), which affords me time to hang out with the family and rest, I'll have to be more diligent about writing.

I am finally getting into the swing of my clockwork ghost story, and I'm typing up notes for a collaborative UF with someone. [That will hopefully keep my creative juices flowing.] So I'm hoping that devoting some bus time to writing longhand, as well as setting aside time when I get home from work on Tuesdays and Thursday (when I finish work early) will help make a lot of headway on both stories.

I am also hoping that having taught here for a year, there will be less prep to do in the mornings,so I'll have time in the air conditioned office to do some writing as well.

It'll mean a lot of early mornings, which I am not prone to when the time is my own (I stayed up until 1 last night and could've stayed up later except I knew I had plans today), but the plan is those will be productive early mornings.

Anyway, so that's the update from me. Now please enjoy this random photo:

Writing is Not Solitary

I've been writing today.
I am in the midst of my two-week break between quarters, and although my time is full of other things (including some intensive spring cleaning for the whole house, gearing up for a visit from my aunt at the end of the month), I took today to write.

Shortly before dinner, and partly because of the heat, I decided to put my computer to sleep and rethink whether I wanted to continue writing after dinner. I ate, returned to my room and pondered. I woke it up and was going to shut down for the night when I checked a friend's blog.

There is a lot about writing that forces the writer to sit by him- or herself in a room with pen and paper, or computer, and work alone for hours, days, even weeks or months without real connections to other people. But it is not a solitary act.

It is not a solitary act.

Although some people don't work well with writing groups, usually a writer has at least someone they can talk to. This may be talking out plot points, or just looking for some encouragement. It may be a beta reader or a cheerleader. All have their purposes and place in the process. (I promise the alliteration isn't deliberate.)

Tonight, I regained the urge, even stronger than earlier today, to keep writing, to keep going for as long as I could. So thank you, fellow writer. I'd been sitting in a room by myself for too long.

Happy writing, everyone.

A Change of Pace?

I am coming up on the final weeks of my fourth quarter teaching. These weeks will be incredibly and exhaustingly busy. Which makes it a bit of a surprise that earlier this week I had a spurt of "I wanna write. I wanna write right now!" and then actually wrote.

Lately, whenever I've had the urge, I have't had the time or honestly, just been too tired to do anything. When I did have teh time and energy, I didn't have the motivation.



Now, I've already talked about how much I love getting back to reading. I just finished An Artifical Night by Seanan McGuire, third book in her October Daye series and absolutely loved it, and I'll be starting the next, Late Eclipses, later today. But, the writing has taken a hit because of work and who knows how many psychological issues, so that I had the urge and followed through on it was pleasantly surprising. I rewrote the first couple of pages of my fae urban fantasy.

This Wednesday, I went to my writer's group and the general concensus was that the original pages were stronger in that the genre ("adult" UF vs. YA) and the attitude of the protagonist were clearer. I thought I had to change to the beginning of the story and apparently went too safe. It's hard to get shot down when you feel like you need more encouragement, but I'm going to take this as a sign that I'm ready to write again.

I want to write. I want to see my work in a bookstore. I want to inspire at least one other person to feel like their ideas are important and that they can do and be whatever they want. To get there, I need to write. And I want to. So I will.

Re-Crushing on Sabriel

Last post--the shiny, far-off thing from weeks ago--I talked about my childhood book crushes and it reminded me that (1) I really loved the book Sabriel by Garth Nix, which I bought and have kept near at hand since fourth grade. But also (2) I had not the foggiest idea what happens in that book. Years with too many books in between dimmed my memory to little more than the knowledge that I enjoyed it and it was a good book.

I wanted to visit it again. I wanted to reread that book.

Friends and fellow writers, I love that book. Despite how absurdly busy I've been with work and trying (in a very real, but positive, sense forcing myself) to maintain some semblance of a social life, I made time and read that book on the bus and enjoyed every minute of it.

For the full impact of this you need to know that I rarely reread books, so much so that I can't remember the last time I reread a book before this month. My thinking always seemed to be, "There are so many books I haven't read for the first time, I should read those first, then reread these others." (Incongruously, if I love a book, I want to own it, even if I never read it again, because I always think I will at some point.)



So on the first Saturday of May (Free Comic Book Day), I picked up the rest of the Nix series and a Mercedes Lackey book, Intrigues, which was the sequel to Foundation. I had read Foundation a while back, so here is where the first stirrings of a change in habit arose. I reread it, then moved onto Intrigues in quick succession.

Afterwards, I reread Sabriel. And as soon as that was done, I leapt into Lirael, and just as quickly into book 3, Abhorsen. I finished that this morning, and in between some little necessary computer stuff, have been reading pages of Across the Wall, an anthology whose first story is a novella that takes place in the same world.

I really want Garth Nix to write more books set in this world. I really, really do. Each time I finish a book, I love the characters and stories and world more and more, and really want to keep going.

Although my plans for today involve socialization and singing loudly into a mirophone (I'm going out to karaoke), I will be spending a healthy chunk of time on the bus, which means although I am tucking a new notebook, an old notebook, and a sketchbook in my bag, Across the Wall is coming with me. And I will be turning it back to the library with the last Old Kingdom story singing through me, making me sigh wistfully for one more story.

I love these books. And I love rereading them. And I am going to amend my thinking of the process because even if it pushes back equally good books that I haven't yet read, there is a warmth and excitement to reading a book I've read before that I won't deny anymore.