I didn’t write a word yesterday. Thursday. —Actually, I wrote two words: “The hill—”
I just deleted them.
We’re off to a good start?
I finished the (first) draft of No. 21, “Gallowglas,” on Wednesday night, which mostly consisted of writing out what I’d spent Monday and Tuesday not writing out, and then sitting back,
and then sitting up again to close the file (and thinking, as any writer can’t help but do at moments like this, of the horribly ambiguous gesture Richard Dreyfuss makes at the end of Stand By Me—were we supposed to understand he was supposed to be shutting down the computer itself, when he merely shut off the monitor? Were we supposed to understand he hadn’t saved his file, that his gesture was destructive, purgative, restorative? Or had he just, y’know, shut off his damn monitor?)—and I let out a breath it felt like I’d been holding for, well, far too damn long.
Now it’s time to write out the—is it a spoiler to say it’s an epilogue? This is, after all, first and foremost a television show, and I was reading somewhere about how ever since the Sopranos everybody’s been tying up their seasonal arcs in a blow-out in the penultimate episode, and using the last one before the break not as a cliff-hanger,
but as a breath-catch after the plunge averted, the stock-taking after a loss sustained. But I got my initial splash of it from the fourth season of Buffy, which is anyway where I first started thinking about the structures of long-form episodic storytelling, and anyway had it reinforced by the Wire, which played that card with a flourish every time, and it has nothing to do with whether these folks stole it from those folks or who had the idea first, it has to do with the fact that there’s love yet for the epilogue, and not enough of them in the world.
That hill, then. —Oh, there’s a hill, and a flickering, winding line, but not of candles, and anyway that’s not where it’ll start. I just figured out this morning where it’ll start, is the thing. I’ve still got a list of all the things it’ll be impossible to fit, but that’s the sort of problem I can deal with. Knowing where to start, which word to put down, and which word comes after that—that was the problem. For about 24 hours or so, there.
If you’re following along at home, then: I’ve written 32,064 words of what was only thus far supposed to’ve been about 30,000; there’s still 15,000 to write, and only a day over two weeks left to write them in; a thousand words a day, here on out, if it’s to be done by then.
It’ll be close, I guess? —So far, over the course of the Write-a-Thon, I’ve written 16,345 words: an average of 630 words a day, for more than three weeks running, now. 32,066 words since March 31. (I’m counting “That hill” in the total since it was there, yesterday, even if it’s gone today.) That’s the longest sustained blast of—productivity? creativity? —The longest string of one word after another, anyway, that I can recall maintaining since this thing began.
So there’s that, then, for endings. They have a momentum. —Even if it’s hard, sometimes, catching your breath again, after you finally let that big one out.
Posted 4654 days ago.
So “Sun” is done, or drafted, anyway, and ordinarily I’d be polishing, revising, editing before prepping it to post (ordinarily, let’s be honest, I’d’ve written about half by the time the announced publication date rolled around, and be scrambling to finish what I could and not be too terribly late about it),
but: I’ve got to keep the larger goal in mind. 12, of the 45, of the 90, are done; 15,000 written, and 30,000 yet to go. —And if I manage to maintain a pace of oh, about 700 words a day (697.7, to be precise), I’ll be done (done!) on or about August 2nd.
And then to the polishing, the revising, the editing, the prepping to publish, the marketing blast, the review copies, the reformatting of the ebooks and the paper books, the relisting on all the various websites, the release—oh, you get the idea.
I’ve never been to Clarion, West or otherwise; I’ve never even tried to go. For one thing, it’s got a definite short story focus, and while I’ve got short(er) stories in me, I’ve no doubt, I’m really more of a Donald Rumsfeld type: go massive, sweep it all up, things related and not—how else will you ever find those unutterably elusive uknown knowns? —Was there another thing? —Probably.
But! Clarion is a Thing Without Which; any mechanism that takes people out of the world for six weeks or so and sends them back different is—well, actually, there’s a lot of such mechanisms that produce soldiers, and cultists, and thousand-yard stares, but this one transmits and inculcates the manners and mores of the phantastick as it’s currently spoke, here and now, which—I mean, it’s not like I don’t have beefs with this manner, or that more, but, you know, you can’t flip a table unless there’s a table there in the first place—
I think we’re starting to see my limitations as a marketer. (—Anything that gets Elizabeth Hand and Neil Gaiman and Samuel Delany in a room to drop some little science is, well. Better by far than not.)
The point: each year, to raise money (art, education, priorities, you know), Clarion West invites writers to “shadow” the workshop by setting writing goals and working to meet them, and inviting everyone—you, in fact—to sponsor any of those writers, or a group of writers, or all of them, by pledging donations to Clarion West. —A Write-a-Thon, in other words, running from this coming Sunday, June 23rd through Friday, August 2nd. And I’ll be participating this year, so you should visualize me having come to your door and rung the bell and now I’m holding out a clipboard and asking you to sign up to sponsor me, because, you see, if, during the course of the Write-a-Thon, I can maintain a pace of oh, about 700 words a day from June 23rd through August 2nd—
—I’ll be done.
“Sun” is drafted, then, if not complete, and when I close out this file and post it I’ll turn my attention to the opening line of “Gallowglas” (a scream, I’m fairly certain). If all goes well, then, you should maybe look for no. 20, “Sun,” sometime in September? —I went with Spenser for the epigram, this time, because I really should be putting in more Spenser; I did promise, didn’t I? “The joyfulst day that ever sunne did see.” —But I’m kinda wishing I’d set it up that Ray’s pinkish-orange hair was just a wig, worn over a clean-shaven pate, and then I could’ve gone with Laurie Anderson instead? “Sun’s coming up, like a big bald head poking up over the grocery store—”
—Should I have spoiler warninged that? —I can never tell.
Posted 4682 days ago.
The white thread is now separate from the black, so maybe we take a brief crepuscular moment here to look about, before the day becomes too bright too see. —Of the six, then, three are done; 47 of the 90 scenes 90 have been written. And if it’s taking longer than I’d hoped, well, the view when I look outside my window this morning is utterly different than the one I saw a year ago today, for all that the city is the same. (And also for all that the view of our bank accounts is unchanged. —There’s a moral in there, somewhere, perhaps, but it’s beyond me to go looking for it.)
Here’s the thing, though, or a thing, which has occasioned this thing: the end is nigh. I’ve actually got to bring this beast in for a landing. And while there’s a certain inevitability, an ineluctable gravity to what’s lined up and waiting, there’s still this vasty gulf ’twixt cup and lip; a vasty gulf, and only three chapbooks, or forty-five thousand words.
So I need to turn off the autopilot, run through the protocols, flip lots of switches and mutter half-heard snatches of instructions into the microphone that I hope will sound terribly important, as I make damn certain I can cover all the checks the seat of my pants has been writing all this time. —Which means, to a certain extent, Radio Free Silence for a bit. I need to hunker down and write out what’s left all the way to the end before I commit; which means, to a very real extent, a delay before no. 20, “Sun,” manages to rise.
What I’m hoping, what this’ll look like, is in six months’ time or so, that’s when “Sun” begins, along with the promotional work I’ll need to be doing for vol. 2, The Dazzle of Day, which drops a month or so after that. And then after it’s been around for a month or so, nos. 21 and 22, “Gallowglas” and “Maiestie,” will then finally put in their appearances here, the one right after the other.
Which means, yes: for a brief little while, if you want to read the end of it right away, without waiting, you’ll need to get your hands on the book. —Do I feel a little awkward, holding it hostage like that? —A little, yes. Sheepish, even. But the devil’s driving, as he usually is, and this seems like a way to let him drive some sales, yes, but also and more importantly interest, attention, even conversation. A book is an Event; a finished chapter is just another finished chapter.
Or so it is to be hoped, at the present moment, questions remain to be seen, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
—I’m sorry, you want to know when, exactly? —You see that “or so” up there? Much virtue in that, “or so.”
And after that? After all of that? I’ll probably sleep a bit, yes, but it’s not like I’m not sleeping now. —There’s more to come, of course; we’re just getting started! [cracks knuckles, winces at pain, essays a maniacal laugh, dissolves in coughing fit] —A re-design, for one thing, and a refit, which will take a little time, and somewhere in there I’ll start on the next bit, and then the one after that, and so on, and so forth, and they’ll make their way here, at least as long as the bees keep humming. —Let’s end on an ambiguously hopeful note, perhaps? I’ll copy out some notes I’d tell you I scribbled down on paper, except I typed them into a generic text editor instead, but here: some words that, from a long way off, might look like titles:
“Wake up…”
The Dazzle of Day
In the Reign of Good Queen Dick
Or Betty Martin
The Greene Chapel
Eleleu Ie
Restoration
No promises, mind. Subject to change. May settle during shipping. Void where prohibited.
Posted 4766 days ago.
Posted 4835 days ago.
The idea of f--ries, I learned, probably goes back to ancient Greece and Mesopotamia, and before the 19th century they weren’t pretty, tiny, winged girls who grant wishes and sprinkle magic glitter hither and thither—they were more like murderous kidnapping demons that eat babies. (The word f--ry comes from the Latin word for the Fates, i.e., supernatural creatures who decide if you will live or die.) I also learned something even cooler: f--ries, and the tales about them, are one of the oldest and most powerful secret codes that women have used to explain their lives.
—Jude Ellison Sady Doyle, “Once Upon a Time”
Posted 4842 days ago.
So the revision to the revised schedule needs revising. I’m not up to any promises at the moment. Suffice to say no. 20, “Sun,” won’t be beginning on Monday as noted; I’m not even sure if the next bit of “Moon” will have dropped by then.
One need not rehearse one’s own disappointments, one hopes?
(Those of others, on the other hand…)
At any rate. There are reasons; of course there are reasons. The dead logic board. The ear infection. The post-election ennui; the looming fiscal cliff; the move across town. Words that taste like tinfoil when you put them on the page. The terror that seizes when you get up on the stepladder with the shears to finally snip the thread that holds the other shoe of Damocles: will it actually make a noise, when it falls? Is anyone even listening?
What if all this latency—isn’t?
Mostly if I want to point to something though I’d point to the dam’ script, the third revision of which I just sent off to New York complete with wing and prayer. —Script? —Yes, well. The Spouse and I are collaborating on a young-adult graphic novel for Lerner, part of their “My Boyfriend is a Monster” series, and it takes time, writing 124 pages of comics down. Time that pays.
Which this time doesn’t, so much. —But whose fault is that, really?
That’s pretty much it, for now. It will come. When? I don’t know. Soon? Maybe. It’s dark; it’s cold. It’s also very, very quiet and rather too terribly dry. It’s the Moon.
That’s the best I can do.
Posted 4871 days ago.
There is a kind of Writing, wherein the Poet quite loses Sight of Nature, and entertains his Reader's Imagination with the Characters and Actions of such Persons as have many of them no Existence, but what he bestows on them. Such are F--ries, Witches, Magicians, Demons, and departed Spirits. This Mr. Dryden calls the F--ry Way of Writing, which is, indeed, more difficult than any other that depends on the Poet's Fancy, because he has no Pattern to follow in it, and must work altogether out of his own Invention.
There is a very odd Turn of Thought required for this sort of Writing, and it is impossible for a Poet to succeed in it, who has not a particular Cast of Fancy, and an Imagination naturally fruitful and superstitious. Besides this, he ought to be very well versed in Legends and Fables, antiquated Romances, and the Traditions of Nurses and old Women, that he may fall in with our natural Prejudices, and humour those Notions which we have imbibed in our Infancy. For otherwise he will be apt to make his F--ries talk like People of his own Species, and not like other Setts of Beings, who converse with different Objects, and think in a different Manner from that of Mankind;
Sylvis deducti caveant, me Judice, Fauni
Ne velut innati triviis ac pœne forenses
Aut nimium teneris juvenentur versibusHor.
—Joseph Addison, “—mentis gratissimus Error”
Posted 4928 days ago.
City of Roses by Kip Manley is the closest I came to a really well-crafted, character-driven fantasy.
Posted 5116 days ago.
Saturday evening and we had no plastic eggs, so I walked down to the Fred Meyer to get a half dozen or so imprinted with animal faces and pastel bags of Kit-Kats and sour jellybeans, and I ended up getting a bottle of bubbles, too, because why not. On the way there the sun had been setting, and when I left the store it was almost entirely down, and Hawthorne stretched up away ahead of me into the deepening gloom and at the head of it the far-off colonnade of the Seminary’s front porch catching the last of the light on the ankles of Mount Tabor—and just for a flash, the way you see these things, I saw it: a flickering winding line of candles held in sure and steady hands, a procession making its slow way up the paths there among the trees toward the long-dormant (but not dead) caldera, and I knew how it was all going to end. —Oh, no one’s doom was sealed at that point; those have long since been written down and sealed away in envelopes, days and dates, hows and whys. But what would be done about it, what it’s all going to do to the city: now, with that one glimpse, I know a little more.
Slowly, solely. —Less than a week from the 16th of April. Something will appear here then; something more will appear on days thereafter, but when exactly, which, I don’t know, nor whether it’ll all be done by the 27th as advertised, as promised, sloe, slew, slhoa.
So we’ll set the marker down, here: next week, Monday, April 16th, will see the online première of no. 18, “Dazzle,” with installments appearing, um. Pre-orders? I’ll get back to you on that.
It should all be wrapped up in plenty of time for the “Moon” to come in June. (And so forth; and so on.)
I will be places as well in the next little while. Perhaps I should mention them?
Stumptown and VanCAF will be joint appearances with the Spouse; Readercon and the PZS, I’ll be on my lonesome. I should have at least a couple of books and chapbooks at each of these, and also a warm smile and hearty handshake.
Posted 5119 days ago.
The 9-year-old who discovered The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is genetically identical to the 54-year-old who cannot travel without Calvino’s Invisible Cities and the OCT of the Iliad; if these are not the same reader—if between them lie many, many obsessives to whom the current occupant of the body can never return—the project of improving a book with a view to “the” reader is obviously a non-starter.
Posted 5143 days ago.
