February 2012 Archives

Here’s something you won’t often see from me: a 3,000 word day. Yes, if you squint at the number in that counter (it’s the project target counter from Scrivener), you’ll see that the word count is 3,056. And what was more, I wasn’t done. I had had a nice nap, and so while the counter reset I stayed up far too late — till 3:00 — and wrote another 1000 words. I made myself cry. Ah, retreat. I miss you already.

If you’re also squinting at the text, squint no longer. Here it is. Otter, the protagonist of Sorrow’s Knot, is seeing one of the most feared things in her world, a White Hand, for the first time.

“She could hardly make it out in the purpling light. It did not hold its shape, but drifted and billowed, swarmed and bulged. Only its hands were clear: white as peeled roots, five-fingered human but twig-skinny, bone-skinny. You could have taken them for a birch branch, if you were just glancing — but then your hair would rise in warning and you would turn slowly back and look again.”

I got out to the Hermitage on Wednesday afternoon. I unpacked my food, put my grandmother’s quilt on the little bed, poked around the tiny space — it’s an old stone milk shed, smaller than the average dorm room, with walls two feet thick and a counter across one of the deep window ledges that serves a desk. Profoundly quiet. I thought: now what? So I went for a walk.

The centre has about 15 miles of woodlot trail. There was a messy thaw going on, snow turning into ice, turning into mud. Well, I thought, I can cope with that. My book needs a messy thaw. My goal for the retreat was to take apart the existing nine chapters of Sorrow’s Knot. I’m a feel-one’s-way writer, so often my new chapters, when sent out to beta readers, will be topped with a note such as: “I’m doing something different with Fawn and will take her out of chapters 1 -5. Pretend you haven’t met her.” There were four major shifts of that kind that needed retrofitting. After that I hoped to write the two or three remaining chapters that would finish the first half of the book.

Messy thaw. Muck about, get muddy. Watch for tiny bird tracks and beautiful moss. Can do. So I finished the first two chapters — the really hard part — on Wednesday and the remaining seven — not as hard, but much longer — on Thursday. Thursday was a good day: mild and sunny. I walked eight miles.

On Friday that grimmest of winter things: sleet, then freezing rain. Ice came ticking down: we got half an inch. And then snow — huge flakes, falling fast. And then more ice. It was lovely but I couldn’t go out. So I worked, in a broken stuck way, on chapter ten. Some decent stuff, not amazing. It felt — forced. Trapped. In a little milk shed in the middle of nowhere where it would probably be stuck until the spring thaw. Shit.

So I whimpered and whined. And I decided it would be okay to be nice to myself. Pity I didn’t the necessary nice-to-self stuff: a book. Plus there was no bathtub. Not bringing a book: that was dumb. I turned on my smartphone and started expressing broken stuckness via text message. You know, in the spirit of our desert fathers.

And that, of all things, helped. Mostly Seánan helped: listening to my stuckness and questions and helping me work through things. (If anyone needs a book midwifed, I recommend her.) My hubby helped too. How I missed him.

An idea came to me out of all those questions. The first act ends with main characters setting out on a journey. The why of that was clear to me in my last draft, but (based on my editorial letter) it was coming off as “idle curiosity” instead of (as I was hoping) “desperate quest.” As if Frodo wanted to see what Rivendell looked like. Rats. Okay: Why do they leave? How to make it explicit? A trigger, a reason a —

Oh, got it.

A sudden and miraculous breakthrough, one which opened up the whole middle of the story. I skipped head two chapters and started writing. On Saturday I wrote 4000 words. On Sunday 2000, but I was running out of strength.

Fortunately, at that point the kids showed up to take me home. We built a bonfire in the snow — their first campfire — and roasted marshmallows. They were extra sweet, glad to see me. Home again.

Today’s little piece is from early in Swan Riders, the sequel to Children of Peace. In this scene our narrator has just met the titular riders for the first time. It’s not a brilliant paragraph but I kinda like how it’s structured.

*I considered the two Riders. They could have been picked for contrast. Francis Xavier was big and broad, with a face as round as the moon. Sri was as narrow as if she’d shut herself in a door, her face almost comically tapered and intense, like a heron’s face: bright eyes and beak. He was thoughtfully slow; she was delightfully quick. They were both murderers, of course.
*

Well, blog, let’s see. It’s been awhile. Last week I finished an edit of the first half of my book in draft, Swan Riders. I discovered what the arc of the main character was somewhat late, and so there was a lot of moving stuff around. You’d think this would be mechanical, but in fact it was hugely satisfying. I even made myself cry.

Meanwhile, I’m thinking about Big Weird Poem again. It seems to be approaching chapbook length, and approaching done. I’m wondering if any publishers anywhere are interested in publishing a 40 page book. I may be DOOMED.

Meanwhile meanwhile, Sorrow’s Knot, the book I’m rewriting (usually mentioned around here in the context of how much trouble it’s giving me) is finally moving along. This is good because it’s due — EEEP! — April 1st.

This week I’m planning my first ever writing retreat. I’ve rented a hermitage in the Crieff Hills. I’m going on Wednesday and coming back Sunday. I’m planning to work on Sorrow’s Knot, and my goal is to finish the first half. Here’s the thing. I was really planning that I would completely re-do the first act of this novel and then try to salvage the last two acts. (The first act is the longest act by far, and takes up a half of the book. Then there’s a major turning point, and that’s what I want to write up to this week.) I’m starting to wonder if that’s going to happen — if I’m really going to end the first third in such a way that I can pick the second two thirds more or less intact. As I rewrite, it’s turning into a different book — and a better one, by far. But that makes the April 1st deadline pretty scary. Still, one must follow the energy.

I am currently fussing about my writing retreat, and sublimating said fussing into wondering about what food to take.

I even cast a Tarot about “how to move with my writing on retreat.” (I do not actually believe that shuffled pasteboard influences my life. I do, though, believe it’s useful to borrow an external perspective. Tarot is a mirror mets a dream mets an inkblot: always interesting, sometimes startling.) A notably intense casting: I got major arcana for three of four cards, including the Devil reversed for a signifier. This reads to me like a “break out of the rut” card, so: let go of the old draft of the back half, perhaps? “Deeper emotional connection and more equal footing,” sayeth the book. It’s kind of a wild energy card, though, so it could be (and I hope it will be) a big wild out-of-control few writing days.