Lilith Saintcrow's Blog, page 187

Grace and Dignity

As in, I have neither. I mean, dignity was pretty much shot during my first C-section; if it hadn't been, motherhood would have finished it off right quick. There was that one time an almost-psychotically-sleep-deprived me mistook a tube of Desitin for toothpaste, and didn't notice until I'd brushed my top teeth.

Yeah. Anyway.

You would think dance would have taught me grace. Nope. I am capable of amazing feats of dexterity while avoiding fists or when moving too quickly to really think about it, but grace? Nope. Not me. I'll settle for not hurting myself nine times out of ten.

Those tenths, however, usually end up being doozies.

So, last Friday I was out with my climbing partner S. She talked me into cocktails. Not just any cocktails. We were going to have dress-up-like-real-ladies cocktails. It was the inaugural event for The Dress–wait, did I tell you guys about the Dress? I found it in the J Peterman catalog. First dress I've bought in YEARS. It fit (well, anything with a side zipper has a different value of "fit" than my usual "if I have to contort to get into it, it doesn't fit" rule) so I couldn't send it back. It's a very light pink. With polka dots. And a bow. ANYWAY. I wore heels.

That was probably my mistake.

We met for lunch and a little shopping, and there was a very nice little boutique…where I proceeded to trip on a step and fall full-length.

Now, I know how to fall, so I only got a bruised knee. S had never seen me fall without a rope, so she was a little perturbed. I reassured her I hadn't broken anything, blamed the heels ("if I would have been in my BOOTS–" I said, and she gave me an eyeroll that could have won at the Olympics and a stern "Don't start, Lili,") and we continued. The funny thing? The cocktails came afterward.

Yes, I managed to fall flat on my face while stone-cold sober.

Cut to this morning. Miss B and I are out for our usual five miles. Some of the sidewalks we run on are fairly cracked, the trees shading them have managed to heave up blocks of cement inch by inch. I know where all the bad cracks and edges are. We're in front of the church, on a piece of pavement I've passed over easily five hundred times by now…

WHAM.

Yep, flat on my face again. Skinned my right palm and my right knee, bumped my shoulder (I went loose and rolled sideways to shed momentum), my left thumb got a bit battered (I do NOT know how, don't ask) and I found myself staring at concrete right in front of my nose.

Miss B, of course, thought this was a new game. One she was not quite prepared for, but gamely ready to give a go at. "Alpha's thrown herself on the ground! Should I too? What's my role? What are my motivations? HALP SHOW ME WHAT TO DO!"

"Oh, fuck," I muttered, which cheered me up immensely. If I'm cussing, I'm okay. It's only when I get really quiet and say something like "Oh my goodness" or, more frightening, "Oh, fudgesicles," that I know I'm really hurt and shit's about to get ugly.

Miss B pranced, getting the leash wound around her front leg. I pushed myself up and took stock. Just a bit of skin lost and a little bruising. Nothing broken, sprained, torn, or pulled. Good deal. I untangled the dog, chirruped and gave her a treat, and we were off again.

For another four and a half miles.

The good thing about a bad fall is that the adrenaline tranquilizes me for the rest of a five-mile run. I got through the four-mile mark before I began to feel winded in the least. Miss B kept waiting for me to play the game again. I suspect she had some idea of her role the next time I went tumbling. I further suspect that self-appointed role will make it incredibly difficult for me to gain my feet again.

Oh, well. I am philosophical about my lack of grace or dignity. If I can't have either of them, I will at least settle for persistence. And not wearing heels. Unless absolutely forced to. At least they were the Capezio character shoes. I can run in those, and I can even fight, if need be…

…but that's another blog post.

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Raw, But Not Bleeding

This morning, five miles. Along the way there were several sprinklers (Miss B likes to avoid those, energetically, whenever possible), five dogs (four off-leash, when will they learn, it's a leash LAW, not a guideline or suggestion, for the safety of the pets unlucky enough to have YOU as a goddamn owner), a multiplicity of squirrels we were going too quickly to chase (though Miss B tried, gamely), several bunnies (pets escaped and gone feral, long story, cute and fluffy until you see the TEETH), the hawk in the park crouched over something bloody before it took wing, carrying the unfortunate rag of bone and meat and breakfast, late-summer heatstressed leaves falling and crunching underfoot.

The season is turning. You can smell it–the mornings are crisper, without the asphalt-and-dust scent of high summer. It's not harvest season yet, but everything's preparing, and the nights are turning cooler. The sky is not the endless blue of summer. It is paling, still infinite, but it has the washed-and-dried-outside quality of late summer, after the worst heat but before the rains sweep in. Things are ripening, yawning, enjoying the slow afternoons.

I come home to a Little Prince who has grounded himself from the Wii for two days because his legs hurt–when he plays, he jumps up and down from sheer excitement, and he's sore this morning. "I better take a break," he informs me solemnly over his cereal, and I try not to smile as I nod and seriously agree, and compliment him for being so mature and responsible. And the Princess, buried under her covers until late, comes blinking out into the morning light and informs me a scene in the fanfic she's working on has broken loose; as soon as she has breakfast she's going to dive into it. Their days are long and timeless in summer. When school starts at the end of the month I'm going to miss them–they'll miss me too, but they're excited to go back to their friends.

The house is quiet. Miss B is tranquil–the first three miles are to calm her down, the last two are to wear her out. The sneezing cat doesn't protest when I dose her with antibiotics, though it must taste nasty. She takes the eyedropper gracefully, and there are pets and praise for everyone afterward.

I open the fridge to get the cream for my morning coffee. Stuck, fluttering, on the fridge are cards someone sent me during the dark difficult time not so long ago. You'll feel better soon, one says, and the other, Keep going. The world needs your light. For a moment, I am arrested by the thought that little by little, things did get better. I put my head down and just went one step at a time, and now I can look back and see the hole I climbed out of. The edges are raw, but not bleeding. I am on the other side. I never have to endure that particular hell again. (I like to make an entirely new set of fuckups each time, thank you very much.)

It's a funny thing, to realize you don't have to stare at your feet anymore. That the weight dragging all over you has lessened, that you can take a deep breath and look forward. That you have endured, and now you can begin to glance ahead. Shyly at first, carefully, in case there is a sudden tilt back toward the hole. Later, more confidently, settling the straps of your pack, your steps becoming long swinging strides instead of a spiritless trudge. There is light now, stray gleams strengthening through breaking clouds, the storm has spent itself. A little older, a little wiser around the eyes, scars to tell stories about instead of wounds to triage.

I begin to roll my eyes and see the funny parts now. I get my coffee, and I go back to work. There's just one thing left, and that is to say…

…Thank you. Thank you very much.

Over and out.

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The Fertile Random of Revision Hell

I'm in Revision Hell at the moment, chopping up and messing with the first Bannon & Clare book to get it from zero to first draft status. So I have the map of Dickens's London out, a sneezing cat on my shoulder, a dog flopped at my feet with several long-suffering sighs whenever I move in the slightest, and a head stuffed full of story structure, plot arc, character cross-references, and things to look for in the zero draft.

As you might suspect, this makes for some exotic thoughts when I'm not actively revising. Like the peculiar, highly-colored, anxiety-ridden dreams I've come to expect during revisions. They rarely involve the story; instead, they're some version or another of the old "here I am in class, naked and missing my homework" dreams. Last night's featured Martians.

Seriously, you don't want to know. In any case, here's a selection of Things I Think While Revising, different than the normal oddness inside my head only in that the anxiety makes them much more vivid than usual ho-hum "how would I do a shootout in this stairwell" thoughts.

* "I have a tumor. I'm going to die." This morning while running I had an amazing bolt of pain lance through my head. Wednesdays are my easy days, only three miles and no double in the afternoon. So there I was, trucking along at about two miles, and I had to stop and screw my eyes shut. The dog was confused, and as soon as the bolt passed I wondered if I had a brain tumor and I was going to be felled by it in a matter of weeks. Then I realized I was being ridiculous, and started running again.

* "Pancakes and watermelon are an acceptable dinner, right?" The kids agreed enthusiastically. However, I don't really like watermelon, so it was grapes, pita chips, and Brie for me. That was when I realized I had grabbed "light" Brie. Let me tell you, such a thing is an abomination unto the gods, and shall ever be, world without end, amen.

* "A hansom only needs one clockhorse, thanks." Said to the nice lady checking my groceries at the supermarket. She knows me–I've been shopping there for a decade now–so she just said, "Another book, huh? I'm gonna give you this coupon, honey. Go home and get some rest."

* "Armored squirrels. With red eyes. Can I fit them into this draft?" Sadly, I could not. Altered rats, sure. But not squirrels. I'm sure there were squirrels in Victorian London, but I don't want to dig them up. Let them rest in peace, for Chrissake.

* "I can climb tha–THUD." It's not that I overestimate my abilities. It's that I throw myself at the wall and see what sticks, and while I'm in revision I'm tempted to do the craziest things because they sound good at the time.

* "Oh, God, if I just had a submachine gun right now…" Pretty standard, right? But when in revision hell, the ensuing mental dwelling upon the likely consequences are Technicolor vivid. I…won't say more.

* "Could I teach the dog to bring me a glass of wine?" I actually spent a good ten minutes contemplating this. Then I ran up against the fact that Miss B doesn't have thumbs. And decided it was time to go to bed, for I was getting silly.

* "What if it was an alien driving that car…?" One of the things about revision is that new stories start crowding the brain, the what-if muscle working overtime, begging to be used. I have not decided if this is a method of procrastination or a natural result of the creative faculties chewing on the bone and gristle of a zero draft, looking for something a little more tender. Who knows? In any case, I lose myself in little what-ifs like this an awful lot during revision. Even more than I normally do, which is saying something.

I could go on and on, but you get the idea. Here, have a trailer for a movie about the invention of the vibrator. Hat tip to the Selkie for that one. See, there's a taste of the random that happens when it's revision time.

Speaking of which, I've got to go back. I'm trying to find chapter names that don't sound like coffee brands. *headdesk*

Over and out.

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Convention Madness, Recovery Edition

So, we returned from SpoCon late Sunday evening, exhausted but happy, clutching our gifts and swag, all three of us incredibly happy to be home again. Miss B. returned from my writing partner's house about an hour after we got home. While we were convention-ing, Miss B was catching voles, rolling in grass, meeting alpacas and horses and chickens and generally having the run of a couple acres. I was actually half afraid that she wouldn't want to come home. The cats, checked on every day by a friend or two, were aloof as usual. "Oh, you left? I didn't notice…"

The kids are still talking about the hotel pool, and being able to watch all the television they wanted to. They attended a couple panels, liked the dealer's room and the game room, and had fun spotting costumes. They weren't too into panels–the siren call of the hotel room, with AC and the big wide television, was too strong to ignore.

Oh well.

As for me, I had a lovely time. Kudos must go to Chris Snell for organizing, and Kathy McCracken, who is a saint for ferrying three punch-drunk writers to her place of employment, ferrying us back, and going drinking with us as well. (Well, there was dinner involved, so it wasn't as bad as it sounds.) The list of people I enjoyed muchly includes Erik Scott de Bie, who can out-deadpan me, Moira J. Moore (hey Moira, the Princess finished your book the night we got home, she loved it), Roxanne Skelly (keep going, even if you are in revision hell), upcoming writers Kaye T. and Esther J., the nice guy in Registration who figured out the badges for the Prince and Princess, Frances Pauli (who almost made me moderate again), and Courtney Brasil, who was a trouper, let me tell you. That panel didn't let up until after MIDNIGHT. Plus, the young man who I used as an example during the Paranormal Paramours panel: you were a good sport, thank you.

I wanted to take a bunch of pictures, but I was going so fast trying to get to the next place I needed to be…that I forgot. Bad author, no cookie for me.

Anyway, it was a lot of fun. The drive out there was pretty, even though coming into Spokane through the construction on I90 was an exercise in patience. The drive home was gorgeous, except for the Prince and Princess in the car for six hours growing heartily tired of each other. (They spent all of yesterday in their rooms, recuperating and catching up on alone-time.) I think I've about recovered–I was toast yesterday, couldn't form a complete sentence to save my life.

Anyway. My big purchase in the dealer's room was a pocket-watch that Bannon & Clare just had to have. I don't even know how to wear a bloody pocket watch anymore, but it's gorgeous and I love it. Thanks also to all the fans, both at the convention and at the Hastings signing, you were uniformly a pleasure to meet and chat with.

And that's about it. I got up this morning, ran five miles, bouldered with my pal ZenEllen, and am settling into deadlines.

Whew. It's good to be back.

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Convention Fun, Day One

So we made it to Spokane for SpoCon. The trip was not without its hazards, including one episode of carsickness (thank the gods for all-wheel drive; when one ends up in the construction gravel on the side of a road going up the Gorge it's nice to know one's trip isn't over.) that a pair of bemused survey guys from the county curiously watched me clean up after, lunch at the weirdest Subway on earth (don't ask) and Spokane desperately trying to keep me from entering its environs. (Oh, I90, you gave it a good go, but I'm more determined AND tougher than you, m'dear.) So here we are. The kids enjoy hotel television (Looney Tunes! In the wild! OMG!) and my first panel starts at 2:30pm.

For those of you wondering, my con schedule is here. Expect live-Tweeting and shenanigans. (They do have a bar here. I've checked.)

Onward!

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Ready For SpoCon?

Why have I been so hard to find these days? Well, the new YA book I'm working on is eating my head. Plus, there's two other books about to go into the pipe for revision. There's the kids, of course. And the dog. (You don't even want to know about the other strays.)

Plus, there's the events I'm getting ready for.

I'll be at SpoCon this upcoming weekend! You can find my schedule here. Plus, I'll be signing at the Hastings in Spokane on Saturday, 3-6pm, along with Erik Scott de Bie and Moira Moore. (We have collectively promised not to get arrested.) Should be a ton of fun! I will, of course, be tweeting all I can. Because I'm Just That Way.

In short, if I seem to have dropped off the face of the earth, it's because this is basically Hell Week for me. There's getting ready for the convention, planning pet care and the drive out, wordcount every day, doctor's appointments (don't ask) and back-to-school stuff that all needs to happen before Thursday morning. The runrunrun of a con will probably be a relief.

See you in Spokane, or catch you on the flip side!

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Valuable Skills Learned By Telling Lies For A Living

Crossposted to the Deadline Dames, where there's tons more writing advice, contests, and pie! (Okay, maybe no pie.) Check us out!

Every once in a while, I like to sit down and think of about five things to make a post. Since I'm exhausted and stare-eyed after a long, very busy week that went straight through the weekend without even pausing to nod, I see this as a very good strategy for today. So, without further ado, here's Five Things Writing Will Teach You, Or, Valuable Skills Learned By Telling Lies For A Living.

* Patient productivity. To be a writer is to know how to wait. You wait until you've got a finished piece or two. You send them out and wait for rejections to come back. You wait for the advance payment. You wait for the editor to read. You wait for the revision letter. You wait for the shipping date. You wait for the reviews. You wait for the royalty check. If you do not know how to wait without tearing your hair out and setting yourself on fire, this is not the career to you. The best way I've found to handle the waiting is to always be working on something. Write while you're waiting. Don't ever wait unproductively.

* Let them have their hanging rope. Let them knot it, too. To be a writer is to learn to step back sometimes. I could be talking about characters here–pretty much every time, you can see the tangle the characters are going to get themselves into a mile away. If you move in to save them before the time is right, there's no damn story. I could be talking about Real Life here too. It's like wincing when your kid embarks on Learning A Valuable Life Lesson, or watching a friend who won't listen as s/he plunges for the cliff/bad breakup/disaster. Sometimes, you just have to let someone have their rope.

* It's okay to be wrong. To be a writer is to give yourself the license to not know everything. So you took a bad turn in the story and have to rip out 20K and repair it. So you get an edit letter uncovering a plot hole you could drive a Chevy through. So you make a research error. So you don't know what kind of underwear someone in Bohemia in 1613. So what? Writing can teach you to cock your head and say "I don't know, let's find out!" Curiousity can't flourish when you think you know everything. Nor can you improve if you don't admit the possibility that you might have made a mistake.

I will admit that parenthood taught me a lot about this too. I often feel like the worst parent on earth (with bonus moron sauce) because every day I end up saying over and over again, "I don't know. Let's find out!" But I figure this is better than the way I was raised, having curiousity and wonder almost beaten out of me because someone couldn't admit to not knowing something small. I'll take feeling like an idiot, with the attendant joy and wonder, over calcified hubris, anytime.

* Discipline allows magic. To be a writer is to be the very best of assassins. You do not sit down and write every day to force the Muse to show up. You get into the habit of writing every day so that when she shows up, you have the maximum chance of catching her, bashing her on the head, and squeezing every last drop out of that bitch. You also do get into the habit of writing so that you will automatically get published. You do it consistently because it maximizes your chances. There is no certainty in any career, really, and even less in creative freelancing. But discipline will make sure you can catch and squeeze the everloving daylights out of every single slight chance that comes your way. Chance favors the prepared mind, and all that.

* Observe, observe, observe. Everything around you is grist for the writerly mill. Everything beautiful, terrible, wonderful, horrible, ugly, nasty, awe-inspiring, uncomfortable, downright terrifying, everything is material. To be a writer is to digest everything a life can dig up and throw at you, to melt it in the crucible of the creative brain, to remake the world through words. This is heap powerful mojo, and it needs fuel to run on. That fuel is all around you, all the time, no matter where/who/when/what you are/do. Everything. There are a hundred stories in every kitchen drawer, in every breath, on every streetcorner. They are waiting for you merely to look.

There. Five things writing can teach you, if you let it. There are probably–what? What's that? How many?

I don't know. Let's go find out.

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Process, Part II: Recovering From Finishing

First, a couple things: the Little Prince is bright and perky again. That's the thing with kid stomach bugs–they show up in the middle of the night and are gone pretty much right after dawn, and the kid is all energetic again while the adult feels like she's been hit by a bus. Yesterday was…well, pretty stabby. But he's doing all right.

Plus, I'll be participating in a Book Country Twitter chat tonight. (The hashtag will be #bookcountry.) The topic is: "Author blogs & websites: what works, what doesn't, how to maintain a balance of personal and professional, and how not to become an annoying book marketing machine." I'll be there with Colleen Lindsay and Dan Blank; it promises to be fun.

So. You've made it through the process of writing a novel, and your brain feels like three-day-rotted cheese. What does the recovery process look like?

I should start with the usual disclaimers: YMMV, do not consume if safety seal is tampered with, keep arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. That about covers it.

Here's how recovery works for me:

1. I never want to write again. Yes, I sometimes feel this way. For about ten minutes between actually writing "finis" and sending the "oh God I finished shoot me now" email to my writing partner and agent (and sometimes editor), I seriously question the advisability of ever doing this sort of shit again. The first time this happened it terrified me. I seriously thought I was going to keel over. Writing is so much who I am that the feeling of never wanting to do it again was virtually losing my identity. There was the scary sense of disappearing, falling into a black hole, vanishing. Later I realized the feeling was completely normal–like finishing a run, or muscling my way up a difficult climb, and feeling like I never want to do that shit again either. It's a temporary response to finishing a massive, complex, and draining emotional, mental, and physical task. It never lasts longer than ten-fifteen minutes, and it's part of the reason why I always immediately open up another project and just…look at it for a while. If I'm busy distracting myself, the "ugh, please don't make me do that again" passes far more quickly.

2. Eat something nice, then sleep it off. I tend to finish things late in the afternoon, after a marathon session. After I've looked at a new project and passed through the "OMG do not ever do that again" stage, I usually need something sinful to eat. The last stage of finishing a book is usually pretty lo-cal for me–I will put meals on the table for the kids, but either skip them or pick at them myself. Dinnertime is sacred–it's when the kids and I talk to each other about our day, and they each get a chance to be the centre of attention–so I'll be present at the table, but trying to eat during the very last stage of finishing a book is just not fun. I end up with a handful of trail mix or an energy bar at the computer, sucking down tea or water with lemon while I race to the finish line. So, after I've finished, my body suddenly says, "HEY, REMEMBER ME? FEED ME OR I WILL HURT YOU."

So what do I eat right after finishing a book? I carbo-load. It's pasta-rice-bread time, baybee. I take the kids to a nice Italian place, or we go to my favourite local Indian place and I eat a ton of rice and naan with chana masala or butter chicken. I give myself a complete pass and eat whatever the hell I feel like that evening and the day after. It's not quite a binge–the calorie load, I've noticed, ends up being only slightly higher than my normal eating habits. (Look, I have Food Issues. I track things, okay?) Then, I sleep. The night after finishing a book is pretty much the only time I've never been troubled with "hideous insomnia that takes medication to surmount." (I'm wound kind of tight. But you knew that.) I usually crash early and sleep all the way through until I absolutely have to get up.

If it seems like I'm taking a lot of trouble explaining this, I am, and for good reason. You absolutely must take care of your physical self if you want to write long-term. Writing a 70-100K novel is hard on the fine structures of the hands and arms, and it's terrible for the back. Your body carries you through the writing in more ways than one. Do NOT neglect it. Give it something nice and restorative after you've put it though the marathon.

3. Emotional Whiplash. Writing takes mental and emotional energy, too. It stretches you out like a rubber band, and a project's finish hits me like letting go of that band and getting a nice welt on the wrist. I call it snapback, and the symptoms include restlessness, irritability, mood swings, mental exhaustion, insomnia, the urge to pummel a heavy bag, inability to settle in one place, rabid housecleaning, snarling, and caffeine overdose. The snapback phase can last from a couple days to a week, depending how big the finished project is, how hard and fast I ran to get there, and whether or not I practiced good self-care during the whole thing. One particularly bad snapback took me a month of literally sobbing at the drop of a hat to work out. I cried every. Damn. Day. (At the time I was dealing with finishing a series AND watching my marriage falling apart. Not fun.)

During a snapback, I take it easy. My taste in music generally retreats like a bruised anemone–I want stuff without words. Classical, ambient, stuff I don't have to pick at and tease out the lyrics in. My taste in books sometimes retracts; I used to want easy-reading fiction after finishing a book, but nowadays my inner editor twitches so hard I either want an old favourite or I want very dry nonfiction, nothing else. (If you wonder why I read so much military history, it's partly because I don't read it with an editor's eye.) This is also the stage where I play the most video games. I just want to kill some pixels. Oddly, though, I can't handle television or movies during a snapback phase, unless I get a sudden yen for Monty Python. Even then I'll put it on and sometimes just walk away from it. (Strange are the ways of working writers.)

4. Fill That Well. Right after the snapback, I start this. Any sort of creative effort, as Julia Cameron points out, consumes. You must feed your inner well, or you'll hit burnout. So, I seek out new music, I start wanting songs with words again. My taste in reading broadens back out. I scour the Internet and magazines for visual material. I look at random image feeds. The world takes on new color and weight, and everything I see becomes part of the entity that is the new growing book inside my head. I am normally very interested in everything around me, but my tolerance for stim varies, and during this phase I become well-nigh ravenous for it. This usually coincides with the first few stages of writing a book, but I put it under recovery because it must be managed. It's impossible for me to get to this stage without fully accounting for and taking care of myself during the snapback. Also, the main idea while filling the well is to choose nice nutritious stuff instead of just staring at a few webcomics and calling it good. Museums, libraries, walks around the neighborhood, public places–this is the phase when I watch the most movies, too. My kids love this part; it's where I spend most of my free time during projects.

5. Hitting my stride. At this point, I can say I'm fully recovered–and I am already in the middle of another project. Recovery and work overlap a great deal for me, which is not always the case for writers. I have consciously arranged my work schedule so that I have ample time for the snapback, which is by far the most problematic and vulnerable part of my process. It's all too easy to think I'm through it, try to force the well-filling, and find myself struggling with burnout in the middle of a book I'm under tight deadline for. It's better for me to take two or three days completely off (opening up a trunk novel or a graveyard drabble, staring at it, choking up 200 words or so and calling it good, then taking the kids to the park) and get itchy and uncomfortably eager to dive in than to try to give myself those extra days as a jump into the next project and end up struggling halfway through. Now that I've figured out what I need to recover, the process goes much more smoothly than it did during my first six novels or so.

To give you an idea: my recovery phase after the first book I ever finished? Years. The second, smoke? Six months. The third–a month. After that, it was pretty reliably a month of snapback and struggle before I hit my seventh book and finally learned not to frigging push myself to fully work during the snapback days. Yes, I'm an idiot, it takes beating my head against something for me to figure anything out.

There it is, my recovery process. Yours is going to be different. Part of why I say "finishing requires finishing" is because one has to not only learn how to get from inception to finished zero draft reliably, but one also has to navigate recovery successfully in order to have this writing thing work long-term. Especially if you want a viable long-run career. Do yourself a favor and track your recovery, either with a spreadsheet, index cards, or in your journal. Don't be like me–it only takes finishing two or three books to start noticing a pattern. Hell, you might even find your recovery method/time after your first work (though I doubt it.)

Once you have your recovery pattern mapped out, understand this: It is more efficient to experience each stage fully than it is to try to rush them. Give yourself enough time, and don't scratch at the scab. On the other hand, don't use snapback as an excuse to get out of the habit of writing, either. It's a balance, like so much else. Even something as simple as setting your trusty timer for twenty minutes and poking through your graveyard of unfinished drabbles can keep your writing habit in shape–not race-ready, mind you, but easy to ramp back up when you throw yourself into a new project.

Having fun yet? Stay tuned for Process Part III: Burnout, and How To Deal, probably coming early next week.

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Ugh. No. Not today.

The Process Part II post about recovery is postponed until tomorrow. I was up all last night with a Little Prince whose stomach decided to paint everything in sight with half-digested blueberry waffle and bile. So…yeah. (You're welcome for that mental image, by the way.) Today my tolerance for anything besides my little people is severely diminished, so it's probably best I don't post at length.

See you tomorrow!

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Process, Part I: Finishing Without Hurting Yourself

So the new YA is gathering steam. I've reached the point of excavating the world instead of feeling my way around in the dark, and I can tell the long dark slump of picking at the book like it's a scab is just around the corner.

I have, over the course of writing a few books, become pretty comfortable with how that process usually works for me. Familiarity, while not getting rid of the frustration factor OR the sheer amount of work necessary, does help one plan, and it does help one get through the more uncomfortable parts of writing a book with something resembling grace. (Or at least, you can stumble through without stubbing your toes too much.) Being able to say, "Oh, this is the slump part of the project, I can just keep chipping and eventually I'll get to the dead heat phase," is a lot easier than saying "OMFG this book is going to kill me WHY AM I DOING THIS?" Note, however, that one can say both at the same time, and the former does help to ameliorate some of the sheer ARGH of the latter.

For me, writing a book goes somewhat like this:

1. Idea/Hallucination. The inception phase, where I have a question to answer (for example, "What would happen if a paranormal heroine was not adversarial with law enforcement?" a la Jill Kismet) or this full-immersion vision of a scene from the story (like seeing Dru Anderson in her kitchen with a zombie at the back door a la Strange Angels) or the character suddenly starts speaking (hearing a throaty Necromance whisper "My working relationship with Lucifer began on a rainy Tuesday." a la Dante Valentine.) and a furious phase of writing to find out what exactly this character has gotten into and what happens next ensues. This takes me to about 6K, usually, of new wordage.

2. Feeling Around In The Dark. The story is there. I can feel it. Unfortunately, it's under a heavy blanket, or it's in a dark room, and I have to stumble around with my hands out, feeling my way around the shapes of things. generally, this is about as comfortable as banging my head repeatedly against a wall. I keep getting pulled up short, the story doing everything but what I want, and each word has to be chipped out with a chisel. Fortunately, this phase doesn't last very long–it's usually over by the 12K point.

3. Excavation. At this point, the story has acquired enough mass and momentum that instead of being a structure I have to build, it becomes a site for me to excavate. This is a critical milestone, because the worldbuilding becomes a whole I'm witnessing instead of parts I'm putting together. An organic entity, instead of a Frankenstein monster of odds and ends. It happens which a click I can actually feel physically, inside my chest and brain. This is when things get fun.

4. White Heat. From the shift-click over into excavation to a point about halfway/two-thirds through a book, it's white heat. I am consumed by the world and the characters, I spend a lot of time in a creative fugue state, where I sit down at the keyboard and am literally gone into another world. I have to tear myself away for appointments and Real World stuff, and I almost resent every single moment spent sleeping or taking care of the physical world because it drags me away from the story. This phase, however, is too good to last.

5. The Doldrums. The doldrums hit halfway or two-thirds through a book. Suddenly, I'm tired. I go back to chipping words out of my cerebellum with dull chisels. Wordcount drops, in some cases dramatically. I do a lot of going back and tweaking, so that my total wordcount added might only be 200, but that will be a result of adding 2K in one place and trimming elsewhere. Dream scenes and connective tissue get added, dialogue gets sharpened. And I get so sick of the characters and story I start talking about The Book That Will Not Die and making little stabbing gestures at random points. I also get cranky. The only cure is keeping one's head down and powering through. This is the phase most aspiring or new writers commonly quit during. This is the gritty part, and it is the phase during which the habit of writing consistently is most valuable. Some days it's only habit that pulls one's silly ass through.

6. Dead Heat. Just when I'm about to mutter about returning the goddamn advance and never writing again because I hate this book so motherfucking much, something happens. There is another physical click, and all of a sudden, pretty reliably at the four-fifths-through mark, the book acquires incredible momentum. My wordcount spikes–it's not at all unreasonable for me to turn in 8-10K a day of new material during this phase. The book is like that huge boulder rolling after Indiana Jones–I can barely keep just ahead of it, and it requires all my energy to keep going. I don't sleep much during this phase, and dinners become spaghetti, pizza, pho, soup–easy things. "Mom's finishing a book again," the kids say, and cheer when I tell them it's a pizza night. This goes in an eyeblink, and then I reach…the end.

The instant I finish a book–literally the instant I send off the email to my beta, agent, and editor saying "Zero draft is done, I will be able to turn a first draft in on deadline," I open up another document–a short I have due, or a trunk novel, or the next book I'm scheduled for. I don't do much, I just sit and stare at it. Maybe I'll type five words. But I'll spend at least a half-hour looking at this new problem. Then I'll close it down and start the recovery process, which is a whole 'nother blog post. (One that is, incidentally, probably coming tomorrow.) It is way easier to shift into recovery if I've taken a look at something other than the massive thing I've just finished. I never walk away from the computer after the finish. I think I need the idea of the next project to soak up all the leftover momentum–there's a huge flywheel in my head, and while it's spooling down from the dead heat part of the process I need to be careful not to let it spin too freely. Nasty stuff happens to me, emotionally and mentally, if I don't brake that flywheel gently.

Your process may be different, and that's okay. But I encourage writers to finish things, so that you understand what your process is. Generally, all creative projects involve a doldrums phase, and getting through it is a lot easier when you understand that it's just temporary. The way to teach yourself that it's just temporary is to go through it a few times and teach your doubting self that you will, indeed, finish the damn thing.

And so ends part I of the Process of Writing A Book-Length Thing Without Hurting Myself. Tune in later for Part II, where I detail the recovery process and why it's important to let yourself recover.

Over and out.

Related posts:Finishing Requires Finishing
Environment (Process, Part II)
Process, Part I