Rachel Neumeier's Blog, page 129

Making Book Recommendations

Here’s a post at Book Riot that caught my eye:

I DON’T KNOW YOU: DON’T ASK ME FOR BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS

That seems harsh. I mean, realistic, but still harsh. Let’s look at the context:

… small talk plus a reading hobby equals the inevitable question, “got any book recommendations for me?” or “read anything good lately?” And it’s meant well. It’s a natural progression of the topic of conversation. But, I can’t be the only one who dreads questions like that, can I?

Well, “dread” seems like a strong word. This looks to me like an invitation to continue the small-talk-getting-acquainted thing by saying, “Well, I don’t know, what do you like?” or “I read mostly fantasy and mysteries and romances, do you read any of those?” or, “Sure, I’ve got ten thousand recommendations — what’s a book you recently loved?”

If the person turns out to like fantasy and romances, there you go, recommend Sharon Shinn or whoever leaps to mind for that sort of story. If the person turns out to like only nonfiction, maybe you also like that nonfiction topic and can spend the next hour talking about, I don’t know, the Indus River civilization or whatever.

The worst that can happen is that the person tells you in detail about the plot of a book you hated, but whatever, this is small talk, just nod and smile and murmur politely and after a decent interval, shift the topic to work or hobbies or (generally my choice when possible) pets. Practically everyone with a pet is happy to talk about the pet.

Anyway, this post then goes on:

First, I’m one of those “bad” readers who can’t remember books after I finish them. Like, seriously! In my brain and immediately out. I can remember titles, usually, but there are countless books on my Goodreads that I can’t remember a single detail from. On many occasions, I read a book for a second time without realizing I had already read it. 

And I skidded to a halt.

Okay. Does anyone here have that happen? I mean, not a book you read 30 years ago and now you don’t remember anything except a vague impression that the protagonist was a thief and that the cover was blue. I mean, books you read, say, this past July. In your brain and immediately out. No memory of the book. Yes?

Because, no. This is one of those areas of human experience that I trip over and think, Seriously?

I stalled out at this point in the linked post and just thought about being an avid reader / who does not remember anything at all about a book immediately after having read it. I’m having trouble believing in this. Not that I don’t believe the author of this post. I’m just having trouble believing in it.

Anyway, that stopped me.

As far as book recommendations go, that does happen on Quora. Can you recommend a good book? What books do you recommend? Lots of people answer those questions. While it’s fine to talk up a book you love to random strangers, it does seem more practical to ask in return, What books do you already know you like?

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Fun friday true crime

Glad I stopped in at Kill Zone Blog today, because this is funny:

True Crime Thursday – Easter Bunny Didn’t Bring THESE Eggs

This is an inexplicable, weird, non-serious crime. It’s a very brief post, but hey, if you’d like a surreal moment in your Friday, here you go.

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New options for authors whose publishers drop a series in the middle

Hanneke pointed to this, and I thought I’d pull it out so everyone would see it:

Michelle Sagara West has posted that DAW is not going to publish the final arc (4-6 very long books) in her Essalien/Averalaan world (so far consisting of the Hunter duology, The Sun Sword series, and the House War series, and a few self-published short stories), that they have published under the Michelle West name for the last two decades.

She has now started a Patreon to enable her to write them.

She will probably post an update on Patreon once a month at most, as she does on her blog, and hopes to keep to the usual DAW deadline of one book a year (barring unforeseen circumstances).

Good luck to Sagara / West! I hope this goes well for her.

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Tropes I have unaccountably never used myself

So, I commented the other day that I really like prison escapes.

Honestly, I love prison escapes.

I was thinking of the prison escape in Ann Maxwell’s Fire Dancer, which, by the way, was released as an ebook last year under the name Elizabeth Lowell, and thanks to @Sandstone on Twitter for that information.

The Honor Harrington series has its flaws, sure, but it’s still a fun series and of course my favorite book is this one, where Honor and others wind up on and escape from the prison planet Hell.

There’s a fantastic prison escape in the 4th book of Tanya Huff’s Valor series. What a great story that is! Practically the whole thing is an extended prison escape. It’s probably my favorite book in the series, and I enjoy all the books. I’m pretty sure this is my favorite military SF series.

There are innumerable prison escapes in SFF. If you’ve got a favorite, by all means let me know because I’m always up for this trope! I’m amazed I’ve never put a prison escape in any novel, except I guess this trope is actually a bit intimidating. You have to work out a clever escape in the same way that you’d work out a clever murder in a murder mystery. I don’t have a knack for that, so this sounds difficult to me.

The prison escape isn’t the only trope I have unaccountably never managed to hit myself.

A second trope I particularly enjoy but have never once used myself is The Bodyguard. I love bodyguard characters! I’m thinking here of trustworthy, competent bodyguards who, at least eventually, like or love the person they’re guarding. That’s the relationship I like and that’s how I would write a bodyguard myself. Several of you pointed out great bodyguards in this relatively recent post. I’m particularly planning to find Daughter of Mystery, which Irina pointed out and which I’m certain I have on my Kindle even at this moment. Every book that was recommended there is one I truly want to look at.

A third trope I’m very fond of is The Thief, particularly a character who is perhaps somewhat ambiguous, but when it comes down to it, on the right side. If you stretch the definition of “thief,” then Nicolas Valiarde might count. But I’m really thinking of more specifically thief characters. One reason Scott Lynch’s books work pretty well for me, despite being on the edge of too gritty, is that the protagonists and important secondary characters are thieves.

Oh, also Vlad, even though he’s an assassin as well as a thief. I like assassins a lot too, as long as they’re not embedded in a grimdark narrative. Assassins who aren’t evil. Vlad might have been pretty amoral for some time, but right from the first was willing to go amazingly far to support and protect people he cared about, which is why he works fine for me as a character. I think Vallista is the most recent book in the series, right? I don’t think I’ve missed any. Wow, fifteen books total so far. Fourteen if you pretend Brust never wrote Teckla, about which the less said, the better.

Anyway, amazingly enough, I’ve never put an important thief (or assassin) into any of my books. Or nothing that has been published. The original trilogy which I cannibalized to write both The White Road of the Moon and Winter of Ice and Iron actually did include thieves, and a thieves’ guild (more or less) and a king of thieves (again, more or less). I had to remove all that because there was just no room for any of it in the final versions of the books. I’m still sad about that. Who knows, maybe eventually I’ll find a place to put those thieves.

Granted, Oressa pretty much acts like a thief. In a way, writing her is a lot like writing a thief character. All the rooftops one could wish! She’s a smooth liar, and she’d steal something without a moment’s hesitation if she thought she needed to. I don’t think she actually does steal anything during the course of this story, but she certainly would.

One more: I’m very fond of kitsune. Not sure how I’ve never managed to work even one kitsune into one of my own books. The Black Dog series is already so cluttered, I don’t suppose it’s possible to cram a kitsune or two into that. Probably. Though it would be neat!

Of course, I have managed to write some tropes I particularly like. I’ve managed The Girl Who Disguises Herself As A Boy. I’ve always liked that one. But it’s amazing how many great tropes I have unaccountably never happened to put anywhere. Yet.

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words words words

Neat post here at Daily Writing Tips: Ten More Naming Words Ending in -nym.

Eponym, exonym, autonym … I knew that the Welsh call themselves Cymry, not “Welsh,” but I’d forgotten that.

What a great-looking language Welsh is. Or perhaps I should say, what a great-looking language Cymraeg is. Either way, that is a language that looks wonderful on the page.

Moving on, I see there’s a word for something I’m familiar with:

Tautonym — this is the word for scientific names like Gorilla gorilla or Crocuta crocuta. A “tautonym” is the word for repetitious taxonomic names. I never knew that! That’s quite common. The second example is the spotted hyena, incidentally. Generally, one takes a repetitious taxonomic name to mean that historically, this member of the genus was considered to be “most representative of” the genus — it was named first or is by far the most widespread or something. All other species within the genus are probably defined at least partially in terms of their dissimilarities to the species with the repetitive name. This is true even if the species with the tautonym is really quite an outlier for the genus.

The red fox, for example, Vulpes vulpes, is thought of, at least in England and the US, as kind of the fox’s fox, the ur-fox, what a fox is like. When you pick up a kid’s book and it says “F is for fox,” the picture is of a red fox. Then we say, well, a swift fox, Vulpes velox, is smaller than the red fox and different in these other ways.

(The swift fox, once very seriously endangered, is now a species of least concern, by the way; a real success story for conservation. Just thought I’d throw that out in case you wanted a tidbit of good news today.)

Anyway, Linnaeus and other early taxonomists tended to think of the red fox first and describe the other Vulpes members in terms of the red fox, even though the red fox is the biggest Vulpes species and rather an outlier and not actually typical for the genus. But because a European came up with the system of Latinized binomial nomenclature, the red fox was named first and so it’s got the tautonymous name.

The spotted hyena is by far the most numerous and successful extant hyena species. As it happens, it’s also rather typical of the hyaenids, if you line ’em all up from earliest to latest. There’s a fair bit of variation, certainly, but Crocuta crocuta is reasonably typical of the family. Amazingly enough, here is a Youtube presentation about extinct hyaenids. Wow. I didn’t expect anybody to have made anything like that. You know, the hyaenid family makes a really interesting contrast with the canidae family … which I guess I’m drifting off topic. A bit.

Anyway, tautonym. Great word. I’m going to remember that one.

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Interview

Just letting you know that a blogger asked for an interview — this was when puppies were about to arrive or had just arrived, so I was too distracted at the time to point to it.

But: here, if you’re interested.

If you want to know my view on the burning question of whether pineapple belongs on pizza, here you go.

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The TBR Pile: Seven Novel Openings

Since I did this kind of post with mysteries a few days ago, I thought it might be good to do it again, this time with SFF novels. Say, a handful of the ones that have been on my paper TBR shelves for a year or two. Or three. For some time, let’s say. That applies to nearly everything on those shelves. Since I’ve got probably a hundred books or so on the physical TBR shelves, let me pick a theme … okay: these are all older titles – published before 2000. (That still seems a little odd to me, referring to stuff before 2000 as “older.” But here we are.)

Taking a good look at the opening paragraphs ought to show me which of these books, if any, I should leave upstairs on the coffee table, which can go back down to the TBR shelves in the library, and possibly which might go directly to the give-away pile. So, let’s take a look!

1. Name of a Shadow by Ann Maxwell, 1980

“Are you the Sharnn?”

“Yes.”

“Come in.”

Ryth entered the room with the lithe grace of a dancer or a Malian assassin. Kayle watched, orange eyes hooded; few people had ever seen a Sharnn in the flesh.

“I didn’t know that Sharnn ever left their planet, said Kayle, gesturing to a sling for Ryth to sit in.

“Not much is known about Sharnn,” said Ryth, his face changing with what could have been a smile.

Kayle’s glance flicked over the tall man whose silver-green eyes compelled attention. Though Ryth was standing motionless, his floor-length cape seemed to stir subtly, twisting light into new shapes.

I picked this up at a convention relatively recently, which probably means at WindyCon in 2019, since it sure wasn’t last year. It was one of those surprising finds. I’ve got some other books by Maxwell, but had never even heard of this one. I won’t claim that those of Maxwell’s books I’ve read have struck me as flawless, but I do enjoy them and have read them all several times, particularly the first book of her Fire Dancer series. The first book of that series, by the way, resolves a particular plot point which Maxwell then pretends in the second book was never resolved, a phenomenon which particularly annoys me in a series. Nevertheless, I do like the first book, which is a delightful example of a SF romance with a bonus prison escape. (I love prison escapes. I should include one in a story of my own sometime.)

So, what about Name of a Shadow?

It’s been some time since I opened a novel and saw a beginning like this – dialogue with no setting at all. I actually can’t remember the last time I saw that. It’s certainly risky to open a novel that way. I think it rarely works. I don’t think it works here. The reader’s going to have to read a bit more to get any sense of the setting or the world or even the characters. This is a classic white room opening – people speaking to one another in a scene devoid of setting. Not a great choice as far as I’m concerned! I’d read a few more pages, maybe the whole first chapter, because I’m interested in seeing what Ann Maxwell does here compared to her other books. But right now this is reading like a pretty amateurish work. I expect it was one of her first.

Let’s pause here to just pull Fire Dancer off the permanent-book shelves and take a look at how that one begins:

1b) Fire Dancer by Ann Maxwell, 1982

Onan was the most licentious planet in the Yhelle Equality. No activity was prohibited. As a result, the wealth of the Equality flowed down Onan’s gravity well – and stuck. Nontondondo, the sprawling city-spaceport, was a three-dimensional maze with walls of colored lightning, streets paved in hope and potholed by despair, and a decibel level that knew no ceiling.

“Kitrn!” shouted Rheba to the hug Bre’n walking beside her. “Can you see the Black Whole yet?”

Oh, yes, that’s a far, far better opening! Also, I’m a little amused by the Black Whole. It makes me think at once of Jackson’s Whole, because of the “most licentious” thing. You can buy licenses to do whatever you want on Onan, just as you can buy whatever you want on Jackson’s Whole.

Anyway, I do recommend Fire Dancer. If and when I read Name of a Shadow, I’ll let you know if it improves. Or if any of you have read it and remember it, what did you think?

2. The Ends of the Circle by Paul O Williams, 1981

From the west wall of the Rive Tower in the city of Pelbarigan on the Heart, a young guardsman leaned out and yawned in the glare of the winter sun, now toward the west and glancing off the snowfields beyond the river. Far out on the river, a party of Pelbar was cutting ice, leaving large squares of dark water in the gray and moving the blocks toward shore, where they would be brought to the caves under the city for storage against the coming summer heat.

“Ahroe, you don’t watch,” said the guardsman. “Your husband has fallen four times now. He is tired. The Dahmens are too hard on him. He will never bend. I know him. He is a good man, but incredibly stubborn.”

Ahroe said nothing. She resolutely looked upriver, toward where the thin haze of woodsmoke had climbed above the trees on the bluff and lay like gauze on the still air.

“Ahroe,” said Erasse. She didn’t turn. He shrugged and looked away.

Lots of setting this time! However, I agree with Elaine T’s comment regarding the Bruno mystery: I truly dislike the stylistic choice of introducing a character, the first character the reader sees, as “the man” or “the girl” or, in this case, “the guardsman.” Like a white room setting, that strikes me as amateurish. This is true even if the author in question is by no means an amateur. I don’t know anything about Paul O Williams. He may have written a hundred novels. I still think this is an amateurish thing to do.

The sense of place is really good. I particularly like the line about the woodsmoke. But the characters we meet first are not very appealing. This is a rather distant, unconcerned exchange. Neither the guardsman nor the wife seems particularly worried about whatever is going on below. The society appears unpleasant. All of those first impressions might be off, but that’s how everything looks right now. Also, “You don’t watch” is a weird locution. “You’re not watching” would sound far more natural. Maybe Williams is deliberately using phrases that are off from normal phrases. I’m not sure I would suggest that on the first page of a novel – unless the phrase is so far removed from normal usage that no one could possibly miss that the author is deliberately choosing odd phrasing.

Offhand, I don’t think I would go on very far with this one, unless it gets a lot more appealing really fast.

Here’s one by an author you’ll all recognize:

3.  Yarrow by Charles de Lint, 1986

Old ghosts lived behind Cat Midhir’s eyes, memories that had no home until they came to haunt her.

They came visiting in dreams, a gangly pack of Rackham gnomes, with long skinny arms and eyes like saucers, dry-voiced like cattails rattling in the wind. Their tunics and trousers were a motley brown, their green and yellow caps pushed down unruly thatches of wild hair. Sometimes she sensed them outside of sleep, their wizened faces peering sharp-edged from sudden corners or, shy as fawns, soft stepping behind her through parks and vacant lots – shadow companions who capered in her peripheral vision and were gone when she turned her head, dry voices piping strange music that became only the wind when she listened closely.

I’ve never read anything by Charles de Lint. It’s immediately clear why some of you have mentioned him as a writer I’d like. This is beautiful writing. 

Here’s another writer I don’t think I’ve read anything by, even though I think she is, or perhaps was, pretty well known.

4. Mirage by Louise Cooper, 1987

Are you awake, in the dark and the silence?

Do you have eyes to see, and ears to hear? Do you have hands, to reach out and clutch at the emptiness?

Can you feel? Can you know hate, loneliness, love, despair?

ARE YOU ALIVE?

Yes; you are alive. You can sense blood trickling through your veins, cunt the muffled beats of your heart; and you know that, after what might have been centuries of waiting, sleeping without dreams, without memory or identity, you exist. And although as yet there is nothing for your awakening senses to grasp, something is approaching you. It draws nearer, like a half-recalled nightmare, and it pulls and calls, demanding that the call be heeded.  … …

“Wake up!”

The voice was light, crisp, demanding obedience. It spoke so close to his ear that he started; and his muscles contracted sharp with the unaccustomed movement. It took him a few moments to comprehend that the voice was female.

“Wake up!” The impatient edge was sharper.

Wow, two white room openings in this small set of samples. That can’t have been all that usual in the eighties. This must be an unrepresentative sample. Also, second person! I skimmed past a page or so of that second-person introduction – sort of a prologue, though it isn’t called that – to where the third-person story begins. Most readers, I suppose, would make it that far, unless the second-person style pushed them away immediately. Which it might. I am seldom or never in the mood to wade into a second-person narrative. As a cute gimmick for a very, very short passage … I’m still not sure I’m in the mood. And as soon as the actual story begins, we see at once that “he,” presumably the protagonist, appears to be in a terrible position of servitude to the impatient woman. This is quite unappealing so far. I’d turn the page, because I almost never stop THAT fast, but this is not looking promising.

How about it? Has anyone read this, or would anybody recommend Cooper in general?

5. Blue Moon Rising by Simon Green, 1991

Prince Rupert rode his unicorn into the Tanglewood, peering balefully through the drizzling rain as he searched half-heartedly for the flea hiding somewhere under his breast plate. Despite the chill rain, he was seating heavily under the weight of his armor, and his spirits had sunk so low as to be almost out of sight. “Go forth and slay a dragon, my son,” King John had said, and all the courtiers cheered. They could afford to. They didn’t have to go out and face the dragon. Or ride through the Tanglewood in full armor in the rainy season. Rupert gave up on the flea and scrabbled awkwardly at his steel helmet, but to no avail; water continued to trickle down his neck.

Towering, closely packed trees bordered the narrow trail, blending into a verdant glom that mirrored his mood. Thick, fleshy vines clung to every tree trunk and fell in matted streamers from the branches. A heavy, sullen silence hung over the Tanglewood. No animals moved in the thick undergrowth, and no birds sang. The only sound was the constant rustle of the rain as it dripped from the lowering branches of the waterlogged trees, and the muffled thudding of the unicorn’s hooves. Thick mud and fallen leaves made the twisting, centuries-old trail ore than usually treacherous, and the unicorn moved ever more slowly, slipping and sliding as he carried Prince Rupert deeper into the Tanglewood.

While I don’t exactly like either Rupert or the scenery, I must say, this is a certainly lively as an opening. I’m enjoying reading this. It’s one I would certainly go on reading, at least for a bit.

6. Forbidden Magic by Angus Wells, 1992

Bylath den Karnyth, Domm of Secca, Lord of the Eastern Reaches, and Chosen of Dera, stared moodily from the embrasure, his expression saturnine, as if the breeze that skirled about the palace walls enhanced his naturally dour temperament. Fingers calloused by a sword’s hilt tugged at his leonine beard, the yellow streaked with gray now, like his hair, and fell in a fist to the stone of the sill. Below him, on the sanded practice ground, his sons worked under the vigilant eye of Secca’s weaponsmaster, Torvah Banul, the younger the object of the Domm’s dissatisfaction.

The younger son is too effete for his father’s taste, I see. Wow, that is a familiar situation from one million books. Wait, I bet the son turns out to be bookish and clever and probably has magic no one knows about.

I like lyrical prose, I can appreciate ornate prose. But the above has purplish tendencies that don’t appeal to me. Also, the the clustered dependent clauses are not working for me. Anybody else get a brief image of the beard or hair or something falling in a fist to the stone of the windowsill? Too much stuff between the fingers and the fist, as far as I’m concerned. I’m not sure this book is going to be anything that holds my interest past the first pages.

Moving on:

7. An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears, 1998

Marco da Cola, gentleman of Venice, respectfully presents his greetings. I wish to recount the journey which I made to England in the year 1663, the events which I witnessed and the people I met, these being, I hope, of some interest to those concerned with curiosity. Equally, I intend my account to expose the lies told by those whom I once numbered, rightly or wrongly, among my friends. I do not intend to pen a lengthy self-justification, or tell in detail how I was deceived and cheated out of renown which should rightfully be mine. My recital, I believe, will speak for itself.

A very mannered style, entirely different from any of the above. I don’t mind a style like this, necessarily – I enjoy Steven Brust’s Viscount series – but I prefer to like the protagonist. This guy sounds like he might be amusing, but not likeable.

This is a significantly more well-known title, I believe. It’s got a laudatory quote on the cover from The Sunday Boston Globe, and plenty of other quotes from other sources like that, so it must have been brought out as a literary novel. The quote says, “May well be the best historical mystery ever written,” so I think I was mistaken about this being a fantasy novel. I think the book was recommended by Jo Walton, which is perhaps why I had an impression that it was historical fantasy. Or maybe there are fantasy elements that are not obvious from the back cover description.

Regardless, this selection of older titles certainly provides a wide, wide range of opening, that’s for sure. I like the de Lint best (by a lot,) but I would put Green’s novel second without hesitation. It’s a great deal livelier than Iain Pears’ opening. That one will go back down to the TBR shelves, for me to actually try reading … later. Someday. When I am in the mood for something erudite and intellectually amusing, rather than actually engaging.

Several of these, I will probably try right away, just to be able to move them off the TBR shelves to the give-away pile promptly. That always gives me a sense of accomplishment, if not exactly satisfaction.

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Mine, all mine

I bet it won’t surprise anyone that I’ve decided to keep Tri Girl One, at least for the present.

Tri Girl One

She’s a nice puppy. Not the very best puppy I’ve ever bred, but really quite nice. Pretty head, decent structure, nice markings — one little freckle, but hopefully that’s as far as that’ll go. Bite’s a little bit off. Puppy bites change all the time, sometimes for years. Morgan’s bite is perfect. Ish’s bite was off for five years(!) and then corrected. We’ll see what this puppy’s bite does as she matures.

Naamah wants to keep a puppy

Morgan, incidentally, has decided, along with Naamah, that the puppies are kind of a good idea. Now that she’s no longer nursing and has discovered that puppies are fun to play with, she’s moving back toward her own normal playful personality. Both Morgan and Naamah want to keep a puppy.

Like Naamah and Morgan, I also just want to keep a puppy.

I am indeed going to call this puppy Saffron. Her registered name will be Anara Orange Blossom, in keeping with a flower theme that has been moderately consistent in this family. If she turns out to be a handful and a half, Saffron will fit because of the Devil Woman connotation. If she turns out to be sweet and affectionate — and I will say, her personality has moved in that direction recently — then Saffron is still a nice, pretty name if you pretend you never watched Firefly.

She’s a delightful puppy. I need to start teaching her the basics of very simple obedience exercises.

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The dangers (?) of Editing

An eye-catching post title at Writer Unboxed: The Dangers of Editing

What could that mean?

–Getting lost in research wonderland and never emerging? But that really isn’t editing, so:

–Getting trapped in never-ending attempts to make everything utterly perfect, so that you never hit publish? That seems more likely.

–Trying to solve one problem and making changes that accidentally screw up something else in some awful way? Not that I would know anything about that. Except it’s wise not to delete older versions of your manuscript until you’re quite, quite certain the most recent version is the one that is actually going to move forward. As a side note, you’re not really certain of that until you hit publish and/or reach the page proof stage of the traditional publication process, whichever.

–Trying to apply too many people’s incompatible advice? (Make it more commercial! Make it more literary!)

–Trying to apply ONE person’s advice, but the advice is wrong for the book or wrong for you, so you lose what is good about the original book? I’m sure that happens. I’m pretty stubborn, and I don’t generally pay that much attention to advice unless my response to that advice is OF COURSE! WHAT WAS WRONG WITH ME THAT I DIDN’T SEE THAT? Which is, in fact, often my response. I think it’s (often) quite clear when advice is totally correct versus totally off-base. But I could see a writer tying herself in knots for this reason.

So, what does the author of this post actually have in mind?

I edit books for a living, so I know it’s true that writing is rewriting. But I’ve sometimes seen clients fall into editing traps that can cause real damage to their work.  Although some simply waste valuable writing time, others get so caught up in the wrong kind of editing that they either lose sight of or actually blot out their vision of the book. …

Okay, so that’s sounding more like my last suggestion above.

All right, the author of this post is actually listing out different kinds of editing traps. Here they are, in brief — click through to read the whole post —

a) Starting to edit too early

If you start delving into detailed rewrites before your story, with all of its interconnected character and plot threads, is in place, then you are probably not doing all the editing you need.  You cannot know how a character’s voice should sound until you know who they become.  Nor can you judge the importance of descriptive details or the relative weight of different events until you know where your story is going. …  

Hmm. I sort of agree. But not really. I am pretty sure you can and do know your character’s voice from the beginning. How else can you write the character?

I imagine someone who writes from a detailed outline (not me, in other words) can re-write as they go. But I can too. I find polishing one scene helps me get into the next scene. It’s not a waste of time — it helps me move forward. That’s true even if I wind up cutting the scene later.

There are times I write a transition scene or whole chapter even though I have a pretty good idea I’m going to cut that material later. But it’s not a waste of time. Sometimes I just need to write that extra scene or chapter in order to get to the next scene or chapter.

It’s true, though, that when someone says they’re stuck four chapters in and can’t get farther, the best advice may be: quit looking at those four chapters and put words in a row until you have a lot more chapters.

b) You can also start too late, working and reworking entire drafts to try to nail down details that can only become clear through line-by-line editing.

Hmm. I’m trying to imagine what this means. Having read the explanatory paragraph, I’m still not entirely sure. Line-by-line editing IS editing.

Well, moving on.

c) Editing way beyond the point of diminishing returns.  … I promise you, you will always find something else to fiddle with.

Yes, that’s one I had in mind. It can be tough to declare your baby is all grown up and throw it out of the nest into the world, but you certainly have to do that eventually. It’s absolutely true that you will never, ever open that manuscript and find nothing to do. You will always, always fiddle with commas. And you’ll probably be right to fiddle with commas! But you have to stop sometime and toss the fledgling out to fly.

As a side note, for obvious reasons I wasn’t interested in trying to actually work on anything last night. I re-read little bits of Tarashana instead. I immediately noticed commas I would like to fiddle with.

It’s always the commas. There’s just no end to fiddling with commas.

Anyway, moving on —

d) Fear of letting go.

That’s a thing, but it has nothing intrinsic to do with editing.

Not a bad post, really!

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Gradually, then suddenly

Sevenwoods Epiphany CGC RN RA RE CD CRN CRA CRE CCD

9-28-2005 – 7-21-2021

Pippa 2021

So. You may have seen Pippa, even if you never linger over dog pictures I post here or elsewhere. It’s Pippa who appears in my author photo, here:

Pippa 2008

That was a good while ago. We were both so much younger. She was, oh, about two or three years old She was beautiful – even if you don’t know much about Cavaliers, you can see that. When I sent that picture to my editor, she said she thought the dog in the photo might be artificial because she was too cute to be real.

Pippa was beautiful all her life. I never showed her in the breed ring because her bite was off. She gave me one litter of puppies, but I didn’t keep any, unfortunately. Then she had pyometra, which put an end to any chance of another litter. Her puppies were doing fine last I heard. They’re thirteen now, I guess.

That’s hard to believe, even now, that Pippa’s puppies are old. That she was old.

Actually, I’m not sure she was old. She wore her years lightly. It wasn’t her age that brought her down.

Pippa was such a happy dog. She made me laugh. Her attitude really was “The lark’s on the wing, the snail’s on the thorn, God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world!” Pippa decided when she was born that the world was arranged just right, with herself at the center, and she never had reason to change her mind. Also, she was amazingly photogenic:

Pippa wasn’t just beautiful. She was also the best performance dog I’ve ever had. “RE” stands for Rally Excellent, and that is a tough title to earn. The exercises are complicated, like “Heel – standing stop while handler continues forward – turn and face your dog – sit your dog – stand your dog – return to your dog – heel forward.” I’ve only ever put that title on two of my dogs. The one who enjoyed performance most was Pippa. She could literally learn a new exercise ten minutes before we went in the ring. She did that now and then, when AKC added a new sign to the rally ring and I hadn’t realized. I’d get to the show, look at the new sign, quickly watch a video of how to do that exercise, and teach it to Pippa right there at the show. Then we’d go in the ring and she’d do it perfectly.

She had four or five RAE qualifications too – that is where you show in Rally Advanced and Excellent on the same day and qualify in both. It may tell you something about Pippa that her first time in the ring for RAE, we went in the ring for the Excellent round and I gave her the signal to sit at heel, and the judge asked – they always ask this – “Are you ready?” I said, “Ready,” and Pippa leaped in the air and whirled in a circle and I thought, Oh, whoops, not ready, not ready! She did the whole course about twenty feet in front of me. She took jumps the right way and then spun in circles and came back to me across the jump the wrong way. I have no idea what our score was. Zero, conceivably.

I took her back in for the Advanced round. I told the judge I knew we had non-qualified for the day, but I wanted to show that Pippa truly was trained and really did belong in AE. Of course she did every exercise absolutely perfectly. At the end, the judge said, “Well, I guess she really is trained – your score would have been a perfect hundred!”

Both performances were just … so Pippa.

Pippa remained my demonstration dog for all kinds of obedience until she was fourteen. It didn’t matter that she went deaf early, when she was seven. I use lots of hand signals anyway, and Pippa knew to look at me to keep track of what I wanted next. She loved people, but she knew how to ignore distractions and watch me. You wouldn’t have been able to tell she was deaf unless you knew. I could take her anywhere and she would enthusiastically greet every single person and then focus on me and do a fabulous demonstration of silent obedience exercises. I could use tiny, practically invisible signals for her. She was such an impressive performer her whole life!

I didn’t breed Pippa. I got her when she was a tiny puppy. She could practically disappear, especially since we had lots of snow the day after I brought her home:

She had such tremendous attitude right from the first. Once, ages ago, when we were at a show, I opened the window of the hotel room because the a/c was broken. Then I left Pippa and my two Papillons while I went down to get stuff out of the car. When I returned to the room, the two Papillons were sitting in front of the door, waiting for me to get back. Pippa had jumped on the bed, on the windowsill, out the window onto the balcony, and then up onto the balcony railing, three stories up, so she could look down at me in the parking lot. There she was, balanced on that railing. I called her, she jumped back onto the balcony and trotted back to the window and jumped back into the room. I closed the window. I’m not sure I ever mentioned that to Pippa’s breeder. I expect you’re reading this now, Sue, so let me tell you, that little incident probably took ten years off my life. Obviously it didn’t take even a minute off Pippa’s life. It takes a lot to faze a dog that confident of herself and her place in the world.

She never had a significant heart murmur. Cavaliers mostly do, eventually. Pippa didn’t. The cardiologist used to listen to her heart and exclaim, “Oh, right, I remember this dog!” Pippa went gray, but she never lost her vigor or liveliness. At fourteen and a half, she could still leap to the back of the couch, which was one of her favorite perches.

Then, in August 2020, she developed symptoms consistent with a brain tumor. Phenobarb got the obvious symptoms under control immediately, but slowly – very slowly and gradually – Pippa began to lose her sense of balance and – I think, though this was harder to tell – her eyesight.

She still was not old. She would run up the stairs two at a time. I just had to be ready to catch her if she lost her balance and fell. Because she was moving so fast, when she did fall, she would really fall – a high-velocity tumble right at the top of a flight of stairs. Not very often. But I spotted her up every single time and caught her when it happened. And remembered to close puppy gates so she couldn’t go up or down without me.

She jumped to the back of the couch even then. I had to lift her down and ask her to stay on the couch seat with me. She stayed off the back of the couch just to humor me long before she lost her ability to jump up there.

She loved to go for walks. She could trot fast as long as the ground was level. She loved to play with her “Buster cube” type of toy. I could take her to the park with other dogs and make our usual circuit – I’d forget she might have trouble and we’d be halfway around the park before I remembered. She did fine.

Gradually her sense of balance worsened. In December 2021, I was carrying her down flights of stairs. By May, I was also carrying her up. By June, she was trotting less and walking more. This wasn’t weakness. She wasn’t old. She just did not have the sense of balance she needed to trot. If another dog trotted right next to her, then she could trot too. You hear sometimes of one dog acting as a seeing-eye partner for a blind dog. It was a bit like that. Dora would sometimes trot shoulder-to-shoulder with Pippa and they would both move out pretty briskly. But any kind of uneven ground was tough for her. She began to lose her balance walking on tile floors. I’d hear a sort of sliiiide-thump and look around and she’d be lying on the floor because she’d lost her balance and her feet just slid out from under her. Sometimes she needed help to stand up again.

You know, we often think, or imagine, or hope, that a much-loved pet might die in her sleep, gently, when she is ancient. That we’ll be spared the need to make that kind of decision. I always knew, from the first seizure in August 2020, that that wasn’t likely for Pippa. She wasn’t in pain. There was never any urgency. It was always a matter of adding up Things Pippa Can Still Do and Enjoy and deciding whether those things were enough. This July, that list finally seemed to get too short. She wasn’t uncomfortable, though, so I set a date for the end of the month. I figured that would give me time to prepare.

(Nothing ever gives anyone time to prepare.)

Last night after dinner, I took the puppies out, sat with them for a bit, carried the first one back up the stairs … and found that Pippa had suffered some sort of crisis. The details are unimportant. I don’t know whether the brain tumor caused this, or whether it was something else, but it was a crisis. It was enough. I called my vet’s emergency number and asked her if she minded coming in right then, that minute. Fifteen minutes later, she met me at the clinic and let me in and, well.

Pippa still felt pretty good. Right up to the end. She was happy to say hi to my vet. She licked my nose when I put my face near hers.

I buried her in the woods near my house, where all my lost pets are buried, just as the sun went down, burning red through the trees.

That’s all.

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