Rachel Neumeier's Blog, page 29

Bored with the Zodiac? Here’s your birth-month spirit animal

Surprisingly, a post at Kill Zone Blog: What Does Your Birth Animal Say About You?

I’ve never encountered spirit animal birth months, but I’m totally on board. I’m way more interested in animals than constellations. Sure, what is my birth animal, given that my birthday is February 22nd?

Jan 20-Feb 18: Otter … not quite there …

Feb 19-March 20: Wolf … ah ha, here we are! The Wolf! And what does this spirit animal say about me?

The Wolf is a walking contradiction. Loving and emotional, they also need freedom and don’t like taking orders. Folks born under the Wolf sign possess a deep longing to help others. Because of their generous nature, they freely give love. Driven by their need to also receive love, they’re fiercely protective of their independence and don’t like being too tied down in a relationship, often resulting in conflict.

Hmm. Wolves are not independent animals by choice. They are family animals. They are pretty much the quintessential family animal. I mean, African painted dogs are more social than wolves. (A lot more social.) But wolves are social animals first and foremost. They DO want to be tied down in a relationship. Independence is not their goal; it’s a temporary state they want to get out of.

Not only that, but they avoid conflict within a family — not all the time, no, and not as successfully as African painted dogs, but wolves have a bunch of specialized affiliative signals which they use effectively to reduce conflict. Coyotes, who lack those signals, may come together in a pack; these are looser packs that form in the winter and fragment as soon as practical in the spring, because coyotes have much more trouble avoiding and reducing conflict within a pack. Also, wolves do take orders, more or less. That’s why we could easily breed dogs to look to humans for direction and take orders. It’s pretty obvious that without that instinctive willingness to take direction, you can’t get very far with breeding animals to take orders. I mean, look at cats.

On the other hand, sure, I’ll go with loving. That’s why dogs are loving. Again with the family focus here.

Regardless of real wolves and closely related animals … not super accurate, but then, who expects accuracy from astrology? Or whatever. My Zodiac sign is Pisces, which is not very accurate either, of course, but at least I have no inclination to say, “Yes, but the fish is REALLY like whatever,” because it’s just a constellation.

I forget the Chinese one … oh, I was born in a Year of the Monkey, right, I remember that now.

The monkey is a clever, lively, and witty animal. … a mascot to pray for the luck of official career as it pronounces the same with the Chinese character for “marquis (hou)” in ancient times. In some west areas of China, monkey is also believed to be able to protect little babies from evil spirits. The most famous monkey in China is the Monkey King (Sun Wukong) born from a stone who is intelligent, brave, rebellious, and talented. Some similar personalities may present in people born in the Year of the Monkey, who tend to be lively, quick witted, righteous, brave, and humorous.

Frankly, I think that’s a more accurate description of (some) monkeys than the wolf description is of wolves. I’m thinking of capuchins here, that kind of monkey. Intelligent little hooligans, those guys. Gutsy and humorous. I rather like them, but they’re complete thugs compared to, say, spider monkeys.

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Trusting yourself as a writer

A post at Helping Writers Become Authors: How to Trust Yourself as a Writer (Not Relying on Advice Too Much)

You can trust your own instincts, says this post: What is story? Story is just a reflection back to us of our arcs of psychological transformation. It’s a mirror of life. This means that, inherently, story is something every human has an innate understanding of. Nobody has to tell you what a story is. You know deep in your heart and your gut. You know what a story is—particularly if you’re drawn to writing a story. You’re probably deeply immersed in fiction yourself. You watch movies. You read books. You learn by osmosis what stories look like on a more intricate level. You come to the act of writing with an innate knowledge. It’s important to recognize that. 

I agree, and this is slightly funny, because a moment earlier in this post, the author says You don’t just do it instinctively. Yes, you do; or at least, I do; and also, the author of this post agrees with me that you do, actually, do this instinctively. But then she goes on with this rather long post. I like the length. I don’t like facile, shallow posts, which are everywhere. I like longer posts like this one, especially if they stick to the point and don’t drift off on some other topic partway through. This post does stick to this question: How can you trust yourself as a writer and not rely too much on advice?

If that need to know is arising out of a sense that, “There’s some things not working in my story and I’m not able to execute something the way I want to,” then that lets you start working on better and better questions. That will help you find the answers you need instead of it taking this shotgun approach where you feel like you need to know everything.

This seems like good advice to me. You may not be able to get helpful answers to your questions, but I think it does help to think about what is actually not working, even if you can only narrow it down to “the ending doesn’t feel like it’s working, but I don’t know why” or something like that. I mean, that’s still broad, but it’s not that broad.

Just because somebody is out there telling you how to write a story doesn’t mean that they know what they’re talking about. And it certainly doesn’t mean that even if they’re right in some contexts, they’re right in all contexts because art is extremely varied. Again, you might be creating something that’s never been created before, and others can’t necessarily comment on that. … Now, obviously there’s also the other side of that where artists think they’re creating something massive and original, but really it’s just a mess. So again, you have to find that balance of humility and curiosity,

Also good. Just a good post overall. I don’t remember looking at this website before, but I’ll come back to it now and then after seeing this post.

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Poetry Thursday: Imagery

Here, this week let’s look at a short poem that is completely different from last week’s poems. Those were all about line breaks and uneven, stuttering rhythm. Here’s a classic poem, with smooth rhythm the simplest possible rhyme scheme. I bet you recognize the last line.

***

John William Burgon

It seems no work of Man’s creative hand,
by labour wrought as wavering fancy planned;
But from the rock as if by magic grown,
eternal, silent, beautiful, alone!
Not virgin-white like that old Doric shrine,
where erst Athena held her rites divine;
Not saintly-grey, like many a minster fane,
that crowns the hill and consecrates the plain;
But rose-red as if the blush of dawn,
that first beheld them were not yet withdrawn;
The hues of youth upon a brow of woe,
which Man deemed old two thousand years ago,
Match me such marvel save in Eastern clime,
a rose-red city half as old as time.

***

I believe Burgon is somewhat known for never writing anything else anybody wants to quote. Everyone, however, wants to quote the last line of “Petra.” It sure has stuck with me too. I don’t specifically KNOW that I was thinking of Petra when I described the Peacock Desert, but you know, maybe I was.

Petra — image from Pixabay

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Silver Circle: Back Cover Description

Here is the description for Part I:

The destruction of the vampires marked the ending of an age.

As the vampire miasma faded, Dimilioc led the way toward an alliance of black dogs and ordinary humans against monsters deadlier than either.

Yet not all monsters are easy to recognize. Practitioners of black magic hide in plain sight, spinning webs of confusion and madness, determined that the age now dawning will be theirs.

Dimilioc isn’t going to let that happen. But black dog strength, Pure magic, and human intelligence may not be enough to stand against enemies far more subtle and terrifying than any Dimilioc has faced before …

***

Now I need to finalize description for Part II. Here’s what I’ve got so far, and thank you to those who commented on the first version.

***

Grayson Lanning, Master of Dimilioc, intends to defeat and destroy every practitioner of black magic in North America. His first target: Gossamer, the black witch who has made herself an enemy of Dimilioc and of the ordinary human world.

To this battle, Grayson brings the formidable strength of his black dogs, every shield Pure magic can provide, the ingenuity of his human allies, and his own unwavering resolve.

But as the storm winds rise, every plan begins to unravel …

***

I think this is decent. One of my concerns with this is that it does make it sound like Grayson becomes an important pov character in this part of the story. He doesn’t. He is, however, central in the sense of pulling everything together. Also, maybe that’s just me and readers won’t generally have that expectation.

One problem is: It’s not easy to get three or five pov characters into the description. As you see, I just avoided mentioning any pov characters for Part I. As part of that avoidance, I put “Dimilioc” rather than “Grayson” into that description when I said “Dimilioc isn’t going to let that happen.”

I could do that again here, but it sounds weird to me to revise the description for Part II with a personified “Dimilioc” rather than Grayson. But maybe THAT is just me and it would sound fine to say “Dimilioc intends to …” and “Their first target …”

What do you think?

With Part III, I did mention three different pov characters, just very briefly:

***

When the storm breaks, nothing is safe.

Natividad’s plan: protect everyone she loves, no matter the cost. Miguel’s plan: hold together the alliance between black dogs and humans, whatever it takes. Alejandro’s plan: follow orders without fail, lest all Dimilioc’s most dangerous enemies escape.

But Gossamer’s webs, already spun and waiting, lie before them all …

***

So obviously with that one, I didn’t go with a sort of personified “Dimilioc,” at least not in this version.

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Beta Reader vs Developmental Editor

Here’s an interesting post at a blog called The Insecure Writer’s Support Group: Your Beta Reader Options

This post really starts off talking about what beta readers do and how a beta reader is different from a developmental editor.

Beta readers answer the question If I published today, what would my Amazon reviews look like?

Developmental editors answer the question What steps should I take to comprehensively improve this manuscript?

That’s a neat way of looking at it. I hadn’t thought of it that way. I’ve suggested pretty often that someone look for a beta reader or critique partner before even considering hiring a developmental editor. I still think that’s a very good idea. I think I was considering a beta reader pretty similar to an editor, but probably less focused on structure, more on personal reactions to the story. That’s the same general idea as the above, but the distinction offered by this post is more clear and pithy.

I’m willing to accept this other idea, that a beta reader isn’t an editor at all, but doing something different than an editor would do. That doesn’t change my advice, because I’ve seen a lot of self-published books that are dreadful. I hate to think of someone spending a lot of money to hire an editor when their book is basically unfixable. I think they should make sure the novel is basically a real novel that is fundamentally readable before they think of hiring an editor.

That still means a beta reader is a good first step when asking strangers to evaluate your novel, because asking, “If I published this book today, what would reader reviews look like?” is a really good idea. If reader reviews would be, basically, “Wow, I didn’t think it was possible for a book to be THIS BAD!” then that’s highly valuable information. Not that a beta reader would say that, surely. But they would hopeful communicate the information that the book should not be published.

When I say, “a lot of self-published novels are dreadful” or “a book should not be published,” I generally feel I should clarify what I mean. So, here is the description of a self-published fantasy novel currently available on Amazon:

Once just a dream, now turned into reality the young Master of the White Blades, must fight to save the world. There is always good and evil, and the struggle is just a part of that existence. Having only been a Warrior, (an ancient race born in the early years of recorded history) for a few years this young man, must deal with the responsibility of both his new found power, and life. He must learn to find a balance within the world, and himself.

Here’s how this book opens:

Before you proceed into the beginning chapter, I’d like to give a little insight to some of the places, Characters, and History found within the story. My work has many influences, personal, such as family and things I’ve experienced. It also has many references to Ancient Egypt, and other cultures. The story is meant to be a fictional account of a continuous dream, one that regularly occurred.

The Council as it is referred to many times in the book, is An Ancient foundation whose sole purpose is to protect the world from evil, in all forms. Early in their founding, (2000 BC) it was decided that they’d be led by one leader, called the Grand Master, who would have power in all the places in the Earth and any known places therein. Only the Master’s selected their predecessors, each had the sole purpose of protecting the world, and everyone in it. Each would live one-thousand years. Their power was given divinely, however that didn’t mean that no harm could befall them. In fact, only their spouses could aid them, as any blood from a human would kill them! …

And a bit more. Once we get past the author’s note, here is the first paragraph of the actual story:

The day now broke and I felt the warmth of the sun on my face, it was Sunday, Chillicothe is where I wanted to go but knew that I had to prepare for the first day of the new school year. The first year of high school! I Already had went shopping so I just grabbed one of the five outfits I had bought and lay it on top of my dresser. In doing so I ended up knocking off the one letter from the council about my training, which I had left up there some years earlier. The white wax seal shattered as it hit the floor, leaving only small traces of its self on the letter. With this clumsy event, I remembered that I still needed to find a mistress, well I guess high school is as good a place to start my search as any. I thought to myself as I picked up the bigger pieces of the wax, now littering my floor. I didn’t play sports or anything so I knew that my weekend was free, even though it was Sunday. I began to walk out the front door, when the phone rang, startling me. I darted to the phone, grabbing it up in frenzy, and clicked the power button. “Hello?” I said, in a dull voice.

So, this is what I mean when I say that a novel is dreadful or should not be published, and this is why I wince at the idea of hiring an editor before confirming in some other way that a book is worth publishing. However! Now we apparently have the option of paying a beta reader instead! Here’s how the linked post continues:

The emerging trend of paid beta reading as a service offered by professional editors strikes many writers as a smart option. Why not get a read-through from someone who knows all about how stories work, right?

Of course there’s a trend toward paid beta readers. That’s not surprising at all. The post then lists a bunch of reasons why it might be better to find a beta reader who isn’t charging a fee, although they don’t list “because your novel may not be worth publishing and so investing a lot of money into it is perhaps not the best idea. Or … they kind of do list that, like so:

Nonprofessional beta readers help you stave off premature editing. By offering you early feedback on high-level issues, they keep you outside the professional ecosystem until you’ve more thoroughly revised at the story level, allowing you to refine your book before paying for professional time and services.

That’s in the same ballpark.

Here’s a post that looks pretty good to me: Beta Readers: The Good, the Bad, and Where to Find Them

This is a solid post that suggests places to find beta readers, tips for thinking about advice from beta readers, and suggested questions to help guide beta readers to give you the feedback you’re looking for. That’s questions such as

Was the timeline clear? Did you always know roughly when you were?

Which is crucial for me in Silver Circle because the timing was so hard to work out, you may recall, that I added “dawn on the eighteenth” and “noon on the eighteenth” to the chapter headers during revision. I may or may not take those out, but I sure was asking beta readers about those headers and whether there was any problem keeping track of when they were.

Here’s another suggestion:

Did the end feel satisfying or unfinished?

And that’s certainly important. A lot of the time, I’m confident of my endings. Sometimes, less so. I’ve sometimes heavily revised endings multiple times until it felt right. I did about half a dozen iterations of the ending of Tasmakat — I mean the very last chapter. It’s a short chapter, but obviously very important. It took me some time to nail it. I was happy with it and confident about it before that book went out to early readers.

Another was the ending of Shines Now. Commenter EC was an early reader for that one and the only thing I specifically remember about her feedback was a suggestion that the ending didn’t feel quite finished, particularly with regard to a specific element. That was really useful feedback and I revised the ending and was significantly happier with the final version. That’s why I remember this so clearly — because endings are important and that feedback made a significant difference.

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Here’s a great measurement graphic

I encountered this graphic on Quora, where the person was ranting about how awful all measurement systems are other than metric, and of course I thought whatever, for crying out loud, it’s not that hard to learn multiple measurement systems and just remember that one inch equals 2.54 centimeters or whatever else you might actually use. Which, for me, is tablespoons and teaspoons to ccs, because of course when tube-feeding puppies, you convert ridiculous units like tablespoons to ccs, because it’s not like you’re going to be feeding a neonatal puppy out of a SPOON, they ought to just give the units in ccs to start with.

But my point is, this is a great graphic! Take a look —

Okay, did anybody actually know about the span — ell — skein — spindle thing? I didn’t know a “spindle” could be a unit of measurement! And so big — more than a mile? And I’ve never heard of a “shackle” as a unit of measurement.

Okay, here is a website where you can convert from one weird unit to another or to a normal unit. A spindle is more than eight miles! That’s so neat. But we can make it much neater. Look at what else the linked website shows us:

spindle = .29730444 arpentcan,

spindle = 20,736,000 bottom measure

spindle = 60 cable length

Spindle = 654.55 chain (surveyors chain)

And a whole bunch more.

AND, this reminds me of someone else on Quora asking something like, How can I give distance measurements in my fantasy novel? Well, here you go, these are the exact tools you need to come up with great ideas for measurement in fantasy novels.

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Silver Circle: Scattered Sparks now at Patreon

Surprise!

I meant to schedule this Patreon post to go live on Wednesday, but absentmindedly hit “publish” instead of schedule. Well, that’s fine. There it is, a couple of days before I intended and a full week before it HAD to be there.

I’ve loaded the new! proofed! versions at Amazon as well, skimming through the paperback version multiple times to tweak the formatting, but it looks good to go. I can in theory tweak it until October 25th, but I hope I won’t have to. HOWEVER, if anybody spots any further typos in the epub, please let me know.

WHEN IS PART II GOING TO BE RELEASED?

Yes, that’s a question, isn’t it? It has to go up on my Patreon at least a week or two before it goes live on Amazon, and longer is nice. It’s POSSIBLE that Silver Circle: Rising Winds will be ready to release at Patreon by the end of this month, ie, on Halloween, the same day Part #1 drops on Amazon. That would be nice. However, it’s almost exactly twice as long and will therefore take a little longer to tweak and proofread and everything.

Let’s say that Part #2 should be available at my Patreon somewhere between Oct 31 and Nov 15, with release at Amazon probably two to three weeks later.

HOW ABOUT PART III?

Uh, I’m still actually doing primary revision for Part #3. Some elements for this part came clear to me during the final tweaking of Part #2, so I have a fair bit to do here, but I hope it won’t take all that long.

I hope to be sending Part #3 to the earliest readers by the end of October, to the next round of early readers a week after that. If I can do that, then it might be available at my Patreon as early as the middle of November, but it might be a little later in November. The most likely release date at Amazon is the first week of December.

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Update: Whew, that was a lot

Okay, so my really intense week last week, especially my insanely intense Friday, was MAINLY Kim’s fault, but I admit it was a little bit my fault too because I didn’t skim through her full comments about Silver Circle #2 until last thing, when I was finished with everything else for #2.

And why?

Because Kim’s suggestion to combine six chapters into three seemed like the big thing. I thought, fine, that’s probably good advice, especially the part about how to start Part 2, I’ll do that first. So I did, and also read through the entire manuscript from top to bottom, and cut quite a bit — I cut 12,000 words, and SC #2 is now almost exactly twice as long as SC #1 — and fixed a handful of typos flagged by someone else, all while kind of forgetting to look at the actual full manuscript with the rest of Kim’s comments.

Then, Thursday night, I remembered about that and thought, fine, I’d just skim through those comments Friday morning and boom, a couple of hours, done.

But no!

There was all this advice, almost all of it obviously accurate. How about starting this chapter three pages later? How about cutting some of the description through this part here? Since this character turns out not to be important, maybe cut this prior appearance of the character?

I have, generally speaking, only one of two possible reactions to suggestions like this:

A) Huh, I don’t think so.

or

B) Duh, obviously.

And I’m glad to say that as a rule, people give me good advice and therefore reaction (B) is by far the most common reaction I have to editorial feedback, but that does mean a good bit of time tweaking this and that. In this case, basically all of Kim’s suggestions fell into the “duh, obviously” category. But just deciding to cut the first three pages of a chapter doesn’t mean a straight-up delete-and-done. No, it means finding a way to save the two or three lines that are actually setup for something that happens later, while cutting most of the rest of those pages.

So, this only took a day. But it took ALL DAY. I actually wound up just taking Friday off work completely and focusing solely on SC #2, and while I did get it done, it was a loooong day. But I sent the more or less final version to the second wave of early readers Friday afternoon just before five, and before you say that five doesn’t seem that late, let me mention that I got up at four that morning because that’s how I roll, my schedule is orthogonal to the normal-person schedule, so yes, that was a really long day.

Then I went home and started reading this fanfic one of you recommended — ah, Elaine’s Teen, and thank you, Teen, for this recommendation — called Cultivating the Slow Life, because a 450,000-word slice-of-life fic was exactly what I wanted after a day like that. Not that I got all that far into it. We’re at the base of the mountain.

Also, I sent the most updated Silver Circle #2 to my kindle app so I can start proofreading it. That’s not the right term. Tweak-reading. Lots of fiddling with sentences at this point. Still, moving along.

Also, having more or less recovered from Friday’s intense focus on SC #2, on Saturday, I created the individual file for SC #3 and started doing the primary revision I’ve had in mind for … it seems like a long time, but probably only weeks. Anyway, I’m now doing primary revision for that and let me see, wow, it’s not even the middle of October, quite, so there’s a good chance I’ll be sending that to early readers before the end of the month.

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Deep and Hollow

From a neat blog called Wordmonger:

Deep & hollow

The word deep comes from an old word meaning deep & hollow. Though the people who used this ancient root never wrote it down, etymologists write it *dheub-. Like our modern word, deep, the original root also carried the figurative meanings profound, inspiring, solemn, mysterious, awful.

Of course, *dheub- was far too deep a word to give us only the word deep.

About the year 1200, it gave us dive, to descend or plunge headfirst into water. I’m compelled to note that the idiom dive bar was born in the 1800s. It appears to have come from the fact that many low-end drinking establishments could only be accessed by walking downstairs from street level, thus diving into the bar.

Quarrelsome as they are, etymologists are still duking it out over the etymology of typhus & typhoon. They may have come from Arabic, Mandarin, Cantonese, or Greek. They may also have come from *dheu-, a form of *dheub that meant smoke. Or they may have come directly from *dheub-. I suppose both typhoon & typhus can be seen to embrace the concept of depth. …

It actually goes on from there, though that seems to be a pretty, ahem, deep dive into these words already!

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Poetry Thursday: Marianne Moore

Here’s a poet I don’t believe I’ve ever encountered before.

Marianne Moore plays with line breaks in a lot of her poems. Here are a couple you may enjoy —

Talisman by Marianne Moore

Under a splintered mast,
torn from ship and cast
              near her hull,

a stumbling shepherd found
embedded in the ground,
              a sea-gull

of lapis lazuli,
a scarab of the sea,
            with wings spread—

curling its coral feet,
parting its beak to greet
            men long dead.

***

***

The Fish by Marianne Moore

wade
through black jade.
       Of the crow-blue mussel-shells, one keeps
       adjusting the ash-heaps;
              opening and shutting itself like

an
injured fan.
       The barnacles which encrust the side
       of the wave, cannot hide
              there for the submerged shafts of the

sun,
split like spun
       glass, move themselves with spotlight swiftness
       into the crevices—
              in and out, illuminating

the
turquoise sea
       of bodies. The water drives a wedge
       of iron through the iron edge
              of the cliff; whereupon the stars,

pink
rice-grains, ink-
       bespattered jelly fish, crabs like green
       lilies, and submarine
              toadstools, slide each on the other.

All
external
       marks of abuse are present on this
       defiant edifice—
              all the physical features of

ac-
cident—lack
       of cornice, dynamite grooves, burns, and
       hatchet strokes, these things stand
              out on it; the chasm-side is

dead.
Repeated
       evidence has proved that it can live
       on what can not revive
              its youth. The sea grows old in it.

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