Deborah Kalin's Blog, page 4

a force of nature! and digitised crows!

It's officially official: Cherry Crow Children is now available as an ebook!

It should be obtainable through your ebook retailer/distributor of choice in the coming few days, or however long it takes said retailer/distributor to authorise their new content, and of course through the TPP website — so if you've been waiting and waiting for the 0s & 1s format, go forth and download to your heart's content.

This e-publication brings the Twelve Planets series to a close (well, the original vision thereof, anyway; next year there'll be a special Thirteenth Planet by Isobelle Carmody), and it's been an immense project. One I couldn't have believed, until Alisa delightfully proved me wrong, that anyone could have managed. I've loved the books that preceded mine, and I'm honoured to have my work be a part of it, a not-necessarily-always-so-quiet voice in the landscape of Australian women's speculative fiction.

To your appetite, the recently-released ASIM #61 features a glowing review:

[This is] storytelling like a force of nature…The result can be alluring, foreboding, unexpected or gruesome, at times achingly tragic, but always faithfully enacted. Kalin’s fantasy settings carry a truth that most real-world fiction fails even to aspire to, let alone attain. This does not make her stories comfortable reads, necessarily, but however bleak at times the subject matter, the richness of Kalin’s prose provides constant succour. Readers may not end up where they’d been hoping, but they’ll be glad to have gone that way. …Cherry Crow Children taps into a special darkness, Kalin guiding us with no promise of safety through woods fashioned at least in part from our own devisings.

My stories, a force of nature. I like that. (And it certainly fits with what they do to my head in the writing of them.)

the budding writer

Yesterday Squawk decided recognising letters wasn't enough of a challenge and progressed to writing them. I think I have never seen such an awesome B. #toddlerlife #handlettering

A photo posted by Deborah Kalin (@deborahkalin) on Nov 7, 2015 at 5:59pm PST

"I broke it. 'cos that's why."

it's the one book neither of us ever dare skip a page

One book before a nap (more correctly, these days, enforced alone time) and two books before bed. Plus whatever we happen to decide to read together throughout the span of any given day.

Lately, I read out loud a lot, is what I'm saying.

Inevitably I'll end up reading Squawk something I don't much enjoy. Some books require too much effort to render the text interesting, or expect too much acting of me; some are just over-exposed by Squawk's love for them and consequent insistence on reading and re-reading and re-re-reading them. Some are far too enslaved to the apparent necessity of rhyme in a kid's book: I am not at all a fan of a rigid and unvaried meter, and whenever Squawk wants a book of this ilk I can't help but edit them as I go, slicing out repetition to gain myself a touch more brevity and inflection.

Thankfully there are also books we both love, for the same and different reasons all at once — but my favourite of them all is, has to be, Where The Wild Things Are.

She won't let me read it often. I think it scares her a little. The page which mentions their yellow eyes and their fear always has her climbing into my lap for a comforting snuggle. But it always, always, always has her paying attention. It's all perfect: the drawings, the child's perspective, and the language. The language most of all. There are multiple worlds layered and called to life within this book, in barely half a handful of sentences.

The vines growing "until the walls became the world all around" — and the line about how Max "sailed off through night and day, and in and out of weeks, and almost over a year"… those two slay me every time.

in which ideas aren't special snowflakes unique to me and that's even more awesome than if they were

Today, spurred by a last-minute reminder and possessed of an odd amount of energy for a Saturday morning, I packed Squawk on to the train and we trotted into town to catch Shaun Tan's "The Singing Bones" at the No-Vacancy gallery.

I very nearly didn't go: Squawk is tired and cranky on Saturdays, which meant the visit was likely to be either largely frustrating or else a downright disaster. And Shaun Tan himself was due to be speaking/signing at midday, and it was the exhibition's second-last day, so the toddler meltdown was likely to happen in the midst of, and inconvenience, a large crowd. Better and better.

But we needed an outing, so… we went. And then this all happened:

awesomeness the first

The absolute first piece that hit me, as I entered the gallery, was The Riddle:

Lookit! Shaun Tan has only gone and sculpted one of my Cherry Crows!

Seriously, how awesome is that? I know he's never heard of my nasty little crows, and I know crows eating eyeballs isn't all that impossible to come up with, but the synchronicity was nevertheless delightful. You simply can't ask for a better artist to conceptualise your fiction, however inadvertently, than Shaun Tan.

I love the stark, clean lines, which speak to me of swiftness; and that inquisitive cocking of its head, a charming gesture which contrasts so beautifully with the bright blue reality of its meal.
awesomeness the second

The fine folks at the gallery (and/or Shaun Tan?) had set up a plasticine table for visitors to make their own sculptures. Squawk planted herself there and happily made me a green dinosaur, and superman, and pretend ice cream, for twenty-five whole blissful minutes — during which time I wandered the gallery in peace, able to peer at each sculpture in turn and at my own pace. I have not felt so rested, so human in … I can't remember how long, actually.

Huge props and my eternal gratitude to whoever had and implemented this idea. You made me feel welcome, which can be rare with toddlers.

awesomeness the third

After Squawk got bored of her lonesome, she and I went around the gallery again, together this time. It was her first time in an art gallery, so I taught her to look at each piece, to talk about what she liked and didn't like, to try and find a story behind it. This, guys, this is my field and forte, and sharing it with her was so much fun. It was fascinating to note what she did and didn't find scary, and glimpse her world by listening to her stories.

Apparently not at all scary

This one worried her: there was a lot of red needed sweeping up, and who spilled it and why?

This one distressed her because she really wanted to touch it. We settled for blowing (very, very softly) and "nothing happened! must be magic!"

This one I very nearly failed to catch Squawk from touching all that carefully raked sand, and oh, wow, my breath seizes up just thinking about it

awesomeness the fourth

Squawk was so patient, we were still in the gallery when Shaun Tan arrived, so I got to get my books signed.

Squawk, when she realised the man who'd made all the sculptures was here, decided to make one for him. Which she did, using orange and purple (her favourite colours). Then she was too shy to give it to him — because it wasn't good like his sculptures. (Aww…) Luckily, Shaun was all class and had the grace to admire her creation, and even drew a little picture of it into the title page of the book, so I now have a physical momento of her swirl-faced man.

My favourite piece — here labelled All-Fur, but I know it (or a similar tale) as Donkey Skin

still waters run deep and blank pages aren't necessarily empty

I've always kept a collection of short story ideas. For a few years now it's been in SimpleNote (so I can access it via my work computer or my phone when on the go; and my home computer has Notational Velocity set to communicate with SimpleNote and also to save its files in a spot where Scrivener looks for its scratchpad notes, so any random idea can be imported into Scrivener with a single click).

So when I set up my new bullet journal earlier this month, I naturally gave myself two blank pages to act as a capture point for any stray ideas.

I can't help but notice that we're now into the second half of October, and the page remains blank.

Used to be I would slavishly record every single stray mutter my brain sent my way. The habit was probably one part fear I'd have no ideas ready for the next story, and one part insatiable curiosity/daydreaming/call it what you will.

I'm not sure exactly what's changed. (I do know it changed some time ago; it's just that my previous, all-electronic set-up hid from me how infrequently I'd been utilising it, whereas the blank page in my otherwise scribbled through journal is starkly obvious.)

It's not that I don't get ideas on a near-momentary basis — there was one not two days gone about hair and growth rates, for example; and I spent a good portion of time mentally chasing down the future society that might be built around the seed of this stray "what if…?"

It's just that, now, after considering the ideas, I'm more likely than not to let them go. Release them back into the wind that dropped them into my head and let them skittle on their tumbleweed way.

I'm time-poor (aren't we all?), of course, but I suppose I've also spent enough time chasing down ideas to know something of what I'm looking for. It needs to resonate with me (not necessarily positively), and to be something I am or can be obsessively passionate about, to be worth all the effort it'll inevitably demand. It needs to be the sort of idea I won't forget because it will nag me too much to let me. And all those little adjunct ideas … I guess I've just taken to trusting that they'll pop back up when and if their moment arises.

I remember once, at Clarion South or perhaps a year or two after, Sean Williams saying to me that experience under his belt had made him better at judging which ideas would sustain the weight of a story. I envied the talent, at the time, enmeshed as I was in starting lots of stories which vanished out from under me — but I think I may now, without quite noticing or realising it, have acquired it for myself.

raindrop detail

Raindrops on the car window this morning, each reflecting a tiny but clearly detailed mirror image of the tree they're obscuring. The devil, as they say, is in the details.

the corollary isn't actually true

writing fiction and the bullet journal method

A couple of months ago I took up bullet journalling because I need to plot by pen and paper, so I succumbed to the one notebook to rule them all. In my first month, I (re-)discovered that plotting a novel burns through notebooks, so last week I succumbed to my lifelong desire to indulge in a notebook dedicated solely to the novel-in-progress.

But because I've now been indoctrinated, my novel notebook is, at least currently, being written out using the bullet journal methodology.

Here's what I'm trying and/or liking about it:

Tagging

The bullet journal traditionally uses an index (which, despite the name, is actually more of a table of contents), and doesn't really use tags. But the index is built upon the idea of each page being dedicated to one topic — in a bullet journal proper, that would be a given day's notes, or a master-list of tasks for the month, or notes/tasks relating to, say, a home improvement project or upcoming holiday.

While that concept works fine for some aspects of planning out a novel, such as a page dedicated to a character or location, the vast majority of my pages will be a mishmash of plot notes, scene maundering, snippets of dialogue or description or narrative voice, and whatever else falls out of my head. Mostly blather. I can't title 103 non-consecutive pages "Blatherings". (Well, I can, but it's not very helpful for finding anything again.)

On those pages, then, I've foregone the heading and in its place I'm putting in tags.

colour-coded tags at the top of each page of blather

Since I may or may not (ahem, probably won't) have the energy to index all those tags, I'm colour-coding by tag type (character, geography, culture/society, theme, plot). This does mean writing in the tags only when I'm at home, since I don't carry colours out and about with me, so who knows how long the colour-coding will actually last. If it becomes a hindrance to getting information down and on with the story, I'll boot it. It is handy when reviewing the pages, though.

Which is another thing I'm loving and have realised I've not been doing:

Reviewing

Normally when I plot out a story, I don't review my notes as I go. I always intend to, but I delay and prioritise new words/notes/plotting until reviewing it all is simply too enormous a task, and then it doesn't get done at all. I simply rely on what I remember having dreamt up, and launch myself into writing it out. I do have a good memory, and I tend to work and re-work plot events through in my head often enough that the plot gets hammered in there pretty thoroughly, so that's not not working. It's just that every iteration of the plot gets hammered in equally thoroughly, and I can't always tell which iteration I'm remembering at any one moment. That part can get frustrating, to say the least.

The bullet journal — which encourages going through the day's notes and transforming them into tasks or moving them into a collection, as appropriate — incorporates a level of reviewing I really should have been implementing well before now. I begin to realise why the research / reference part of my Scrivener files are such colossal messes I soon stop even looking at them.

Any pages I need quick access to are tabbed with the label visible from the back, not the front. Because I'll always be turning back to that page from somewhere further ahead.

Scene Outline

empty apart from intentions

This is where I'll consolidate all the scenes/beats that fell out of my head while plotstorming my way through those tagged pages.

This one is all neat and empty because I want the outline to be in order (or near enough) — I'm coming close to the point of starting in with drafting this manuscript, and one of my goals with this novel was to try writing to an actual outline. (I have initial scene outlines which are far more in-progress, out-of-order, scribbled and generally tentative, don't worry. But they're in the previous notebook and this is the one I took a photo of.)

The next step is to get this notebook a little more beaten up and banged around, with some scribbles in there as the ideas start flowing thick and fast. Here's to hoping, eh?

lunchtime visitor