Cat Hellisen's Blog, page 22

Stalling

It’s happened before.

When I first started writing, I was so bad that it would have been more than a little pathetic if I hadn’t shown some fast improvement (and even then I doubt it was fast enough). After getting my dreadful fantasy trilogy out of my system it seemed I had acquired slightly better grammar, the ability to use spellcheck, and my words began to flow in ways that could be quite pleasing.

I was learning. I could put a story together and create characters who were slowly shedding their cloaks of mary-sueness. I worked on critique for other writers and had my own work critiqued in return. And probably learned more from the former than the latter.

It was a pretty good feeling to be able to look from my then-WiPS and back to my first attempts and see just how far I’d come. There was a definite, discernible difference. I took out writing books that talked about structure, layering, dialogue and characterisation. I learned to edit myself and break out of some truly appalling habits. Well, except the abuse of commas but I’m always working on that.

And then I stalled.

Utterly. Completely. My work plodded forward at the same dull rate, the words were no better. Which made them feel worse. I should have been learning, after all. I was writing all the time, I had managed to get an agent. I lost my agent. Got a new one with a new book. I was doing okay – the book sold.

But I was learning nothing. I threw myself into what I felt was my absolute weakest point – plotting. I inched up a little there, but it was hardly a spectacular improvement. Still, it was enough to make me feel like maybe I wasn’t a failure. I wrote a book I loved. No-one wanted it.

For a while after The Book I Love, I felt like I was finally making some progress again even though it was in tiny hesitant steps, rather than the leaps and bounds I wanted.

And then the steps dawdled to nothing and here I am again, looking at what I’m writing now and wondering why I bother if I’m not getting better. Is there any point in carrying on working at something if you’ve reached the highest level you seem to be able to achieve and it’s still not bloody good enough? What if no matter how much more I write, anything I produce is going to be a slightly sharper facsimile of what I’ve done before?

What is the fucking point then?

I don’t know.

When I lived in Joburg, there was a cheetah enclosure in the Joburg zoo, with a well-worn path where one cheetah walked over and over and over.  What was it thinking as it wore that red path down between the tussocks? Did it think at all, was it even aware that it had probably gone mad, or was it like a machine and there was no questioning beyond one paw then the next, meals at set times, sleep, one paw then the next.

Now I’m that cheetah and I don’t know what I can do apart from putting the animal out of its misery.

Cat-Waxing Memery

I managed to scrape out my 750 words today, and since DiscordianKitty tagged me, I have another reason not to work.

As you can see, I have won this prestigious award. It has questions, you know the drill.

Okay 11 random facts about me:

1: I really like Chinese food. I never get it. (is this two facts?). Sadly, I don’t even think there’s a Chinese place anywhere near where I live, and The Boy is obsessed with pizza so. Yeah. I think I am beginning to hate pizza. Which is pretty sad really because I already hate a lot more things than I like.

2: Most of my best friends live in a plastic box. The other day I realised that there are people I have been friends with online for a decade, easily, and I have never met them. That’s kinda weird, but also kinda cool. And hopefully when I get to WFC this year, I will be able to hang out in meat space with some of them and it will be awesome.

3: I have always wanted to own my own bar. Like…really. It’s not even a cool life ambition.

4: I am a design-school drop out because I hated every minute of it. I wish I’d had more of a spine when I was younger and insisted on fine art instead, but my mother was convinced that the only way I would make any money with art was if I studied design. Let me explain something, if you hate graphic design and advertising, you are not going to make money anyway. Learn from my weak-willed spinelessness and do what you want to do.

5: I am hellishly insecure about my lack of formal post-high-school education and I am convinced everyone is judging me for being stupid. It’s part of why I love sites like Open Culture and Coursera

6: I hate most people I meet. Sometimes I like them briefly but then they say things and I realise that if I had no moral code whatsoever I would probably just tear their eyeballs out and feed them to my children.

7: I actually like more people than you would imagine, from that above fact. Basically if we’ve met and I haven’t given you the sullen death glare we’re probably okay. And if I have, I might still get over it. It takes me a while to warm up to humans.

8: I like music more than books. Much more. I could live without books, but I would die without music. Stories I can make up, music I am fail. I need other humans for music.

9: I grew up on pulp Science Fiction novels and Horror. I write neither. My dad was a huge sciffy and horror fan and I read most of his library books, always about exploring new frontiers etc etc. His taste for fantasy was pretty limited, but having a well-rounded background in SF led me to other interesting stuff.

I read this one a lot.

10: Almost all of these things start with I. It is very boring. But that’s okay, the chances are pretty high that you didn’t get to this sentence. If you did, I salute you. Here, have this shot of tequila.

11: I sound like a telemarketer on the phone. I have this ridiculous “phone voice” that appears out of nowhere when I have to speak on the phone. I think it’s a defence mechanism because I hate speaking on the phone. Email me, cats.

 

Okay, now for the part where I nominate people. I am not nominating you specifically, but I am actually nominating you. You know who you are. Also, I need coffee.

Then the questions from DiscordianKitty:

 

You’re given the option to permanently relocate to either 100 years in the future, or 100 years in the past. Which one do you decide and why?

100 years in the future. Hopefully I can then mess with the minds of my great grandchildren. I hope some of them grew up to be demon-hunters.

Who was your first celebrity crush?

Prince. Shuttup, I wasn’t the only one.

What is your alignment? (Non-nerds, an explanation can be found here)

Chaotic Good. I think.

You get to become a professor in something they teach at Unseen University or Hogwarts. What is it? (made up subjects plausible in an alternative magical universe’s magical school acceptable.)

I would totally be teaching the students to distil alcohol from dreams and use the resulting liqueur to see the future.

Putting aside common sense, skepticism, personal conviction and fear of hell, what religion of all the religions in the history of the world would you choose to be the right one?

Is there one where we all just chill out and be friends and leave each other alone? That religion, whichever it is.

Comedy or Tragedy?

The best comedy is tragic, the best tragedy is highlighted by moments of painful comedy. YOU CAN’T MAKE ME CHOOSE.

You have a button that not only destroys Facebook, it removes all traces of it from everyone’s memory but yours. Do you press it?

No.

All YOU need is?

Cheese.

If you were not the sexual orientation you are now, who would you want to make sweet, sweet love to? 

All of them.

List five of your favourite words.

amphibian, anarchic, tumble, scrattle, inoculate

Name something silly that makes you happy for irrational reasons.

Terrible cheesy slashy tv shows. Like Supernatural, Torchwood, Merlin, etc.

all these questions are number one. I like that, everyone’s equal, baby.

A Musical Interlude

I’ve become the proud owner of several new albums over the last year or so. Technically speaking, I am the proud owner of a some beautifully packaged mp3s. Because I hate waiting I normally buy the digital release rather than the cd or lp. (exception is wolf because I am freaking lame like that.)

Not all these albums came out this year, but since I bought them in 2013, these artists are going on my awesome sounds of 2013 so whatever.

So, in no particular order:

Gabby Young & Other Animals. Although the first tracks I heard were kind of brash cabaret, they have quite a gorgeously sweet melancholy sound on several songs.

Ellie Bryan. Not much info about her, but she plays miserable folk (that’s a good thing in my book) on banjo, mountain dulcimer and mouth harp. I am pretty much in desperate love with her version of incest-murder ballad deluxe, Sheath and Knife

This year saw the release of The Indelicates‘ latest album, Diseases Of England. It is utterly vicious and gorgeous and headed to be my album of the year.

 



 

(also, once again due to my lack of life, I would really really be many percentages behind anyone who took this song and made an angsty merlin/arthur fanvid with it. Because. Yes.)

Deap Vally‘s album Sistrionix just released, like..2 days ago, and if you want dirty dirty bluesy sabbathy, pagey sounds, as sung by two women who met at a crochet class (please, let this story be true, it’s too awesome to be a lie) then this is the band for you. They are pretty much UNF.

I think four is enough for a music post. I have some others lined up for another day.

House of Sand and Secrets update

I have just sent in the final draft of House of Sand and Secrets. Final being a relative thing in publishing.

I have two more Hobverse books ready to go into edits, it’s just a matter of deciding which to concentrate on. Because the Hobverse books are meant to be stand alone but appreciated as part of a bigger picture, there is no rigid order they need to be read in.

So we have Bones Like Bridges, which takes place ten years after When the Sea is Rising Red and has Felicita as a minor character; or Empty Monsters, set twenty years before When the Sea is Rising Red, which explains something about Lilya’s roots.

Much pondering to do on my side. Until then, I shall watch this gif over and over.

The Problem With Owning Only One Net

How do you catch a shape-shifting animal if you only have one net? What if you start out catching butterflies and end up hunting a bear?

This is a terrible metaphor but I’m going to use it anyway because I think it gets the point across.

Novels are shapeshifting beasties. Just when you think you know what it is and you’ve picked up your net and run after it, it turns around and bites your head off.

Because you see, the last time, right, the last time you wrote a novel, it trotted neatly along in a linear fashion, and there were exactly two points of view and it had a comfy 3rd person voice and well, it was easy. You bagged that sucker, revisions were a doddle and now you know *exactly* how to write a novel.

No. You know exactly how to write that novel. (Kinda, maybe, depends. You may be wrong about that too.)

You do not know how to write the next novel, because even though you had a perfectly well-planned outline and you thought you knew what you were doing because LAST TIME, RIGHT, LAST TIME this worked. And now it appears to have mutated into I have no fucking clue what and where did this extra character voice come from and that was not supposed to happen and these scenes are all out of order and what the HELL happened to that ending I had all worked out, dammit THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE AND I GIVE UP THIS BOOK IS BROKEN.

Maybe.

And maybe you just need to accept that this is not the novel you thought you were writing, and you need to go home and get a bigger net.

*I should probably add that the you in every post I write is me, because really, I’m just talking to myself.

Doodlebugging

I have five scenes left to write in Three Dog Dreaming. (Well, five-ish, things are pretty fluid here). The end is nigh! So naturally I am doing everything I can to avoid actually working on it.

Yesterday I asked twitter if anyone wanted doodles, and it seemed they did.

So here are my collected doodles from yesterday, to prove that when it comes to work avoidance strategies, I can get pretty desperate.

Now, I should probably at least open this document and pretend to write.

Eddie Izzard, Performance, And Typos.

Last night The Boy took me out to go see Eddie Izzard on the Cape Town leg of his Force Majeure tour.  Was a fantastic night out, with much fun had.

But it got me thinking a little about performers and artists who produce live shows. I can write my little books and then hole up when they go out into the world. Sure, I can get shitty reviews that make me want to slit my own throat, but I don’t have to know about them if I don’t go looking for them. I can, if I choose, live in a little Bubble of Happy.

Performers don’t have that luxury. They are in the face of your love, your boredom, your contempt, your adulation. They have to be “on” at all times.

I get tired just from socialising at a party and being in extrovert mode for a few hours every month or so. These people are on for two solid hours at a go, with no-one else to pick up the slack if they get bored or tired or are just having a shit night. And they’re doing it in front of thousands of people.

Massive respect.

I’m supposed to be working but I have a headache (there is news about this, but it makes me sad so I’m burying it here where no-one will read it: optometrist says I am left with 50% vision, so I’m kinda depressed about it but oh well such is life.)

So instead of working I doodled about Tyops, who live in your manuscripts and eat your vowels and steal your plot threads to line their nests.

NEVER READING AGAIN TBH

Yep.

That’s what readers always say after finishing an amazing book. Trufact.

You know that’s not true. Or at least, it shouldn’t be. Every time I finish a book that made me happy, I go hunt down all the writer’s other titles, stalk them to find out what books they’re reading*, and look for recs for similar titles.

Because here’s the big truth: OTHER WRITERS ARE NOT THE ENEMY. So That Writer You Vaguely Know Online sold 60 000 books and you sold 6? She’s not the reason your book tanked.

Reading an amazing book and then keeping quiet about it in case she/he gets more sales while you cry into your cereal-spattered dressing-gown is not the solution. Tell people about the books you enjoyed, and be supportive of other writers in the industry. This doesn’t mean promoting books you think were great steaming piles of dung in the hopes that the author will promote you back. Inauthenticity is lame. I can smell it on you like the stink of yesterday’s vodka tears.

Be genuinely enthusiastic and supportive of work you think is good. Because I find it hard to believe that by supporting other writers you are somehow “losing” readers to them. Readers are voracious. You should know – you are one.

* Hush. I can’t be the only one who does this.

seven hundred and fifty reasons to join

Yesterday on twitter I decided to resurrect the old 750 words a day practice so I would stop slacking with this novel.

I first came across it on LJ a few years back, when Elizabeth Bear had an lj comm where people would track their goals and encourage each other. I don’t even know if that comm still functions, and if it does, I felt it would be a little weird to just barrel in there now.

Instead I was going to track on twitter and the goal was really to get people to join in, to foster that camaraderie and community that comes with sharing our goals and applauding the efforts of others, but then…poor twitterfeed. Hahaha.

So I’ve decided to make a small bare-bones forum where people can track their progress with their 750 words a day, and get imaginary gin after.

it’s here: sevenfifty. if you’d like to join in. I’m looking forward to it.

two-tone shoes

I’m working on two tonally very different books at the moment, which makes dreaming weird. The stories keep folding into each other in the small hours and I’m left wondering about curiosities and art and clockwork and charm.

The one book is a young adult urban fantasy. I guess. I mean, it doesn’t have vampires or angels or fairies in it. It does have a (maybe) dead man in a leather trench-coat and a girl with serious issues in the crush-department. Also, rats. Lots of rats. And the other is adult set in a secondary world, and much more traditional fantasy, whatever that means. (It means it has dragons, I suppose.)

I find it easier to work on the YA in the morning when I’m feeling bitter and filled with hate for the world. Angry Cat likes to lash out. In the afternoon, once the coffee has soothed me, I can tackle the more intricate world of the other book.

It’s kind interesting seeing how my mood affects what I’m working on.

 

So the morning voice:

 

Rain sits close, and leans back on the palms of his hands, relaxed. “Sit, he won’t bite you,” he says.

“I’ll start at the beginning,” Caleb says.

Well, I guess we have time enough. “What’s that – Genesis?”

“I have the art,” he says, simply. Like I’m supposed to know what that means.

“Great,” I say. “Good for you.”

“There are very few of us who can use the art and charm people and things with magic and music.” His face is very serious. “And not all of us are nice.”

“Tell me about it.” I hope my sarcasm is showing because, really.

“Some of us are dangerous.” He sighs, leans back. “All you need to know is that one of those dangerous and not-nice people is in Joburg right now, and that’s why I’m here. He has something I want. I was in Egypt when I heard the rumour that he had risen here again and that he was looking for someone, and I came down. For a while, I had his scent, and then I lost it.”

“What happened?” The room feels unreal.

Caleb shifts, the smoke clouding around him, obscuring his face. “The most prosaic of endings,” he says. “I’d been back here a week when I was hit by a taxi.”

It was him. He surprises a choked laugh out of me. “I thought you have this art thing; couldn’t use it to step out of the way of a hurtling mini-bus?”

He draws on his cig and says nothing.

“So you were dead,” I prompt. Under my shirt, the icy pendant seems to be sinking right into my skin, burning a cold hole all the way to my breastbone. “That must have put a damper on your plans. What are you now – a zombie? Let me guess, you ate Rain’s brains and now he’s a zombie too. Except,” I glare at Rain, “slim pickings.”

Rain just flicks his middle finger at me, lazy, unconcerned.

And the afternoon voice:

“I cannot rule you with a name like Tet-Nanak,” she says sourly, “and you know it.”

“And I have no name to give you in exchange for my soul.”

“Then we have no bargain.” She drops her hand and turns to look at me. Her eyes are slanted and large, her eyebrows like the wings of birds. Her nose is long and narrow. She is a handsome woman despite the pale skin.

“Then I will die.” I’m desperate. She must give me my soul back. All she can do with it is torture me to a slow nameless death. Perhaps she is petty enough to think that fitting. “I cannot tell you my name, but I can promise to help you retrieve the breastplate Shoom is paying you for.”

“You think you know everything, Tet-Nanak,” she says softly, and her breath is cold and her hair is fragrant as seven-petals. “You would be wrong.”

“Give me my soul.” It is close enough to grab, and casting all instinct aside, I reach up and close my hand around it, willing the magic out from the stone and back into me.

Kani laughs and catches my wrist with her right hand. It is very cold and hard, and she crushes my grip easily, She is stronger than I could ever have realised. “It will not work until it rests around your own neck.” I can’t see the wards on her skin, not now, but I can feel myself being shifted back, pushed away. She lets go of my hand and uses her magic to send me backward.

“Please,” I say, broken. I will beg, if I have to. I have no pride left, just the empty prospect of my approaching end.

Kani turns to hold the fur at Nanak’s neck, and swings herself back onto her mount. “I’ll think about it,” and for a moment her voice is not the haughty, throaty voice of the princess. Pal-em-Rasha’s market accent flickers below it like a fish in a muddy stream. She is losing her grip on her fiction as she spreads out her magic to keep me away from her.

Actually, now they feel more similar… hahaha who knows.