Rhi Etzweiler's Blog, page 7
August 29, 2012
More Adventures @ Haus of Rhi
This one is safe, I swear.
The weather was beautiful Tuesday afternoon, the sky a clear vivid blue.
The temperature was perfect and a brisk breeze was blowing.
I had a short dayjob shift thanks to my inability to say "no" when they asked me to work a release event Monday night. And so I got home at the perfect time to snap some pictures...
Read more »
The weather was beautiful Tuesday afternoon, the sky a clear vivid blue.
The temperature was perfect and a brisk breeze was blowing.
I had a short dayjob shift thanks to my inability to say "no" when they asked me to work a release event Monday night. And so I got home at the perfect time to snap some pictures...
Read more »
August 27, 2012
Adventures @ Haus of Rhi
So. Umm.
This happened yesterday...
And I decided it was the perfect thing to share on a Monday morning.
You should probably set your morning coffee down--and swallow--before you click past the break.
Read more »
This happened yesterday...
And I decided it was the perfect thing to share on a Monday morning.
You should probably set your morning coffee down--and swallow--before you click past the break.
Read more »
July 16, 2012
Editing: The Evolution of a Story
I've spent the past few weeks under the radar for various reasons, but edits have had a great deal to do with it.
Trapped between the grindstones this month, a novella that has a relatively shallow past with me. It hasn't been around all that long, I didn't play around with it much before I just churned it out.
That's not my modus operandi, to be blunt. I don't do my best work that way. Thus, the edits are exhaustive, and have resulted in the story's growth, on a number of levels.
Yeah, the word count swelled with every page I edited.
But it was more than just fluff. In fact, a good bit of my efforts have involved cutting back and tightening the prose where I can. And yet the length increases.
I think this quote from Stephen King doesn't just apply from a reader's perspective. As an artist, writing is much like any other medium. Some stories aren't just all there from inception, adhering to the predetermined outline. Certainly mine are not.
Instead, my stories evolve as they're written. As the characters flesh out, they take control and make their own decisions, dictate what they'll say, what they do, how they do it. Toss a couple of those on the page together, and a writer (well, this one at least) swiftly discovers that the story being told isn't at all the one that they started out telling, and in fact may bear little or no resemblance to its predecessor.
All the sudden the story is whispering things, themes that weren't even planned now echoing through the subtext. Monsters lurking in the shadows, and wraiths in the basement. Don't go down into the cellar alone, and make sure you knock first.
In the initial editing round, I doubled the length of the story, from a short to a novella. One of the secondary characters I introduced in the newer text decided that their sex/gender was irrelevant, and presents as neutral. This is very challenging in a third-person construction, limiting referential options in the prose. On some level, I dislike it. And yet it won't slide past unnoticed by the reader, which I feel makes a crucial statement. Here I go playing with the reader assumptions and perspectives again. Just a little bit. I swear.
I just find myself wondering what else this story will decide needs saying before I'm done with it...
And of course, that's half the adventure. Discovering the story as I write it, following along on the adventure every bit as much as the reader eventually will. Actually, I get more adventure than the reader does, because I get the fun of exploring all the options that don't end up in the final version as well.
Sadly, there's little room for actual sex in this novella. Too much blood spatter, arterial spray and close quarters combat...
June 29, 2012
An Option Failure Is Not.
Camp Nano had actually been chugging along reasonably well through the middle of the month. Halfway through June, I managed to stay on track and broke the 25k barrier only a day or so late. And I did hit 50k... for the year.
The irony is that, well, the day I broke the halfway mark? I received an email from my Riptide editor. Yep. I am wading through edits, my focus on a completely different project. And switching gears between them doesn't happen easily enough for me to try finishing out the month goal of 50k. Especially not when all my creative energy is going into polishing. It takes a lot of elbow grease. Can I count the 2k+ that I've added in the edits?
So! August Camp Nano it is, then! I'll take the year-milestone of 50k as a technical victory, putting me at the halfway point for that. I set an annual goal of 100k for this year for a couple reasons -- the greatest being a matter of quality over quantity, but editing processes contributed heavily as well.
I knew coming into this year that I'd have one official pub to edit, and the intended completion of a very large and substantial rewrite on another project would require at least two thorough editing passes as well. That completion is my major goal this year, word count be damned, to be honest. Which is why I engaged in Camp Nano this month, will do so again in August, and have every intention of participating in NanoWrimo as well.
Forcing the creative focus is crucial for me. I have very close blood relations who have diagnoses of ADD. Some are medicated. Some aren't. I share a lot of the symptoms, have known it for years. Coffee helps. So do externalized deadlines and goals (like Nano). The rest of the time? I manage it by understanding my limitations and accepting that I work slowly as a result. I don't beat myself up about it.
(Okay, not too often, anyway.)
I may have left camp early and hiked off into the wilderness on my own, but it's hardly been a failure. I have 25k on a project that I didn't have before, and it helped push me part of the way over a plot obstacle I had.
I'm about a third of the way through the edits, roughly. I'm being horribly thorough. Which is the way I prefer to do it. Rhi, the Editing Masochist.
The irony is that, well, the day I broke the halfway mark? I received an email from my Riptide editor. Yep. I am wading through edits, my focus on a completely different project. And switching gears between them doesn't happen easily enough for me to try finishing out the month goal of 50k. Especially not when all my creative energy is going into polishing. It takes a lot of elbow grease. Can I count the 2k+ that I've added in the edits?
So! August Camp Nano it is, then! I'll take the year-milestone of 50k as a technical victory, putting me at the halfway point for that. I set an annual goal of 100k for this year for a couple reasons -- the greatest being a matter of quality over quantity, but editing processes contributed heavily as well.
I knew coming into this year that I'd have one official pub to edit, and the intended completion of a very large and substantial rewrite on another project would require at least two thorough editing passes as well. That completion is my major goal this year, word count be damned, to be honest. Which is why I engaged in Camp Nano this month, will do so again in August, and have every intention of participating in NanoWrimo as well.
Forcing the creative focus is crucial for me. I have very close blood relations who have diagnoses of ADD. Some are medicated. Some aren't. I share a lot of the symptoms, have known it for years. Coffee helps. So do externalized deadlines and goals (like Nano). The rest of the time? I manage it by understanding my limitations and accepting that I work slowly as a result. I don't beat myself up about it.
(Okay, not too often, anyway.)
I may have left camp early and hiked off into the wilderness on my own, but it's hardly been a failure. I have 25k on a project that I didn't have before, and it helped push me part of the way over a plot obstacle I had.
I'm about a third of the way through the edits, roughly. I'm being horribly thorough. Which is the way I prefer to do it. Rhi, the Editing Masochist.
June 23, 2012
Struggling With Theoretical Implications
Earlier this past week, I grabbed a special collector's edition of Scientific American Mind titled "His Mind, Her Mind: How We're Different" off the magazine rack.
Because, in all seriousness, I wanted to see how they tackled a headline I caught on the contents page.
An article titled, "The Third Gender."
I'll admit, though I had high hopes, just seeing that title gave me a queasy feeling. I knew deep down that it was going to be rough reading before I even started. Guess I'm a masochist, because I read it anyway.
And you know what? I was right. I realize that Scientific American isn't a scientific journal where the foremost minds in their fields publish those papers that you need a comparable doctorate to parse through. That being said, the author of this particular article still contradicted himself so often that I began to suspect he was confusing himself. Or perhaps was confused himself already, and it simply presented that way in the writing...
Read more »
Because, in all seriousness, I wanted to see how they tackled a headline I caught on the contents page.
An article titled, "The Third Gender."
I'll admit, though I had high hopes, just seeing that title gave me a queasy feeling. I knew deep down that it was going to be rough reading before I even started. Guess I'm a masochist, because I read it anyway.
And you know what? I was right. I realize that Scientific American isn't a scientific journal where the foremost minds in their fields publish those papers that you need a comparable doctorate to parse through. That being said, the author of this particular article still contradicted himself so often that I began to suspect he was confusing himself. Or perhaps was confused himself already, and it simply presented that way in the writing...
Read more »
June 8, 2012
A Letter From A Nano-Camper
Dear readers,
Hi! Send Twizzlers and black licorice jelly beans please? Oh, and more coffee of course. Not that I don't have plenty, but once can never have enough.
The weather's great, sun's warm, and the occasional glimpses of Black Hawks and Chinooks are just enough to be a timely distraction. I was sorely tempted to go sit and watch the #soldierporn flying around all afternoon, but that sun-so warm and lovely in an indirect way on my front porch-promised the murder of a thousand lobster-burns if I dared neglect my day's task. So I saluted the Chinook with my Moleskine and went back to writing.
Read more »
Hi! Send Twizzlers and black licorice jelly beans please? Oh, and more coffee of course. Not that I don't have plenty, but once can never have enough.
The weather's great, sun's warm, and the occasional glimpses of Black Hawks and Chinooks are just enough to be a timely distraction. I was sorely tempted to go sit and watch the #soldierporn flying around all afternoon, but that sun-so warm and lovely in an indirect way on my front porch-promised the murder of a thousand lobster-burns if I dared neglect my day's task. So I saluted the Chinook with my Moleskine and went back to writing.
Read more »
June 1, 2012
I Dreamed A Dream
I rarely recall much of any detail about my dreams anymore.
They dissipate the moment my conscious awareness reboots and comes back online.
This morning was different.
In living color, playing out before me as though I were an actor in a lead role of a theater production.
The edges of the stage, the curtain, invisible.
Immersed, I experienced every emotion, every touch, heard every word and musical note, with clarity and realism that I cannot begin to describe. I think I might have even experienced a few smells, too. Talk about engaging all the senses.
I know it was a dream.
But it didn't feel like one.
And the words came pouring forth from my fingers before the fuel of caffeinated beverage was past my lips. I rarely write 600 words in ten minutes. Hell if I didn't this morning.
Good morning, new muse. Go sit in the corner and strum your guitar and keep all the other muses in some kind of passive state of non-frenzy while I finish this other project. And then I will play with you. And you can channel your rage into your riffs and scream of wrong-doing, or whatever the hell this story is you want to tell me.
They dissipate the moment my conscious awareness reboots and comes back online.
This morning was different.
In living color, playing out before me as though I were an actor in a lead role of a theater production.
The edges of the stage, the curtain, invisible.
Immersed, I experienced every emotion, every touch, heard every word and musical note, with clarity and realism that I cannot begin to describe. I think I might have even experienced a few smells, too. Talk about engaging all the senses.
I know it was a dream.
But it didn't feel like one.
And the words came pouring forth from my fingers before the fuel of caffeinated beverage was past my lips. I rarely write 600 words in ten minutes. Hell if I didn't this morning.
Good morning, new muse. Go sit in the corner and strum your guitar and keep all the other muses in some kind of passive state of non-frenzy while I finish this other project. And then I will play with you. And you can channel your rage into your riffs and scream of wrong-doing, or whatever the hell this story is you want to tell me.
May 23, 2012
Plans For Summer Camp
So I've set a goal to finish the WIP known as the Trunked Novel Overhaul before the end of June.
That leaves me with, roughly, somewhere between 40-50k needing written, with the bit of backtracking I needed to do in order to detour around some plot-block issues I had.
One of my fellow Riptide authors tweeted this morning about "Camp Nanowrimo" which, not surprisingly, I'd known nothing about because I live in a cave under a mountain most of the time.
At any rate, I've signed up for the June camp.
And because I'm silly and sentimental and this WIP has been with me forever, I tossed up an old sketch for the "cover art" spot:
Insignis
A piece inspired by one of the original characters, which has since been smooshed back into a lump of clay and recreated along with many others. The concept prevails, though. And I am acutely aware that I have less talent for drawing than I do for writing. This is here because, as I said, it's been a long journey and it has sentimental value. Not because it's actually good or anything.
Come on Writer's Tree. Give me some more juice!
Off to pour a fresh cup of Thai Nguyen and buckle down to get a few thousand hammered out today.
Look for regular(ish) updates on my progress over the next few weeks.
I'll try to share some excerpts.
That leaves me with, roughly, somewhere between 40-50k needing written, with the bit of backtracking I needed to do in order to detour around some plot-block issues I had.
One of my fellow Riptide authors tweeted this morning about "Camp Nanowrimo" which, not surprisingly, I'd known nothing about because I live in a cave under a mountain most of the time.
At any rate, I've signed up for the June camp.
And because I'm silly and sentimental and this WIP has been with me forever, I tossed up an old sketch for the "cover art" spot:
Insignis
A piece inspired by one of the original characters, which has since been smooshed back into a lump of clay and recreated along with many others. The concept prevails, though. And I am acutely aware that I have less talent for drawing than I do for writing. This is here because, as I said, it's been a long journey and it has sentimental value. Not because it's actually good or anything.
Come on Writer's Tree. Give me some more juice!
Off to pour a fresh cup of Thai Nguyen and buckle down to get a few thousand hammered out today.
Look for regular(ish) updates on my progress over the next few weeks.
I'll try to share some excerpts.
Plans For Summer Camp!
So I've set a goal to finish the WIP known as the Trunked Novel Overhaul before the end of June.
That leaves me with, roughly, somewhere between 40-50k needing written, with the bit of backtracking I needed to do in order to detour around some plot-block issues I had.
One of my fellow Riptide authors tweeted this morning about "Camp Nanowrimo" which, not surprisingly, I'd known nothing about because I live in a cave under a mountain most of the time.
At any rate, I've signed up for the June camp.
And because I'm silly and sentimental and this WIP has been with me forever, I tossed up an old sketch for the "cover art" spot:
Insignis
A piece inspired by one of the original characters, which has since been smooshed back into a lump of clay and recreated along with many others. The concept prevails, though. And I am acutely aware that I have less talent for drawing than I do for writing. This is here because, as I said, it's been a long journey and it has sentimental value. Not because it's actually good or anything.
Come on Writer's Tree. Give me some more juice!
Off to pour a fresh cup of Thai Nguyen and buckle down to get a few thousand hammered out today.
Look for regular(ish) updates on my progress over the next few weeks.
I'll try to share some excerpts.
That leaves me with, roughly, somewhere between 40-50k needing written, with the bit of backtracking I needed to do in order to detour around some plot-block issues I had.
One of my fellow Riptide authors tweeted this morning about "Camp Nanowrimo" which, not surprisingly, I'd known nothing about because I live in a cave under a mountain most of the time.
At any rate, I've signed up for the June camp.
And because I'm silly and sentimental and this WIP has been with me forever, I tossed up an old sketch for the "cover art" spot:
Insignis
A piece inspired by one of the original characters, which has since been smooshed back into a lump of clay and recreated along with many others. The concept prevails, though. And I am acutely aware that I have less talent for drawing than I do for writing. This is here because, as I said, it's been a long journey and it has sentimental value. Not because it's actually good or anything.
Come on Writer's Tree. Give me some more juice!
Off to pour a fresh cup of Thai Nguyen and buckle down to get a few thousand hammered out today.
Look for regular(ish) updates on my progress over the next few weeks.
I'll try to share some excerpts.
May 21, 2012
Bloghop Winners!
Thanks to everyone who followed the "Hop Against Homophobia" this past weekend. The participation was huge and it was so awesome to see all the wonderful blogposts raising visibility and awareness of not just homophobia, but transphobia as well.
The winners of the two copies of Dark Edge of Honor are:
Erica (eri.pike@gmail.com)
and
Ashley (ashley.vanburen@gmail.com)
Check your email account for your ebook, and thank you to everyone who took the time to stop by and comment at Haus of Rhi!
The winners of the two copies of Dark Edge of Honor are:
Erica (eri.pike@gmail.com)
and
Ashley (ashley.vanburen@gmail.com)
Check your email account for your ebook, and thank you to everyone who took the time to stop by and comment at Haus of Rhi!
