Writerly Wackiness

So I lied about eventually having a more substantial post last week (not that I think anyone was eagerly awaiting one, especially given my half-assed blogging tendencies of late). I had intended to write a post last week, but I got distracted by something that was probably far more worthwhile for me. I rediscovered how much I like words. 

I'm a fairly slow reader, so once I started grad school, I didn't have much time to read anything beyond assignments for class. And as soon as the spring semester ended, I had a big pile of critiques to get through for TNEO. But then, last week, a beautiful thing  happened: I was done with critiques, and I had before me an evening with no rehearsal, schoolwork, meetings, or anything else to do or go to. So I read. Fiction. For fun. For the first time in months. It was glorious. And it continues to be glorious.

In addition to getting to lose myself in someone else's words for a while, I also got to rediscover some joy in my own words. Even though I've still been working on fiction these last several months, my writing routine during my spring semester . . . well, I no longer had one. I squeezed in what I could where and when I could. And everything I was working on was revision. With deadlines. And therefore pressure.

But last week, I started a new story. Every day on the train ride to and from work, I've been writing. And when there's time in the evening, I write some more. And since it's not revision, I've been able to use my old battle-worn AlphaSmart (aka VoldeSmart). In other words, no shiny things on my Macbook to distract me. Just me and my words and no deadlines. I had forgotten how much fun it can be to just play.

As expected, this past week was rather weird for me schedule-wise.  Adjusting to the whole part-time from home day job shift was sort of like pulling on an old pair of pants; you're thrilled they fit again, but it's been so long since you've worn them that you're trying to remember which tops look right with them.  As a result, the time I spent trying on metaphorical tops meant I didn't do much fiction writing during the week.  At least until yesterday, when I finally got my ass out of the metaphorical dressing room.

After doing a small amount of research and photo scrounging on Thursday, I finally started the prequel-ish My Big Fat Epic Fantasy Novel short story.  Well, I had already written a first sentence or two and jotted down some notes a while back, but yesterday was when I finally sat my butt down and started writing in earnest.  The Silk Road Ensemble was kind of a "duh" soundtrack choice for working on a story set at a caravanserai, especially when one of the albums I have from them has a track called "Night at the Caravanserai."  And I threw Loreena McKennitt's "Caravanserai" onto my writing playlist for good measure.

After working on the short story for a bit, I switched gears slightly and did an hour writing exercise with some online folks for the first time in forever.  Recently, I've imposed all these huge expectations on myself as a writer, which often has the unfortunate side effect of making me petrified when I'm staring down a blank page.  This was a good way to tell those expectations where to shove it.  I turned off Serious Writer Brain and just goofed off for an hour by writing something silly that will probably never go anywhere beyond the exercise.  It was also my first time playing with Write or Die, which was a great help in turning off Serious Writer Brain.

And finally, on to the reading front:

( Readerly update under the cut... )

1. Staycation!  I had some vacation days to use up before our fiscal year at work ends this month, so I took today, tomorrow and Monday off.  It's nice to remind myself what my house looks like.

2. Happiness is walking out of your local library on a beautiful day with a big fat book in one hand and an iced coffee in the other.  I love you, local library.

3. Still got a short story rewrite to get to today.  Must...stop...procrastinating...

So, last week?  It sucked a lot.  No writing time over the weekend?  Also sucked.  And rain and wind strong enough to knock over a big-ass pine tree and street light in the neighborhood when you're trying to move large pieces of furniture?  Yeah, that sucks too.

The Writerly Update
Close to 600 words into what is now chapter 12.  More revision wordage would have been nice, but considering the aforementioned suck, I’m amazed I got that much.

The Readerly Update
I’ve been reading On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society by Lt. Colonel Dave Grossman, which has some really fascinating (and sometimes disturbing) stuff in it.  I put it on my “to read” list after j_cheney had posted about it some time back.  It sounded like it’d be a good resource for a short story I’ve been planning to rewrite, and it’s delivering on that front.  What I didn’t realize was how useful it’d be for my novel rewrite as well.

Submission Land
I don’t think I’ve ever had this many submissions out at the 100-day+ mark all at one time before.  Luckily, working on the novel rewrite instead of a short stories at present has me obsessing over this less than I normally would.

Random Literary/Theatrical Musings
I saw a production of Romeo & Juliet Thursday night.  It’s been a while since I’ve read it or seen it performed, and the production made me realize why, unlike a lot of other Shakespeare, I don’t love this play.  Two things in particular: 1) The supporting characters are far more interesting than the protagonists.  I spend most of the play wanting to slap them.  2) After Romeo and Juliet have bit it and brought their angsty histrionics to an end, we have this moment where the friar stands there in the tomb telling the other characters everything we just saw happen.  "As You Know, Audience..."

Reading Update
Slowly making my way through Writers of the Future XXIV. Because of work, I can't carve out as much daily reading time as I used to, and I didn't read much at all this past week due to other distractions, so I've only gotten through the first five stories.  My favorites so far have been Patrick Lundrigan's (dandyfunk ) "Hangar Queen" and J. Kathleen Cheney's (j_cheney ) "Taking a Mile." I also enjoyed Sonia Helbig's (soniahelbig ) "Crown of Thorns."

When searching for suggestions on combating feelings of writerly slugdom, kannibal_kat  suggested The Writer's Portable Therapist.  I put picking up a copy on my list of "things I will get to soonish," but then I came home the other day to find a copy sitting on my desk, courtesy of The Best Significant Other Ever.  Seeing how little the book is (it definitely lives up to the "portable" part of the title), I decided to dive right in.  I can't say that the book's first "session" (aka chapter) led to any slog-curing insights as of yet, but it did get me writing for about 40 minutes straight last night.  It was random writing and not something that anyone but me is ever going to see, but it felt nice to just spew out words without stopping or fixing typos. 

Writerly Musings: Critiquing
Some recent conversations have gotten me thinking about critiques a lot lately--the good, the bad, and the ugly.  ( Thoughts under the cut... )

Crazy busy week. But despite the craziness, I just have to say that my new employment gig is awesome.

Now I need to spend this weekend doing all the little things I put off during the week in order to get the not-so-little things done. I had been considering auditioning for a play for the first time in forever this weekend, but I don't know what the hell I was thinking given how much else I've got going on. So instead of working on a monologue, I used last night to recover from the big shift in my schedule with the relaxing combo of pizza, a bottle of wine, some Mythbusters viewing, and an earlier-than-usual trip to bed. Slept in this morning, and now I'm ready to roll...after the productivity report, of course:

Reading
Up to chapter 11 in The Dramatist's Toolkit, which I'm finding to be a good read. I've finally got some achievable-seeming play ideas percolating in my brain now, which means the book is the mental kick-start I was hoping it'd be. And while the timing was by no means planned, it's rather a fun bit of symmetry that I'm reading it during my first week working for a theater company.

Exercise
Except for Monday, exercise pretty much fell by the wayside this week. Something had to give amid the crazy.

Music
Except for Friday, I managed to stay on top of the practicing. Go me.

Writing
I didn't get a lot of writing done this week (I'm still slogging through the first scene of chapter 5), but I at least did a little bit every day on the train ride home from work.

In other writerly happenings, last Sunday Michael Swanwick came to speak to my writing group, which was awesome. We even ended up on his blog, Flogging Babel. If you care, I'm in the back row, first person on the left.

Reading
Through chapters 15-18 in Bitterwood.  Also finished the audio book of The Road, which didn't end as bleakly as I thought it would.  I give it a thumbs up overall.

Exercise
It's looking like I'm going to slack today, but I'll make up for it tomorrow.  Otherwise, I've been keeping to the routine.

Music
Keeping on top of my piano lessons and practicing.  Monday was the last regular rehearsal of the season for the chorus I sing with.  We have a dress rehearsal tonight and a concert Sunday, and then it's only church choir and some solo stuff on my plate through June.  I'm kind of dreading tonight's rehearsal.  We've done the concert once already and have had two regular rehearsals since then to brush up on the music, but I have the feeling that we're still going to go through everything in its entirety and then some instead of just doing what's necessary to adjust to a different space and acoustics.  I wish we had spent more time on Carmina Burana (particularly the diction--I tend to pick that stuff up pretty easily, but I'm hearing a lot of mush around me), but the other pieces on the program (especially our chamber choir pieces) have been beaten to death, and then backed over with a truck for good measure.  Rehearsing is important, but there comes a point of diminishing returns.

Writing
I've been hit or miss with the writing this week.  Some days I've been super productive girl.  Other days, like today, a little tinkering is about all I seem capable of accomplishing. On the plus side, I finished rewriting chapter 4 of My Big Fat Epic Fantasy Novel.  On the downside, that's only because I'm splitting what was originally one long chapter into two smaller ones.  Either way, I'm about 11,400 into the rewrite.

Reading
Got through chapters 11 and 12 in Bitterwood this week.  I've also been listening to more of The Road in the car, and that--well, "enjoying" doesn't seem like the right word for this kind of book.  But I'm hooked.

Exercise
Except for yesterday, I kept on top of the routine.  But I think slacking yesterday was probably a good thing.  My left leg was sore and stiff from overdoing it earlier in the week, and taking a day off seems to have helped.

Music
Slightly crazy week.  On top of church choir and piano lessons, the chorus I'm in has our first of two Carmina Burana concerts tonight.  So in addition to the regular Monday night rehearsal, we had the dress rehearsal last night.  There's a large contingent of clueless people in this group who have serious problems with that whole filing on and off the risers thing, so coordinating that always takes ten times longer than it should and makes me want to smack my head against hard surfaces.

Submission Land
More rejections, more stories back out the door. I have two stories I'd like to try at Sword & Sorceress, and I thought the markets they're currently at would have bounced them back by now, but amazingly, no.  Knowing my luck, they'll both reject the stories the day after the Sword & Sorceress submission window closes.

Writing
I was tinkering with novel revisions last weekend, but the zombie story kept calling to me, so I finally answered and began my next round of revisions on that. I'm rather excited as I think it's going to be a much tighter story now, and I think some of the changes I've made are helping me better develop what's going on with the protagonist.  I also realized that I had an entire scene that could go away, so the story's already about 1,000 words shorter.

This week has been strong with the bat-shit crazy side of the Force, making that whole productivity thing a challenge. Some of the things keeping me busy were good things (Easter with the in-laws, seeing a production of Edward Albee's At Home at the Zoo, a reception where my dad got a firefighter-of-the-year award from the local VFW).  But other things...well, I think my brain exploded a few times.

Now onto what I actually managed to accomplish amid the crazy:

Reading: I'm partway through chapter 10 in Bitterwood.  As for Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, I gave up. I reached my library renewal limit on it and was just going to copy the remaining discs onto my computer last night, but then I realized that I still had 12 discs left. It's an entertaining book, but it's not that entertaining. So I took that long-winded puppy back to the library today and checked out the audio version of Cormac McCarthy's The Road.  Only six discs total.  Ah, blessed brevity.

Exercise: Fell off the wagon Tuesday and Wednesday thanks to the crazy, but stuck to it the rest of the week.

Music: The usual rehearsal schedule, but fitting in practice time on the piano proved tough. I was all stressed out at my Wednesday lesson as a result, which didn't help.

Writing Business: Bored with the rejections-a-plenty/several-months-long-dry-spell-when-it-comes-to-sales combo now. I'm feeling particularly disheartened with one story. It's a flash story I wrote a while back, and while not brilliant, I think it's a good little piece. When I first wrote it, a fellow writerly type thought very highly of it and said, "If Strange Horizons doesn't take this, I don't know what they'll take."  Well, they didn't take it, and neither have the 27 other markets I've sent it to. I've never had a story get shot down that many times, and it's depressing, especially since it came close at a few places, which gives me confidence that the story doesn't suck. Unfortunately, I'm almost out of decent markets for it.

Writing: I spent much of last weekend figuring out what I needed to move, add, axe, and rewrite in chapter 4 of My Big Fat Epic Fantasy Novel, which was fun and exciting and I couldn't wait to start writing.  Then, Sunday night, I sat down to write, and nothing. I spent an insane amount of time rewriting the opening sentence. I didn't get back to the chapter again until Wednesday, when I finally managed to push past that block. But because I had so little time for writing this week, I'm only about 500 words into the chapter. Blah.

On that note, it's onto the weekend for me.  I'm going to get in some more work on the novel tonight.  Tomorrow AsYouKnowBob and I will be driving down to Washington DC--the chorus we're in is singing at the National Gallery, and afterward we'll be making a Maryland pit stop to have dinner with some of my friends from college. Sunday will be singing at church in the morning, writing group in the afternoon. And if I'm not too exhausted, I might squeeze in some more writing before Monday rears its ugly head.

...my shiny new iMac! The downside is that I didn't get much done today other than playing with the shiny new iMac, but that's ok, because shiny new iMac!

I did get things done the rest of the week, though, so here's the productivity report:

Reading: Chapters 4 and 5 in Bitterwood, and I believe I'm up to chapter 30 in listening to Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (my god is JS&MN a long damn book)

Exercise: I've been entirely too obsessed with Wii Fit this week.  Especially the rhythmic boxing. But i should start alternating with some non-Wii exercise sessions.

Music: The usual round of rehearsals, lessons, and practicing.

Writing: I've gotten about 1,100 words into the zombie story revision. Not as much as I would have liked, but good progress given the whole one day I managed to work on it. 

Writing Business: Lots of stories have been coming and going out the door this week. Somebody buy something already, damn it!