Food for thought

Today I made it to see my lovely aunt, as I mentioned I'd be trying to while down here. We had a great time, talking for probably far too long about a surprisingly wide range of things. She's a bit of a gourmet chef (this is an understatement) so given my tentative inching into that Actual Cooking stuff we ended up talking food for quite a while, and she persuaded me to try some new cheeses and crackers. I seem to be surrounded by people who know what they're doing with food and are eager to take me up on my promise to "try anything once". I don't regret it yet...

Among the food discussion, a couple of books came up - Elizabeth David's works, which sound half cookery book, half food history and exploration of why and how regional dishes came about, due to sources of food and so on. I (as you see) whipped out my ever-present notebook and took down the name, because one area where I am very aware I am lacking in worldbuilding is food. I'm really bad at including meals at all when writing, because I don't know enough about what's available in what sort of climate, at what level of technology and civilisation. And I do rather need to include at least fleeting mention of meals when I write so many important Round The Campfire scenes. But I get lost in clickbait when I try to do vague internet research around that, and end up briefly extremely informed about the spice trails through the Middle East and not very informed at all about pre-potato British cuisine. Or pre-British potato-based cuisine, for a little continental diversity.

Anyway, I have a name and a few titles and hopefully that sort of focused attack will help. In the meantime I'll have to reread Ray Mears and make do for the moment.

Ah, the troublesome life of a writer. Nothing escapes scrutiny, to add depth to the next book.

The best kind of nitpicking

I am dangerous to things I love. The more I love a film, TV show, or book, the closer I'll be looking for flaws. There's lots of reasons for that; it means I can defend it better when someone (if we could all just take one concerted look at my brother at this point, that'd be great) inevitably tells me it's rubbish because this... It also means I get to pry open its narrative ribcage and have a poke around at the little problems inside. In the good old days this meant an awful lot of fanfiction to fix the plotholes and the dodgy characterisation and the glossed-over developments. These days it tends to mean I prod one tiny little aspect that doesn't quite sit right (this female character is irritating because with her background she should clearly have reacted in this way... this scene is great on the action but they should have escaped using this clever method... this male character has completely changed his attitude for plot's sake and obviously this must have happened offscreen to make that work...) and unspool a whole new idea from it. Switch up the setting and the surrounding plot and boom, future project.

That's how Hanith started life in entirety, after all. And it's where a lot of bits and pieces in most everything else came from. I tinker. I try to fix things.

This does mean watching films/TV with me has become, occasionally, a little tiring, I'm sure. If talking is permitted (never with my brother, usually not if I'm watching something for the first time, definitely not if I'm watching something for the first time and am desperately interested in it - this is partly why I try very hard to see everything I want in the cinema, so there's no chatter and missed dialogue if it's all new) then I have a tendency to point out these little flaws and discuss with whoever's watching with me. (Oh dear heavens, the ecosystems in My Little Pony, the briefings in the waiting room of Quantum Leap, the skeevy morality and ethics and potentials of the technology in Dollhouse...) And I have definitely got worse at that after hanging around with far too many people (you know who you are) who do the same, profess not to mind, or actively encourage it.

In totally unrelated news (honest, really... No, I didn't think you were going to fall for that) my friend down here in Cambridge and I watched X-Men: First Class this evening. Oh, my love for X-Men knows no bounds. It's just such a beautiful setup, to enable so much fun and such variety among your characters. I'm sure it had quite some influence on the fantasy world I created with twenty magics. (Really, precisely. I can probably still reel off the list. At some point I will go back to that and rewrite the plot and characters with the benefit of a dozen more years' writing and some nice clear hindsight.) I've always liked that kind of smorgasbord of power. A huge ensemble with different abilities, and the real fun kicks off when you team up unexpected combinations. It's just glorious, and I will forever, eternally, be distraught that I didn't come up with it first.

I do love Marvel for that. The films are doing a grand job of taking lots of different characters with defined skills, and smashing them together in fits of glee and beautifully CGI-ed explorations of how they can bounce off each other. Sometimes literally.

You go, Black Widow, illustrate my point.

That's definitely one thing I try to stick to in my writing - people have different abilities, and they work together in different ways. I am long, long past the days of the single overpowered has-every-skill-and-every-power-available characters. Power down and partner up, my dears. Even Dryden, ridiculously powerful as he is, needs other people to do what they're good at.

Anyway, yes. That's the thread I pulled most happily from X-Men. Power team-ups are just plain fun and there should always be more of them.

So, next time you see me apparently tearing something to pieces over a small flaw, bear in mind it probably means I love said thing to pieces, and am trying to dissect its problem so I can fix it forever. Or at the very least pull out its still beating heart and transplant it into something new and wonderful, to live on in a glorious, beautiful new form, with stitches around the forehead and bolts in the neck and that pure, perfect core hidden safely away inside.

Because I love it. So I will preserve it and pass it on.

Weary traveller

I managed to get almost everything done that I'd had in mind today, and since that included the two-and-a-half hour drive down to Cambridge to help out a friend, that seems good enough. And I'm sort of in the process of arranging a brief visit with my aunt, since it's been far too long since I last saw her.

Not a lot of writing, though - the drive was tiring and time on both ends was mostly occupied with cleaning and tidying and packing. I did listen to the first half of Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds in the car though, and now clearly need to go back and slip a couple of references to that into Dryden. Very easily done.

Otherwise, sort of stalled and tired and in that stare-at-the-page-and-hope-words-happen sort of state. It's always annoying when that happens, but it's worse when I know what needs to happen next, it's just that fingers and brain can't even seem to form the concept of words, never mind find the right ones to put down. So I'm going to sleep, and try again tomorrow when I have more brainpower and time.

Back by popular demand

You may have noticed a lack of posts over the last few days. Interestingly, I've had complaints about that. I was expecting complaints about the excessive chatter, not the lack of it. Oh well.

So, quick refresh: the daily posts were part of an intent to focus on the happy, good things in each day and try to stay positive. You can draw your own conclusions from the lack of posts, I suppose.

Despite that, there were actually quite a few good things over the last few days. I helped a friend plan a complicated cosplay on Wednesday, and received art (and random little presents too, which was so sweet) from my friend Cally. She drew me a dragon for the new pen name, and named her, naturally, Leaf Pendragon. Ah, the puns. I should've thought of that one. Leaf's now the background of my Twitter page. I'm still playing with settings to work out if I can get her onto the background of the blog too, and keep everything legible. She's a pretty thing, though, you have to admit.

I also got some more feedback on Dryden version whatever it is at this point, and more again on Thursday. I was getting very lost in attempts to rewrite, second (and third, and fourth) guessing myself at every turn, certain of some problems and hating other bits but not sure if that was just me or if they actually needed work. Hearing back from my readers settles that - even if I disagree with the odd comment, it still solidifies what I have to do to make progress. It clarifies matters, and reassures me that there's something worth saving in the draft.

There was also the NaNoWriMo group chat on Thursday night, which meant I got a little writing done. Hanith again, poor lad.

On Friday I made it into town to pick up the latest Loki: Agent of Asgard comic, because Loki. It did make me laugh like a drain, too.

Saturday included a trip to the cinema to see Captain America: The Winter Soldier for the second time... So I really can't complain about that. I even managed to do almost all the dishes and cook again, afterwards.

Today was monthly NaNo in-person meetup, too, so I spent the afternoon hanging out with half a dozen other writers, generally geeking out, chatting, and keeping up to date with everybody's plans and current writing status. It's nice, though this particular meet did leave me more exhausted than usual. I think I'm still not quite entirely recovered from the troubles of Tuesday through Thursday. Remember I mentioned how the food and the happy overlap a lot? This does mean that lack of happy equals lack of food, especially if I'm feeling guilty. That in turn slows me down for a while, which does mean a much lesser chance of sparking off further guilt-inducing incidents, but also means it's difficult to get back up to doing a full day of normal stuff without ending up utterly shattered at the end of it.

Oh well. The delays in getting round to actually writing Dryden 2: The Second One have meant that the plot is getting longer, more in depth, and crueller with every passing day. Shame it all makes sense and follows on from the chaos of the first book. My poor characters. They did so little to deserve this.

Honour's Knight (spoiler free)

(Yes, that is the American cover, but so was the copy I read, so shush.)

Book: Honour's Knight (Book 2 of the Paradox trilogy)
Author: Rachel Bach (Rachel Aaron in disguise! Also, @Rachel_Aaron on Twitter)

Okay, this is BOOK TWO. Are we clear on that? I've tried not to include spoilers for either book one or two, and though that's quite tricky I think we're all clear. I've checked through a couple of times. This is a long post though, so if you're short on time or interest you can scroll to the bottom. I've highlighted in bold the point at which I stop babbling excitedly and summarise basic book thoughts. Otherwise, here we go.

In the interests of not spoiling book one for any of my fellow spoilerphobes, the summary for Honour's Knight shall be merely the tag-lines, not the blurb:

Devi Morris has a lot of problems. And not the the fun easy-to-shoot kind either.

Like the sound of that? Here's a little more depth:

Deviana Morris is a kickass mercenary in the far-flung gloriously space-opera future, with enough burning ambition to set the whole universe on fire and a keen awareness that life as a mercenary means she probably doesn't have much time to fulfill those ambitions. So she'll take any chance she can to get herself boosted up the career ladder into the prestigious (and dangerous) job she's really after - joining the Devastators, the most elite fighting unit in all of the colony worlds.

So a year's contract on the Glorious Fool - a ship so dangerous it's said to be cursed - seems like the perfect way to get noticed.

The Fool's crew are all oddballs; aliens and psychics and mysterious men with deep dark secrets. Devi tries to be a dutiful security guard and not dig into what doesn't concern her, far more interested in her honour and ambition than with other people's secrets, but it's another matter when those secrets start putting the lives of everyone on the ship at risk. Then things really get rolling and it's more than just the ship at risk.

While all this is going on, Devi still manages to find time to fall in love. But even that isn't simple or safe.


So. That's how it all starts.

Book One, Fortune's Pawn, crackled through some rip-roaring action sequences and steadily ramped up through small scale character development to uncovering big mysteries and taking on huge conspiracies with very little chance to stop for breath. And then it ended on a cliffhanger.

Honour's Knight opens with a prologue which is frankly horrifying, and then steps straight back in where we left off in Fortune's Pawn.

There's a helpful recap of what happened in the climax of book one, which essentially adds up to "spot the bullet holes". Reading through it elicited a lot of, "Oh, yeah, that got shot too, didn't it?" but worked very well to orientate me again, since it had been a couple of months since I read the first. Throughout the book there are a few neat recaps like this one, which is very useful, because there's a lot going on. Fortunately for us, Rachel Bach can handle the doling out of information very well, so we're never truly at sea even in flurries of double crosses, backstabbings, ulterior motives, and huge, epic, universe-sized long-term goals.

The stakes are raised again and again - every time you think things can't get more overwhelming, they do, and with a whole book left to go I have the feeling it's not even maxed out yet. This isn't done arbitrarily, though, but in keeping with everything we know, and everything we find out with Devi. The background and the worldbuilding (although worldbuilding seems too small a word for the whole universe and multiple alien species and cultures) are consistent throughout, and gain depth as we go along. All this information gets filtered through Devi's first-person narration, and while she is very intelligent she's also not a scientist, so things are translated through her understanding, without jargon or too much dwelling on intricacies for an action adventure. Generally we get everything we need to know delivered to us in a quick, clear way, so we can move on to the plot and the fight scenes.

If you do get lost, there are still those regular, crisp updates on the current situation. Devi, after all, is a soldier, so it makes perfect sense for her to be evaluating her position and considering her options and counting up her advantages whenever the ground shifts under her feet yet again. A helpful writing tactic and a nice bit of characterisation, solidly defining Devi as capable and resourceful, all in one.

And the ground shifts under Devi a lot in this one. Everybody around her (not excluding Devi, either) has their own motivation and plans, which means alliances shift and unlikely teams crop up as everybody tries to get what they want and different people's methods and aims temporarily align. This certainly keeps you on your toes when reading - as soon as you start thinking you know who are "the good guys" or "the bad guys" everything switches up again, someone else's backstory and primary motivations are revealed, and you'll find yourself on their side too.

All the major characters, then - and it's an expanding cast - are more complex than they first appear, and they all stay true to their driving forces. None of them conveniently forget what they're after to hurry the plot along. Most everyone gets pushed to their limits in this book, and it's their deepest beliefs and varying moralities that come into play, usually in completely unexpected ways.

For anyone who's read Rachel Bach's previous series (The Legend of Eli Monpress, written as Rachel Aaron - and delightful they are too) this moral murk is quite different to Eli's much clearer-cut villains. In those there was a definitive Great Evil to be fought, and some pretty clear, uncompromising definitions of what was right and wrong, usually from the dutiful Miranda. There were still characters and situations set up to explore the limits of what could be done "for the greater good", but they were resolved quite clearly one way or another.

Here, though, allies and organisations are clashing over pretty much every single issue that comes up, and even Devi with her high concepts of honour and duty has trouble arguing for moral absolutes. And there are consequences when everyone takes too long fighting over what to do next, and often worse consequences when they don't, and simply take the course of action that seems best at first, but naturally has hidden problems and unpredictable results. There's a pretty impressive body count as a result, even for books focusing on a mercenary in a high tech weaponised suit of armour dealing with forces so powerful the Death Star starts to look tame in comparison.

This also means virtually nobody comes out of this squeaky clean. Even the people trying to do the right thing don't always know what the right thing is, and most of those who think they do are happy to overlook a little collateral damage to get their way. Sometimes a lot of collateral damage. It makes for interesting reading, and it's intriguing to consider all the current options open to the characters and try to work out where things are going for book three. My money, actually, is on an entirely different option to everything that's been considered or put forward already. Something that will make readers and characters alike slap their foreheads and wonder how they managed to miss that idea when everything we needed to come up with it was laid out in all the laws of the setting and the characters' own ideals and moral codes.

That does seem to be a recurring feature of Rachel Aaron/Bach's writing, after all. There's always one more twist that she manages to keep very well masked in the build up. I was delighted with that in her Eli books, and it's come up already by the end of Honour's Knight, so I have high hopes. I like surprises.

A couple of asides, from personal interest:

One of the aspects of sci-fi and fantasy I'm particularly interested in at the moment is the portrayal of gender and LGBT+ elements. In the universe Rachel Bach has created in these books, humanity has colonised so many worlds that separate human cultures have a lot of differing technology as well as values, and there's a certain amount of culture clash and xenophobia among "Terrans" and "Paradoxians" and their various colony worlds.

And then there are multiple alien species: lizard-like xith'cal (purported to enslave and eat humans), an avian, peaceful species called aeons, and the lelgis, who generally keep to themselves and don't interact with humanity. These are introduced and explored through Devi, bringing up her preconceptions and contrasting those with other viewpoints and clearer facts about each species.

I found it intriguing that in exploring both xith'cal and aeons, gender came up as an issue. Both species are presented with a defined gender binary (clear cut male/female) and resulting roles and customs within the (fairly homogenous, it would seem) flock/hive cultures, but this fact is brought up by encountering members of each race who are gender nonconforming. This comes along with some issues about individuality and personal choices and freedom to be yourself, which ties in with... well, with everything.

Focusing on Devi herself for that, she is a soldier, trained and honour-bound to follow orders, not to think too much for herself, who now has to figure out where she stands and take the lead. She's also a tough-as-nails fighter, boiling with anger and aggression and a habit of shooting her problems. She sleeps with whoever she wants, and drinks and works out for fun. These stereotypically male character traits bring up gender nonconformity for her too - although most of the human civilisations seem to be fairly equal, there are clearly still prejudices and assumptions all over the place, cropping up in her interactions with anyone off the ship, especially if she's not wearing her armour, and even insidiously slipping into her own thoughts. When she makes an assumption about the gender of aeons she encounters based on their appearance and behaviour, a whole background of cultural norms has to lie behind that. This far-future still has issues of sexism and gender bias. Which is a little sad.

(As a small note, I was slightly sad that there isn't more outright gender equality or diversity visible among the human colonies, considering it comes up so clearly as a problem in the alien cultures. But we can't have everything, and I will gladly and gleefully settle (oh, the hardship) for a capable, rounded, intelligent, powerful female lead for now.)

Anyway, yes. The individuality idea. Devi's clearly had to fight (and fight, and fight, and fight) to carve out her own niche, to be more than just a cog in a machine. At the start of book one, we find she's willing to take a lot of risks to be who she wants to be - she's already quit, abruptly, a job everybody else thinks she should stick with, because she can't see how staying there any longer will let her be the person she should. Personal choice is raised again and again within the plot, and reinforced in so many of the characters' backgrounds that it does seem to be a running theme. The clustering and hive-mind examples cropping up are extremely plot-relevant, too, so I won't say too much more, though there's a lot of nice mirroring going on, where a major large scaled plot point is similar to a small issue raised and dealt with already. I can see a few ways this could pan out in book three, so I'm looking forward to seeing if I'm right there.

Okay, that got quite long and involved. Here's your TL;DR:

Basically, I really enjoyed this. It develops everything from the first book, without lagging or slowing the pace at all. In fact it speeds up. One problem is solved and another three are piled on. There's potential peril, mild peril, extreme peril, then oh-dear-heavens-everybody's-going-to-die-in-the-next-thirty-seconds-and-the-universe-is-doomed peril too, just when you thought you'd got extreme enough.

There are sci-fi in-jokes and references slipped sneakily in without in any way harming the plot or characters. The characters themselves are so well defined that sometimes they have a line that's just so perfect for them it's a delight to read - and wonderful to realise that we've been led to know these people well enough to spot that.

I am (clearly, she says, looking back up at the length of this rambling post) thoroughly invested in this universe and these characters, truly intrigued by the plot and eager to see where it's going, and very much looking forward to the finale in Heaven's Queen later this month.

There are still plenty of problems for Devi to shoot.

I babble, because I care

Today I got quite a bit of necessary stuff done, including feeding my car and myself, and foraging successfully for food in the wilds of the supermarket.

I finally started watching season two of Dollhouse, which I never did quite get round to before. At the moment I'm consumed with horror... at the different hairstyles...

And I almost finished the Honour's Knight review, though it's now over 1200 words and I should probably run it past someone else who's read the books to make sure it's not inadvertently spoilery. But I am having far too much fun doing odd sci-fi lit-crit writing analysis on it. I should probably tone that down a little too.

I can't help it; when I find an author doing something well, I want to pluck it out and show it to everyone and go, "Look! See! This is how you do exposition! Just like this!" And then I get so wrapped up in that I forget what my original point was.

This is why a lot of the time I don't mind that whole "reading as a writer" thing. Sure, half the time it means I go, "Oho, blatant foreshadowing, therefore this is about to happen", but sometimes it means I stop halfway through a book and just blink at the page, going, "Wait... you just... you set that up, and it fits in perfectly, and you haven't compromised anything else to get to it. That is a piece of art right there."

Basically, I get to see when writers are trying really hard and putting in the thought and the effort, and I really appreciate it. And I want everyone to. I want people to go flocking back to the author and go, "This bit! This bit must have taken ages to get right. We are grateful for your time and for the fact that you worked hard so that this particular little bit would be a joy to read. We know you did more than just phone it in. We see how much you cared. Thank you."

Maybe I won't cut too much from the review/art essay after all.

Prose in motion

Quiet day after all the Marvel excitement, today. Read all the comics I borrowed, so I can give them back next time. Managed a couple of little bits and pieces around the house, including starting on clearing some space for Dance Central to happen. Soon...
A couple of things are in motion, and indeed in the post, winging their ways to me to remind me that people are amazing sometimes, and exceptionally kind and generous. More on those when they arrive.

Otherwise I generally fell into writing and got stuck all day. The current Hanith short story has more than doubled in length today, and thoroughly distracted me from everyone else. Poor Dryden isn't getting a look in at all at the moment.

What happened there is that I drew up a week plan and assigned one short story idea to each day. When I immediately went, "Damn, I'm looking forward to Friday," that clarified which short story I should obviously be writing next, so out went the plan and in came Hanith. I've even managed to hit the point where I can actually write, where I stop hunting for precisely the right word and put in info-dump filler for now. It's a point where I know what information my characters need to convey but phrasing it in a pretty way is going to take far too long, so they just get on with it and say it.

Ie, first draft. Though it's surprising how much of that kind of blunt, straight-to-the-point dialogue ends up staying, actually. Often it just works, and you don't need the prettification you think you do. People are blunt sometimes, especially when they're tired or stressed or angry or in pain, which characters in the middle of a medieval fantasy adventure usually are...

Infinite feedback loop

Today I finally managed to send some feedback to one of the friends who gave me feedback on my stuff, and whose NaNoWriMo novel I'll be reading at some point to give feedback on that...

I used to be better at feedback/critique, I think. I studied Creative Writing at university, and the group feedback sessions were a pretty big part of the whole thing. It was generally a lot easier to critique their stuff than it is to critique my NaNo group's, because many of them tended towards cliches much of the time. That seems less common among my lot, possibly because all of those from whom I've read stuff are, ahem, a few years out of uni and better read as a result.

Also, probably, I'm out of practice.

It is very difficult to critique something good, though. You'd think the few flaws would stand out more than ever - and that might be true for typos - but think about it. Think about your favourite films or books. They're not flawless (nothing is). But if they're good, if you're enjoying reading or watching them, you forgive them the odd fumble here and there. You wince at the clunky line and let it slide by. You handwave your own explanation for the minor inconsistency. You flagrantly ignore the giant plothole in the basic setup.

So it's much, much harder to remember to point out these flaws that we've trained ourselves to ignore when we're trying to help our fellow writers polish up the next draft. It often feels like nitpicking, like we're bent over the manuscript in candlelight, muttering wildly to ourselves that they won't get away with it this time and cackling into the night when we find something to pounce upon...

Or maybe that's just me. I do all my best critiquing in the crypt, swathed in black cloak.

I know, though, that for my stuff I'd much rather have the cackling circles around every typo or unnecessary adverb (leave the necessary ones alone, all of you waiting with your red pens uncapped already) than have the entirety of the feedback read, "Yeah, I liked it."

That's why I try (and don't always succeed) to point out anything I can. It would be a darn sight easier if people didn't write such enjoyable first drafts, that's all.

Stop the clocks

Smaller achievements/shiny things of the day: have been sent second "Lavender and the Random Acolyte" story from my wonderful group (read and enjoyed), used up the last of the leftover pork by successfully following another recipe from my friend's mother (it involved dumplings, and I wasn't the only one who ate it, and there is none left, so I'm counting that as a triumph even if the pork did get a bit burnt).

Big shiny thing of the day: I finally finished Tick Tock. Heavens above, that story has taken it out of me.

Tick Tock started life aeons ago, intended for a Steampunk Horror anthology, but I was well and truly stuck in my rut back then and couldn't even start writing it. I told the basic idea to my friend Sarah, though, with much hand-waving and sarcastic asides (from me, I should say) and she liked it. She liked it so much that every time from then on that I mentioned an attempt at writing any short story, she'd demand, "Is it Tick Tock?"

She kept it alive in the back of my head, and eventually I stumbled across a submissions call for "Lesbian Steampunk", and thought I'd try again.

From the dates on the Open Office document, it would appear it's taken me almost two weeks to write it, start to finish. From the dates on the doc for Hanith, that one was about two weeks too, from start to submission. Hanith was 4500 words. Tick Tock is 8500. No wonder I feel absolutely shattered.

Strange to think that 75 thousand words in just over twice that time was nowhere near as difficult.

Short stories seem much harder to do. You need a clearer focus, one central idea on which to hang the trappings of a story, rather than the multiple interweaving subplots and grand concepts and sheer waffle you can explore in a novel, let alone NaNoWriMo when it's all about the word count, baby. I lost track of my central idea a couple of times while writing Tick Tock (which is partly why it's currently 8500 words, including a couple of scenes where I did the NaNo trick of Keep writing and you'll find your way back onto plot somehow). This doesn't really surprise me, given that it started out as a horror story concept and has since morphed a couple of times and completely changed its ending at least twice in the process. So tomorrow I should be editing and trimming and tidying and maybe, maybe, if I'm lucky and it's not as flabby and unfocused as I fear, I'll be able to make the submission deadline. I shall, therefore, go to bed now and save the thoughts on short stories for a different blog post, when I am actually awake.

Also I should clean the kitchen. My pots and pans are stacking up.

It's a big success for me, though, and I am proud of finishing it, whatever happens from here.

Immortality (after a fashion)

So this is a thing that happens when I write: the nearer I get to the end of any project, the slower I go. It's an exponential and irritating decrease. I go from an easy 5000 a day at the start to a clawed and desperate 200 words if I'm lucky, in between bouts of staring at an unchanging screen. There's not even enough distraction on the internet to justify the levels of avoidance I get to. And don't get me started on the sudden upsurge of urgent real life errands that absolutely must be done right now.

It's probably something to do with the terror of finishing anything and the implications of the huge looming consequences. If I finish a short story or a novel I don't have any excuse not to submit it somewhere.

Submitting stuff is scary. I don't deal well with rejection. I have enough people who view my writing as a cute, endearing little hobby already; while it'd be nice to prove them wrong, the pity and knowing exchanges when I try and fail will be far worse than the current condescension. The odds of acceptance versus rejection are not in my favour. Much safer just to always have something almost finished, really.

Why yes, I am about five sentences shy of a completed short story and writing a quick blog post instead, why do you ask?

And yes, I am writing that short story instead of editing Dryden as I should be...

There's always a way to make my projects live forever.

Sigh.

Never enough hours in the day

About a year ago Dryden informed me I'd be writing a novel about him. He just turned up one day, nameless and superior and amused by his current situation, in media res, and left me to work out the rest for myself. I wrote a few of the scenes that laid out his character best, but 2013 was a fairly tumultuous year for me, and I simply didn't have the time or concentration to actually write the full thing for quite some months.

Then November came along. I've been a fan of National Novel Writing Month for years, and actually managed to make the 50-thousand-words-in-30-days requirement to win in both 2011 and 2012, though both those projects were abandoned promptly on the 1st December, eternally unfinished. For 2013, I decided I'd up the ante, and aim for 75 thousand words in 30 days. 75k, I hoped, would be enough to actually get through Dryden's plot, from beginning to end, to put down one last full stop and declare the thing finished.

Finished is a magic word. One I haven't had much opportunity to use. I get distracted by other things, lose confidence in whatever it is I'm writing, and generally sigh and give up and go back to writing all the random little bits and pieces that never go anywhere, or try to get a proper job again.

I finished (cue gasps!) Dryden's first draft at 74k on the 30th of November, wrote another 1k to make it past both my targets for the month, and put it aside to start editing soon (and went off to start buying Christmas presents).

Things have been a bit busy since then. I've not just had Christmas and New Year, but been up and down the country fairly non-stop (it feels like it, at least). And there's a lot coming up too:

If I get Dryden edited in time and think it would help, there's this at the end of February. (Though it costs to enter, and that's an inhibiting factor for me right now.) (EDIT: Yeah, that didn't happen. Dryden isn't ready and I had too much on to get it there.)

I must, absolutely must, find the time to do my final proofreading/copy-editing exam and send it back to the sfep approved group who did my training course last March, within the one year deadline from said course date. (Though this requires my brain to be functioning at full capacity.) (EDIT: Did it, managed it, with a day or two to spare. Now I never have to think of it again.)

If I find time to write that steampunk short story I've had in my head for a long time now, there's this anthology (or two) which it fits nicely, to which I need to submit ideally by March 15th. (EDIT: Yup, managed that, just waiting to hear now.)

If I find time to finish up that other LGBT fantasy short story, there's also this rather nice edition of the BFS journal which I need to get to before May 5th. (EDIT: Of course, I went and worked on that one first, and finished a first draft of the thing just shy of the 5k upper limit at about half past midnight on what's now the 15th Feb. Oh well. It's all progress, I suppose. And I think it's quite cute. EDIT AGAIN: And it's submitted now, late on the 25th Feb, so we'll see what happens.)

Oh, and I'm currently ill, for the first time in about 18 months. Yay!

So here we go. Busy, busy, and a blog to boot. Wish me luck.