rambling.effluvium.zenunlimited

I only managed about 5,000 words today, rounding out chapter sixteen and getting about halfway through chapter seventeen.

Bah. Still, slow is better than not at all, even if I’m really not too happy with what I wrote today. It feels as if I was floundering a bit, and I spent a lot of time struggling with certain world details and patching up a few plot holes in what I’d written today.

Eh. The weekend isn’t over yet.

And if I don’t fix it this weekend, I’ll fix it in edits.

Um. So. I decided to go ahead and upgrade WordPress, both for security and to remove that comment-editing problem; it only took two or three clicks through the Fantastico control panel, but I’m poking around the new admin interface now and…um…

DO NOT WANT.

Jesus. The new admin layout is everything I’ve always hated about typical, top-heavy WordPress blog layouts, complete with disjointed bars of crap stuck everywhere. (This layout was a rare find, and I still had to tweak it to remove a lot of the excess header space and tone down the oversize “HAY GUYZ LETS MAKE TEH TITLE OF TEH BLOG TINGY TAKE UP HALF TEH SCREENZ” crap.) One day I would love a chance to tell designers that just because you can do something with Web 2.0 capabilities doesn’t mean you should.

Only good thing?

It auto-saves drafts.

The rest…is going to take some getting used to.

Right, I’m supposed to be writing.

This won’t make any sense to anyone but Hikaru (yet), but I managed to get in an argument with myself about my story today. The basic inner workings of my head while writing:

…hey…hey, wait. The place they’re in is basically a featureless white void, right?

Oh, god. ~facepalms~

…no, I don’t really have voices in my head. But that’s kind of how it sounds when I argue contrasting points of logic with myself to try to work a problem out.

…right. Okay. Stop looking at me like that, I’m going to go write now.

So for those of you who’ve read chapter one of the untitled YA novel…you might have noticed it’s set in Chicago, the windy city, that place that I will soon call home and that currently has me flailing between euphoria and panicked hysterics because it’s so close. When I was writing I found myself looking for setting details, wanting to be accurate and believable; I had to find a neighborhood for Ken to live in, a school that she would go to, various places within walking distance, etc. Not to mention Brian’s neighborhood, which would have to be better than hers but still within walking distance. There’s also a scene at Union Station.

I wrote much of it from memory, as many of the places included in the book - Hyde Park, Union Station, Promontory Point - are places I’ve been to, and what I couldn’t remember I researched online using various tourism sites, Wikipedia (I know, I know, it’s Wikipedia), encyclopediae, and even Google Maps / Streetview to get a better idea of the current condition of the streets I was writing about (since I haven’t been there in ten years). When that wasn’t sufficient, I picked Hikaru’s brain to jog my memory or to get a reference on places I hadn’t been.

Yet I still don’t feel as if it’s enough, and while I’m up there in June I’ll also be visiting these various places and fact-checking so I can adjust setting details if necessary.

I’ve heard a thousand complaints about authors who don’t research their locations at all, or who do but who save all research for after the fact without even bothering to try for a hint of authenticity in their first (or tenth) draft, and barely bother with revisions even after checking things out. (I’ll refrain from mentioning my favorite whipping girl on this one, as it’s just not nice of me to pick on one author, now is it?)

But can one go in the opposite direction? Can one research too much?

Am I overthinking this (mainly as an excuse to avoid work)?

This is not a place where I normally discuss personal things, but…I hate days when I miss people who are truly best left out of my life, both for my own good and theirs.

On the plus side, the angst of that plus watching Drew Barrymore chick flicks lend themselves well to writing from the perspective of an angsty teenaged girl with newly discovered elemental powers and one annoying boy shadowing her.

…my first project for work is due in less than two hours and I’m only a third done with it. Christ, I’m such a slacker today. Buuuuut…I only have one project due tomorrow, and while that’s a loss of about $100, it’s not a big deal. If I can make myself do three projects today, I’ll have a three-day weekend.

Also, I have agreed to let a woman who absolutely terrifies me read Embers of Elysium. She’s trading one of her works in progress, but still. It’s even worse because Anji, the darling dykeadelic diva who acted as my second set of eyes on final edits of EoE, has told her how awesome it is and set the hype even higher so that the inevitable letdown will be that much worse.

…either that, or I’m quoting one of my favorite horribly bad 90s sci-fi TV series, which was sadly but justifiably canceled before even one full season. Though an (un)interesting bit of trivia: when I was a kid, I wanted very badly to be a Marine. If not for my health and abysmally poor vision, I might have gone a very different route than the path my life has taken, and never have ended up as a scruffy, bitchy writer.

Today is a Mort Rainey day: crooked black-framed reading glasses, unkempt hair, unshaven, stretched-out oversized long-sleeved t-shirt (to replace his ratty bathrobe), and coffee while I rant at my cat about bad writing.

It is a horribly and happily frumpy day, and I am contentedly curled in my recliner next to a storm-spattered window, finishing up the day’s writing work so I can try to move on to some fiction. I haven’t written anything on the YA story since that blitz over the weekend - partially to give my brain a break, and partially because I immediately dove from that into a predictable “I suck” funk.

Here’s to getting over that today, I hope.

…dammit, I forgot to eat again. ~shuffles into the kitchen to take care of that~

I…ah…I just booked my flight to and from Chicago for the end of June.

Holy shit.

I’d already booked my hotel reservations, but those could be canceled at the last minute. This is non-refundable and official. I’m officially going up to Chicago to look for an apartment. I can officially afford to go up to Chicago to look for an apartment, which is even weirder. It’s still a little surprising to realize the dramatic upswing in my financial situation.

So many things are coming together. I’m a full-time writer making decent money, I’m almost done with a second novel that may actually have a chance at being published (and who knows, Baen may accept EoE, though I’m not holding my breath), and now I’m so many steps closer to moving back to the city I love, where I can feel like I’m home and solidly settled where I want to be in my life while I work on achieving other things that I want to accomplish. I’m still a little flabbergasted, and unsure of what to do with it.

Although hiding under the bed from sheer nervousness seems like an option.

I’ll…ah…I’ll catch up on comments to the last entry soon. After the butterflies in my stomach settle. Although Kaine, if you swing by here again any time soon? E-mail me at adrien@zenunlimited.com. Your iPod nano finally showed up on my doorstep, and I need your address to mail it out to you.

Sweet honkin’ Jesus on a pogo stick. ~collapses~ I started off at 1p today with 71,000 words on the YA novel. I ended at 6:30p with 80,000 words, my goal for the weekend - and gods help me, they may actually be good. The writing pulled me in and left me breathless and choked up in a way I haven’t been for a while. It was immensely satisfying; I finished chapter fourteen, wrote all of chapter fifteen, and started chapter sixteen before making myself stop before I 1. gave myself a headache, and 2. wrote until it started to suck.

I was starting to worry that chapter fourteen would be the YA novel’s equivalent of chapter eleven on EoE (those who read that one as I wrote it will probably remember just how much I stumbled over it, stopped, started, stopped again, cursed and tore my hair out, then finally forged through it and moved on). I’m just glad to have gotten past it, and to have been able to enjoy spending half my day writing like that. It was nice. Really nice. And I really think I may finish this thing. (If I don’t, Hikaru may kill me; he’s the only one who’s reading as I go along with this one, and he’s been salivating for more pages for a month, the bloody fanboy - and he read these immediately after I finished them and nearly gave himself an aneurysm squeeing. I can’t trust him for a critique, but he’s great for my confidence.)

Now if only I could think of a bloody effin’ title for it…but not today. I think I’ve maxed out my brain for the day. Too many words in too little time.

…watch I’ll read it again in a week and think it sucks.

Also? This is bloody effin’ awesome.

…and…wtf, eh? Do I think I’m faux-British or something? Bloody effin’ this and bloody effin’ that. I blame dating a Brit-boy for almost a year.

One of my LiveJournal friends edits for several small publishers, mostly in the het and m/m romance novel genres. (And by “small” we mean “she gets paid in books and/or pennies for royalties, and they will accept almost anything just to say they’re publishing something;” I almost went that route to pick up more editing work to fill out my resume, but the one I tried out was…well, it was made of crazy, and said friend agreed.) She posts some hilarious excerpts to her LiveJournal that make me at once howl with laughter and cringe in sympathy, as trust me, in my line of work I get some pretty horrible things to deal with as well (…only mine aren’t fictional and I’m free to rewrite them as I see fit).

The other day, though, she said:

“Adri told me not to mention him in the same context as [a type of porn best left unmentioned that left me shrieking in horror that my name was even in that sentence, even if it was used for quality contrast]. But if these idiot [word best left out of my public blog] get published and he doesn’t, I’m gonna have me some things to say to the inner workings of the universe, yo. And they’d better be prepared for pain.”

Violent loyalty is so adorable, isn’t it? One of the reasons I love her. Oddly enough, though, I couldn’t agree with her, even though there is some injustice in the way it’s set up. But the genres and target industries are so wholly different that they aren’t even comparable, and although I shouldn’t be so calm about it, I’m perfectly accepting of just why I might be rejected by every major publisher out there no matter how many people tell me they love my writing. Rather than repeat what I said in different words, might as well just copy-paste my response to her LJ:

“Main difference is, those “idiot [there's that word again]” are targeting a small publisher in an industry that only cares if the story has sex that appeals to some demographic or another. They want something that will sell to someone so they can say they have books, they’re selling books, they’re a publisher. I’m targeting a large publisher who has more books than they know what to do with and wants something that will sell to a large audience, so they’re intensely critical of everything they read and will throw out very good books that would only garner sales in a niche market in favor of barely-acceptable books that will still have widespread public appeal.”

I shouldn’t be so accepting of that, but that’s the reality. I can’t change it. All I can do is keep writing and keep submitting, and not quit until someone picks up something.

And you never know. I’ve only submitted to one major publisher (I was surprised to find out how wide Baen’s distribution actually is) and they haven’t told me yes or no, yet. After that there’s still Tor, DAW…someone might say yes. So I can’t jump to conclusions and assume I’m waiting for a rejection; I just have to be realistic and understand that it’s likely so I don’t get my hopes crushed too much and don’t build up an overwhelming sense of ego assuming that of course they have to accept my novel from the thousands they weed through regularly.

This has been your random Sunday rambling.

I should try eating something today. ~flees~

My grammar is in no way perfect. I have my stumbling points, my persistent stylistic flaws, my areas of ignorance where often my grammar reflects popular (but incorrect) use rather than appropriate textbook English.

However, it amuses the hell out of me when someone comes at me with a few terms snatched from a 3rd grade English textbook, tries to correct my grammar, and is entirely, hilariously wrong.

Yeah. I’m an ass like that.

I only wrote about 500 words yesterday. I spent more time editing a little just for a bit of consistency, as I’m working on chapter 14 of that YA novel and I’ve noticed that the style I started off with when I was euphoric and inspired has slowly degraded over the course of the story. That’s going to happen as I grow more focused on getting the events down so I can finish the long haul, and I’ll revise for style during multiple rounds of edits. Chapter 14 was bothering me, though, since I’m picking up in the middle after a long pause, so I worked on it a bit just to get my train of thought back. With any luck I’ll end up spending the whole weekend following that and getting closer to the end. I doubt I’ll be distracted by WoW; now that the newness has worn off (and I’ve been kicked out of the Draenei starting area to go explore the rest of the world) the addiction is starting to lapse. The Burning Crusade expansion is vividly compelling, and makes the rest of the game look a little flat and directionless. The point is to make your own story, follow your own quest lines and such, I know - but I was enjoying that sense of urgency that came from following the new storyline. It’ll pick up again eventually as I level more and I can go back for higher-level Burning Crusade quests, but I’m in no hurry.

Plus I have to let poor Hikaru catch up. He’s barely at level 16, and I’m at level 25.

At least the apartment’s clean.

Time for work and a breakfast of turkey wraps, now.