Main

July 31, 2005

23, 24-ish

Ah, such a sad loss. 10 pages gone, but four written. Six to go to get back to my old state. (sigh)

Rewrites are going s-o-o-o-o sl-o-o-o-w. And I'm going to Chicago on Wednesday. Won't be back until Sunday night. Figure it'll take me at least a day to decompress and...yep. There goes yet another week of progress.

shitfuckfuckshitshityarrblah!

I am lousy at patience. I think I'm going to become a hermit for the rest of August that is mine and tell everyone that I love them, and I love hanging out with them, but please SCREW OFF for a while so I can WRITE.

Cranky? Me? Pshaw!

Posted by sdshaver at 01:53 AM | Comments (0)

July 30, 2005

chapter 23 / 24

I caught myself committing cliché in lieu of writing a good story, and have decided to excise the last two pages of 23, and most of what I wrote in 24. Yeah, yeah. I'm dense. Sometimes you just gotta write it out of your system....

And yes, I know it's 45 minutes past my bedtime Mr. Alarm Clock. I'm going, I'm going.

I'll get up early and fix what I lost, go to market and buy my new dress, print out the new attendance cards, make brownies, go to yet another goddamn social engagement, and then come home and write more, to say nothing of the letter(s) I owe to a lovely couple of individuals who are offering me some equally lovely favors.

Exciting life, Ms. Shaver. Thank you, I like to think so.

Christopher O'Riley makes very good revising music. And for an extremely limited time (they will be gone in 72 hours), here are some samples:

Posted by sdshaver at 01:43 AM | Comments (0)

July 29, 2005

chapter 24-ish-ish

24 worked on. Nearly done. Didn't get home till 11:30, didn't get writing till midnight. We were saying goodbye to Amanda, one of my dojomates, and it ran over.

Seems to be a week for goodbyes....

The alarm just went off. Have I mentioned the alarm? I don't think I have. I bought an alarm clock. It goes off at 1 AM. And when that happens, I write notes about whatever I'm working on, I save my document, and I go to bed.

No compromises. I need a bedtime. I'm getting too old for this shit.

Anyway, it's blaring, I'm yawning, and I can't ignore either anymore.

Yeah, yeah. I'm going, I'm going.

Posted by sdshaver at 01:03 AM | Comments (0)

July 28, 2005

cover

The cover changed a few days ago, but I forgot to mention it, and then I forgot about it entirely until I went to the main page today and realized mr. mystery guy's smiling face was no longer there.

So anyway, there's a new cover. Of Myr. Being tenacious. AYUP.

Posted by sdshaver at 12:25 PM | Comments (0)

chapter 24-ish, funerary

Notes made, will continue 24 tomorrow. I'm about to zap a whole lot of stuff, and thus make up for lost time and still keep my wordcount in line. MWA HA HA HA.

Interesting developments in email. That's all I'll say.

There was a funeral today, for my boss's dad. By all accounts Oscie Whatley was a neat guy, and I wish now I'd sat and talked with him more.

Posted by sdshaver at 01:02 AM | Comments (0)

July 26, 2005

really, truly

Taking tonight totally, completely, and absolutely off. Not even going to open them Word docs, no matter how tempting it would be. Swear.

Posted by sdshaver at 07:25 PM | Comments (0)

chapter 24 / chapter 3

Heroine in peril! Team Venture to the rescue! Winter just took a sharp turn to the right (3 pages into 24), while Poison (8000 words, 888 of them tonight) continues the steady path already marked out for it many times over.

Posted by sdshaver at 01:04 AM | Comments (0)

July 25, 2005

rants and lists

It starts to ramble toward the end, but replace "cartoonist" with "writer" and the first half of this rant pretty much sums up why I write.

I admit to #6 and #9 in my own writing (or, at least, the first drafts and blog posts).

I'll add a #11: Starting sentences with "And" as an indicator of something important going on. It's a shortcut that can be effective, but overuse turns the prose flat.

Posted by sdshaver at 11:56 AM | Comments (0)

ch. 24 (tSoW), and insanity

Over in Winter, 24 is done and cliffhanged. Yay!

"But Steph!" you argue. "You're already working on one book! And you have a dayjob! And a social life! Sorta. Have you gone mad??"

There's extensive documentation establishing that I am, in fact, batshit crazy. Next question.

And besides, Winter is close. Real close. And much as I hate downtime, it'll need some downtime, during which I can work on Poison. Hell, just printing it on my crappy inkjet should take a week. Nyuk nyuk.

In the soundtrack department: The Killers (debut album) for Poison, Muse (Absolution) for Winter. Smart-assed readers may think I should listen to the band Poison for Poison. Those readers can totally bite me.

Posted by sdshaver at 02:25 AM | Comments (0)

July 24, 2005

chapter 2

Ending worcount: 7157. In my head, my villain looks like Dave Navarro, ex-guitarist for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and that disturbs me.

Dinner, jam, and then probably some sort of work on Ria's tale.

Posted by sdshaver at 08:41 PM | Comments (0)

chapter 2

Ending Wordcount for tonight: 5268 (only 95k to go!).

That marvelous confidence continues, despite the fact that I'm rewriting a book that seems to be a failure in the realm of publishers and agents.

I'm really enjoying the lyrics to "Midnight Show" (The Killers) right now.

Posted by sdshaver at 02:23 AM | Comments (0)

July 23, 2005

"poison to the dead"

For now, that's the working title for the SoS rewrites until I come up with something better. 3,600 words so far.

Here's the plan: rewrite it in a month (like I did with Firebird), get it shorter, keep it tight and focused, send it out again. After this, I don't think I'm going to try and rewrite it. I'll move on to another character and another part of the world, but at the moment I'm just not willing to give up on this particular character and this particular part of the world.

I also woke up wanting to work on it. I still say rejection can be an addiction.

Posted by sdshaver at 01:47 PM | Comments (0)

July 22, 2005

night off

Taking the night off. Sleep is good, but me and the pen are going to sit down and draw out ideas.

I think I'm going to go back to one of the earlier versions, where Rain and Myr were already ass-deep in trouble when the story started. Already planted 500 words to ferment.

Night all. Keep your dreams close.

Posted by sdshaver at 11:45 PM | Comments (0)

agent responses, part 3

Rejection #2. "...didn't find it to be working at quite the high level I've got to seek in today's competitive markets."

Yeah, it's starting to look like this book is going to die. Or get seriously rewritten.

Well, I did start it five years ago.

[EDIT] Hm. Yeah, I think I want to rewrite it.

Posted by sdshaver at 11:59 AM | Comments (0)

notes from chapter 23


I banged up my hip last night walking through my house half-awake. That's right, kids -- half of me walked to the bedroom, and the other half walked right into a fucking wall. Wonderful! Call me Girl Genius!

Posted by sdshaver at 02:13 AM | Comments (0)

July 21, 2005

chapter 22 revisit

Forgot to blog in last night. I was here at the keyboard, but I was way too tired to do anything but write and then go to bed.

My re-read told me that I didn't like how I handled 22 as much as I thought I did. The little niggling voice said it was wrong ("Too pat" according to her), and I agreed. So the scene in question got a rehaul, and will see a few more revisions before I move on to 23.

Posted by sdshaver at 12:20 PM | Comments (0)

July 20, 2005

chapter 22

There 'tis, the total rewrite. 4000 fresh words written today. Character development galore. "Self-imposed misery and angst", and how to work past it.

When did this book become an allegory for trying to get published? :P Oh, well, write what you know, write what you love.

My playlist is pitifully short for the rewrites. Lots of new bands. Lots of upbeat drum rhythms. Lots of males. Lots of retro. Lots of funny, semi-violent names.

Posted by sdshaver at 02:00 AM | Comments (0)

July 19, 2005

Last Girl Dancing

The story of an undercover cop named Jess, a psychic named Hank, a strip club with a problem, and a string of dead girls.

Title: Last Girl Dancing
Author: Holly Lisle
ISBN: 0451411978
Sample Chapters? Yes.

I bought this book on a personal dare.

The dare was this: I was shopping at my grocery store. I glanced at the anemic book aisle. Little voice says -- "If LGD is on that shelf, you're going to buy it." I snorted at the little voice -- what were the chances? -- glanced over the shelf, and there it was in all its neon-pink-and-purple glory.

Well, I'll be hornswaggled.

So about the book itself. Most of my exposure to Holly's work has been her fantasy fiction, and mostly the earlier works. I wasn't sure what to expect of this.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that she's really damn good at suspense. Or maybe I'm just a big ol' chicken. I read it with my hands gripped around the pages whispering, "Jess, don't go in there. Jess, don't go in there. Jess, for the love of god DON'T GO IN THERE." Incidentally, the last book I did that with was Wolves of the Calla by Stephen King, though back then it was: "Jake, get OUT of the FUCKING LOCKER and RUN."

The main characters are well-crafted and great to follow around. Hank's psychic-ness is never cartoony or over-the-top, a touch I liked. Jess does not do stupid things that put herself in trouble for the sake of the plot, a touch I REALLY liked. The story is well-paced. The writing is compact and sleek. The sex is sexy and also, er, well-paced (ah ha ha ha ha -- god I'm funny). I do wish the "race car" scene had stayed in the finished work, but I now happily look upon that journal entry as a sort of behind-the-scenes extra-DVD feature. Nyah.

I'll admit I had one quibble with it: Research dump. There were times -- not often, but a few times -- when I felt a bit like the characters opened a floodgate and out came the research the writer put into the story. This all served to teach me a hell of a lot about strip clubs and police procedure, but it often pulled me above the surface of the story.

This is, however, a minor quibble. It's a fast, fun, tense, satisfying read that I blew threw in a matter of days -- a record for me, considering my work schedule. At 2 AM, when I finished it, I lay in bed staring at my ceiling and trying to pretend my random house noises were just that.

But that's what I get for reading a good serial murder novel before bedtime.

Posted by sdshaver at 05:05 PM | Comments (0)

July 18, 2005

chapter 21

More shuffling in 20. Rewrote major portions of 21 and I'm wrapped on it for now.

I want to dive into 22 very badly and write the new scene I have been wanting to write for a month, but I'm exhausted and I know it. When I'm nodding off at 11 PM, it's a sign that I need to go to bed.

I may be able to wake up early enough to get it done, though...we'll see.

Posted by sdshaver at 11:51 PM | Comments (0)

July 17, 2005

chapter 21 and confidence

Chapter 21 is turning into a sticky wicket. This is the "total chapter rewrites" I've mentioned previously. Ah ha ha ha. Major reveals are a bitch, and I tend to layer them in all over the place because I like them in the fiction I read. Write what you know, write what you love.

I'm learning to write with confidence. That is, when I'm alone and writing, I write like I am the goddamn best fantasy author in the universe. I write like I am a god of speculative fiction. I write like I have authority because when I'm sitting here alone in my basement, tapping away frantically at the keys, I have no one to answer to except myself. If I don't have authority now, when it's just Me vs. Me, I never will.

Of course, I don't edit that way. I shapechange into an entirely different bitch-beast for that stage of the writing. And I don't deal with editors that way (I can't tell you what I'm like then -- it's been ages since an editor has called me up to yell at me about my dumb writing). But when it's just me and the characters, that's how we roll: with confidence and authority.

It's a great fantasy to fall into. I'm not sure if it's some magical writing epiphany I've reached or what, but revising Ria's story, it sure feels like I have.

Posted by sdshaver at 11:56 PM | Comments (0)

chapter 19

Moved a significant (4-page) portion of 19 over to 20, wrote an extra page to help flesh out the world.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was unique and pretty, with better production value than the older Willy Wonka, though I missed Gene Wilder's deadpan (and highly quotable) one-liners. Johnny Depp's Wonka was less weary wiseass and more neurotic smartass; he reminded me of Manservant Hecubus crossed with an undead Peter Pan. I didn't love it to bits, but I did like it, and I got several sinister giggles out of it.

It reminded me of how difficult and simple a child's view of the world can be. Of course whipped cream involves whipping a cow. Of course trained squirrels make the best nut-seperators. Of course chocolate mixed with a waterfall makes the lightest and frothiest chocolate.

I think there's a trend in fantasy writing to try and find explanations for the why and how of magic; the science of it, per se. I think it takes a deft touch to find the middle ground that still leaves some of this to the reader's imagination. That keeps magic magical rather than the pseudo-medieval equivalent of a raygun or automobile.

To use Star Wars as an example: Did people really need an explanation for how the Force can be manipulated? Did we really need to see how (easily) Anakin was duped turned? Did we need to know how much young Obiwon kicked ass? Well, okay, yes on the last one. But so many imaginative avenues were snuffed in three films. So much magical fire was stolen.

Ah well. I'm totally babbling and misspelling stuff left and right! A sure sign that bed is calling. Yawn!

Posted by sdshaver at 03:28 AM | Comments (0)

July 15, 2005

SOLD - "Safe and Sound"

Sold to the Valdemar anthology Crossroads, due out in December.

Hey honey, let's go celebrate by getting the car fixed!

(If only I were joking.)

Posted by sdshaver at 11:27 AM | Comments (0)

19

Worked through a horrid day of javascript and headaches. Somehow managed to be productive, albeit surly.

Revised 19. Bed is nice.

I notice there are only nine chapters left to revise. Uuuuh. Wow. But I have a couple total chapter rewrites coming, and then printing and hand-editing, and...yeah. Still. Wow.

Posted by sdshaver at 01:40 AM | Comments (0)

July 14, 2005

on to 19

18 is in a good state. I have some rewrites I need to import from elsewhere, but otherwise it's good.

I killed trackbacks in the blog; too much spam.

I've had an exhausting day, but it was a good exhaustion. Financially, it's been good, and that makes me a whole lot less stressed. Which, in turn, makes it a whole lot easier to write.

I <3 financial freedom.

Posted by sdshaver at 01:20 AM | Comments (0)

July 13, 2005

still on 18

Got a couple sentences on 18, but otherwise I went to bed early (for me) last night.

My books came, and tucked away inside was a postcard that I'll probably tack up somewhere in the basement office.

I'm looking at my traveling and socializing schedule and feeling stretched again. Such is the balancing act of my life.

Posted by sdshaver at 12:14 PM | Comments (0)

July 12, 2005

chapter 18-ish

Condensing two chapters (and omitting a bunch of needless hand-wringing and couch-draping) has resulted in a rewrite of 18. I would write more, but my lights are flickering, and I suspect lightning is toying with powerlines somewhere nearby.

Listening to Leonard Cohen and Suzanne Vega in one shot can make one feel like a poet -- until one goes back and re-reads one's own crap. Yarrrrr.

Night.

Posted by sdshaver at 01:26 AM | Comments (0)

July 11, 2005

chapter eighteen-ish

Due to various commitments I utterly forgot about, I wound up getting very little writing done today and yesterday.

...But I did get to see Howl's Moving Castle. I *heart* Miyazaki heroes (Ashitaka, Haku, Howl). They're the sort of men I like to write. Mysterious, capable, and usually haunted by something, somewhere. I realize that describes nearly every man in every fantasy novel ever written, but if I've said it once, I'll say it again: my impractical, romantic self is a sucker for a bastard with a past.

Okay. Bed. Night.

Posted by sdshaver at 01:14 AM | Comments (0)

July 09, 2005

chapter 17

Performed reconstructive surgery on Seventeen. Eighteen should also be done tonight, and Act 2's revision is nearly complete.

We got stuck in ridiculous traffic today. It was thoroughly...mmm...well...ridiculous. I bought too much fruit at the market, napped on my couch, and planted tarragon and thyme. I also bought pattypan squash.

Pattypan!

Posted by sdshaver at 06:34 PM | Comments (0)

through to chapter 16

Edited through to 16. I'm excising a chapter that no longer fits. I think.

I also once again wrote something that is either hysterical, or in extremely poor taste and not the least bit funny. Only an editor can say for sure.

I have to be up in six hours. Wow! I'm an idiot!

Posted by sdshaver at 03:53 AM | Comments (0)

July 08, 2005

I needed sleep

I somehow forget amidst all the vacation, cons, and holidays that I make a habit of taking at least one night off from writing per week.

So I did that last night, and I caught up on most of Battlestar Galactica, and reaffirmed that Edward James Olmos is my dream actor for Vadjo. The production team for this latest iteration of BG really needs a clap on the back and a cigar for bringing such taut elegance to what was otherwise a cheesy Star Wars knockoff of my youth. Yummy TV.

Oh! And I seem to have won a book over at PBW's blog. The quote in question is something my stepfather has framed in his office. One of my first acts in DragonRealms was to write it into a script and put it in my office. One might say it's been with me in one form or another for the last ten years. It's good company for a writer.

Posted by sdshaver at 12:12 PM | Comments (0)

July 07, 2005

organized chaos

Crap. Major plotpoint to restructure around. And I have to go to bed.

I sense a reoccuring theme. Time to add more hours to the day!

My favorite new thread I'm weaving into this revision is the heroine reading from a book that's about a heroine who has the same name as her. Confused? Yeah, well, um, I've been accused of having a "catbrain" before. That is, logic that confounds mortal men, yet seems perfectly rational to me. I like to think of it as "organized chaos".

That's how I'd describe the revisions right now, to be honest. Lots of chaos, but I can see where the threads tie up; I just gotta stick my hands in and pull it all together.

Posted by sdshaver at 12:25 AM | Comments (0)

July 06, 2005

chapter 13 solution, and wolves

A wolf sanctuary I would really like to visit.

On an unrelated note, the solution to restructuring chapter 13 is now in my fingers.

Goddammit. Why do I have to be creative at night? Whywhywhy? My workplace is very lenient with the whole "be in by 11 AM" thing, but I really don't get the creative flow until about midnight, and then it's all over.

I really want to finish out 13 tonight, but instead I'm going to bed. This is all Papo's fault. I inherited his nocturnal-ness. And his puns.

Fah. Feh. Fie.

Posted by sdshaver at 02:41 AM | Comments (0)

July 05, 2005

agent responses, part 2

Second agent SASE came back: no. A very nice, very polite no, but still a no.

I also got to Thirteen last night in Winter, which means I'm very close to halfway. But then I remembered I have to rearrange major sections of Thirteen and...now I don't think I'm so close.

Ngh. Sleep.

Posted by sdshaver at 11:31 AM | Comments (0)

rewrites - chapter 12-ish

Sunday. Too much socializing. Not enough writing. (sound of whip snapping) And today, I was so lazy that I got up, made and ate breakfast, and then went back to bed.

There's a paragraph in Twelve that just made me laugh aloud. Goodness.

I made pickled eggs. I realize there are some of you who can't think of anything worse than pickled eggs, but I'm one of those daft punks who thinks they're quite delectable.

Act Two by the end of the week. Watch me.

Posted by sdshaver at 01:07 AM | Comments (0)

July 03, 2005

chapter 10 and market day

Chapter 10 re-edited. 11 and 12 (I predict) will be another set of easy ones. Actually, they should all be pretty easy until 15 or so (I think).

I went to the farmer's market that was the basis for a market scene in this book. I bought many, many vegetables. I ate several of them for dinner. Mmmm. Corn.

Tomorrow I plan on making this. Ah yes. We love us some Thai food.

The cook throwing knives at a wall in my head really, really wants out, but I think she needs to ferment for at least another eight months.

Posted by sdshaver at 12:21 AM | Comments (0)

July 02, 2005

chapter 10-ish

Aw. I had to cut a good ("no means no") scene that didn't fit into this version of the tale. Ah well. No way to bring it back now.

10 is mostly re-edited. It probably needs a fresh scene added, but it's late and I must to-bed.

The goal is to maybe do Act 2 during this lovely break, since there's nothing I can do with the other works at the moment. Myr is off trying to pick up agents in NYC, and Lelia still hasn't sent a postcard from wherever she is. Typical.

I'm going insane! Night!

Posted by sdshaver at 03:55 AM | Comments (0)