An absolutely gorgeous day here: clear and blue, with backlit pure red and gold leaves tugged by the wind along the edges of the streets. Maybe it's the constant theme of evergreens that makes it all stand out so crisply.

Anyway, I'll take it where I can. I walked around 5 miles total today (gotta remember the hat that covers the ears next time, though) and found some whole wheat walnut bread at Macrina and a new external plot arc for an old book that was lacking just that. Hoorah! I think the internals arc and characters all still apply, and some of the old attempts at tension will still fit as complications, perhaps, but now this book has an actual point! (Or, rather, it will when I write it. But that doesn't start until next week.)

Going to a Regina Spektor concert tonight, with Italian food I hope, and a reading at the University Bookstore tomorrow (I haven't read any of these books yet and I don't actually read much horror, but they all sounded interesting!).
This is ones of those days when I feel so incredibly lucky to be living my life.

Yeah, I know that despite yesterday's post I don't really talk about other people's books on this blog. I honestly do in most other parts of my life, but I find it difficult to do well in the vacuum of a blog. Yet I don't like ignoring that part of my writing life -- reading is essential to writing, after all.

Maybe I should make more of an effort to post about books I love. But if I were pitching a book to a person, I'd find out first what their taste is, then think of what they might like, then pitch it according to their taste. ("Pitch" here is in the sense of handselling/book talking other people's books, not summarizing on of my books for an agent or editor.) I don't believe in the One True Good Book Everyone Will Love. My tastes are very eclectic, and many of my friends ask me to tell them which books I hated, since they're more likely to love those than the ones I liked.

You're all book people, I imagine, and you all have blogs: how do you handle this?

I've been thinking for a while now about the differences I see between self-promotion and being part of the reading community. As a writer, the thought of promoting my work makes me very uncomfortable. As a reader, I look at the media barrages from some authors and think "too much," and find out that other authors I love have had books out for months that I never knew about and think "too little".

For myself, I'm far more comfortable with being a visible part of the reading community than in promoting my own work. I don't think those things are exclusive, either. For one thing, when I want to find something new to read, I don't go searching for author websites -- I look for people who love books. People who read a lot and can recommend books I've never heard of, or let me know that something's out that I missed. Writers, take note: always be nice to your booksellers and librarians, in person and online!

And if someone whose recommendations I've enjoyed for years writes a book? You bet I'll hear about it, and that I'll be interested.

So, approximately halfway through the revisions now. Time has been shifted, minor characters have morphed and collapsed into each other, and surplus journeys have been rendered unnecessary. I have picked up entire scenes, scraped off all the connecting tissue, put them where they actually make some sense, and refabricated the tendon holding everything together with (hopefully) more story logic than before. Yes, I still have to scour the scenes for any remnants of their pasts, but don't ruin my sense of accomplishment just yet, okay?

I started out with 34,000 words in the sections I have just reworked. I now have 30,000. The vast majority of them are the same words in new configurations. I think this version really is much better, but... Plot and story arcs do not come naturally to me.

I really hope I haven't taken a week off to rearrange and polish turds.

(It helps a little to know I feel this way in the middle of every single revision.)

My Revisions Bunker is a state of mind, not an actual place. I'm home with all my usual distractions, minus any planned fun things and minus the day job for a week. As a "vacation", it's a little hard to explain, but I feel incredibly lucky to be doing this (when I'm not pulling my hair out, of course).

I do recommend starting something like this with lots of prepared food and as much clean laundry as you can arrange, because the everyday details part of my brain is immediately lost; it can take me an hour to make a cup of tea, because I keep forgetting what I'm doing. (It's helpful to explain in advance to anyone I'll see this week that this is normal, preferably with lots of posts from other writers to back me up.)

But if I ever do go somewhere else, it will definitely be like the Yarn Harlot's writing retreats (the first series & the second series). Only, without the snow, because the point is to survive the process.

Maybe I could just build a cabin in the back yard, with hot running water...

That I have finally figured out how to make the corkboard index cards in Scrivener work with my process.
Rejoice with me: they are delicious, so perfect and so color-codeable.

(Of course, now I want nothing more than to go eat plums...)

Note to self:

When you hit the OMG-Too-Hard-Too-Hard-Eek!-Panic! Wall?
Get some exercise. Really. It helps.

*tries to remember to schedule time for this sort of thing the next time she goes into the revisions bunker*

This is the part where I realize the first quarter of the book is All Wrong.

Diagnosis: This problem may be distinguished from the feeling that the Entire Book is All Wrong and Will Never Amount to Anything in the following ways:

a.) No one is intended to read the book in the next week, nor is it being sent anywhere immediately.

b.) This is a specific, identified issue, rather than a generalized horror; I could put what's wrong into a specific sentence or two. The solution does not involve book burning, and I can see it will make it better.

c.) Rather than the overwhelming melodramatic-yet-debilitating panic I experience when I get ready to send something out and make the mistake of reading a bit of it first, this is quiet, stomach-flopping horror. I understand this issue. I know what to do about it, and solving it will fix a longstanding vague unease. It's just really hard.

If there's someone out there who would like to go on a quest right about now and needs a worthy object to search for, please, would you bring me the Wand of Recognizing-These-Sorts-of-Issues-Before-the-*Mumbleth*-Draft?

(To all of my very kind and patient beta-readers -- I finally know what to do about the excessive travel. Thank you.)

*tattoos note to self on arm regarding early diagnosis of vague uneases next time; realizes is already out of room. contemplates decorating writing space with mannequin arms for just this purpose. realizes is catwaxing again.*

If you leave all thinking/planning/prework on a major revision until the first day of the actual project, it will eat the full day, leaving you with a grand total of zero actual new or changed words and lots of implementation panic.

Of course, it's not as though thinking doesn't count as work in projects like this. If I don't think hard at the beginning, I'll most likely have the fun of doing everything twice. Also, the point of devoting as much solid time as possible is to get into that book and then not come out until it's done, and part of getting in is the thinking.

But try telling that to the little voice in my head that's screaming and running around in circles.

*reminds screaming/circling voice how lucky she is to have time to do this at all, for realz*

*tattoos note to self on arm for next time*

Got a request in to the day job for a week off later this month...
Time for - revisions!

Time to reclaim some headspace around here once and for all...

*cracks knuckles, fills freezer, washes socks, gets out sticky notes and index cards, and battens hatches*

Those of you who've read Glamour might get a laugh from the Etsy treasury I just made...

Recognize any names? ;)

(Etsy treasuries are only up for a couple of days, so if you're clicking on this later, the link won't work for you. It's an ephemeral art, I'm afraid.)

What I do with my life seems balanced between three kinds of actions, of late: the clean-socks-warm-food-bills-paid actions, the ideas-words-thoughts-plans actions, and the making-stuff-with-hands actions. One rises for a while while others sink, and then it revolves again and reverses, the way I can sometimes say what I mean, or sometimes show it, or just get it done.

While clean socks land has been vying for attention, I don't have much to say there, other than to recommend Moosewood's Mexican Tomato Lime Soup for colds (scroll about halfway down the page for the recipe).

Regarding words -- the three projects I'm working on have been tugging my brain in different directions, and, due to the clean socks category, I won't have much time and true focus until later in October. I do like working on one almost-complete, one almost-brand-new, and one middlish project, though. The downside is that progress is hard to see, though work does get done.

And making stuff with hands has taken a new leap, probably due to the Seattle rains, into the form of Wraptilion, mad scientist and inventor, on Etsy and on my related blog. Though it's never bad for a writer to have multiple sources of income, this one's really a vehicle for making cool things without having to keep them all (I love the process of making far more than I need the finished products -- I only have so many arms, ears, and necks!), and having an arena to play with words without feeling like they'll be recorded forever. Surprisingly delightful -- I don't think I'd realized I needed that.

I'm curious, though -- are your lives more blended than this? Are your categories different? I find myself assuming my "normal" is everyone's, yet it almost never is...

Every time I poke my head in here after another gap in time, I feel like one of those kids hopping through parallel universes. Where am I this time? What have I (or haven't I) said?

Anyways. My draft of Glamour is off with better eyes than mine (thank you!!), so I'm playing with a different project. I made an electronic collage for it the other day, trying to get the feel of it. (It always seems odd to me, since visual stuff is hardly ever on my radar, but it really does seem to help -- so thank you, Jennifer Crusie, for the idea and the instruction!)

But I still couldn't get started. I had some feedback from the fabulous folks at the WisCon Writers' Workshop, and some ideas of my own, but it all just felt... stuck. Immobile. I opened the file, moved things around in Scrivener, looked at my collage, and went for a walk instead.

It's about two miles each way to my closest Goodwill thrift store. That seems to be long enough to get the fuzz and random song lyrics cleared out, with enough time left over to start plowing through ideas as well. I don't know why my brain wants to know how some of the later details really go down before it will start on the beginning again, but hey, if that's what it takes, okay. (This is a retelling of East of the Sun, West of the Moon, and my brain keeps wanting to discuss the significance/role of the shirt with me, despite my lack of interest. Price of admission, I guess.)

976 words and a cast iron cornstick pan for $1.99, now soaking in vinegar before I scrub the specks of rust in the kernels with salt again. Not bad for a Monday, and a new draft.

Whew.

We'll see how it looks tomorrow.

4,172 words from the end of this draft, and this book starts screaming for a new and different ending. It says I've got it all wrong, I just don't understand its true inner self, and where it's headed now. The old one doesn't make it happy any more.

And I've tried, really, I've tried. I've spliced and diced scenes into other scenes, trying to give it everything I possibly can, trying my best to support it as it goes. Trying to keep from holding it back. It's hard, when you can see something better than what you've got the skill to create.

And I think it's right, but I don't know how to do it yet. I know the elements, but I don't know the shape or the flow. This is one of the monsters that lives under the beds of writers: that blurry shape of knowing you can come so far, and still not know how to finish. I think it's all of these, exhaustion, indecision, and not being able to find the perfect puzzle piece, or losing sight of the puzzle altogether, that feeds into the endings I find unsatisfying.

1. I can see that the end that's in my old draft is wrong. Not in its components, but the shape of how it hits the page.

2. I know that the right end needs to match the book, and I now understand the book better than I ever have before.

But I cannot find the shape. And this is not something I can outline, or diagram, or ask someone else. It has to come from the same place the "Aha!" comes from, and I cannot force the "Aha!".

So I will have a handful of chocolate chips. And a walk. And I will give my brain nothing else to play with until it finds the shape of the true end. Because I am not on deadline, and this is not a performance art (thank you for this wisdom, matociquala). I may be lacking in talent and skill -- some days it certainly feels that way -- but I've got stubborness in spades. And I will not give up.

I'm in the middle of revisions again, tearing my hair and rending my sheets (of paper), and I'm in the deep, dark middle, where I wonder if I'm actually making the book better or not. And even though I know more about my own processes and also about what other writers advise, the tensions are growing, not decreasing. Because all the reasons sound good. All the arguments have validity. And this is yet another area where the answer is "it depends", and where I must pick my own way through. What's right for me, for this book, for this revision, for this point in my own learning?

In one camp: the writers who say that the job of the writer is to keep writing books, each one hopefully being stronger than the last. I've found it's true that it's easier to write a new, better book than it is to fix an older one. I also believe them when they say this is the job of the professional writer; few authors can live on the sale of one book for long. Beginning writers who follow this approach strictly often end up with 5-10 unpublished novels buried beneath their beds. (Note to those of you who don't hang out with writers: this is not sarcasm, this is what it can take to learn the craft.)

In another camp are the Walt Whitmans, those who polish the same novel over and over and over, trying to make it perfect. I've found that I learn different skills when I write later drafts than when I write new novels; my brain engages in different ways, and I'm able to look at different views of it. I also do believe that it's best to make sure my work is in the best possible shape when I look for an agent and try to sell a book in the current market. Beginning writers who follow this approach strictly often end up with 10-15 drafts of the same novel, and no other books. (Again, not joking, nor am I saying this is a bad thing: this is the process of learning to write, an apprenticeship, not a career approach.)

I'm somewhere in the middle, these days. I've written six novels to varying degrees, with a seventh poking at my brain, but it has taken me a number of drafts to learn how to really make them shine. It's been a good mix for my learning, partly because the skills involved are different: learning to begin novels doesn't teach me how to end novels. Learning to write novels doesn't teach me how to rewrite novels. And I tend to follow a layering approach; I can't usually get it all the way I want it in a single pass, because I can't look at it on all levels in a single pass (plot arc, sentence-level, rhythmic, thematic, series-wide, etc.) The more I write (and the more I revise), the more I'm able to hold in my head at once, but it's still difficult. And although I'm excited to move on to the next set of skills I really need to work on (presenting my work to possible agents), I also want to make sure I'm not shortchanging the work I've put in by rushing my learning. I figure time is on my side up until I sell a book; after that, I need to be able to produce quality work quickly, to keep my name alive in the market. So I better make sure I've learned as much as I can before then.

I've spent a lot of years trying to match readers up with books. So, periodically I become re-obsessed with appeal characteristics and doorways and other methods of categorizing the things readers look for in books.

Because most readers ask for books in code.

"I want to read something really good."

"I'm looking for a fun beach read."

"I like books I can't put down."

"I want something I've never read before."

"I need a comfort read."

These are really general statements, unless you pick up on the code. So, for instance, I usually associate "really good" books with award-winning literary novels that focus heavily on language. "Beach read" indicates light tone and a hopeful/happy ending that bring out a general sense of well-being in the reader. "Can't put down" is often fast pacing, lots of action. "Something I've never read before" can be idea or setting (say, Stiff by Mary Roach or The Red Tent by Anita Diamant, as examples). "Comfort read" is a specific tone/emotion combined with a slower pacing, to my mind, and may have characters triumphing over emotional hardships. But there's no guarantee we're speaking the same code here.

Why even bring this up? Because the more I read and the more I talk about books and think about books, the more I understand what I want to read at any given moment. And the better I get at putting that understanding into words, the better chance I have that other book-loving folks will think of something marvelous that fits my need. Hoorah for book match-making!

So tell me: what kind of book are you looking for right now?

(I want a funny book with a strong voice that isn't so compelling I miss my bus stops, to be my new favorite bus read and to put me in a good mood all day long. Any suggestions?)

In a conversation at WisCon, I was asked to share my list of questions for prospective agents. I'll start carrying these with me at all times once I begin querying the latest project, just in case. (An excellent memory is not one of my gifts, alas.) I've borrowed and adapted this from various agent and writing blogs that either suggested questions outright or made me think about what I really wanted to know and how to go about finding it out. (agent arcaedia and Agent Kristin come to mind particularly, but I know there have been lots more sources!) So, I give the knowledge I gained back to the interwebs for the purposes of once and future edification...

My personal list of questions for an agent who wants to sign me as a client, in no particular order:

QUESTIONS FOR PROSPECTIVE AGENTS, Or, After the Squeeing and Before the Answer:
Please note, I don't ask everyone I query these questions. (I have a separate research list for information such as current clients, AAR membership, accepting submissions, etc, but those are things I can generally find on the web.) These are only for agents who are interested in me as a client. It's also not an exhaustive list; it's something to keep my mind from going blank. These are my interview questions, the ones I want to ask before signing with an agent, to help me determine whether this agent would be a good fit for me and the kind of career I want. That means they're also specific to me, and so you'll have to think about what to include on your own list, and why. Do note the lack of yes/no questions on this list.

What do you like best about my work?

How would you pitch this book?

What do you see as this book's biggest challenge?

Do you see this book as "hot"? Why or why not?

What do you see as the next steps for this book?

How do you see those next steps fitting into a career?

What would you love to see next from me?

What do you expect of your authors?

What would concern you about an author?

What do you offer your authors?

Can you describe an ideal working relationship?

What have you learned from past problems with authors?

I am a planner, and I am planning for a writing career. In your opinion, what are some of the strongest early career moves an author can make?

What are some of the weakest moves?

Other books planned or in progress fall in three different fantasy subgenres. How would you approach this from an agent perspective?

How would you recommend I approach this from a writing career perspective?

(What is your agency agreement, if unknown)

Do you have any questions for me?

So, do you all have questions for me about these questions? Other suggestions, or questions you wish you'd asked? Links to your own lists? Let's share the knowledge!

Yes, I'm home again, and glad to be here,though WisCon was amazing and overwhelming, as always. Part of what I love about going is having those days to focus solely on being a writer and reader -- to only think about that one aspect of my life. And one of the wonderful things about coming home again is that feeling of being filled with excitement to get to work.

I had a grand goal for this afternoon: to create audio files of myself reading the first five pages of two different works, and to add them to my web page. I haven't attempted anything with this capacity for technical disaster in a while, so I was preparing for the worst (aka peering through my fingers at the help pages for the audio recording program).

Surprisingly, the technical aspects were much easier than I expected; it was the actual reading that was harder. I ought to know better -- after doing children's story times and book talks for years, I know how hard it is to read smoothly, even something you've practiced! And some of the sound and rhythm contrasts I play with in my work are hard to read smoothly. (For instance, dialogue between members of two different classes has different rhythms, and can be hard to read aloud.)

After about ten tries with each piece, I decided this might be a better day to practice the gentle art of frequent sample uploading and updating than that of perfectionism. I hate to put anything out into the world that isn't my work's best side, but I'm not a professional voice actor, either. I do plan to try it again when I next find time, and to reload the audio files when I get ones I like better. My voice was awfully tired after a couple of hours, though.

Anyway, for anyone who's curious, I used iTalk (a recording program for the iPhone -- we're gadget-heavy in my household) to record the pieces. The html was fairly simple also; I added the audio files to my site folder and added a link directly to the file from the current works page. (You can view the source code if you're not sure what I mean, or send me a message -- I'm not at all fancy with my coding.)

Why am I doing this? Hmm, a couple of reasons, I guess. One is that I'm working on my web site and wanted to provide some real content -- my actual work, instead of just yammering about my work. I wanted to provide text pages, but I also know lots of people who enjoy audio books, so I thought I'd try for another format as well.
These works aren't sold yet, and I have no plans to self-publish them, so this isn't really advertising... Just, professionalism, I guess. More treating myself and my work seriously; perhaps that's the theme for the week.

You can go here to click on links to view my sample pages or to hear the audio files .

If you do check them out, I'd love to hear what you think!