Nothing Old is New Again

Some readers (and Reiders) are aware, I put away my first novel about two years ago. Not easy, at the time - and I am still grateful for those of you who were SO very supportive and sensitive and generous - but it has been the right thing to do. The possibility of a final revision and self publishing still exists, but my focus is decidedly fixed on the WIP, and that feels healthy and very good indeed.

Not long ago, someone online who is aware of The Ax and the Vase expressed interest in reading it. I sent it their way with thanks for the attention, and turned back to the WIP. It's not the first time this has happened, and the very first reader I ever had was very kind indeed.

This time, my reader began to offer questions and some feedback. It presented for me a terrible temptation, and I turned to my old first pages and found myself a rather cruel reader. The thing is dross, there are some pretty words, but I began to feel "OF COURSE THIS DRECK NEVER GOT PUBLISHED" and felt the urge, a rather strong urge, to tear into it again.



Happy endings: the moment was lust, passing and intemperate. I was drunk with self-critique and old dreams. But only drunk. I did hate what I read, enough to wish I hadn't sent it out to the second reader ... but his feedback has hushed, and my interest has quashed. Fortunately, without a hangover. I didn't drink deeply enough. (I didn't read deeply enough; it was that bad, really.)

The WIP is my One True Love, and I will not stray. Indeed, I didn't actually edit anything while I was under the influence, strong as the influence seemed in the moment.

It's a funny thing, a book's corpse - or its ghost. Very much like a bitter ex: there may be some allure, but in the end, most often, you look at the face of once-beloved, and think ... "What did I see in them?" Or a lost love: you remember, but the feeling is distant, like novocaine. Not quite real.

The Ax and the Vase is no longer entirely real for me, and that is both bizarre and necessary. As a writer, there's only so much energy, only so much focus - and monogamy is important for the way many of us need to work. Even pantsers (still not my favorite term, but it does  have its utility) probably tend more often than not to concentrate on one project, even if not in one area.


It occurs to me how often I referred to the WIP, after I discovered the subject and knew it would be my second novel - but before I had finished with Ax - as the thing I had on the backburner.

Ax isn't even on the backburner now. I know, too, what I want my third novel to be; but I am not contemplating it, and the research will be entirely new and separate; no cross-pollination anymore. There is nothing going on in my writing world right now but the WIP. Two long-comatose shorts exist, and now and then I peer at them momentarily. But neither one pulls focus, and neither has really grown in the period I've been working on the WIP.


It is, in its quiet way, gratifying to know how cleanly I've let go of Ax. Not killed it, nor forgotten it. Only the expedient: put it away. Self-publish? Or even some new route? Maybe someday.

But the interest, the intent, and the intensity: are all on the WIP. Invigorating!

Murder, I Wrote

I used the tag GREAT writing on this post, because sometimes writing *feels* great ... and you can just about believe your own work might be so, when that happens. Last week's momentum reached a bit of an apex in The Murder Scene ... wherein one of the main characters finds herself about to be burned alive, without touching the fires slowly cooking her life away. And it's as harrowing as it sounds.

Most writers know, reading our work out loud is important, and as I am ruled by rhythms (and a former theater major), I like doing this. It's hard to stifle the desire to read to anyone who makes the mistake of speaking with me on the phone, or coming over, and sometimes I fail. Such as Friday night, when I read the murder scene to my brother.

We both came away kind of shaking our heads. I realized that one key descriptor calls up the very birth scene which opens the novel (and the life of the woman about to meet her end). I wrote that birth scene maybe a decade ago; it was one of those backburner moments during research and side work on this WIP, while I was writing The Ax and the Vase, and I've never wanted to change it (yeah, you're not supposed to edit before you've even finished writing - for me, that "rule" is like typing; I self-correct as I go, you can't ask me not to do that, it is my way of doing things). My brother even approved of that callout; and I trust him as a critic. He's never been shy to criticize me! Heh.

But, yeah. Right now, it is all I can do not to post this scene here, and on my cube wall, maybe a couple billboards, and everywhere in the world.

This is what writing can feel like. It's been a long time since I attained this sense of accomplishment, and the way it followed on (Heaven help me) a THEME showing up uninvited - a theme which will work to create tension ... I mean, wow.

Yes, exquisite phrasing, is it not? "I mean, wow." Me writer. Me college gradual. Look, this is a blog, I'm allowed to save some of my best for the work meant for sale, right?

Few of us are at our most eloquent when things get truly exciting, but the excitement is real.

Small Days

For me, sometimes writing is less about getting words out of my brain or even researching than it is a period of exploring what's already on the pages, to look around different places in the manuscript, to throw a little polish and elbow grease into a rough edge or two, to find out whether there is anything I can delete.

These days are a pleasure for me, because even if it's not a "Wow, I wrote 8,000 words today!" accomplishment (in my life, I have never contemplated my word count by the day; though I have at least watched the total count on a manuscript), there is gratification in taking a walking tour, as it were. Yesterday, I read a passage to check the "your research is showing" quotient on it, and found myself loving the scene. I'm not sure I tweaked it at all.

Today, it's been making sure "I covered that." It's one of those can-I-delete-this-placeholder-infodump runs, which are sometimes tricky because: rabbit holes in abundance. But they can be really good runs, these romps across the manuscript.

And enticing, too. Enticed to and/or BY my own work? Heck yes. Yesterday, I looked in on the scene of the old midwife cleaning a newborn and evaluating the child's viability - the sort of scene that skirts the "your research is showing" issue all too closely, oftentimes. But as I read, I saw the light, felt the warmth of the quiet room, could sense the infantile quaking of the newly emerged life, her "eyes still closed and tight as beans", swaddling her for the first time, "at last to look at its mother." The detail, to me, right now, feels more tactile than "lookit what I researched, cool huh?"

We'll see, once I get as far as beta readers.  But for now, my own nascent, quaking little baby of a manuscript ... it looks viable.

Now I gotta clean it up.

Image: Google Labeled for reuse image search
By: peagreengirl

SEXY SEX SEX SEX (... or, "Also, I Write")

For an author’s blog, there’s been precious little word around here lately about actual writing, and work in progress. Skipping over the inevitable excuses, I’ll admit there’s been LESS going on here of late, but thank goodness it’s not nothing at all.

Early in vacation, I was struck by some thoughts on the facts of life as it were; the expectations we place upon sex – today, or “in the past” – and how immutable these feel to us. Sex has always had a pretty high importance to human beings; at a guess, even before history got onto the subject, paternity and the apparent magic of a human being coming out of another one, seemingly out of nowhere. Its intensity of pleasure has long been tied to its importance in interpersonal politics, and perhaps the development of moral expectations was inevitable, given the esteem we place on lineage across all cultures.

These days, the idea of sex as a tool is generally considered rapacious beyond all sanction, and dismissed (again, across, at the very least, quite a *few* cultures) as immoral and crude. Bargaining for position by assuming certain - *ahem* - disreputable positions is, after first being offensive and manipulative, at bottom pathetic. It hardly fails to HAPPEN; indeed, some folks I've been aware of personally prove to me the phenomenon is not limited to the dregs of society. Entire industries and reality entertainment genres (*) thrive on the commoditization of "fairy tales" and wealth-as-romantic-glue, and there has been draconian conditioning, in the past thirty years, tying distinctly to certain gender roles/expectations and material outcomes. Hooray for marketing.

(*This, by the way, is not intended to refer only to romance competitions, but also to huge swaths of HGTV programming, mythologizing the importance of McMansions, settings, vacation stylings, and the types of couple-dom we should aspire to emulate; but at least they've embraced diversity in that last item, somewhat.)

American culture and pop culture have a uniquely slutty-yet-judgmental thing going on, wherein the increase in sales of lives for entertainment and prizes has produced that rarest of "guilty pleasures" - the right to judge others wholesale even as we simultaneously are enjoined to wish we had something we could sell for a good price.



"In the past", though ... transactional sex represented a wholly different market.

As was still true when I was growing up, and remains so for some today, girls and virginity were a whopping big deal. Speaking fundamentally to the importance of that lineage I mentioned above (read: PATERNITY, specifically), virginity took on an aura of magic which imbued it with an almost terrible power. To this day, PURITY is still subject to the curious confluence of desire and defense which mark something which is wanted precisely for the value in its own termination. Lifelong chastity may garner the golf-clap of social approbation. But it's the virgin on the marriage market who's long been an actual *prize* - sought for, competed over; her extinction the very highest tragedy and the greatest sacrifice to the gods.

Coming alongside paternity arise the subjective motivations - virtue and submission and status and all the tantalizing stories we've told, as humans, about the power and magic and pleasure of sex.



For a while there, the completely absurd working title for the work in progress was "Matrilineage" - not because even for a moment I ever thought that was remotely good, but because the WIP is a novel of women. Three generations, their experiences and their points of view. The midwife who spools from one of their lives to another has always been a prominent force, and she has begun seriously to develop. This is a woman whose life revolves around the reproduction of others.

The one male character who has developed any voice at all is: an illicit sexual partner.

Illicit sex had, fifteen hundred years ago in an Ostrogothic court barely a generation old, what you might call Serious Consequences. Particularly for a princess to be used in the marriage market by a king already proven canny in such alliances, and still in the process of using even chronologically advanced and legitimacy-compromised offspring in it.

Virginity was quite the big deal for a princess. Its being disposed of, deals still must be made; and advantages still could be constructed by marriage.

Many of the marriages in the WIP are matters of pragmatism, and some may have been more removed from romantic concerns than is generally popular to write about without the remediation of a little bodice-ripping on the side. The Ax and the Vase touched on this, and I even alluded to the ancient practice of a small country capitulating to the Roman Empire in order to get its protection, as a similar dynamic to certain marriages. In the WIP, the analysis will be much closer to my characters' hearts - and bodies - and I am intrigued not only by the possibilities, but by the implications. The perspectives are so necessarily unfamiliar, and I enjoy getting outside my own expectations (not only in my writing).

In Ax, this practical use of marriage as a tool got quite a light touch. To really explore the unpleasantness, though - and in ways it isn't always perceived by modern authors and audiences - excites my wee and paltry brain. It's bouncing around like Colin  (if you aren't a Hitchhiker's fan, the link probably won't help, and if you are, you don't need it: so skip the click either way - it's Wikipedia anyway, and I know how people can be about the 'pedia).

Suffice to say: inspiration. It's happening.

So yay for sex!

Precipice

The WIP is at that sweet spot stage where I’m giddy as a schoolgirl getting to know it, shyly gazing at its characters and treading a little deeper into its world and generally having quite a crush on it … and *just* beginning to formulate more acute interests in it, which will direct research for a while.

This stage, of course, has curtailed my usual blog reading and writing, but I suspect a general wellbeing ensues, without readers gnashing their teeth and tearing their hair with less of my blather to consume. Russia and Ukraine, for their parts, are certainly barfing all over my stats; still getting hundreds of bots every day cruising in here, so at least there *are* hits showing up – even if most of them happen to be horsefeathers.


It’s an interesting time for a writer, this period of a new work – and a downright entangling time for me.

On the one hand, I’ve had this novel in mind since very very early indeed in the going with The Ax and the Vase; it came up during research for that, and the captivation I had for the subject has never diminished. Indeed, through the querying periods for Ax, it wasn’t rare I wished that could all be over with, I’d be agented and be able to get on with this work.

It hasn’t worked out quite thus, but on with the WIP I am in any case.

When we meet someone who excites us romantically, there are phases of being, and if a relationship ensues, changes come fast and furious. It’s all very exciting, even as it’s giddy in some ways that remind us of our vulnerability.

It’s hard, that is to say, to read Janet’s blog (and commenting community – such as I can these days) about How Long It Takes to write a novel, and not think both, “I’m working so much faster than I did on the first one” and “Yeah, but faster than a decade is still hardly market-speedy.” Hard not to be excited—and, at the same time, remember my experience with Ax.

I’m a confident cuss. But that has done its damage, and as much as I know this book is different (in good and publication-necessary ways), there absolutely IS some temptation to stick with the liberty and freedom of just never becoming a published author (nartist/freedom links).


But back to “that stage” …

I was once told by an ex, “I am quakingly aware of my capacity to fall in love with you.”

That’s where I am right now. I’ve been swept off my feet. I’ve had the second look, more deeply apprasing prospects with my new crush. I’ve started to figure out the fit, and some of the surprises too. The unexpected things are happening – both binding me more tightly to the work, and blindsiding me with expectation-bending surprises that change the prospects entirely.

This WIP – born of Ax though it indubitably is – has never been a sequel, never even been tightly tied to The Ax and the Vase.

And yet, the extent to which it is turning out to be unalike is still a breathtaking vista.

I knew the fundamentals would be not merely different, but outright foreign (figuratively … literally) to Ax. One was first-person from a single POV, told by the possibly unreliable narrator of His Own Glorious Destiny. One was an overwhelmingly male story. Story of power, story of success, story of a bunch of men in the late-antique North. Story of the building of a nation.

Myth, really.

Ax is a ripping yarn, and its central facets are those I’ve come to fear are in fact its stumbling blocks as a debut property.

So – a novel in omniscient voice, a novel featuring more women’s voices than men’s – a novel in which slaves (decidedly marginalized, in Ax) play integral roles … a novel of riots and terrors and unrest and failures …

I knew it would be another proposition.

What didn’t I know … ?

I honestly didn’t know how far I might shift from the character who first enticed me, whose story I thought I needed to tell.

I knew the POV would become more flexible, even inclusive.

I didn’t know just how much #WeNeedDiverseBooks would get into my blood, and amplify characters I didn’t really realize the novel was about.



Its’ been many years since I first sketched what still is the opening scene of the WIP. I couldn’t resist it; needed to get one little yaya out, needed to let that breath exhale – and, indeed, it was about all there was to any kind of draft *writing* (as opposed to research, which cropped up as I was researching Ax itself), until this year.

What is interesting is that, in writing that first scene (a Grand Guignol setpiece of a labor and delivery) – I researched and chose a name … and included a fictional character. There was a face, even back then, on a figure who didn’t necessarily need to exist so early on.

And she is becoming so much more than a supporting character.

I know her hair, I think I have heard her voice (no, seriously – on TV – I heard someone speaking with her timbre).

She’s not alone in surprising me; or perhaps bringing to the fore things I might hardly have suspected, but had somewhere in my wee and paltry little brain.

And that’s the thing. It’s in my brain; even if, to me, it seems external, almost mystical – the idea is mine, if only by right of conquest.

More ideas will show themselves, particularly as I get into more research – little surprises about the way the world worked, the food my characters ate, the color and pomp and dust around them.


And so: exciting times. Even as they’re indubitably weird times.

Like This Weekend Wasn't Good ENOUGH ...

... my policy for some time has been not to specify any of the agents who've been kind enough to read me, and that's kind of hard sometimes, especially in the heat of the moment when they have the MS in hand.  However, today one of them self-outed.

I wouldn't even quote her on this much, but ... a highly talented professional has stamped my work as darn good.  There's only so much willpower in this world, and it'd be a bit of a trick for me, keeping that to myself.

The end of the story was a pass, of course.  But I never imagined I'd even get a read (or, in fact, two), from The Query Shark!  So making a friendly acquaintance online has been an extra bonus; for me, AND for Gossamer the Editor Cat.  I'm pretty sure he'd leave me for her, but he and Penelope do kind of like gnawing on each other from time to time.

So, yeah.  All this, a little bit of Christmas money, my winsome and talented friend K coming over tonight, and everything from the post *just* south of this one.  And my house is clean and smells like cookies.


Best wishes to all ... and to all a good night!

Today Was the Day ...

… when Word shook its head, threw up its hands, and said “There are too many misspellings for me to keep cleaning up after your profligate ignorance, I quit” (… or something of that nature).  It’s the “How in the name of G-d you live in this filthy pigsty you call a room” moment of my writing – and for those who caught that wonderful reference, congratulations but I am afraid we have no bananas today for prizes.  Bask in your pop-cultural knowledge.

Anyway …

If I went to the trouble of adding all the ancient names for my characters to its database, Word wouldn’t have to go through all this trouble with me.  **Oh, and the guilt, she is so great**.  Hee.

But at this point in the game, the manuscript consists mostly of (public-domain) images I want for reference and inspiration, timelines, notes, transcriptions and broken scaffoldings imported from Gaul, and scraps of writing here and there which may or may not ever become “actual writing” as the embryonic mess evolves its sloppy way out of the protoplasm.

It is perhaps a perverse part of my glee that the very mess is its own mess now, coming into being, even if flailingly so and yet so unformed.  As a mark of “progress” – this Word warning is decidedly indicative of how EARLY in the going the WIP still is.

But it’s GOING.  And that is the point.  Punctiliousness can wait. (And if you could start a band or write a song or release a big-budget flop with that for a title, I’d be mighty grateful.  Thankee.)

The point is, to set this pile up with the dignity of its own terms – well, I am either too lazy, or I suppose I haven’t enough respect just yet for my own creation.



It seems like a long time ago that this happened with The Ax and the Vase; and now here we are, the WIP finally reaching this milestone, having lain dormant almost since I conceived the first novel.

I feel a bit like Mr. X did when his son got a McDonald’s toy for some movie tie-in and said, “But dad, it’s not to scale” and X prompltly dissolved in a puddle of choked-up, model-making nerd dad pride, all “That’s my Special Little Guy.”  My second baby’s hit a milestone:  Word *already* can’t even deal with it anymore.

I couldn’t be more proud.

Home (and Other) Improvements

Regular readers will understand that a number of the things I’ve been doing around this house were initially spurred on by a plan to throw my mom a birthday party.  I remember so clearly when dad and I worked on a party for her together, and at the same time he was making sure she had a new microwave in her kitchen, and so on.  Guests get us going, I suppose, and when there’s a good “reason” I know I enjoy a bit of nesting.

One of the major excitements around here, of course, has been the new writing desk.  It’s been in the house just under two weeks, and I have been enjoying it to bits.  The thing is six feet by three, and I joked before it came along “It would eat up all the space in that room and burp happily” – but as imposing a piece of furntiture as it is, it’s not out of place nor proportion.

Ohhhhhh, and having a huge desk.  I come home to it every day, and it’s so much easier getting a bit DONE on this desk.  It amuses the cat, of course, to get in my way – but overall this investment has been a good choice.

So far, it’s seen perhaps as much bill-paying and administrivia as it has writing, BUT … it’s been a pleasure to get a little bit into the WIP, and to have a place where my research and writing are capaciously accommodated.  A positive luxury, actually.

The hugeness of the desk allows both the resource of space to work, but also physical comforts as a writer I have never had.  Contemplating the need for a foot rest, I’m not sure my grandmother’s old footstool wouldn’t fit just fine down there, and that gives me a little grin.  It has a rightness about it, writing while surrounded by family artifacts, writing on a desk I fell bewilderingly in love with.  All of my family are teachers – whether by formal profession or not – and the books and chairs and *things* of them and their minds mean a little something to me, as I crack a new book of my own, to do the reading and research I must, or as I noodle about with actual-writing which isn’t actual at all, but only exercise, to learn about my characters, my scenes, my setting, as I go.

Many historical fiction authors have a set process by which the research for x-amount of time, outline, collate, and writing is a separate thing, done after all the rest.  I never was a fan of steps, and to hold back from writing now, at the point where I feel it’s been so long since I “finished” Ax (… which time … ?), would just be punitive.

And pointless.

The thing is, the writing I am doing now is not work I expect to make the final cut, it’s not even something I’d consider draft work.  The writing I do when research is still new is writing both to flex my creative muscles and to find my inroads into the next novel.  Given the connections between Ax and the WIP, much of it is swing lines – taking a point from the one, and finding its connection to the other; traveling, Tarzan-style, from the branch of one tree to some hold on the next.

The WIP has never, in my mind, been a sequel – but perhaps I need to reconsider that, or perhaps I’ll learn better.  It has little to do with Ax in some very fundamental ways:  not told first-person, setting more cosmopolitan, multiple generations and character focal points, the story of women rather than one man …  Each one will stand alone.

But, too – it’s an obvious starting point, to approach this WIP, by taking a look at the moments and effects where these two stories touch.  And so, I grasp the line in the first novel, which leads to the next – where Clovis’s sister marries south – where his niece grows up daughter to an inimical ally – where she actually visits her mother’s homeland, as a girl, and *meets* this branch of her family.

That last point, too … I had a little fun, taking a look at Clovis through this new character’s eyes.  For one, there was a perverse pleasure in minutely describing him physically – which is NEVER done, in Ax.  My feeling is, readers often invent their own faces (I always have) and anything laid out may be ignored.  More to the point, Clovis’ novel was told first-person through his own eyes, and this was not a character much given to gazing upon his reflection, even apart from the fact that he lived in a world siginificantly lower on mirrors than our own.  I also got to learn a little about Amalasuntha at thirteen-ish; how she felt about the smells, the chills, the sights – and the people – of this strange world from which her blood had flowed, but which was so foreign to her.

That scene, though perhaps in a much-altered/entirely gutted form, I expect will survive, in some way, into the WIP proper.

But, for now, there is a freedom in writing, knowing it is commitment-free if I need it to be … and in working, at my new desk.

Tracking

With Note:  127,276.  Without:  119,541.  And only a little left to skim through at this point.  If I can't finish tomorrow night, it will be Tuesday.

Tracking

Psst ... I have this secret hope I may finish the final revision tomorrow.  Don't tell anybody, m'kay?  Thanks.

With Author's Note:  129,603

Without:  121,868

Good night!

Tracking

As of this morning - with the Author's Note - a nice, satisfying:  129,999!

Without:  122,264.

Yay!

Editing

I used to do word count count posts, but have not been systematizing reports on my progress in the most recent edit.  For one, this is a far less profound revision - and, for two, while my productivity in a lot of areas has been up, I've fallen away from the social networking habit of keeping myself honest by telling anyone where I stand.  Tweeting the occasional #AmEditing brag is a useful option, but putting up a permanent post (even if on a very old-fashioned blog) is one of those indicators (and motivators) of progress you "feel" more substantially.

So I've completed about twenty percent of the current round of edits.  There are two items to revisit - the first is a question about "is this bit necessary?"  (There is, of course, the instinct that having to ask answers the question "no", but for one thing I have no readers to request objective feedback from right now, and for two, the resistance to deletion is strong enough I don't distrust it yet.  As willing as I am to kill my darlings, having doubts about doing so is a reasonable informant against doing so without feedback.)  The other backtrack I'll need to make is a sense that one character needs punching up.  In the previous edit, his earliest presence was drained of a bit of blood, so I need to make him more obtrusive and important.  It doesn't require lots of new scenes, a return of shed bulk - but some judicious description and exposition will contextualize how vital he is to a story in which I reduced him a hair more than I should have.

The work, pretty generally, has a very good weight to it now as I read it, and increasing experience in this process is great education.  Many authors dislike, or at least have a hard time, with editing and revision, but my main issue with it is the aforementioned absence of readers and canny, objective feedback.  One part of my education is the role readers play, and the loss of mine is pretty painful.

Oh, for an agent who'd shake me by the shoulders and show me where and how to edit.  (Yes, I know - selfish dreamer.  I'm allowed that sort of dangerously stupid freedom ... for the moment.)

Work

It was one of those days today where I spent much of the first half of the day enjoying that phenomenon where, though I have been steadily doing better at work than I was a couple of months back, EVERY dadgum error I happen to make is visible to my upper boss.  He and I spent a nice long time having one of those forbearing instant message conversations, and segued into a call with him, me, and our other executive, batting around process improvements for my job.  It actually wasn't a bad day, but very much a matter of chagrin when everything goes well but the details that matter to them.

Truth be told, though the top boss on our team is keenly able to spot mistakes, he's not one who takes unseemly pleasure in finding fault.  His expectations are high, but nothing like unreasonable, and it makes you mad not to live up to them.  When I first started this job, one of the people on my team who had the most to do with training me said, "If you do your job, you will like him."  I hadn't met him yet, but that assessment made clear to me the expectations, and seemed to me actually a pretty high compliment to pay a manager.

Anyway.

The entire rest of today was exhausted by the constant, unrelenting balancing act of taking care of all the things proceeding from my talk(s) with them, finalizing all the to-do's for multiple large meetings in three cities, trying on travel plans for two people for all these trips, setting acres of additional meetings, fielding needs for my team, taking notes and closing them all out ...  Sitting at my desk and not even getting up enough for my little calesthenics or to, ah, take a proper break.

It's tiring and stressful, but I look back at year-end and the build up to that, and am still grateful to have moved forward.  On top of trying to stay on top of the runaway horse that is my job lately, I've also been consciously trying for the past week or two to Project a Positive Attitude (rah rah whee).  It's a facile fake it till you make it strategy, but the damnable thing is it has a way of working, even if by "work" you define terms strictly on the practicals of relationship management with the people you don't love working with the most.  Heh.

At the end of this long day, I asked a friend/coworker for an objective view, whether the better attitude was apparent.  Being a friend, she said to me she was biased and that my attitude had never appeared to her to go downhill.  She then couched that in terms of the way I deal with those who need me, saying I haven't faltered in that customer service context.

But the fact is, I've let sarcastic humor step in where actual attempts at pleasantness used to be SOP, and it makes even me roll my eyes listening to myself sometimes.

It also makes me realize, when it comes to criticism or assessment, I've really trained myself out of any ability to tolerate niceties in their place.  Even in the worst years of my vanity issues, I used to have debates with my ex on the nature of beauty (the symposium I once tried to give him, explaining that "classical beauty" is actually a term with measurable traits I decidedly do not possess).  Mr. X and I have MANY times clinically discussed the objective merits of my appeals, and this usually ends in his smilingly pronouncing, "I am a man and when it comes down to what a man might find attractive about you, I have the last word - not you."  Again:  heh.

The same is true of my writing, of course, and it chafes and frustrates me *badly* to get non-feedback such as "it's really good" with zero thoughtful content.  This is why Mr. X and the Sarcastic Broads are about the only people I feel comfortable sharing work in progress with.  I know my writing is *good* - I don't always know how to make it its BEST.  Good is for macaroni and cheese.  And I love macaroni and cheese.  But going to the trouble of writing something?  Deserves better than comfort food.


***


Anyway, work at an office, not My Work.  It's hard, and it's painful these days as things ramp up toward unknowable conclusions.  It's demanding, and I come home less than motivated with the house, the beasties four days out of five (and, for a while there, seven out of seven ...).  Even still, I am grateful I have one boss - some years younger than I, it may be said - who says to me, "I said you weren't old, not that you're not senile" and another with whom I can chat and laugh about old BBC historical dramas and the way they affect your diction, even as I reach Penelope-like heights of wiggy frustration with myself in my eagerness to please.

And, again: heh.

I'm re-remembering how lucky I am, and the gratitude is infusing me with the energy it takes to work ... at my best.

Or, at least, to work back toward it.

Fast Learner

Today, Penelope is practicing "down" in a non-greeting situation for the first time.  Good LORD does she obey with alacrity when she is motivated.  She's only pooped in the house two times since last week - and, given that twice a day was her minimum before, that is pretty achin' good.

It'll take time for "down" to take in a real-world situation, but she's pretty amazingly smart.  Things are looking up for this little pack.

*Currently being kneaded by a kit with fresh-cut nails*

Life's not bad on pre-Thanksgiving Saturday.

6:46 p.m.

The first new query has gone.  Time to get back to the grind!

PROCESS: Version Three

With some help from Leila, we have now come to this:

Clovis I came to the throne at fifteen, yearning for more from his accession, and erupted to fame vanquishing Rome's power in Gaul.  From a childhood under the shadow of a scandalous mother and profligate father, he launched his own reputation--his legend--with an act of revenge so spectacular the tale is told to this day.  At last, he forged a dynasty by deceiving his allies and killing his own kin.  Yet Clovis' power was balance on his faith in God ... and his religion was inspired by the love of the magnificent Queen Clotilde.

His parents' sins instilled in him a discipline which became ambition so wide he built from it the very foundation of the Frankish empire.  His abiding love of the Catholic Clotilde led him to conversion, which set the course of politics and faith in Europe for a thousand years.  With four sons and indomitable will, Clovis befan a dynasty and set forth the law.  He was famed for piety and a bloodthirsty nature ... yet few can say who he truly was ...

The Ax and the Vase creates and recreates Clovis' story, his world, his fame--and his infamy.  It is the product of fascination, years of research, and the urgent need to understand and to tell this great, gripping story.

Yes:  please leave feedback if you would like to!

PROCESS: Version Two

Mojourner saw a structure in the first raw brain-dump, and said it could be refined with a repeated within-without tension.  Small, expositive verb - big, muscular action.  This is where that observation has taken me so far:

Clovis I came to the throne at fifteen, and erupted to fame vanquishing Rome's power in Gaul.  He lived in childhood under the shadows of the reputation of a scandalous mother and profligate father; and launched his reputation - his legend - with an act of revenge so spectacular, the tale is told to this day.  At last, he forged a dynasty by deceiving his allies and killing his own kin.  Yet Clovis’ power was balanced on his faith in God ... and his religion was inspired by the love of the magnificent Queen Clotilde.

Clovis yearned, from his accession, for more than his father’s small kingdom.  His parents’ sins instilled in him a discipline which became an ambition so wide he built from it the very foundation of the Frankish empire.  His abiding love of the Catholic Clotilde led him to conversion, which set the course of politics and faith in Europe for a thousand years.  With four sons and indomitable will, Clovis began a dynasty and set forth the law.  He was famed for his piety and a bloodthirsty nature ... yet few can say who he truly was ...

The Ax and the Vase creates and recreates Clovis’ story, his world, his fame - and his infamy.  It is the product of fascination, years of research, and the urgent need to understand and to tell this great, gripping story.

Yes:  please leave feedback if you would like to!

PROCESS: Version One

Clovis I came to the throne at fifteen, and came to fame vanquishing Rome’s power in Gaul.  He created his reputation - perhaps his legend - with an act of revenge so spectacular, the tale is told to this day.  At last, he built a dynasty by conquering even allies and killing his own kin.  Yet Clovis’ power was balanced on his faith in God ... and his religion was inspired by the love of the magnificent Queen Clotilde.

Clovis yearned, from his accession, for more than his father’s small kingdom.  His parents’ scandalous reputations had instilled in him both discipline and a deep desire for power, which became an ambition so great he would through battle, diplomacy, and deceit build what we now know as the nation of France.  His love of the Catholic Clotilde led him to conversion, which set the course of Europe for a thousand years.  With four sons and indomitable will, Clovis began a dynasty, he set forth the law; he was famed for his piety and a bloodthirsty nature ... yet few can say who he truly was ...

The Ax and the Vase creates and recreates Clovis’ story, his world, his fame - and his infamy.  It is the product of fascination, years of research, and the urgent need to understand, and to tell this great and gripping story.

Yes:  please leave feedback if you would like to!

Tracking

140,599.  Forty pages covered this weekend, and a fairly satisfactory reduction.  I still hope to cut it down to 120-130K, but the dialogue work is really going well.

Saturday Editing

Making decent progress today in ground covered, but not a lot of reduction so far.  Still, it does feel good to dedicate a day to revision.  I see a little Roomba-ing in the cards for tomorrow, with no housekeeping going on today.