Liberty (... ?)

One of the more hideously seductive things about being unpublished is the freedom to stay that way.  I'm not particularly easily discouraged, and it doesn't come up much, but every now and then, I am tempted by my advanced age, my perfectly good full time job, the sheer volume of research, work, and the fear involved in creating a novel ... into thoughts of how easy it would be to simply say to myself, "Thank you, dealer, I will stand."

This sort of feeling might seem the function of discouragement or depression, but sometimes it's just a simple result of exhaustion.  For me, today:  there's just no excuse for it.  That doesn't mean it isn't a bit of a guilty car-wreck sort of a fascination to indulge it a little.  Sometimes, indulgence precedes inspiration.  It's not uncommon for me to somewhat comically despair that Ax will never truly be finished, never be agented, never sell and exist as an artifact I can hold in my hands, the proof of my publication.  And then there'll be a meeting of the SBC, or a Conference, and the motivation to work is reinvigorated.

It may not be uncommon, but - it isn't really all that common, either.  This may be because I enjoy all the above-mentioned privileges, insulating me from the consequences of failure.  It may be because I'm Just That Confident.  Or both.  At the end of the day, faith tends to win out over fear, with me.

And so this weekend (I've made it an extra-long one, taking tomorrow off), I will celebrate my freedom by using a couple or three days to make with the butterknife and try to really see the work.  Objectivity may not be possible, but I certainly have little trouble using the blade, even if I may not be the best person to sharpen it.  Hey, without readers to help, THAT at least is one excuse I don't depend on, to take a pass on doing the various jobs.

And, of course, there is this ...

... if I can actually succeed, it'll give me an excuse to waggle my eyebrows that I did it pretty much on my own.



So off I go, to finish today's housecleaning.  To change the sheets and get my bath, and get some sleep.

And spend this weekend with the butterknife.

Also, I Write

In between rants and whinges and far too much drama of a personal kind:  I've been eking away every evening at the revisions.  Progress is always slow, but the incremental concentration, the cumulative effect, are better than they've been since October.

It's a pathetic ratio - but I think at least one TENTH of the MSS, I won't have to revisit again.

At least, until the agent who takes me on decides I need to tweak it.  *Smiling eye roll*

Tracking

155,199 tonight.  Only down by 1,784 words.  But down!

Tracking ... or ... Ding, Dong - The Sister's Dead!

Lanthechild (historical) and her husband Gaianus (fictional) are gone.  Also:  down to 156,983.

Tracking

Two thousand words gone just in the past hour.  *Contented sigh*

Why is it so many people hate killing their darlings?  I find it hard to find the right places to DO it - but once I know where to cut, I don't feel like I have *less* left.

157,083 now ...

Axing the Ax!

I was struck and amused at some of the ideas I'm bouncing off my SBC readers, and thought it was worth sharing, if only for the realization I came to in the final line of my note to these wonderful ladies ...

By the way, if you don't like having opening chapters of a novel "spoilered" - well, then, this contains spoilers. However, nothing of substance beyond the first few dozen pages will be ruined by this post.  If you're interested in "process", though - read on, because this is full-on authorial sausage-making!  (Note:  "Cloti" is my nickname for Queen Clotilde.  Other characters named are a mix of historical and fictional, mostly the latter.)


***



Kristi, to catch you up on brainstorming last weekend, Leila helped me to see that I could cut the character of Clovis’ older sister, Lanthechild (and her traitor husband, Gaianus) out of the novel.  Just because she existed doesn't mean she needs to exist in this novel!  This weekend, I decided I probably need to ditch Clovis’ own mini battle with trichinosis, too.  That thread doesn’t do anything but demonstrate Cloti’s administrative expertise, and I don’t think evidence of that is so short those scenes and their aftermath are worth preserving.  Your thoughts?

I’m also shifting the opening progression to move straight from Evochilde’s death to the battle with Syagrius, eliminating all the talk of horse breeds and cousin Wedelphus, and prep for five years, to tighten the progression of events.  It’ll be coronation, mother’s banishment, death of Evochilde, big battle, with very little exposition and blah-blah in between.  Any character I can eliminate, I need to - so if you think the little scribe boy, Merochar, needs to go, for instance, tell me.  For now, I’ve kept Mero since he does provide an ongoing thread through the novel - but he may not be essential, so throw ideas around there, too.

Pharamond’s parents may get to keep their names, but I may also eliminate the scenes where their deaths occur; it doesn’t add anything to the action, nor Clovis’ character (their deaths don’t even do much for Pharamond’s character, textually speaking!), so that will probably go.

Funny, how I can feel so “fertile” as a writer, coming up with so many darlings to kill!!

Pages Here - and Working the Finer Points

The Pitch page over here to the right has never been updated.  I gave it live this year at JRW's Pitchapalooza event at the Conference, was given excellent feedback, implemented a lot of it with help from the SBC ... and have continued delaying really FINISHING that work (I still fee it needs a final polish), and posting the result, for - holy smokes - three months now.

I'm old and all, and time moves faster for me, but even to a late middle aged broad that's a noticeable time gap.  The excuse that I am not actively querying, as I work on revisions, too would carry a LOT more weight if I were working in a more focused way - but, even with wonderfully clear critique and suggestions, actually putting those into force has been a difficult job for me for some reason.  I understand the direction, but the object I must apply them to is just so BIG (it's a lot of book, and cutting it down is in fact one of the things I need to work on ... but only ONE) I lose sight of exactly where to work.  I know I need to cut the subplot with the bastard brother.  I know the rape thread needs work ... but what work?  I know the loquatiousness needs to come down a number of notches, and in fact THAT is the one thing I have had the easiest time with. Tightening bolt by bolt comes easily for me, and cutting only feels good, not bad to me.

But I can't work the entirety of revisions by actually reading this thing, and taking minutiae apart, cutting it down sentence by sentence - moving microscopically, beginning to end.  It's got to be necessary to see this thing as a whole and find ELEMENTS - not mere paragraphs or pages - which need work, or surgery to delete them cleanly.  And I just can't see the whole novel.  It isn't possible to stand far enough back ... AND wield the nippers to cut it down, from that distance.

I'm not smart enough to have learned, yet, how to stand back from something, to see it, and to be IN it, working on it, at the same time.

Advice and observations always welcome.  In the meantime, the work is not going well - unfocused, and unguided.  And so slow.

I have a feeling this weekend will prove far less celebratory of the advent of cable in my home, than it will (I hope) provide opportunity and motivation to at least find ONE aspect of Ax to get into more substantially.

I hope.  We shall see.

Proportionate Pages

Yesterday, I ploughed through 25 pages of the MSS in my revisions.  It sounds all very well - but this isn't *writing*, it's editing.  So perhaps I could be moving faster.  It's not that there's any sort of RDA minimum on revision.  At the rate of 25 pages in a day, if I actually put that much energy in every day (which - with ten hour days and an actual life to be maintained - unfortunately isn't going to happen) I'd have the whole manuscript edited inside of a month.  No, the fear I have is that I am going deeper than revision and more into rewrite.

Which, given the work I need to do - maybe not a bad thing.  I don't know.

Being Miss Pragmatism 2011, though, I want to approach this work carefully, and somehow that seems to indicate not getting too deep in it all over again.  This instinct may be dead wrong.  I may also be full of horsefeathers, on the point of my self-vaunted objectivity.  Getting my hands a little dirty, getting into the guts, may be what the doctor ordered.  (I do, after all, keep calling this work "surgery" ...)

We shall see.

Whatever the case, the work itself overall feels *good*.

And so I shall shut up here, and get back to it.

Cutter

Word count reduction in the space of a single cut (thank you, Leila!):  from 168.9K to 155.5K.

Now to get her down another forty or so thousand words or so.

60 Pages of Ugly Fat

I am so HUGELY grateful to Leila right now - she showed me where Ax REALLY begins.  It's a beautiful thing having writing partnerships you can trust, and it's an even better one when a fairly profound piece of critique means you can slice off SIXTY PAGES of a manuscript without extreme issues with continuity.  At this moment, The Ax and the Vase opens in 481 AD, at the point where Clovis' father, Childeric, is fighting beside Odovakar  at Angers - a setpiece where Clovis draws (and loses) his first blood.

Leila, though, tells me in reading the manuscript, where her excitement truly came into play.  And it makes sense: the story of a king doesn't start with his first battle.  It starts - obviously - at his crowning.  This is the point at which Clovis becomes CLOVIS - becomes Clovis I.  The point at which he becomes king.  This novel is about the king - not the prince.

This novel begins, not with the setpiece of a battle - a battle which, it must be pointed out, is in fact a minor one even in the career of a then-obscure Frankish scion of minor royalty not even yet proved - but with the point at which this character gains his power.  And begins to exert it.


Thank you again, Leila.  And, yep - I am excited to start carving!

"Does This Battle Scene Make My Butt Look Big?" ...

... or "The Perils of Taking Advice TOO Seriously"

The key revision work I am doing right now includes:  making Clovis more immediate, intimate - bringing that much-discussed charisma to a much more prominent position in the character.  Tightening the plot - though I have been cogitating some ideas on how and where to do this, it is my readers I shall trust for advice on this - this is perhaps the point on which I need the most objective, and savvy, advice.  Finally, working on my first battle scene.

The very very very first draft of that scene was of course extremely different.  I *hate* writing battle scenes, of course - as, I believe, I have mentioned.  Heh.  So the first go at this one consisted of little more than the comment that "this battle happened" with my personal stance of "ew. ick." unstated, but probably pretty obvious.

The essential critiqe of this first mention was, "Um.  Battle scene, please?" - and that was as correct as the current requirement.  Ya can't really have a SCENE without, say, verbs.  Maybe even a noun or two.

So I set to work in creating a setpiece, and the battle scene which had been offstage, came on.  It got big.

Taking advice is great, but one *can* still take even good advice too far.  "You want battle scene?  WE GOT BATTLE SCENE, MAN."  Pow.  Boom.  Crash.

The thing is, I'm not sure the scene as it stands is all *bad* per se - but there is just rather a lot of it.  I've already deleted a good bit, but am aware it still needs to come down.

Ahh, there's nothing like showing your enthusiasm for critique by overdosing on the point at hand.  I said it myself, basically, in that post I linked above:  I held my nose and plunged in.

Bit too deep.  We're working on that.  Working on, actually, quite a number of small things.  Details are coming to me - inspirations - intimations, immediacies.  Good things.  A glint of light on steel, a blur of anticipation in passion, the work of remembering a boy is not a man.  Power, and closeness.

It's been a good week and a half or so.  I love it so much when, being a writer:  I find myself actually writing.

Plug-ins

There's a conversation going on right now at Historical Fiction Online, about how we organize research.  Most writers have some form of "process" - the way we manage information and work it into creativity, the way we take inspiration and apply learning to it, and turn the two into writing.  My own MO is not one I suspect many authors, editors, or agents would use, much less endorse, but it works with the way my mind works, and so if I break others' rules I am unconcerned, based on results.

When I began writing, I set up a one-page timeline of major events I wanted to cover.  Very early on, I realized that what I wanted to cover was much more than my initial idea for a novel; and so the timeline became a single-shot view of Clovis' lifetime.  Born here, battled here, ascended ... first son ... marriage ... conversion ... some larger events in his world, but not specific to himself.  It is as high-level a look at the story as is possible.  From there, I began to formulate what I needed to reasearch, and I made a quick study of how to follow tangents within research, to build my world (primary sources on Clovis - particularly for a non-French- and non-Latin-speaker - are not exactly exhaustively thick on the ground; so research by context was necessarily called for), and what tangents not to follow.  I learned how to gauge, very quickly, when to stop following the often interesting threads tangents had to offer.  I learned, too, how to heft something once I had chosen to use it - and, sometimes, how to discard it after all.

For me, writing and research are much less segregated a pair of activities than, as far as I can tell, most other authors (especially in histfic) feel is acceptable.  The writers I hear talk about it all speak of "when to quit researching and start writing" ... but, for me, to withhold the act of writing just isn't an option.  And so, I am writing as I am researching.

Typically blasphemous of me, but I still stand by my finished work.


From the high-altitude view of the timeline, I begin to organize the information by where it fits into the story.  For those things specific to Clovis, it was easy enough to spot what positions certain anecdotes and events should occupy.  In some cases, I had to make a choice, out of theoretical discussions of his life, between one timeline and another.  For instance, much tradition points to Clovis' conversion and baptism being concurrent events, the latter being an observation of the former, and a commemoration of the victory on the field which yielded the conversion in the first place.  There are other possibilities, however; that baptism was viewed, then, in a different way than conversion - and that certain prominent figures actually put it off significantly ... figures on whom Clovis conscientiously may have modeled his own life.  There is also the dynamic of its being a consecration - and a king is concsecreted, already, when he takes his throne.  Finally, there is the fact that Clovis, by necessity of the charisma of his power and of his *lineage* claimed divine descent.

The contradiction between Clovis' expectation of his vital heritage - and his faith in a G-d not content with polytheism outside a certain trinity - presents both an irresistible dramatic opportunity for an author and  a persuasive (to me - and I'm the writer, which puts me in the driver's seat) case for delayed baptism.  The thematic idea, brought to us perhaps courtesy of Gregory of Tours, perhaps out of the reality of Clovis' progress in life, that he modeled himself after Constantine allowed me to use that modeling in a literate way to make certain points.

It would have been impossible for me to write The Ax and the Vase without some delay in the baptism, after conversion.  At root, essentially, I didn't buy the legend - I didn't accept that these two events occurred together.  And so, I placed the baptism well beyond the conversion - and used it to create a scene in which this man, this indomitable power in a crown, actually makes the choice to renounce the tenet of his divine descent ... and accepts that of divine right.

More than a moment's scene, this action is one which informs much of the ensuing history of Europe.  First, Clovis lends his considerable power to an alliance with the Catholic Church - then not the leading light in Christianity, nor in Gaul.  Finally, he accepts a role, as monarch, which in its essence sets that church in an unmached role of supremacy in the world.  This is a tension which played itself out from Becket and beyond, through Henry VIII and the Reformation.  This is a dynamic royals managed in capitulation, or cooperation, or confrontation, for a thousand years after Clovis' death.

This was a scene I needed to see in Ax.  It was one of the choices research gave me.


***

The other choices I had to make, using my research, was where to use such information as had little to do with particular actions by or times in Clovis' life.  I was building a basilica, I studied bricks and ancient church decoration and design.  Clovis needed a beautiful sword; I studied pattern welding.  There was a particular breed of horse popular in northern Europe, a unique animal - and Clovis' army was the first generation of cavalry in a Frankish tradition of infantry warfare.  Clovis' first prince by Clotilde dies ... and I knew the types of grave goods used for royal children.  I knew the relics found in his father's tomb.  I knew the symbolism attached to certain artifacts of burial - for adults; for children.

Some of the study placed itself almost as easily as actions and events; there seemed to be a place for much of it.  I also learned what to set myself to study; introducing a queen into a world, and a story, previously focused only on men, I put time not only into studying the textiles of women's graves - but also to working on the history of costume itself; did lace exist in fourth and fifth century Gaul?  (Answer:  of course not; though fiber-tied textiles have existed for thousands of years, it was not in place in this *time* and place.)  Embroidery.  Material.  Wine.  Crockery.  Jewelry - and its figural design and symbolism.  Carved gems.  Cloisonne'.  The articles of hygeine - sandalwood and ivory; combs and hairdressing; leg wear and dyeing techniques.

The archaeology of graves fascinated me significantly; and it offered the wealth it has a tendency to provide - yet, archaeology being what it is, how much of its knowledge reflected LIFE, as much as death?  Choices had to be made even in what indicated what - about death, or daily existence.  Delineations began to create themselves, even if only in my unprofessional mind.  I know I talked with the archaeologist nearest and dearest to me - yet I don't know that I ever asked for actual advice.  I'm arrogant that way.  But - again - stand by the product.

All the while - a scene here, a piece of dialogue there.  I wrote the blue away - taking the fact of that rare breed of horses, and providing Clovis with a timely, peculiar gift from an ally.  I turned plugs black as I went along, and even worked on flow and knitting them overall.  The tentpoles I put up didn't stand stark and alone; I clothed them with the canvas as I went along.

Utterly unacceptable.

Impossible for me to avoid.

Nothing I would, nor even could, ever apologize for.  Over time, I made this method of work serve me so very well that now I cannot conceive any other way.

Some of my research will stand, too, as tentpoles for the second novel, the work in progress *now*.  I coded, in my texts, as I went along.  Yellow highligher was Clovis'.  Pink for the other work.  Some passages I plugged into Clovis - and also bookmarked in the nascent document set aside for II.  Even some of the pre-edited text first worked for Ax was set down as reminders and context for II.  The two works are different.  But the work on each one went on at the same time.


I work in a way not allowed by any professional expectation in publishing.  Per usual, I refuse to repent this rebelliousness.  Because, for me, it yields such excellent storytelling.

Because I was aborbed in the method of creating my story concurrent to its telling, the research process remained, for me, fresh and engaging.  And because the writing took place in such proximity to the study I had put in to manage its raw materials, that too, for me, remained compelling as I went along.


***


If you are a writer - read, first of all.  Not "for" any reason - only for yourself.  Read second to educate yourself - on the process of writing, sure; and on the process of publishing, whether traditional or otherwise.  Read finally for your readers - and find those you trust, let them read you too.

And through it ALL - write.  All the time, through everything.  Segregate it from research, if that is the way for YOU.  But never actually stop it.  Never let it go.

Excerpt - Breathless

Years ago, I started work on a short called "Airless" - a sci fi detective piece, not "very" SF, you should pardon the descriptor making it sound like I want to distance myself from the genre. It was set during an investigation in which breath-evidence was key to the murder at hand. The premise (the extent to which this was SF) was that breath absorbs into the walls of the rooms we spend time in; and that somehow this has become quantifiable and measurable. The writing was good, but I had no idea where to go with it.

I have some more work I want to find some way to incorporate. I didn't know it was related until walking my dog tonight; so it isn't in any shape to fit. But my wee brain cogitates. Maybe it will give me some direction. Right now, it goes as far as "there can't be evidence ... because of this problem" - but that is a completely unformed premise at the moment ...


***


I am just typing. I’ve been trying to quantify ... what it’s like. What this IS.

And ... I can’t. It isn’t something I can explain. It isn’t even something I can describe. And I never have. I’ve never sat with anyone, not even you, and been able to tell what it is has happened to me. Because it’s too many things - but also because I can’t grasp a single aspect of it. I don’t even have enough control over whatever is wrong with me to ... so much as be able to say what it is.

I can’t put it into words.

This is beyond even comprehension, never mind expression.



And THAT. Is what it is like.

That is what being unable to get a breath is like.

It’s like being an infant, physically powerless and verbally powerless, and blotted out by the terror of helplessness. And knowing: there IS no help. No control, and no overcoming. Just inability. Impotence. Obliterating frustration.


It happens, sometimes - that I *can't* breathe. Not that it's hard to. That I simply. Flatly. Can’t. It’s not "hard": it’s not possible. You may have heard the phrase, oxygen starvation. Trying to come up with a way to describe this, I thought it was more like thirst. Thirst has an immediacy which hunger, as powerful as it is, somehow doesn’t. Thirst carries with it a desperation, which begins at a far earlier point in the pain than hunger gains such depth of power. Thirst is harrowing. Thirst is terrifying.

But even thirst doesn’t capture the essence of drowning in thin air.

Blank defeat isn’t benign. It’s as black as ignorance, it’s as impenetrable as water *just* too deep to swim to the surface fast enough, it’s as hideous as the mouth of the tiger bearing down on your neck. No escape. No relief. No hope. No point in fighting it.

Not only do I experience what it is to be unable to breathe ... years ago now, I learned what it was to just capitulate. To GO without breath, because I know I’m not going to get one, and to function until my body, inattentive, can regulate to the diet it can get. I admit defeat multiple times every week. I quit. I lose.

Raheema. G-d. It is the most terrifying thing. There is nothing so stark as to expect *nothing at all*. When I am forced to face it, I give in in another way. The power is overwhelming.

Yesterday I was unable to breathe; so acutely distressed I know I had to be audible to somebody around me. I couldn't have that. And so, strangled even though I wasn’t moving, I simply sat, and stopped, and strangled. There was nothing else for it. Defeat was relief. Anything else only made it worse. Anything else only made it real - by witness - and that was unbearable.

I can FEEL how small the human passageway for air is. I can feel my soft palate constricting to my tongue, the back of my throat misshaping itself, but almost spastic, almost convulsed beyond my control. Sometimes, I can no more swallow than breathe.

They call it fighting for air. For the life of me, I don’t understand that: there is no battle - no weapon ... no blood you can draw, no opponent. Only oneself.

When I was younger, I used to have a dream: that I was wrestling a giant cat. Lion, panther, cheetah - just anything bigger than I was - just anything with inarguable strength, immobilizing paws, indomitable weight. At the time, the dream had to do with the lack of control we have over life when we’re young, and the fear that teases out of our depths and tries to ignite us to cinders with.

This is *like* that ... but even less romantic. Nothing so beautiful as an actual preditor coming against you. Only the slowness of dream struggle. Only the preternatural impotence.

This is simply like being pressed to death. The torture of weight, stone by stone. It’s like being underneath a bag filled with a thousand pounds of water, slowly but slowly sinking down on your bones.

I would love to have a fight - something to *engage* ...

I have no fight. I have only the sight of succumbing.

And you know me.

I’m not good at giving up ...