Barnstorming on an Invisible Segway

I am doing revisions on a printout, because I need to revise on printouts mostly, and when I try not to, I bang my head repeatedly against the wall and then feel stupid when it turns out all I needed was a printout. So. Printout! I need to remind myself of this in future, because I am unlikely to come admit to you-all that revisions have stalled out and give you the chance to remind me that I need a printout.

Anyway: I am doing these revisions with the purple pen of mystery. It's the oddest thing. (Where by "the oddest thing," I mean "a fairly ordinary household object.") It's a disposable fountain pen. There is absolutely no way to refill this fountain pen. It's nice, though. It's a pilot, and I wouldn't say the nib is any worse in smoothness than my refillable Pilot fountain pens, though it's lighter. I found this pen cleaning out a box of things that got stuck on the corner of the hearth when we moved in and stayed there. And yet the ink has not dried out and the nib isn't clogging. It is a good little pen.

The thing is, we cannot figure out where this pen came from. Mark doesn't use fountain pens. Timprov and I know all of our fountain pens personally and have no recollection of this pen ever joining their number. And we can't think who would have left this pen with us. Most of our guests are definitively non-users of fountain pens or else Dave obsessive enough about their fountain pens to know what kind they use and keep track of where they've gone.

It's too bad, too, because after five years I would not offer to give this pen back, at least not until after I'd finished revising this book with it, but I would want to know where the heck they got such a thing, and where I could get another, or ideally a whole pack of them. Wait! I know! The magic of the internets has told me where to get more. Well, all right then. It is a Pilot Varsity. If this might be your pen left at my house for five years, I'm dreadfully sorry, but at least I know replacements are only $3.25, so you won't be too bereft. And neither will I when the thing runs out.

I am currently wrestling two sets of short story edits into submission, one for the story I just sold and one for an as yet unsold story. It's good stuff. It makes for better stories. But coming on the heels of doing zeroth draft coherence revisions on What We Did, it makes me sort of taciturn around here.

I think I'm done with all the laundry, or all the laundry I'm going to take with -- I may throw another load of towels in just to be nice to markgritter. We'll see. Other than that, I think I'm getting there. Sort of. Mostly. We have Canadian money now, for example (hockey fives FTW!). My passport has been dragged up from the basement filing cabinet. My packing list is at the ready. My notes for the novel I'm not writing next are typed into the relevant file.

Wait, that last one was procrastination, not readiness. I am one of the most virtuous procrastinators I know. I'm not goofing off! I'm organizing my notes!

Anyway: I know they have connectivity in the hotel we're using, but I have honestly no idea how much I'll be online in the next ten days. If the travel is rough on the vertigo, it may be a lot. If not, it may be hardly at all. Or really anything in between; hard to say. I expect to enjoy myself in Montreal regardless.

Oh, noticeable progress. How I've missed you.

The thing about working on short stories for much of the last few vertiginous months is that I write them fast enough that there really isn't a sense of progress on the same project for very long. I start a short story. I finish a short story. There may be a few days when I will say, "I made progress on [story]," and they may be spread out, but there's no building sense of accomplishment: the story doesn't exist, then it does.

There has been progress on the PT front, but it's all been more the kind that we measure with fancy machines rather than the kind that lets me, y'know, feel normal and live life without leaning on somebody at every second. So the lack of progress on either novel revisions or new novel for months on end had been driving me just nutso.

But now! Now this new revision system is so happy and fine! I am officially down to fewer than half the remaining chapters for revision, and yes, some of them are the chapters that need the most done to them, but progress, progress, progress! It's nowhere near submission quality. It is not yet the book I want it to be. It will get a few eyes on it at first, and then a few more. But today, not only did I do some things that needed doing, I was able to make them do double duty or more; it got all layered and neat and did the sorts of things revision is supposed to do. It is a better book than it was this morning when I woke up. And I have missed that so much, the sensation that I have taken action and something I care about has improved in a large enough increment to be noticeable as a result.

I may still be staggering and lurching around. I may still be dreaming of malfunctioning space stations and making myself sick by turning my head. I may still have limited computer time before it makes me sick as well. But I'm able to use that time, and that helps a very great deal.

Had clinic PT today. I know that it would be worse if this "two steps forward, one step back" thing was reversed in ratio. Still and all. Continuing faith from my physical therapist that this will be fully resolved. Eventually. Someday.

So tired.

I've finished revisions (for this pass through only, of course!) on the first eight chapters of What We Did to Save the Kingdom, and also on 11, 16, 18, 19, 23, 25, 30, and 34. (Just two of those today. But still, two of those today, on a clinic PT day. This? Could be worse. Even without any new fiction.)

I think one of the things about this particular type of revisions is that it's forcing particularity. I cannot wail, "It is not as shiny as it was in my head! Unless it is and I just can't see it because it's been languishing unrevised and unloved!" I have to say, "Chapter 4 is dragging," or, "I have not explained the thing about the salt magic," or whatever. The down side of this is that the whole thing may still be thoroughly unshiny when I finish this set of revisions. But I have hopes that, if so, it will be unshiny and moderately sensical. With this style of approaching revisions, I have to deal with the book that is rather than the book that is not, and this is, I think, to the good. There will be time to talk more about what it is not and could be when I can get smart people to critique it for me. For now it's time to get all the things that need to happen before smart people have the information they need to be smart about it. And progress, progress is good. Measurable progress on something. I hope.

1. My mom, who is a hero of the revolution, trimming all of our front bushes for us. Big task out of our hair! (And since she was going home to shower, I assume it's out of hers now, too.) Yay!

2. Really good cucumber on my lunch salad. Hey, I didn't say they had to be big good things.

3. Managing to keep my temper with a friend long enough to remember that there were really good reasons why I should cut her slack.

4. Being cut slack myself.

5. New framed komododaikon photo on my office wall.

6. The extreme Swedishy Swedishness of this library book. Oh my goodness. It actually noted that if you read between the lines of one euphemism, you could discern...and then the thing you could discern was another euphemism. In other spots it is completely blunt about things American writing is not generally blunt about. Just in summary: very, very Swedish.

7. 1K of The True Tale of Carter Hall, with potential for more this evening.

8. Finishing figuring out the rest of the revisions for What We Did to Save the Kingdom, so now they are in tiny bite-sized pieces, and might be done in the available chunks of computer time while the vertigo gets bad. Maybe. You never know.

9. Finding a glimmer of hope that all of my behaving as though I can get somewhere with this...might mean that I can get somewhere with this.

10. Mango sorbet with dark chocolate bits on it. Nom.

Your turn.

I have directly conflicting writing needs:
1. I need to get the revisions done on What We Did to Save the Kingdom, at least to the point where I can get other eyes on it. Really. Need.
2. I need to start another book. Really. Need.

I do not, however, have the bodily resources to do this concurrently. Or even particularly quickly consecutively.

My method of coping with having novels out on editors'/agents' desks has always been:
1. Work harder.
2. Send out stuff to which 1. has been applied.
3. A miracle happens.
4. Wiktory!
(Steps three and four are purely conjecture at this point.)

This is not particularly functional when 1. is not physically possible. Problem is, I can't really think of anything else that will work, either.

At least I'm pretty sure that, since I finished "Snapshots of Breath" this morning, I don't need to add, "3. I need to write more short stories," to the top list.

Bleh.

Yesterday Santa 'Prov and I did some shopping. We're not done -- I am not even close to done shopping -- but we got lo these many items, and had a good time along the way. And now there is so very much wrapping. Uff da, the wrapping. And the things I have ordered are only trickling in at this point. And there are entire important people for whom I have nothing more than a vague idea and a very small token.

The wee beast would like her stocking stuffer dog biscuits nownownowplznow, and while we're at it she believes she would enjoy a few of the stocking stuffers purchased for the rest of her (monkey) pack as well. But it was not to be. It is so hard being the dog.

markgritter and I decorated the tree this afternoon, and I made Robin's chocolate chip cookies this morning. I don't generally make chocolate chip cookies for Christmas -- or ever; I make bomber bars or double chocolate cookies with stuff in -- but when I asked Robin what he wanted, that was his answer, and he is my very best godson ever, so what're ya gonna do. It's not like chocolate chip cookies will go begging except for Robin's interest. While we were doing these Festive Domestic Tasks, timprov was dispatched for a take-and-bake pizza and some DVDs, so we are going to stay tucked in and watching Animaniacs tonight. I hope it snows again.

The book revisions are going neither outstandingly well nor outstandingly poorly. I occasionally wonder if I am introducing new flaws as I obliterate the old ones. Probably I am. I repeat to myself in firm and kindly tones that this is what smart critiques are for.

So. I was talking to some folks about critiques for the current book, when the time comes, and I had to keep saying the same thing enough times that it just needed to be public: I think it's extremely valuable to have non-writers read and critique books. This is not in lieu of having skilled writers doing critiques but in addition to it. Ideally, the finished books will be read by non-writers, and just as only having people of one sex or only having people of one age critique a book can skew the type of critique one will get, only having people of one approach to the written word read it might skew the response.

I think some non-writers are a little shy about this because they don't necessarily know what a good critique looks like. Trust me, writers sometimes have all the jargon down and brilliant ideas for exactly how, technically, to fix a scene -- and other times we will look at each other and go, "I dunno, it's just that this part kinda goes whoppita whoppita whoppita when it should go whirrrrrr, y'know?" Or else, "I think it needs to be more, kinda, um, um...manic...does that make sense?" If you socialize with writers you should know that we are not necessarily more coherent than other people until we've had several drafts to hammer out the whoppitas and the ums. And we probably ask each other, "Does that make sense?" more often than the international average, not less. And sometimes the whoppitas and the ums are the bits that make for a good and useful critique and the detailed, technical jargon ideas about how to fix something turn out not to be very useful.

Also writing-related: awhile back people were talking about what, if anything, writers owe readers. And watching Season 3 Veronica Mars made me think of something in that direction. I think one of the things we owe readers is to put telling the current story to the best of our abilities ahead of marketing future stories. And another thing is to do our damnedest to tell them whole stories. The ending may be unresolved, but as long as we're alive and able to work, it shouldn't be unresolved for no reason. An ambiguous ending should be a choice rather than a failure to finish. Because a story is not about the storyteller being able to continue telling tales. It's about itself, and it should have a pretty firm dependence upon the storyteller's tales being worth telling.

The way TV shows are made is terrible for this, and I know that. No book editor in the world would ever look at someone who had written two 100K novels and say, "Okay...well...I might let you write another 100K about these characters, but...give me a 30K novella about them first. Then we'll see if we can tack on a 10K novelette. Twice. And then we'll see if another 40K novella does the trick, and no, wait, you can't have those last 10K; oh well. Hey, you appear to have turned in incompetent directionless crap! Huh, let's see how that sells. Badly. Oh. Bye, then." But the choices Rob Thomas made in the way he handled the impending cancellation of VM were not about bringing the story to as much of a close as he could at that point in its telling -- they were not about giving us the ending of a decent "middle book," say. They were about flailing around desperately trying to demonstrate to the network that he wasn't done telling it. As if the network cared.

I feel sorry for him, but having watched the director's commentary, I just wanted to shake him and say, "Idiot, the network was already screwing you over. It was going to keep screwing you over. And doing a crappy job for the actual viewers, few though we may have been at that point, was not the answer. Dude. You have just been telling two seasons worth of a story about how everything has consequences. I want you to watch the old episodes of your own show and think about what you've done. And for your penance, write me a show starring Percy Daggs as a bioengineer and Francis Capra as...um...something appropriately snarky and conflicted, okay? And Tina Majorino as Mac In A Very Slight And Unconvincing Disguise. All right, you can go now."

Sheesh.

1. How to throw in lines of operetta without boring or appalling the readers.

2. How to keep from panicking at the smaller-than-peak but still utterly reasonable number of short stories I have in circulation.

3. What I am doing for Christmas baking, other than the obvious things. (Pepparkakor, fudge meringues in both raspberry and pistachio, gingerbread of the loaf variety, apple bread with toasted hazelnuts, layered fudge. Those are the obvious things. What else?)

4. What to bring to Thanksgiving dinner. (This problem is subtitled, "Can you teach a 95-year-old great-aunt new greens?" I suspect in this case the answer is yes. Your auntage may vary.)

5. How to send someone else grocery shopping and still end up with enough groceries to feed us actual meals.

6. What to read for ten minutes in the group reading at Fantasy Matters on Friday.

7. What to get a favored small person for his birthday. (Hint: not a rocket cake. Because ladysea is already making that. I had this explained to me very carefully more than once by the said small person.)

8. What to wear for Fantasy Matters that will also be appropriate for a concert that night, where by "appropriate" I mean "will not kill my feet, freeze my butt, or require timprov to look unduly menacing."

9. When I can wedge in additional lunch, dinner, tea, or general hanging-out with people I like but don't see enough of (that is to say, all the people I like, individually or in very small groups), and how I can do it without going into an introvert coma and hiding under my desk until Lucia Day.

10. What is wrong with the bathroom and who should fix it (who as in which professional, not which housemammal).

11. How on earth it can only be Tuesday, and, simultaneously, how on earth it can be mid-November already.

12. What novel to write next.

Things About Which I Am Enthusiastic

1. SNOOOOOOOOOOW!

Okay, not real snow. But flurries. Enough flurries that a skiff of snow was blowing around on the road.

I am so pleased.

2. Most of the people I saw this weekend. Extremely enthusiastic. Yay, other monkeys. New monkeys! Previously known monkeys! Go, monkeys!

3. Space to be introverted. Go, immediate lack of monkeys!

4. That Orange Stuff (made by tnh). Wow. Layered and complex and astonishing. And with a kick like an entire team of army mules who were Clydesdales on their grandmother's side. I kept telling people about the orange stuff. It was noteworthy.

5. The hot chocolate at Mrs. London's down the street from the hotel. Bitter. Very fine. See also: brioche with vanilla custard and chocolate chips; farm bread with fennel sausage, stinky cheese, and arugula. Go, Mrs. London's. They made a travel day culinarily noteworthy in the good direction.

6. Mmmyyyyy precious. I will try to get a picture. One link broke when I went to take it off in security (and that was ridiculous anyway, but whatever), but next time I have tea with elisem I will ask her to fix it. It is called "The Day She Stopped Waiting," and it is so shiny.

7. Big piles of books on my desk, whee!

8. My book, the revisions to which I will start typing tonight or tomorrow. Book! Still looking interesting and fixable! Yay, book!

9. Being home.

10. Having gotten to be somewhere not-home that was pretty kind to me. (I've heard others didn't have that experience. I'm sorry.)

11. Hot water poodle on my lap.

Things About Which I Am Less Enthusiastic

1. Post-flight vertigo. Bah.

2. Post-travel laundry. Bah again.