According To Hoyt

For years I’ve assumed I had a problem writing sequels.  Part of the reason to drive my poor publisher insane by redoing a book at the last possible moment, which I’m doing with Darkship Renegades comes from this.  I feel Darkship Renegades is inferior to Darkship Thieves, and I’m trying to fix that.  I felt the same way about Gentleman Takes a Chance towards Draw One In The Dark, and having read both recently, I think this is true, for various reasons (partly because I was SO depressed while writing GTAC, but that’s something else.)

It’s not a marked difference, mind, I just thought the sequel didn’t quite hit the right note.  This might be subjective and predicated partly on the fact that I THOUGHT I wasn’t good at sequels.

Why am I saying “thought” as though this were somehow illusory?

Because I realized, when Iw as discussing this with someone today that in fact I can write sequels just fine for some of my books – to wit the mysteries.  I never wrung my hands and went “I don’t know how I can write a sequel to Death of A Musketeer.”  It was baked in before I wrote the first book: these are mysteries, each focusing on one of the characters.  Same with the Refinishing mysteries.

I think the difference is that my fantasies and science fiction start from the character, while the mysteries are “plot books.”  They start from the plot inward.  This is not to say that Darkship Thieves is not plot driven – of course it is, also – or that the musketeer mysteries don’t focus on character – of course they do, to an extent.

But it’s where the primary force is, and how the book presents itself to me.  Athena came to me, in Darkship Thieves, as this seriously messed up chick, by the end of the book she’s almost functional, and though I planned on a sequel, it’s weird to be in the head of a “calmer” Athena.  With the first shifter books, Draw One In The Dark, Tom was SO severely messed up that when I got him settled at the end, it seemed almost nasty to disturb him for a second book.

And yet, you know and I know, if you love a book you need to go back.  You want to go back, as a reader.

So… how to reconcile that?

Well, first, I rid myself of the idea I can’t write sequels.  I think part of the reason for this feeling is that my first series, the sequel got so severely messed around with by agent that I got convinced I couldn’t do it.

Once rid of that idea, I think I need to give myself permission for writing the sequel different from the first book.  Because there’s a built in it should be “the same.”

And then, at least with Darkship Renegade, I need not to be depressed <Grin> – I say this because it’s so much easier to see where I “stuttered” in narration due to depression.  I mean, I’m dragging around the creeping crud, and I’m still able to see this much clearer now I’m not depressed.

AND when possible (if the Earth Revolution series comes to pass, for instance, but also for other books/series) I need to set up the sequels so they have different characters – at least when the book is intensely character driven.  This is often used in Romance, for that reason.

For instance, in Noah’s Boy the Shifter series starts pivoting slowly away from Kyrie and Tom.  Oh, they’re still there.  The George is still the center of the action.  And the next two books, Bowl of Red and POSSIBLY Balloon Juice center around their relationship as much as the other plot, but the other plot starts pivoting away from them and towards the other people: Rafiel first, then Conan and THEIR relationships, so that Kyrie and Tom become only one of the legs of the series, as it were, still there, still important but not the fulcrum.

Again, this is done a lot in Romance, because of the “compelling character problem” that drives the plot, and it will – I think – work well for other series too.

What do you think?  Do the readers always want the same plot/book with different names?  Or do you want characters who grow in different ways?  And how would those of you who are not primarily romance readers feel about the “moving among a group of characters” thing?

Years ago, during one of the Oregon WRITING (as opposed to publishing) workshops Kris kept complaining everything we sent in had “occluded” voice.  I know what she means.  It’s like when I do a painting, then scan it in, and something goes wrong.  All my vibrant colors go faded, like they’ve been under the sun a long time.

To remedy this she had us do a very odd exercise, which I’m not going to explain, but let’s just say it took us WAY out of our comfort zone.

When reading it, she said it was like spending the whole week hearing tin whistles and now there were trumpets.

This is kind of what I feel like with A Few Good Men vs. Darkship Thieves (or Darkship Renegades.)  Which is why I’ve done something unprecedented and asked my publisher to stop mid-read on DSR and let me fix it.  Most of what I’m fixing is the end, mind, but I’m also redoing the first five pages, and doing a thorough clean up in the middle.  Because after all my fights with that book, this is a matter of “I was blind, but now I see.”

Now, this might happen anytime you let a book rest for a few years, but I didn’t, of course.  It was only a couple of months.  And I’d tried that before, which is why it’s so late.

So, what changed?  The transformative (no other explanation) experience of writing AFGM.
Why was it transformative?  I’ve been thinking about that, because of course, I want to replicate it.

I think for me – and mind you, this is JUST for me.  You’re a different person – these are the main factors:

1 – I wrote it on spec, not under contract.

I’ve suspected for a LONG time this was a problem for me, and have in fact discussed it with Toni at Baen (My long-suffering, very patient publisher mentioned above.)  No, this is not something I’d choose to be like, if I’d got a choice.  Writing things to contract is better because you have security.  Much better.  Except that my mind locks into “It’s due and I don’t want to do it.”  Possibly it’s my issues with authority.  Possibly it’s that I’m broken, but I think it’s more and less than that.  Yeah, if it’s due it becomes “homework” – I remember when I had an history test ALL I wanted to read was physics and vice-versa.  BUT the other part of it is that if it’s not sold, there’s no one looking over my shoulder.  I don’t subconsciously try to prod the book in “a direction the publisher will like” or stop myself if it goes away from that.  This allows me to experience the book, to live it, to make it truly mine.  Hence, the trumpets as opposed to tin whistles.

2 – I knew if it didn’t sell I could bring it out myself
This too is important because before I tried to write things out of contract and they just died halfway through, normally when I went “Oh, no, this will never sell, why am I wasting time.  So, this again frees me to create the way I WANT to.

3 – I wrote it when it wanted to be written.  Oh, I made it wait while I delivered DSR and the mystery, so the first fifty pages were there.  But then I pushed the other three due books aside and let it come through.  And it did.  Poured.  At the rate it wanted to.  I can honestly say the most apt phrases in the book I don’t remember writing.  (Not the most beautiful, I don’t write for beautiful language) but the one sthat completely capture it.  Once or twice while reading over AFGM I went “I wrote that?”  So…

So, what to do going forward?  I shall see if publisher is willing to work with letting me just do books on spec – she’ll probably get them faster, to be honest, if I’m not fighting myself.

And, once contracts ARE finished, I’m going to let popcorn kittens have their way, with only one rule: must finish one book before picking up next one.

My guess is the trumpets will sound loudly.  I’ll let you know if I turn out to be wrong.

I’ve been neglecting my drawing… pretty much this last year.  Between figuring out what was wrong with publishing (TM) and working on the new process to get words in front of readers, and the year of the great travels (okay, they weren’t great.  But they were continuous, at least a week and often two out of the house from May to September) I didn’t take any courses and I haven’t devoted much time to drawing since the New Year’s vacation almost a year ago now.  An afternoon here and there, but not much finished and no concerted effort.

This morning, as I sat at the breakfast table waiting for tea to kick my nervous system into a semblance of consciousness, I looked out at the large tree in front of the kitchen window and I thought with the cold morning light and the bits of snow it would be interesting to draw.

I didn’t do it, and I’m still craving it.  But drawing would involve finding my drawing kit (weirdly not on the desk with the pastels, I looked.  I need a different desk where I can organize things) and possibly three to four hours making small changes before I have a halfway functional sketch.  And today I HAVE to finish editing Darkship Renegades and a ton of other stuff, and I’m still recovering from whatever this crud was.  I keep creeping halfway to wellness then falling down again.

But as I got up to put the tea cup in the sink, thinking “I’ll get to work on writing.  The urge to draw will pass” I remembered a conversation with my dad about three years ago.  My dad’s first degree is in art, but he had to do commercial art and then engineering, to put food on the table.  (Pesky tables, always needing food.)  I think he was always a little disappointed that we didn’t have an inclination for art, or that I did, but gave it up at 14 to concentrate on writing.  So, I was showing him my drawings and explaining that after I got concussion 9 years ago, I got an almost unbearable urge to draw, so I went and took art lessons, and started drawing in my copious spare time.  (And no, I have no idea how severe concussion does that.  You figure it.)  And he said “If you ignore it long enough, the urge passes.  Now it’s gone.”

And you know, the way he said it, it was the saddest thing in the world.  He used to talk about pursuing art and his poetry in retirement, but he says now (of course, he retired at eighty) he just doesn’t have the drive anymore.

And then as I was coming up the stairs, I was thinking I treated my writing like that for years, too.  There was college to finish.  And then – even with my husband’s support of my writing – there was work, and then kids.

I probably would never have pushed seriously – a short story a year is NOT serious, even if one submits it and works hard at it – except I ended up in the hospital with near-lethal pneumonia (11 days in icu) fifteen years ago now.  The doctors thought I was going to die.  I thought I was going to die.  My husband was the only one who thought otherwise, and, as you see, he’s a very forceful man.

Anyway, lying there, contemplating the probability of death in the next few days, I thought of what I regretted most.  Of course, at the time the boys were four and one, and I was almost frantic with worry about them.  My husband is a wonderful father, but he’d have to work, which would leave the kids in the position I most didn’t want, in the position I’d promised myself we wouldn’t put them in when we were going through near-endless infertility treatments: being raised by hired strangers.  I worried, and felt very regretful that they probably wouldn’t even remember me.  I worried about our finances too, since these were the hardscrabble days, and while I was home I earned my pay in how I shopped, and buying furniture really cheap (used) then refinishing it (furnishing a whole house for about $500 and having it look decent is possible) or even making stuff.  Without me, the family lifestyle would tumble down several notches.

BUT hard behind that worry was worry about my writing.  I had all these started novels.  And written novels.  I had worlds and characters in my head no one else had read.  They would die with me.

For some reason this was as unbearable as the thought of orphan kids.  Which is why as soon as I recovered, I returned to writing with a vengeance and started treating it as a serious endeavor.

Have I sometimes wished I hadn’t?  Sometimes, in the last four/five years.  BUT now it’s starting to come back to what it’s supposed to do, and the rewards (trust me) outweigh all that.

So, what is this post about?  Am I telling you to do it before the urge passes?  I don’t know.  I’m not living your life.  For instance, I’m not going back downstairs to draw the tree, because I DO have editing to do.  I will however make a decision, going into the new year, of taking at least a couple of classes and trying (my best) to give a couple of hours to drawing or painting every week.  Because even though it will never be my main work, it is something that seems to help the writing (and vice-versa.)  And because I think the urge is precious.  And I don’t want it to go away.

I’ve lately been reading a lot of my own stuff, which is one of those things you shouldn’t do while sober, particularly if said stuff is more than a couple of years old.  (Read your own stuff, I mean.  Of course you should read mine because you know, I was born amazing.  Also because, frankly, I have NO idea what ya’ll will like… or not)

It’s actually a great setup because they don’t read like mine, so I can copyedit to the limits of my admitedly not detail-oriented ability but they still feel enough like mine that I see EVERY flaw as though under a magnifying glass.

Did I say that’s a great setup?  Well it is, if your goal is to clean the stories up.  For the writer’s ego, which in my case is so collapsed most of the time it might as well be a blackhole, it is a disaster, but never mind that.  I think I have enough rational detachment not to roll up in ball and cry at how bad stuff is.

I did come up with what seems to be a few idiosyncrasies that bear noticing, such as my penchant to have people attacked in their sleep and/or the shower; my penchant to have any woman who plays a musical instrument be pure evil (the men tend to be sweet, though.  Go figure); my penchant to destroy the Natural History Museum, etc.  At least give me props, though, for no longer stalking Kit Marlowe.  It takes effort, but… Stalking a dead man is just evil.  Also, he probably didn’t swing that way. (Actually hard to tell, as Elizabethan England was more… fluid.  But Marlowe is as close to an indication of leaning [or falling over] as we have.)

However, reading these many short stories in a row gave me indications of several things, like “Short stories, I was doing them wrong” – or not wrong, but now I can see how I truncated things to fit within word limit.  You see, I’m a VERY lazy person and I hate doing work for free.  BUT it turns out that when unfettered – the few stories I wrote since realizing I could go indie with them – I tend to 10 to 15k words, not 6.

On the other hand it also gave me a clear idea of how I – note I said I, I’m not telling you everyone should do this! – structure a short story.  I thought it might be of interest to the writers among you.  So, here’s what I’ve discovered.

1- First line or two, introduce the most startling or grabby thing about your characters/setting/situation.

2 – Use the rest of the paragraph to lay out character/setting/ and most of all problem.  You might want to lead with problem as that brings out the most interesting things about your idea.  (If your idea isn’t interesting, WHY are you writing it?)

3 – Next few pages –Develop the present situation which your character is caught.  This situation is usually not the main problem, and you should have at least one try/fail before getting character out of the PRESENT situation.  About 1/4 of the way through the story, have the character realize what the REAL problem is.

4 – Initiate try/fails to solve the main problem.

5- Around middle of the story have character realize he was going about obtaining goal the wrong way or that his/her assumptions were oh, soooo wrong.

6- Activate cunning plan.  (This normally doesn’t involve a turnip, on account of not being a Black Adder story.)

7 – Try fail sequences set up about 3/4 through the story.

8 – Black moment about 1/8th from the end.

9 – resolution and usually not much of what my husband calls a cigarette moment, because it’s a short.

There are exceptions to this, but this seems to be my basic structure, and I probably could outline a short (if needed – might be, I’m out of practice for shorts) by going in and filling in the events at each of those points for whatever the story is.

And now, having got up indecently late (getting over re-crudescence) I’m going to get coffee.

Sorry to be ridiculously late posting this but after an early wake up to get #2 son to an event on this snowy morning, we got back in bed to stay warm.  I have been reading a stack of books on being young in England just before WWI — not sure where this is leading yet.  It’s one of those cravings.  Some glimmer of a mystery series, maybe, but when I don’t know since there are all sorts of popcorn kittens ahead of it.  We shall see.

Meanwhile, despite being cold I couldn’t stand being in bed anymore, and besides I have copyedits on Sword and Blood (under pen name Sarah Marques) to go over, I have Darkship Renegade to do a last pass to (I have a theory that now that I’m no longer depressed I can clean it up a bit — might be wrong, who knows?  But I had a sense of the voice being slightly askew on that one, I just couldn’t fix it.  We’ll see if I can now.  BTW this might be imagination, as I felt the same way about Darkship Thieves, but four years after writing it reads fine.) and it needs to be at Toni’s and done by Sunday evening.  There’s also a Musketeer Vampire world novella to finish.  Oh, and the trademark “Kitten and Dragon Christmas Card” to draw.  So.  No rest for the wicked.  I’m up and about to go fight the coffeemaker, then get dressed in something warm so I can work.

I should go to the thrift store and see if I can find something for an art desk that allows me to use the monitor for models, but this MIGHT wait till next weekend because I don’t know about y’all but I don’t feel like carrying heavy furniture in light snow.

Now below is the continuing installment of Between The Night And The Morrow.

Through the flawless palace of fairykind Prince Darcy came striding, his spurs striking the glimmering floors in rhythm with his angry footfalls, his mouth set in a tight line, his eyes flashing the fire of displeasure.

If he were asked, he could not even say what had first disturbed him. The way Miss Elizabeth Titania Bennet so adroitly set the spells of enchantment upon him, or the way she’d let her middle name slide out so smoothly, so uncaring. Worse, he couldn’t tell if the fact that his anger was not directed at her had more to do with the fact that she had bespelled him, or the fact that he’d been lied to by his king and grandfather.

He and Bingley, aye, and Carola, also, had ridden their fairy steeds from the mortal world and through the magical forests of the night, on the way back to the hill, and he was vaguely aware that Bingley had tried to talk to him, that Carola might have tried to gentle him. He had some confused memory of her hand on his arm, trying to call him from his black mood, but he had not talked. And he’d not stopped. He’d spurred his horse on, and now he drove himself on, ignoring the courtiers that bowed and the ladies that curtseyed, and even Georgiana who said, “Fitzwilliam!” – his childhood name.

And now that he thought about it, it struck the ear as a very unlikely name for a fairy prince, a Lord of the elves. And now that he thought about it, he felt his teeth grinding upon each other, even as he heard his sister’s agitated steps speed up to catch up with him.

In vain, as he’d reached the doors of the throne room, smooth, polished doors being opened for him by two tall elves with the dark hair of the southern peoples, the marble countenance of those brought up in the king’s service. The King! Prince Darcy’s grandfather, who had much to explain!

He sat in the throne, in his full majesty, Titania beside him, the lady for whom Miss Bennet was named, and Darcy snorted at it, and approached far too close to the throne before he remembered to halt and bow. And even then he would never have done it if the guards at the foot of the throne stairs hadn’t moved, in a sudden slide, as though to block his attack. He wondered what his face must show – and what his magic flare – if they’d react thus to a prince of the blood.

“Darcy!” the king said, a tone of surprise in his voice, but he did not ask what happened, nor demand that Darcy give a report, as he doubtless would normally do. Instead, he stared at Darcy, his mouth a little open, his eyebrows rising. And Titania, his lady, leaned into him and clutched his muscular arm with her delicate hand which appeared to be gloved in spider web woven entirely of silver. But she said naught.

“Your majesty,” Darcy said, after what felt like a very long time, in which he strived to find his voice. And then, because he felt as though he needed to remind himself of these honors, as much as he needed to remind the one he addressed, “Sovereign of the high court of the elves, Commander of the magical isles, King of the storm and the lightening, Emperor of the Air,” he took a deep breath. He saw his grandfather start to half rise from the throne with alarm and wondered how oddly his voice must ring. “Whyfore did you lie to me?”

The king opened his mouth, then closed it, then opened it again. His wife’s hand squeezed his arm, visibly. “I?” he said. “Lie?”

Darcy inclined his head, not only in respect, but because he’d prefer to look at his highly polished boots, and the silver spurs shining on them, than at his grandfather’s face, right then. What he read there, he was afraid, would lead him to commit some folly. “You, your majesty, lied to me, your own kinsman, you liegeman, as you sent me out to brave the mortal world.”

The king said nothing. Perhaps it was better that he did not speak, Darcy thought, and looking up, he found that the king was looking at him, his expression indecipherable. “You lied to me, your majesty, when you said that the Bennet girls were descended from your majesty.”

“But–” the king said, and looked genuinely puzzled. “But… they are!”

“Oh, aye, and that they might be, but you know, as well as you know the uncounted years of your unnumbered life, that there are ways to lie which have nothing to do with words. You led me to believe… you led me to assume… that these girls were the result of an… an encounter with a mortal. Nothing more.”

The king again didn’t answer. Darcy fancied that he looked paler. “When in fact, your majesty…” he cleared his throat. “Both your majesties know that this cannot be true. That these girls are, in fact, descended from both of you. That my grandmother is these girls’ ancestor as surely as you are… grandfather.”

The magic the king tried to throw at Darcy was so clumsily aimed that Darcy had time to see it coming and to block it. He realized it was supposed to compel him to keep his mouth shut, at the same time that his grandfather must have realized it had missed. He brought his silvery eyebrows down over his eyes. He glared at the assembled company, and then down at Darcy, “This is not the place, son,” he said, using a word and a tone he rarely if ever employed to his grandson. “If you feel yourself injured, if you wish to discuss this, you must come with me. Into my private chambers.”

Darcy closed his hands tight with rage. “I wish we’d speak before the court.”

The king’s eyebrows went up, in disbelief. “Is this your challenge then, grandson? Do you intend to rule this kingdom tonight?” He spoke with incredulity, and his wife’s hand squeezed his arm tighter, and she whispered something in his ear.

It was the look on their faces, which should have been anger, but was not, that brought Darcy to his senses, in a sudden, cold awakening, as though he’d been doused in freezing rain. He knew that sometimes, in the smaller hills under his grandfather’s command elf lords fought their heirs – or their rivals – for the domain. He’d never heard of its happening in the halls of the high king. But then there was a lot he’d never heard of happening. And he realized, in a crash of sobriety that didn’t set his anger in flight but made him rise above it as though it belonged to someone quite different, that if it came to that – if he challenged his grandfather – he would lose. And then what would be left for him, but that mortal world, and those flawed creatures out there? And all while the traitor rounded, seeking to destroy all of fairyland. No.

No time for family quarrels. He forced his hands to open and inclined his head. “Your majesty commands,” he said.

He saw Titania’s hand unclench from Oberon’s arm, as both king and queen rose, and the court fluttered out of the way, and the chamberers moved, fast, with torches and lanterns to light the way along the glimmering hallway, and throw open the door to Oberon’s private chambers.

 

UPDATE:  A SLIGHTLY EDITED AND PRETTIED UP COMPILATION OF ALL CHAPTERS UP TO A WEEK OLD IS HERE

*This is chapter ELEVEN (can’t count) of witchfinder, the Fantasy novel I’m posting here for free, one chapter every Friday.  I’ve been posting director’s commentary at the end of chapters, but I think it detracts from the experience, so I’ll do that on Sunday, instead, for the previous chapter.  If your conscience troubles you getting something for free, do hit the donate button on the right side and down.  Anyone donating more than $6 will get a non-drm electronic copy of Witchfinder in its final version, when it’s published.  This also allows us to buy the very expensive food that Euclid (upon whom Pythagoras, aka Peesgrass of the refinishing mysteries is based) seems to need.  And, oh, yeah, the cover sucks, but I haven’t had time for a new one.

Oh, this is in pre-earc format, meaning you’ll find the occasional spelling mistake and sentence that makes no sense.  It’s not exactly first draft, but it’s not at the level I’d send to a publisher, yet.*

For first chapter, look here

For tenth chapter, look here

The Spider And The Web

Nell woke up.  She woke up with no consciousness of having been asleep, or any time having disappeared.

It was rather like waking or dreaming she’d wakened, and not being sure which.  Had she slept before, when she’d imagined herself in the sunlit park with Sydell?  Or did she sleep now?

Now she was in the same park, but it was the dead of night, and the park was deserted.  Strangely, it was winter too, though it had not been cold when she’d been there during the day.  Now there was frost on the trees – or at least something white frosted the branches.  The lake stood motionless like a mirror.  There was no sound, either, though the park was not that large and from where she stood she should be able to hear the noise of carriages trundling through the night, or at least the noise of swans splashing in the lake.  Any noise.  Anything, even the rustle of leaves or grass blades.

Instead, everything was very quiet.  It felt as if she were trapped in one of those dreams where silence has a physical presence and can envelop all.

She took a step forward, and that too was like walking in a dream. *I don’t like it* she thought, but the truth was that she didn’t have to like it.  She didn’t have to give consent to it.

“I am asleep,” she said, but the words came to her oddly, and she knew she wasn’t.  Each step she took seemed to weight too much and take too long, and she walked all the way to the edge of the lake, slowly, very slowly.  Every step seemed to take a million years.  Each moment was unnaturally prorogued.

“I must think,” she told herself.  “I must think where I am and how I came to be here, and what I must do.”

“Sydell.  I met with Sydell and he rifled through my mind and took from it all the matters pertaining to Seraphim Darkwater and to whatever it is he’s doing with the other worlds.  All of it.”  And that was bad and she knew it was bad, but she didn’t count on the surge of panic that followed those words, on the feeling that there was more in her mind than pertained to the fate of two very nice, but let’s face it, somewhat hapless young men who had broken the law in pursuit of justice as they saw it.  No, there was more there.  Enough, she thought, that could tilt the universe on its axis and make the world a very dangerous place indeed.  Antoine had told her–

But when she tried to pursue what Antoine had told her, it receded before her mind, and she couldn’t pin it down.  Something about her mind and its memories.  Something about locking them from prying eyes.  “But you should have taught me how to do it, Antoine,” she said, talking to the still air, the silent night, the cold-frosted trees standing, their pale branches gleaming in the moonlight like lost souls begging for mercy.  “Because without you, my mind has got rifled through and picked, and whatever Sydell found in it caused him to send me to–”

To send her where?  She’d reached the edge of the lake and looking down she saw the water.  It was water, but it was unreally smooth, like a mirror, so smooth that it might well be solid, like glass calm and unreflective.

And from a place a long time ago, when she’d been just a young computer programer, who seemed to have fallen into a fantasy novel and in love with a powerful wizard, she heard Antoine’s voice talking.  “Sleeping Beauty,” he said.  “Why do you think she slept a hundred years?  And never woke?  And never tried to fight her enchantment?  Why do you think all those around her slept?  The brambles never grew.  That is a silly invention in your world.  And no mice nested in the cupboard, no rat nibbled the sleepers.  Do you know why?  There are worlds in between the worlds that exist anew each ticking of the clock.  Each time the clock ticks, reality hesitates and wavers, as many possible futures rush in and solidify into one.  Just one present.  Unending futures.  From such unending worlds, though a magical accident, the multiverse’s many worlds were created.  But in each of these worlds, the infinity of futures coalesces to just one second of present.

“And between those many futures and the solidified present lies a unit of time.  It’s so brief that in it your heart would not have the time to beat once.  It is so long that, to someone caught in it, it will last forever and the future will never arrive.

“A strong enough magician can spin another human – usually just one.  One shudders at the thought of what it would take to really spin an entire castle and all its inhabitants into that space.

“– into that time.  That time between future and present.  That time that will never be present nor future nor past, but a place apart from time.  In them no one dies, though it could be said no one really lives, ever.  And you can stay forever, imprisoned.  Alone.”

Alone, Nell thought, looking at the water still like glass.  Alone.

But there was a way out.  There had to be.  Sleeping beauty had come back.  The prince had kissed her.  But that would need a prince, would it not.

“So I’m out of luck, since all I have is a duke.” she thought and wanted to laugh, which is how she knew she was really tired and really scared, because laughter was inappropriate in here.  Laughter had no place in this land where nothing would change and where she would be a prisoner forever.

No.  No.  there had to be a prince and a kiss.  There had to be a way of attracting him.

The problem of Earth, she thought, and the problem of growing up on Earth was that one never got the to learn how to get out of these kind of situations.  If you could believe the people of Avalonis, the Earth and Avalonis, and the hundreds of other earths had all spun from the same unified Earth.

The theory of when it had spun apart varied, and some maintained it had happened well before human history begun, and others that it was as recent as a few hundred years ago.  Yet others, saner, thought that it had taken place at different times for different worlds.

But all of them believed they’d all come from common stock and had common legends.  And that these legends, perforce, came from similar events, or encoded similar knowledge.  And by and large that was true in Avalonis, where one could learn from the perils of Cinderella – although mostly what one learned, at least according to Antoine, was not to perform love-spells involving one’s own father and a nice-seeming neighbor lady, when one was a very young and inexperienced witch.  And as for Little Riding Hood, that charming cautionary tale had prevented many a young girl from giving her pet dog characteristics of her human playmates in order to have him better play house.

But Nell didn’t think that anyone had ever told her what the real meaning of Sleeping Beauty was.  And in the world in which she’d been so fortunate as to grow up, the best known version said that she should send blue birds or something of the sort to call Prince Charming to come and get her out of this bind.

She snorted loudly.  So much for Prince Charming.  If he only answered to dial-a-blue-bird she’d be lost in here forever, and he’d never know where she’d gone.  Because, after all, nothing moved here.  No bluebirds.  No wind.  Not even air.  And she only remained alive because she couldn’t die.

But she could move, her mind protested.   She was an intelligent being and she could move, even though the rest of this world might be locked between past and future, never being present.  And if she still had the ability to think and to move, then the only thing that she could use to call someone to her rescue was … her own mind.

Part of her wanted to rebel and to say that she needed no one for rescue; that she was a self sufficient woman; that she’d been taught to rescue herself.  But the old legends didn’t work that way.  They were older than mankind and certainly older than any vestige of self-determination, than any idea of females being embarrassed for being beholden to a male.  The legends, and the puzzles they encoded went all the way back to the beginning, when a human without a tribe was lost, and when a tribe was often just a man, a woman and their offspring.  In those times, in that place, you needed the rest of them to rescue you.

That meant… that meant, she thought, that if she had bonded with someone, preferably someone male, she would be able to now call her to him by magical means, and he would break through the frozen stillness of this nowhere place and rescue her.

But she had never bonded with anyone.  Well, not that way.

“Perhaps Antoine,” she said, aloud, and tried to take it seriously, but she knew it wasn’t.  Antoine was just a dream.  He had been the dream of a young girl – the extraordinary, enchanting wizard who existed even though all the laws of the world said he shouldn’t.  But lately, just as they landed in Avalonis, she’d started to wonder if he was truly all she’d thought, if he was as powerful, as urbane, as learned, but most of all if he was as good as she’d willingly dreamed him.

She didn’t know the answer to that.  She still didn’t.  But she knew that having doubts had severed the connection between them.  If there had ever been a connection.  Now when she tried to reach for Antoine’s essence, for his magical strength, she felt nothing.

It was like pulling at one end of a rope, which was supposed to be tied to solid rock, and instead feeling the rope come up, all of a sudden, slack and too light.  It was like taking a step in the dark and finding nothing under one’s foot.

Antoine would not work.

Gabriel, perhaps?  Gabriel Penn had seemed a good solid man.  She’d liked his strength and his persistence, and his refusal to let his half-brother die.  Given what the society was, and the difference in their positions, she could only imagine how many slights and insults Gabriel must have endured, and yet he was willing to risk it all for the legitimate heir.

Yes, he could be a rock in times of trouble, and though she’d not perceived any attraction from him to her, he had told the duchess they were engaged.  Perhaps that was a sign of a wish he dared not express?

She looked at the lake, in the frozen not quite light of the not quite night.  It wasn’t she realized, that it was nighttime here, but more that the light that was here had solidified like water.  It was light on the trees, not snow.  And yet she felt colder just thinking about it.

Her mind, gently, carefully, quested in the direction of Gabriel Penn, thinking of him and of the power she’d perceived from him, and trying to establish a connection.  Even if the connection was no more than a vague interest from him, that and her good will ought to establish a bond strong enough to–

To what?  To have him ride up to her rescue?  No.  She didn’t think so.  She suspected it was more that establishing a bond would make it possible for her to pull herself up to where he was, to drag herself from this frozen never-was to the present.  Wherever he was and whatever he was doing, as embarrassing as it might be, at least it was somewhere alive.

Her questing mind met with something.  It wasn’t like looking for Antoine and finding nothing where his mind and power should be.  Gabriel was a solid presence in her magical quest, taking up a solid portion of her magical map.  But when she tried to pull up, to pull to him, to feel him – her mind careened into a blank wall.

No, not a wall, a gate.  She could see it in her mind’s eye – tall and made of something hard and cold.  Metal, or perhaps stone.  And locked.

For a moment she thought of shaking the gate, of rattling it, but realized it was less than forlorn hope.  The gate dwarfed her and loomed over her, and there was nothing in her human form that could open that.  From beyond it came a disturbing song, in a language she couldn’t understand.

She had the impression quite suddenly that the real Gabriel Penn was someone quite different, quite other than the servants he appeared to be.  It was nonsense, but…  She felt him as almost an alien being, someone she couldn’t hope to comprehend.

That left…  She gritted her teeth and through her mind passed in review the many people she had met in her time in Avalonis.  Most of her meetings with men were less than inconsequential.  Other than Sydell she’d had no constant male contact.  And Sydell had sent her here.  She was sure of it.

So that left…  Seraphim.  What possible contact could he have with her?  Well, he’d risked his life to save her.  But he’d risked his life, too, to save the lion boy, and yet she didn’t think that he had any interest in lions.  Or in boys, for that matter.

But he was kind and he was – if she guessed his character properly – hard put to resist the claims of someone in need.  And she was in need.  So, if not with her attraction, she could forge a bind with her need.

Thinking of her great need and that without him she would be locked in here forever, worse than a ghost, neither dead nor alive, till she went slowly mad in an eternity of solitude, she reached for the power she’d seen as Seraphim Darkwater’s.  At the same time she called the duke’s aristocratic profile, his laughing green eyes to her mind.

For a moment it felt like she’d met with the same wall that surrounded Gabriel, only if Nell had to picture this one she’d picture it as those brambles grown around Sleeping Beauty’s castle.  A profusion of defensive thorns, things to keep others away.

“But I need help,” she said, and cringed to say it, and yet – desperate – pushed her need at him, forcing him to see that without him, she was barred from life forever.

Whatever was holding her broke so suddenly that she had the impression of being picked up and lifted, then thrown bodily into the water.

She started to sink, under the weight of her skirts and petticoats, then managed to paddle enough to keep herself afloat as she struggled to remove the water-logged petticoats before they pulled her under.  As she did, details sank in – the murmur of the wind in trees around this lake, and something else.  The lake was full of boats, the boats filled with men who looked like gardeners or stable boys and who carried a lantern a piece.  Each boat held two men, one of whom rowed while the other stood, other holding the lantern aloft and trying to look into the murky depths of the lake.

There were two boats making for her as fast as the men rowing could make it.  The man with the lantern called from the nearest one, “It is not him.  Not the young master.”

“Who is it then?” the standing man from the other nearest boat called.”

“It’s a lady,” the nearest man called.  “Someone tell His Grace there’s a lady in the trout pond”

Or how to write fast and as well as you can at your stage (whichever that is.)

First – stop fighting the words.
Yes, yes, the words are important – eventually – but for now, stop fighting them.  Tell yourself before this is sent in, it will be read three or four more times, and you’ll catch that – then.   If you can’t remember an exact word, or if you know you’re repeating a word, let it go.  At this stage the lightening bug is as good as the lightening bolt, metaphorically speaking.  It’s easier to think ONLY words and get really good once you have the basic structure/scenes/characters down.

Second – Stop fighting the story.
Okay, for instance in A Few Good Men I realized with ages where they were, the ick factor for a particular event was THROUGH the roof.  (No, can’t explain.  Just trust me.  Yes, it made the victims more sympathetic, but, as a parent, it set off ALL sorts of alarms.  I couldn’t take it. ) So I aged everyone concerned four years.  Two problems.  First, my arithmetic sucks when I’m mid book.  Second, “Curse you search replace.”  So it made it to betas with screwed up numbers.  Sigh.  I’ll fix it on next pass, before editor sees it.  No big.  Allow for that.  Don’t drive yourself nuts.  Your first pass is not your last.

Third – if story changes mid stream, make notes, do not go back and change.  Say halfway through the book you realize your narrator is the murderer and you did not foreshadow.  Make notes at that point “First chapter, make sure he says…” Etc.  save it for revision.  When I started out and was still learning plotting, I often ended up with a beginning for one novel, a middle for another, and an end for yet another.  BUT that was still fixable in revision.  You just go back and make all the “pointers” match.  I use sticky notes for these, so often my desk looks like a porcupine at the end of the novel.  (And btw, these days novels don’t end up tri-partite often.  First novel that wasn’t that way was Draw One in the Dark.)

Fourth – don’t think of this as “your one and only” If you do that, then you want to make it perfect.  It will never be perfect.  The closest you’ll come to perfection will be your aggregate work, not each of them.  Make each as good as you can, but give yourself three revisions tops, then one after betaing.  If you do more than that, you’ll start introducing as many issues as you fix.  TRUST me.  If you think “But this is my one and only” think… if RAH had only written For Us The Living and tried to make it the BEST thing ever.  (Gags.)  And I’ll point out he got stuck trying to publish that for like… ten years.   Or if Pratchett had ONLY ever written The Carpet People and devoted himself to fixing it, forever.  Or if I had only written Glass Pedestal (cold dead hands, children, and not even then, as I’ll HAUNT anyone who publishes it.)  I came darn near only writing the pre-minoan thing — eighth novel — once I hit that.  It ate years of my life.  In retrospect… it couldn’t have been made publishable with what I knew at the time, which brings us to fifth

Fifth – sometimes you have to admit, to quote my son’s post on G-d and pantsing that you can write a kidney stone that even you can’t pass.  I.e. you’re creating a novel you can’t write yet.  This is good – you’re reaching, learning, stretching – but sometimes (not every time.  Then you have to just wonder if you’re a trifler with novels) – you have to wonder if you lack the… practice to write that.  Mirrorplay – the minoan thing – was that way for me.  I had no clue how to plot even one novel, and here I was trying to do an epic SERIES.  Now?  Now I can go back and do it, with multiple, fully realized characters.  I finished it, at the time, mind.  I just recognized it wasn’t very good, so it’s sat for near on twenty years.  Now it’s waiting for a time to go back and fix.  IF I’d insisted on just rewriting it till it was good, I’d never have done that learning.  (It’s different, trust me.  You learn different things from different novels.)  I have at least one ex-writers-group member who last I heard HAD spent the last twenty years rewriting her novel…  Not only doesn’t she have the knowledge to recast it, but by now it probably needs recasting.  No, seriously.  It will be soup.  Also, what if the reason it didn’t sell was not that it is badly done, but that the premise has one of the ick factors YOU are blind to?  (But the rest of the world isn’t?)  There are tons of this, but to give one that a friend told me about from when she was in RWA and her Critique Partner was obsessed with sweaty, unwashed for weeks men and couldn’t understand that other women would go “EWWWW”.
If that’s what’s keeping your book from selling (or doing well in the new market) you’ll NEVER know it.  Move on.  Grow up.  Eventually you’ll come back to it, and weirdly unless it’s a true fetish, ten years down the road you might go “WHY did I think that was cool/cute/whatever.”  Kind of likne in art, when you stick, you go away and work on another piece, then come back to that one.

Six – consider short stories.  Yes, they’re a completely different art form.  But it will teach you beginnings, hooks, how to introduce a character, etc. with MUCH less investment than a novel.  Try it on weekends, or some day when you’re not doing novel work.  Train yourself in writing those fast and under the principle “It doesn’t have to be perfect, it has to be good.”  Sometimes they become novels.  Deal.  And hey, you can use them as loss leaders, once you’re ready to get that novel out.

Seven – Keep writing.  If you keep writing your quota (mine is 5k words.  Other people are saner) a day, you WILL improve and gain experience.  At least, if you’re also reading and studying how people do things.

Now, stop reading the blog and go write

— wait, leave me a comment, first, so I know you read it AND got it ;)  NOW go write.

So, we’ve been talking about writers going solo and working without a net.  So far so good.  Writers can subcontract editing.  They can subcontract proofing. They can subcontract art and even document conversion.

Can they subcontract confidence?

What am I talking about, you say?  Well, I’ll be blunt.  First let me start with the fact that writers’ belief in their abilities and their abilities are often totally at odds with each other.  And rarely the way you’d expect.

Very few writers who suck on ice will believe they are the world’s gift to writing.  Oh, sure, there are a few, but those have usually got that way because of “critical acclaim” – also, they’re not usually bad as such.  They might not be to my – or your taste – but they are decent of their kind.

No, writers – absent a few strange wanna bes – after their earliest steps when everyone thinks their stuff is great because they don’t know enough to know it sucks, are alone among the creative professions by thinking, most of the time, that their stuff sucks.

I don’t know why.  Perhaps it is that we use words, which is what everyone uses to speak, normally.  So… how do you judge “good”.

Well, good is what holds your attention.  But you find out early on what holds your attention is not necessarily what holds other’s.  Besides, you have a vested interest in this world.  Otherwise you’d never have written it, right?

And then by the time you’re minimally published, you will know that people can find stuff in your books you never meant to put in.  I’ve been accused of everything and WORSE praised for things that I not only can’t see in my books but hope to heaven aren’t there.

So you get odd.  You start wondering what is there, and … is it any good?

For years, while I was unpublished, I used my writers’ group as my touchstone.  “Is it good, guys?  Is it good?”  Yeah, they were newbies too, but they lived outside my head.  And if they liked it… well… maybe other people would.

I confess for the last… five? Years I’ve used my agent mostly as a touch stone.  If the agent approved of it, well, she must know what’s marketable, right?  Even if it wasn’t true, it was encouragement…

So, now I’m agentless.  I’m putting a lot of my stuff up myself.  What sells is flabbergasting me, as it’s often my earliest, clumsiest work, or that with a really weird bend (Think back to the Muppets and HEAR this with the right voice “Nuuuuuns in SPACE!) Mind you I haven’t put up the juvenalia and won’t put that under my own name BUT well…  When you finish something… how do you know it’s good?

This has come home to me today because having finished A Few Good Men I’m trying not to rush the betas and ask how it reads and… do they think it will find an audience?  I really have no clue.  I see all the clumsy spots under a magnifying glass and I worry it sucks.

At the same time my older son and a friend who also finished work are convinced THEIRS sucks.  So… It’s like this – my husband has read son’s and says it’s quite good (And no, he’s not easy on us.  So likely he’s right.)

How do you know it’s good?

Well… first, accept you’re the worst judge of your own work.  It’s possible to gain perspective on it, sure.  First, forget you wrote it.  Then let it sit for ten years.

Oh, you don’t HAVE ten years?  Then accept.  You don’t KNOW if it’s good.  You just don’t.

Second – find ten friends.  Give manuscript to ten friends.  IF more than three find the same problem, you have an issue.  If not, ignore it.  And pay attention to the “general” feel.  Like “I couldn’t put it down.”  Or “You sent me that?  Are you sure?”  Or “Uh, it was great till chapter twenty.”  Or… if everyone is saying that (you’ll ALWAYS get a couple of those, but) or if eight people are saying one of those, then that gives you an idea where the book stands.

Third – Kris Rusch tells me after a certain level a writer is at a certain level.  Yes, I know “Oh, thank you, oh, great Sybil.  We bow before your knowledge.”  I find – though I had trouble believing it – it’s by and large true.  If you’ve written more than one “decent” story, by whatever means, chances are all of your stories are decent to an extent.  I.e. you’re not pulling beginning idiocy.  BUT… is it good?

Well, this defaults to:

Fourth – Alma Alexander told me at a con that everything you write will be someone’s favorite and someone’s most hated of your works.  This is very freeing.  Let it out.

Fifth – will it sell?  Oh, who knows?  I don’t know.  So, put it out and see.  It might shock you.  (nuuuuns.  In space!)

Sixth – You’re working without a net.  You can learn what sells, given time.  You can learn what’s good – to you at least – by reading your favorite writers and analyzing what they do.  You can have sense of where you stand – ask ten friends you trust – but in the end, you’re working without a net.

Are you going to do it?  Or are you going to go back and hide in the shadows, your words unread, your worlds unshared?

Which is it going to be?

You want to be a writer, do you?  There’s the tightrope.  Get up there and DANCE.

 

Update: As for check the statistics on what sells.  Well, I have 19 back list short stories out, so I just went and looked.  Yep.  Dragon’s Blood and With Unconfined Wings (a short about gun-packing sisters of St. Lucia of the Spaceways in a far frontier colony) are still outselling everything else by an unreal margin.  Does this mean I finally get to/will be forced to write Her Crown of Stars, Her Trusty Burner?

The other day while driving to Denver for Greek greasy spoon food (hey, listen, buddy, you have your addictions, I have mine.)   Dan and I found ourselves in the urgent need to discuss the implications and ramifications of The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag with the boys.

And I found myself thinking of it in terms of writing.  (Look, I realized I was in serious trouble – possibly of an eternal kind, if one believes in such things, and this one does – when I answered the eternal “Why would a just G-d allow evil in the world?” with “Because otherwise it would be a pretty boring plot and no one would read it.” [Am now trying to fight the horrible suspicion that what He’s writing is actually a series called “World Wars and The Fall and rise and fall of civilizations.]) Update:  This is a common perception of writers, hence my son’s post, here.

This led me by one of those sideways mental jumps one does to wondering about young writers and shoddy work.  And no, I’m NOT referring to Jonathan Hoag. I’m referring to the story in Jonathan Hoag where – SPOILER – the world is the creation of a young artist, who painted over an early and shoddy work.

And I thought of the experience I went through with writing this last book.  (Actually the last three.)  And realized that while there is the tendency, which I mentioned before, for young writers to end stories badly because that “feels” serious, it’s an odd sort of thing because you often feel that less than the smaller movements in the work of a more seasoned artist.

There is a line in Murder In Retrospect in which Poroit talking to the murderess talks of her not knowing: All the grown-up emotions – pity, sympathy, understanding. The only things you know – have ever known – are love and hate.

It is sort of like that for beginner writers.  It’s not easier to paint in primary colors, but it might look that way to the young, inexperienced and/or lacking in confidence.  It’s certainly easier to make an impact.  Paint a house so huge and so black (or red, or yellow) it can be seen across the room and people will notice it.  They might even admire it…

But it’s not grown up work.  The shading isn’t there, nor the fine tuning.  It’s unlikely you’ll cry at the sight of it, like grown ups can be brought to tears at the sight of some of DaVinci’s work.  (well, I can.   Your mileage may vary.)

Perhaps this is because I started attempting to write seriously very early, or perhaps – and my mentoring experience seems to indicate this – it is a curve every writer goes through, predicated less on lack of experience in the world than in lack of experience in expressing it.

The curve seems to be that you start out doing primary colors and big blocks – or in other words, dramatic emotions, big events.  Your character faces the death of his entire family.  And they were buried in a rain of fish.  And the entire world was turned into a fish fry.  And…

And none of it feel like much of anything, perhaps because they’re lost amid other blocks, all of them competing for attention.  It can be pulled off in a short story, but less so in a novel.

Then you start having a suspicion your work is crude and rough, and you try to refine it.  At the end of this process, you find yourself trying to avoid the big movements of the earlier work and all you have is small events, small actions, small emotions.  It’s all an indistinct pastel.  Very pretty at times, very artistic, but pastel.

If you get stuck in this phase, you get prizes and university professors speak of you in reverent tones.  And, if you’re very lucky, normal readers will keep your book on the bedside table for those nights they can’t sleep.

If that’s not your goal and you go past that, you find yourself where I’m now.  I’m not painting the big blocks of shouting color anymore, but I’m not afraid to have the occasional rotting fish fall on a character, or even have one or two of them killed by a plague of gnats.  Weirdly, I’m getting the other extreme in too which I could never do earlier – the humor – so that hopefully sometimes the reader finds himself crying through his/her laughter.

At least I hope that’s what I’m doing.  I might be doing a pastel background with the occasional blobby bit of red building.  Who knows?

But what it feels like is like I now have the softer emotions, but the occasional hard note too.  And those hard notes hit hard and seem to strip me of all defense and occasionally turn me inside out.  The impact is that much stronger, against the pastel background.

All this to explain why I now don’t need to destroy the world to “feel” it.  Sometimes it’s enough to give my character a bad day.  If the character is lovable enough.  If the day is bad enough.

[On reading my old stuff, etc, another collection of short stories “Five Unlikely Foretellings” (narrowly beat out Five Unlikely Ukases) is up on Amazon, Smashwords and B &N.]

With Much Delayed Directors Commentary On Witchfinder

I often think I came into writing by a weird route.  No, I don’t mean into publications, I mean into writing itself.  But perhaps we all do, because I’ve now mentored for something like ten years, and it seems like each person is highly individual.

Add to that that I THINK the fledgelings I attract are – at best – odd (there are probably other words for them, yes) and that means I often find myself flabbergasted by things in how to write manuals that inform you – rather solemnly – that “starting too early is a typical beginner mistake.”

Of course, the minute I come across something like that, I immediately acquire one or two fledgelings who do this.  Which is more proof that the universe is, if not solipsistic exactly, at least a tightly plotted novel written by a Writer who is fond of the ironic detail.

But there is one thing I ONLY ever found one fledgeling who thought – in fact a very talented, but for that massive fatal flaw fledgeling – that a novel was a length, and whom I could not get to understand that a novel is a unit of action.

And now a few of you are scratching your head (I wish you’d stop.  You’re leaving dandruff all over the blog.  Ew) and going “But isn’t a novel a length?”

Well, yes, of course it is.  And there are a lot of beginners who start writing a short story, then end up with forty thousand words which – well, this happened to me and it was the old days – means they have to figure out if it can be cut, divided into four coherent stories and/or expanded by double.  (Nowadays you sell it as a short novel on Amazom for some relatively cheap price, say 3.99.

What I mean is that a novel isn’t ONLY a length.  This is where I say I came into writing through an odd route – having a degree in literature because digit dyslexia forbid engineering, natural squeamishness barred me from medicine, I wasn’t larcenous enough for psychology, and law required my moving away from home, which my dad wouldn’t allow (and yes, there were other reasons, too.) – because I learned how to write novels by studying plays.  In plays, being less wordy, the structure is more obvious.  Oh, also Portuguese school system started pounding us with ancient Greek plays round about sixth grade and went all the way to Shakespeare in College.  (And Wagner.  There is a place in h*ll reserved for the German culture teacher who made us memorize Wagner librettos.  Don’t go there. {Well, it’s reserved for other reasons, too, since he was a defrocked priest who was well known to take liberties with female students stupid enough to attend office hours.  Oh, and also he didn’t wash.  Since I was not stupid enough to attend office hours, the only trauma I retain is that the mention of Wagner brings back the smell in that classroom.  Fortunately I never liked Wagner.})

In a play it becomes startlingly obvious that each act is a unit of action – there is a try fail sequence and something is solved, or isn’t – and that the play itself is a unit of action.

I made the mistake, when first coming into writing, of equating acts with chapters.  This meant at the end of a chapter, I gave the impression that problem was solved and now we’d move on. Yes, I know smart playwrights don’t do that either.  But still, if people are in a theater, likely they’ll stay.  With a book… well.

Lately my “acts” have been morphing into “Sections” of up to six chapters, which DST had, DSR came out with, and AFGM is big on.

But I still don’t close off the action completely in the section, or I am careful to introduce the next step.  (To train myself to do this, for years, I’d take the first paragraph of the next chapter and tack it at the end of the last chapter.  Nine times out of ten, it works.)

Anyway, a novel is a unit of action (so is a short.  Yes, the difference is size between a short and a novel.  BUT it’s unit of action between a novel and glop.)  It is about resolving something, be it concrete (the aliens took over the world, we must stop them) or emotional (I want to kill everyone, give me a reason not to) or artsy and pseudo-literary (we’ll stop when the reader feels like he’d rather chew off his own arm than read another pointless page.)

ANY coherent story is a unit of action, ranging from the short short at 2 thousand words to goat gagger at 200 000.

BUT if you think a novel is a length and you forget that it is a unit, then you end with glop.

To be honest, I don’t know if this is normal, or if it’s this particular writers’ issue.  It is possible that it’s based on some neurological thing, because the same writer has major, major issues with the symptom that leads up to this.  And that symptom, at least, is fairly common and I still battle against it periodically – though normally not to the extremes this writer does.  Frankly the only writer having issues approaching this is my friend who has Aspergers (highly functional Aspergers, but all the same) so I wonder if it’s related to emotional projection and empathy.

The problem that leads to glop – at least in its extreme – is the inability to properly weight incidents in your novel/short/whatever.  And no, by that I don’t mean you should tie led weights to your characters (don’t tempt me.  That and a dark river, and I’d be rid of some of them forever!)

I mean that your prison rescue where major characters die shouldn’t take the same page space, and certainly should have more feeling poured into it than the incident where the character’s favorite cup gets broken.  If you give them the same space, refer to them as often in subsequent pages, have an entire city mourn the loss of the cup, have your character traumatized by both incidents in equal measures, etc., you end up with glop.

Now, of course, I don’t have weighting problems to THAT extent.  But I do have them.  In fact, often this is what revision is all about.  Either because the pantser half threw fresh incidents in (I swear sometimes writing is a collaboration with myself!) or because the character changed in the writing, I’ll often discover that, oh, I need to give more weight to the thing with the dog, because it’s a sign he’s coming out of his shell – and able to attach to dogs, but not humans yet.  Or that some incident that was supposed to be funny has to be eliminated all together because it distracts from rising action.

Which is where we come to the director’s commentary for Witchfinder – you knew I remembered, right? – The only problem with the last chapter is something new I’m discovering ONLY with this novel – though I had this problem before, in a never finished novel that I call jokingly “A cast of thousands, with elephants.”: Each of the secondary pov characters is strong enough to sustain a novel

Honestly, I don’t know what to do about this, but I might borrow a page from Romance writers and truncate the secondary, tie up the principal (not literally, though trust me, I’ve thought of it too) and then spin off the secondary characters’ histories as sequels.

I won’t say I’m thrilled about his.  Just what I needed, another series.  But it seems to be what I have to do, unless I want to write a mega-goatgagger.