I'm a Spelling Bee Failure

Nearly every person has a hard time spelling certain words. There's one in particular that crops up for me from time to time as I'm making my grocery list. Deodorant. Somehow I keep wanting to write it as deoderant. I keep forgetting that 'odor' is a key part of that word. Doh! Fortunately, I'm much better at remembering to put the stuff on than I am at remembering how to spell it when I'm making my list of necessities.

Thank goodness for editors

And what's up with fuchsia??? Somebody screwed up the three letters in the middle there. I always want to put the 's' in front of the 'ch.' A quick jaunt over to the dictionary tells me that the word comes from modern Latin and was named in honor of a German botanist by the name of Leonhard Fuchs. Okay, I have a dirty mind, but tell me you can't say that name aloud and not giggle. Now every time your kid pulls that crayon out of the box, you're going to laugh because your mind is as entrenched in the gutter as mine.

And one other thing I always screw up isn't necessarily spelling, but... hyphens throw me for a loop. I either leave them out when they need to be there, or I stick them where they have no business existing. I worked with an excellent editor for my urban fantasy trilogy The Necromancer's Inheritance, and he dinged me on hyphens. A lot. I am hyphen challenged. That should probably actually be hyphen-challenged. But I have no idea because I am horrible at knowing when to use them. I mean, the word hyphenated does not have a hyphen. But the word non-hyphenated does. It's amazing people can communicate in English at all.

Spring Fever

The first day of spring has come and gone. The grass in the backyard and in the park is greening. The trees are putting out buds and flowers. The weeds are sprouting. Have I mentioned I'm one of those crazy people who enjoys pulling weeds? I find it cathartic, and I like seeing the progress I make in cleaning up the yard. Seriously, I go pull weeds when I'm feeling stabby. You're welcome, world.

Snow at the beginning of March

The weather makes me feel like I'm coming out of a long sleep. To enhance the feeling, I just finished the last book in my Necromancer's Inheritance series. This is the first time I've completed a huge project like that. Finishing the last book also makes me feel like I'm coming out of a long sleep, like I've been in this dreamworld for a long time and am waking up to a bright world and blinking my eyes.

While I enjoyed working on the series, I'm also glad to have the bulk of it done (with the exception of final edits and, ya know, actually publishing it). There are so many other things I want to write. I still probably have another good forty years ahead of me (pardon me while I go knock on wood), and yet I'm scared I won't have enough time to tell all the stories inside me.

Soon it'll be sunning weather

Things are also moving ahead on my fantasy novel Fractured Days, which is the follow-up to Shards of History. It sort of hit me this week that I have two books coming out soon, which means I get to start working on a brand new one. Eep! I've been in edit mode for so long that I need to shift gears hard to get back into rough draft mode. I love it when I get to dream about the story and imagine all the shapes it can take. So I guess I'm going right back into dreamland while the rest of the world wakes up around me. With breaks now and then to tend the garden and take care of weeds when I feel stabby.

Finding the Stillness

Things have been busy, which is part of the reason blog posts have been few and far between. The other reason has been that I kept dismissing all the ideas that came to mind. I think some of that stemmed from the busy flutter of the past few weeks, and some of that stemmed from the fact that I wrapped up the rough draft of the third Necromancer's Inheritance book and felt all tapped out after that. My brain needed some time to recharge.

Although I'm working on flash fiction and getting geared up for an online class, I'm in a lull between major projects. Lulls are good. We can't always live on the crest of the wave. Sometimes we have to come down into the trough. It's the only way to keep moving along. I used to be horrible at lulls, though. But that changed after I had a child.

So calm and peaceful

When you have a little child, you are constantly running after them, helping them get something to eat or drink, teaching them how to use the toilet and get dressed, and later how to ride a scooter or a bike. When you have a job on top of that, you're constantly getting them to and from school or daycare, thinking about what to make for dinner or when you'll fit in that trip to the grocery store. Even when you're home from work in the evening, you can't sit and catch your breath because there's a little person demanding something.

But when kids are older, they can play by themselves or with other children for a little while. At least, until they decide to climb on top of the castle on the playground equipment fifteen feet off the ground and act like they're going to jump off. Then your heart kicks into high gear and you're screaming like a crazy person at them to get down right this instant. But in those moments when they're playing nicely, you can just sit there and finish your thoughts and let your mind wander without interruption or just let it go blank. It's a lull in an otherwise hectic day, and it's precious.

For me, these lulls allow me to sink deeper into myself and let my subconscious be in charge for a little while. My subconscious makes a lot of my creative decisions. It works on problems while I'm doing other things, but if I don't have the chance to check in with it once in a while, it gets snarky and lets those ideas go. Sometimes it's when I'm doing nothing that my mind is working best. So these lulls are good. The frantic, half-finished thoughts get finished or filed away for later, and I enjoy simply sitting and being. It's so nice to enjoy warm sun and birds singing and the sensation of having absolutely nothing to do and nowhere to go at the moment because it's about as rare as a unicorn farting rainbows. It allows me to rest my mind and body so I'm ready for what comes next.

I'll leave you with a quote from Gore Vidal: "Many writers who choose to be active in the world lose not virtue but time, and that stillness without which literature cannot be made."

Reminiscing on 2014

While time in general always seems to fly by, December, in particular, zips past in a blur. As always, when I reach December, I look back on the year and what I've accomplished. Back in January, I set myself a couple of writing goals. One was to complete two novels. I did that, by the skin of my teeth. The other was to write twelve short stories. Again, skin of teeth. For 2015 I'm not putting a set number on completing stories. Next year will be the year of earnest yet relaxed writing, if that makes any sense.

So here's what all happened this year:

1) I published my first pro-level short story, "Extraction," in Nature Futures.

2) I self published two novels, The Graveyard Girl and the follow up to that, The Necromancer's Return. It was both terrifying and fun, and I learned quite a bit.

3) I ran my first (and second) 5K race. I'm currently training to run a 10K. I'm sort of curious about how far I can run, and how fast I can run. Yes, I know I'm a little crazy.

4) I read 60 books, which doesn't include the handful I began reading and quit, or those I began reading and skimmed to the end because I couldn't get into the story. My favorites of the year included Clockwork Dagger by Beth Cato, The Martian by Andy Weir, Born to Run by Christopher McDougall, and The Seat of Magic by J. Kathleen Cheney. They're all fabulous, and even if you're not a runner, Born to Run is a great story.

I ended up selling more short stories this year than ever before, and more of my short stories came out than ever before. I already have a short-short slated to come out in January. It's one of my favorites, and I can't wait to see it out in the world. Here's to a prosperous and happy new year for all of us!

Hold on Loosely

I've been working on the third book in The Necromancer's Inheritance trilogy. And working on it. And working on it. This book has been a bear. And not just any bear. It's a hungry bear woken early from hibernation. It's been the hardest to wrangle out of any other book I've written. The bad news is, I'm far from done. The good news is, I think I realized what's gone wrong and what I need to do to fix it.

Before I started writing this book, I had a couple of great scenes in my head. I was excited when I finally got to write them. But what I figured out shortly afterwards was that they didn't work. Both of them took my story in the wrong direction, added little to the plot, and introduced way too many characters. There was a lack of depth in my work. It's taken me a couple of months to realize this, and it's quite frustrating. I need to cut the scenes and cut several characters. I need to streamline. Trust me, when I figured this out a couple of days ago, I was ready to pull my hair out. But the most important thing to me is to make a story as good as possible before launching it into the world. So out came the scissors, and those scenes and characters are gone.

Of course, when you're up this high, don't let go of anything

This has dramatically changed the story, which has already dramatically changed since I started on it. I've had trouble finding the true beginning. I just rewrote the first scene again. I've done it I don't know how many times. But this time, it feels intimate, and I slipped right into the main character's head. I think I'm on the right track.

So the big takeaway is that it can hurt you to hold onto things too tightly when you're going into a new project. That shiny idea or scene or character you've been dying to write is probably just fine. But it might not work for the story you want to tell. I tried forcing my two scenes into the story, and it weakened the entire thing. So I pulled back, reminded myself of the three main plot lines of the story as well as the themes, outlined the first chapter yet again, and started over. Sometimes you've just got to let go.