Fuel

I'll be honest. I didn't read many books last year, partly because I was busy writing three of my own, and partly because I feel guilty when I read. I don't know why, but I always feel like I'm wasting time, even more egregiously than when I watch television. (Yes, I know. Sacrilege! And I should throw away my t.v. Yeah, whatever. Buffy.) I think it must go back to when I was a kid and I would sneak reading at every opportunity. There was always something else I was supposed to be doing. (And still is. I won't even tell you how long it's been since I cleaned this house.)

But words are fuel for writers, and I've been starving my poor writer-tum, so I'm making an effort to read more this year.

To that end, I'm going to keep a running tally of what I read—not for you, but for me, kind of like a dieting journal. Go ahead and be appalled at my reading choices if you must. I read what interests me.

So far this year:

Still working on: Nicholas and Alexandra by Robert K. Massie. I started reading this a year ago as research for The House of Arkhangel'sk, and it has been very difficult to get through, not because it isn't fascinating and masterfully written, but because it is. I pick it up, and in two minutes, tears are streaming down my face. I last put it down just after the Imperial family was put under house arrest and Tsarevich Alexei's formerly loving servant began treating him like an animal. I don't know why I feel so close to this tragedy, but it makes my heart ache with every word.

Finished: Mark of the Demon, Diana Rowland. First in an urban fantasy/police procedural series. Loved it. Can't wait for book two. I mean, female cop who happens to be a demonic summoner accidentally conjuring an inhumanly beautiful Demonic Lord who decides to seduce her instead of tearing her into tiny, bloody pieces as honor demands...what's not to like?

Currently reading: Fool Moon, book two of The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher. I don't have a copy of book one, which irks me, so I'm starting here. Initial impressions: enjoying it, but annoyed by the physical descriptions and stereotypical behaviors of some of the women, and really annoyed by Murphy's over-the-top assumptions of Harry's betrayal. I don't like it when characters are treated so unfairly by their supposed friends. I wouldn't tolerate it in real life, and it makes me mad on the character's behalf, and not it in a "you've really sucked me into this story" kind of way, but a "you'd better stop this or I'm throwing the book at the wall" kind of way.

Hoping to get around to reading: Dostoevsky's The Idiot, and hoping not to take as long as I took in reading Demons last year. It would have been a lot easier to keep up with the patronymics and remember who had done what to whom if I hadn't waited a week between every ten pages. (I have to stop considering my commute as my only reading time since I now only work at the office one day a week.) Even so, it was lovely, wickedly funny, and horribly depressing. I adored it.

Really psyched about reading: The White Road, book five in the Nightrunner series by Lynn Flewelling. Jumping-up-and-down psyched: I will be cruising the Bahamas with Lynn for its debut! (Not as her personal friend or anything, just joining her Writing on the Waves writing seminar at sea, which is, like, the most awesome idea ever...and has clearly regressed me to '80s teenspeak. And I think the video below in Making Me Mental really applies here as well.)

Writing right, or the penance of the pen

I'm always interested in how other writers write. The conventional wisdom is "never edit as you go, just get through the draft," and "when you're done, put it in a drawer for six weeks and come back with perspective." Most writers I know try to follow that advice. Not me.

I plow on through during a single writing session, but the next time I sit down to write, I go back and read everything I wrote in the last session (whether it was a few hours ago or the day before) and edit until I'm reasonably satisfied with it before continuing. Sometimes my edits don't satisfy me and I put things I absolutely hate in brackets to revisit later. But it makes it easier for me to go on when I see where I've been and feel fairly certain that I'm going in the right direction.

When I'm done with a first draft, I go straight back to page one and read through for grammar, typos, and continuity, fix anything in brackets (if I can), and then immediately go back to page one to read again and rework sections I'm not happy with. That draft is what goes to beta readers and critique partners. (Though I have to make a confession: I don't really have critique partners. I have a single friend I share critiques with when I can, and another friend who's a very critical reader; Orson Scott Card refers to this as the Wise Reader: someone who knows how to let you know when you're on track and when you're skidding onto the shoulder—or way out into the dirt and weeds on an unimproved county road.) When I get their input, I start over. If I make significant changes, I go through all three stages again, and then try to find a reader I haven't annoyed.

The reason I write this way is in part related to my depression. Writing is necessary to stave it off (and usually results in some nice hypomania and occasional euphoria when it's all working), but when I reach "The End," I'm in danger of an epic crash.

The first two novels I wrote differently. I fed them a chapter at a time to my closest friend or partner (or both) while I was writing the first draft. I think it was necessary at that stage to have the external validation that someone was interested in the story and wanted to know what happened next. Without that, I would not have kept going.

But when I reached the end of both of those novels, it felt like the end of the world. I put them in a drawer for six weeks...six weeks that sank me deeper into despair, knowing that every word was crap, that I couldn't fix anything, that I would never write again. I tried to write other things, but kept obsessing about the "love I had lost." I didn't want someone new; I wanted them. By the end of six weeks, I had lost all faith in my writing and I was mired in hopelessness, which led to epic periods of writer's block. Maybe that still happens now, just a little bit later; I don't know. I certainly still have periods of despair, as evidenced by some of my recent posts. But I do know that re-reading and reworking while it was still fresh made me feel like I hadn't lost anything, and reassured me that I wasn't completely mad; the story needed work, but it was sound.

I guess what I'm getting at is that you don't have to follow writing advice that doesn't work for you, and you don't have to feel like a bad writer because you don't do what you're told. (I think that last bit was for me. Maybe this whole thing is for me. I seem to have a lot of "writer's guilt.") Anyway, I'm sure I'm not the only one who can't follow the rules, or who wonders if I'm being "bad" and somehow the writing gods will find out and punish me. (Fundie childhood PTSD, anyone?)

So, tell me; how do you write? Do you think I'm writing wrong?

This anticipation...it's making me mental

Just a quick follow-up to yesterday's whine-fest to report that the agent I queried before Christmas responded today...and has requested a partial of my manuscript. [Brief, undignified dance ensues.]

Maybe I am in the ballgame after all.

If there's one thing I've learned from the overflowing cup of writing and publishing advice available on the Web, it's that any given drop may be both absolutely right and absolutely wrong. Simultaneously. Like a character in a Dickian dystopia, you never know which truths apply to you. Because it's all true. Until it's not.

And here's what my little undignified dance looked like, in case you were curious:

When there's deafening silence, you have to listen more closely

Two great blog posts today from Rachelle Gardner and Janet Reid lay it on the line about what it means when you're getting no feedback from agents. (Here it is in short, if you're too lazy to click: it means epic FAIL.) This is not the first time I've heard this in recent weeks; several other agents have said as much on Twitter, albeit with a little less tact.

This revelation has put me into a serious funk. I've been hearing for years that when an agent sends you a form rejection, it doesn't mean that your writing isn't good, it just means it wasn't right for them. Coulda been anything, they say. "Go on, keep sending out those queries; did you hear how many times Harry Potter was rejected?" (Well, way less times than my book, actually. About a third as many times. But who's counting?) And so I did. Again, and again, and again. (To be fair, I did get two requests for partials eventually—and two polite letters saying it was well written but didn't excite them.)

If someone had been honest with me about what those silent rejections meant ten years ago, I would not have doggedly pursued representation for a manuscript that clearly was not even close. I would not have spent $4,000 on the Maui Writers' Conference (yeah, I'm that stupid) to pitch it to agents who had already rejected it during the pre-conference Manuscript Marketplace (pre-conference, but post-payment; no, I didn't feel at all like a chump getting on that plane for Hawaii). I would not have held onto that story for so many years, feeling brokenhearted every time I got a rejection letter but climbing back on the horse, because after all, it probably just wasn't right for them and someone would love it. It finally took a crippling depression for me to let it go and start something new.

That something new has so far received two form rejection letters. I consoled myself with thinking it simply wasn't right for those agents, rewrote my query letter, and got ready to send it out again. Reading those blog posts today gave me pause. Am I just going to keep repeating the same actions and expecting different results? How many silent rejections should I accrue before I get the message this time? Five? Ten? Twenty? If it weren't for the encouraging feedback I got at the Editors' Intensive, I would say that number was two.

So while I am going to send my little darling out there again, another dreadful possibility keeps me awake at night. Maybe, just maybe, I simply cannot write a query letter to save my life. I may have written a really great book...and a dozen iterations of an astoundingly bad query.

I've taken the WOW query writing class. I read Chuck Sambuchino's blog religiously. I follow Nathan Bransford. I have read dozens of other great blogs on querying. I have books on it. And yet I still managed to write a query that friends told me succeeded in making a really exciting story sound dull. (I have since rewritten it several more times, but how would I know a good query from a duck? I thought the first one was good after all.)

Maybe I'll finally figure out the answer to that one in another ten years.

What will this day be like? I wonder. What will my future be? I wonder.

Here's another year in front of me in which anything could happen. Like Maria von Trapp, I'm afraid of the unknown, even as I long for it. And of course, everything is unknown. The actions I take this year may have nothing to do with the events that will fill it.

I was reminded of this on Christmas Eve on the way to a dinner party, when a truck came out of the unknown and slammed into the car I was in while we were stopped behind a doubleparked car. The driver of the truck did not slow, and as near as we can figure, he was trying to pass someone on the left before switching into the left lane to go around us.

There was that sickening thud and lurch I have experienced before (that sort of "Pevensies at the train station" feeling, only without being transported into Narnia), and then the back end of our car was torn off, and Jack's cane, which he keeps on the dash while driving, struck me and became tangled in my hair. I had no bruises afterward, so I can't quite figure out where or how the cane struck me, although my head hurt as if someone had rattled my brain inside my skull, but there it was: the brass handle of the cane wrapped in several inches of my curls.

Ahead of us, a white pickup truck lay on its side in the left lane. Our car had served as a ramp and the driver had soared over us and flipped his truck. People were running to it, screaming, while Jack and I stood stunned in the debris of our rear bumper (now in front of the car). Someone shouted that the door was stuck, and they couldn't get the driver out until the police arrived. When they eventually pulled him out, he seemed miraculously unscathed, though they put a brace on his neck and took him away in an ambulance. We were uninjured, but Jack's car was totalled. Being unable to work for the past few years and dealing with chronic pain and health issues, this was the last thing Jack needed. But it could have been worse. Much worse.

Through all of this, I kept thinking that no matter how safely I drive, no matter what I do, there is no way to control what others around me might do. Had the other driver turned a second earlier, he might have missed us completely; a second later, and he might have seriously injured us, or worse. We are forever at the mercy of the unknown. All we can do is react when it comes flying at us.

While pondering these things, I came across a blog post written earlier today by writer and literary agent Lucienne Diver, wherein she contemplates an idea that has "spiraled into something truly ambitious, something I’m afraid I won’t be able to pull off." Well, there it is, the unknown we can affect, but which still looms like a dragon in the dark: our own words. As every writer knows, when the muse throws down the gauntlet, you have to take it up. Will I be able to pull it off? Will I do my darlings justice? I don't know, but I have to try.

So I wonder what this day will be like, what my future will be, and I remember that I must dream of the things I am seeking. (I am seeking the courage I lack.) Thank you, Maria von Trapp and Lucienne Diver, you are so right. Pants kicked.

Livin' on the air in Cincinnati, or an Unbearable Lightness of Being

I flew to Cincinnati against my agoraphobia's better judgment, expecting freezing rain and windchill factors of zero in both weather and critique. Two things happened that I was not expecting: the weather was relatively mild, and Writer's Digest editor Jane Friedman did not beat the hell out of my little darling. Instead, she compiled a list of agents I should send it to. (Yes, yes: "to whom I should send it.") I kept thinking, wait, does she think I'm someone else? Is this somebody's idea of a mean joke? Am I still rehearsing this session in my dream the night before? (I decided it could not be the latter, as my dreams run more toward, "This is the worst piece of tripe I have ever seen! What makes you think you have any business writing? Give me your keyboard: I'm cutting it in half!")

But Nelson Muntz did not pop out and say "HA, ha!" and I still had the piece of paper with all of the agent names on it when I went back to my hotel room. (And the little smiley in the margin of my manuscript where Jane liked my silly ZuZu's petals joke between the demons after the angel gets her wings.)

I was walking on air for several days afterward. Finally, some validation that maybe what I'm writing would be of interest to more than just a handful of my friends. Maybe, finally, I had something. And then the other pole of my bipolar head swung back around with a nauseating lurch, and the Shakespeare quotation that I have above my computer came back to me: "Expectation is the root of all heartache."

I recognize that this is chemical, that I have been staying inside my very dark, scaffolding-shrouded house for too long writing, and the Seasonal Affective Disorder is raging out of control. Still, I cannot convince myself that the upswing in my mood was not a total, helium-filled delusion, a Hindenburg awaiting a spark. The agent I queried on referral hasn't replied. Normally, I wouldn't expect a quick response, but I don't really know how it works when it's a referral, and I'm now trying to figure out if I've done something wrong. Yes, it's the holiday season, and I should take a step back and not worry about it right now; people are busy. Yes, I have other agents to query and a few more referrals. I think about that list of referrals and I'm a bit giddy for an instant. Still, I am gripped by self-doubt and self-hatred, as if the price for feeling good, for hope, is an equal amount of despair.

It's the Solstice, the time for lights in the darkness, the time to look into the leafless trees for the dancing snegurochka syla—but here I sit with an unbearable feeling of detachment and insubstantiality, a fear that like my mother, I am close to the end at the age of 43. I read of others for whom it comes so easy, who attain their goals so young, and I have been trying for so long, but it's always out of reach.

I pondered whether I should write this post. All that talk of building a platform, and the best I can do is blurt out my anxiety and paranoia for all the world to see like a stain of emotional incontinence. This is one of the reasons I've resisted the "public presence." I am all too familiar with my mood swings. Yet if I keep it to myself, it feels worse, and if I don't write when I feel like this, I don't write. I guess I'll take comfort in the fact that no one is yet following this blog, and apologize to my future followers should they ever happen across it.

In the meantime, I'm going to try to get myself to go outside and get a Solstice tree. After all, it will be up in plenty of time for the Russian Orthodox Christmas and New Year. Maybe the lights will work their terrestrial magic. As my leather demon Belphagor once said, it's why we fall.

Naked

Oh, dear. Who knew that following another's blog would mean this silly blog would become visible? I admit, I'm woefully behind the times (and woefully behind on my blog). I have never "followed" anyone before, because I wasn't quite sure what it meant. No time like the present. (And no present like time.)

So I suppose I ought to briefly update my blog, as the last post was over a year ago. And now that I'm exposed, I suppose I'll have to keep updating my blog. This whole public persona thing gives me the wiggins, I have to say. (Stop staring at me! Oh, wait...that was only the painters standing on the scaffolding directly outside my bedroom window while I sit here in my bathrobe at 4:00 in the afternoon. Another story for another dreadful blog post.)

To sum up over a year of blog silence, I finished up The Blood Maiden's Vision (formerly Under Galga) rewrite last Thanksgiving and sent it off to an LGBT small press looking for romantic fantasy. In February, they responded to say that it wasn't LGBT enough. (Because the B in LGBT apparently stands for "by the way, we mean same-sex only.") But they did give me some very useful critique.

Meanwhile, I had vowed to complete my Queen of Heaven book once and for all (after all, I'd gone all the way to Russia and started learning a foreign language just to write it), and I had begun in December, giving myself a deadline of April 1. It wasn't long before I realized that, dammit, I was writing not a single novel, but a trilogy. I then gave myself three deadlines: April 1, June 1, and September 1, to write the whole thing. I've pretty much been sitting here in my bathrobe ever since.

I finished The House of Arkhangel'sk in early February, and a second draft by the beginning of March. Not wanting to lose momentum, I launched straight into The Fallen Queen, and finished up its second draft by the end of May. Each day became progressively more difficult to force myself to sit and write (I'm not one of those people who can crank out thousands of words in a day), but the story wanted out, and I wanted it out. Writing the final book, The Midnight Court, was a painful, upward climb (barefoot, through snow), but just two weeks past my deadline, The Queen of Heaven trilogy was finally done.

I had hoped I could remain a bit detached from this story, because the last one took so much out of me, and each rejection was like having the same raw wound torn open again and again. (To those who like to scoff at us sorry losers who feel pain over a rejection, you know, some of us just feel it, all right? It hurts like hell and I keep going. I'm bipolar: a rejection is a suicidal low, but the writing is an ecstatic, religious high.) But I fell in love again. I couldn't help it. The damn things just get under your skin.

This weekend I'll be in the sleet of Cincinnati paying a Writer's Digest editor $300 (not to mention airfare and lodging) to beat the hell out of my little darling. As much as I've always loathed this saying, I hope what doesn't kill my little darling will make it stronger. As for me? Hell, I'm a masochist. I don't know when to quit.