Sometimes I get nervous when I see an open door

The novella is moving along. I struggled a little last night to find my hero's voice when I got to his first viewpoint scene. A few replays of emo Goo Goo Dolls songs finally did the trick. I hit my word count goal, so I'm starting this morning with almost 5,000 words, which is 1/3 of the 15,000 word goal for the story. So I went to bed last night thinking about the next scene, and with an uneasy feeling that I was missing something. And this morning I woke up and realized that what's missing is a sense of urgency. There is a Terrible Thing That Must Be Done, and of course the two main characters are all angsty about wishing they didn't have to do it. But there's no real consequence if they DON'T do the Terrible Thing.

We can fix that. And I came up with the perfect, awful price for disobedience in the shower this morning. I think. It's a start, anyhow. I need to add at least one scene to the first act to make it work, and it changes my idea for how the next scene needs to go. But I think I'm on the right track.

Upon request, I have resumed slapping song lyrics into my blog titles. They may be a bit more random than previously, and possibly simply whatever snags my attention from what I'm listening to when blogging time rolls around. Although now that I know people were actually, like, paying attention, I might also start making them a bit more obscure and challenging.

In the meantime, the novella has a growing soundtrack. No title yet, but hey, I have my priorities.

"Name" Goo Goo Dolls
"Iris" Goo Goo Dolls
(Which serve as the angsty, emo themes for both my main characters, actually. And also for Loki in a different story. Hmm.)
"Welcome to the Jungle" Guns N' Roses
(Loki's theme song. Must. Not. Let. Him. Take. Over...)
"Afterlife" Avenged Sevenfold
"Through the Fire and Flames" Dragonforce
"The Running Free" Coheed and Cambria
(Yes, I've been raiding my kids' playlists again. The big, epic, melodramatic metal-but-still-melodic sound seems appropriate for this one.)

Foos have not managed to wheedle their way into this soundtrack yet. You're slacking, guys.

Back to work. I have 1,250 words waiting for me to write them today.

Monday morning geekery

I'm still working on a rewrite plan for Crowmaker. It has thus far involved a lot of scribbling notes and diagrams in OneNote and a whole bunch of deep thinking, but it is also resulting in a rough outline which accumulates the important bits I discover during the scribbling and thinking. It's in what I usually liken to a birthing stage--painful and slow, but I can feel that what I'm struggling for is close to coming out where I can see it more clearly. I'm trying to not force anything much this week, with two weeks of Christmas break right around the corner. But I am working!

The aforementioned geekery comes to you courtesy the Joe-Bear, who spotted this on my computer screen over the weekend. "You're making a soundtrack for your novel?" (Said in the "huh" tone of voice that could be interpreted as "That's cool" or "My mother is kinda weird." You decide.) Mostly I just use it to prod the Muse when she's sleepy, but here's a list you can do with what you will. (I'm too lazy to collect links this morning, so you're on your own this time.)

"Best of You," Foo Fighters
"To Be a Man," Boston
"The Pretender," Foo Fighters
"No Way Back," Foo Fighters
"Saints and Angels," Sara Evans
"One Blue Sky," Sugarland

Going down again

I think at this point, since the sad has still not really gone away, that it's safe to say I have entered the annual season of the winter blues. My "coping" yesterday and Monday consisted mostly of playing video games and rolling in self-pity. Today, I decided it might be wiser to go with the special (albeit expensive) sunlight-mimicking light bulb in my desk lamp, a little bit of exercise, and forcing myself to do some writing-related work, even if I couldn't quite get directly to the writing just yet. And music. Music usually helps a lot, too.

So far this morning, I have constructed a final timeline for Crowmaker, to aid in this whole "planning the rewrite" stage. No, really. It's the final timeline. It's not at all like the first five. I really mean it, this time! I put this one into OneNote, in a nifty table format that is easily tweaked and played with and seen all at one time for the big picture effect instead of scrawled haphazardly across and in the margins of several sheets of paper. (Some lined, some the back sides of letters from the boys' school in SC... One of them was even pretty yellow!) So I feel productive. And more, I think I can go back to the outline I was working on and fix the stumbling block I'd tripped over there that sent me scrambling for a working timeline to begin with. Yay.

Musical (re-)discovery this week is The Hooters. One day last week, the boys and I were having supper. The husband was working late, so it was a pretty casual affair, which means we were listening to assorted songs of our choice at full blare and talking about music. (I have no idea what food was actually involved; I don't remember.) While listening to The Killers, I was reminded that I had intended to sometime compare their song "Uncle Jonny" to "Johnny B." by The Hooters. So we decided right then would be a good time. This involved digging up an old cassette version of One Way Home, but we had a good discussion about the similarities and differences between the songs, with their guys named Johnny and their approaches to the subject of drug addiction.

And then, of course, I had to rewind the cassette and play "Satellite" and "Karla with a K," just because I hadn't heard them in ages. At which point I was reminded how much I really liked pretty much every single song on their albums. Michael was bopping along with the music, so I explained to him about televangelists and some of the related scandals and had him listen to the lyrics of "Satellite." He grinned. And he asked me to play it again the next night.

So yeah. The Hooters are on tap on Rhapsody today. I didn't link any of the songs, but I'm willing to bet you can find them on YouTube if you try hard enough. I couldn't possibly pick a favorite, but in addition to the above, I'm also inordinately fond of "Where Do the Children Go" and "South Ferry Road." And "Day by Day." OK, and of course "And We Danced."

Mine to make

I've settled into the routine of writing for (a goal of) two hours each morning, even setting my alarm during the summer to make sure I don't oversleep and lose the time. It worked well during the school year, since I dropped kids off and was home to start at 8; during the summer I let the kids play video games in the morning, and they often sleep in a little, so those two hours remain (mostly) quiet and conducive to creative productivity. I listen to music sometimes, and since "One Blue Sky" has become the unofficial theme song for Crowmaker, Sugarland's "Enjoy the Ride" has been the CD of choice lately. (I love Jennifer Nettles' in-your-face, yeah-I'm-a-hick-what're-you-gonna-do-about-it twang. This is a woman who knows who she is and doesn't care too much if you approve or not. We can all learn from that.) So the first song I hear starting out my morning has been "Settlin.'" (Youtube alert!) Nothing like a little I-can-do-it anthem to start the day. ("It's my life so it's mine to make...")

I found the new slant I needed for Crowmaker. Only time will tell if it's the right new angle, but it'll work for now. Wrote 1,500 words yesterday, even though it wasn't a scheduled writing day. The hubby went out of town for a business meeting, and the kids were awesome about entertaining themselves. Blocked in another 1,000 words this morning before taking a break to run the boys to Walmart; I'll try to get at least another 200 before the end of the day. End of the day tomorrow should see me breaking 30,000. A lot of that is probably going to be cut and replaced with new material before all is said and done, but I have earned some feel-good padding of the word count, so it's not going anywhere just yet.

Joey's been busting his ass to earn money, first to buy an Xbox 360 and Halo 3, now to buy his half of Rock Band. (Michael the penny-pinching money miser is pitching in the other half.) Windows are very clean at my house, fridges and stovetops are sparkling, and window frames that have needed painting for a couple of years now have been scraped down and prepped for further work once Mom gets off her butt and buys the paint. (He's a Heroscape addict, too. I could milk this for a really long time.) As of Friday, he'd paid off the Xbox loan. By last night, he had his half for Rock Band. This child is MOTIVATED.

So off we went to Walmart this morning to buy the Next Big Thing. I fully, truly intended to just haul the box downstairs for them and then leave them to it while I finished up another hour of writing. Honest. But they couldn't figure out how to get the drums together, so I HAD to go back down there. And then when they asked me to stick around and play guitar, well... What mother could say no to that? It's a pretty nifty game; I intend to pry the drumsticks out of Joey's fingers sometime and try that part, too. At one point, Michael decided he wanted to run through the guitar tutorial for some practice (he was on bass), so Joey and I were just kinda hanging out watching over his shoulder. And Joey starts in with a "tap-tap-TAP, tap-tap-TAP" on the drums. And I looked over at him, and he looked back at me, and at the exact same second we both burst out with "We will, we will, ROCK YOU."

My kids are so cool.

Let the real summer begin

The wayward fishermen have returned, along with several pounds of leftover junk snacks and roughly a half ton of dirty laundry. Michael finished the entire book he'd taken with him and informed me I should read it, too--ever since we read Ender's Game together he has been very proud to recommend reading to me. I already have at least a half dozen books on my summer reading list that came from him. I'm thrilled that both boys are so big on reading, especially after hearing so much anecdotal evidence that it's often just the oldest child who catches the reading bug. Joey is currently working through The Once and Future King, after which I have set aside the first book of Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn for him. One of my giddiest delights is in picking out books for people that turn out to be perfect matches for them--especially kids, my own as well as my nieces and nephews.

I haven't gotten in quite as much writing time today as usual, but I've still done 200 words plus some revising. I also (finally) got around to picking through the formatting on my bibliograpy web site's posting of my short story Disappearing. The italics had vanished on me a while back and I've kept putting off the necessary fixing-up. I re-read the story itself as I was working on it--I hadn't done so with that particular story in a while. It was published over five years ago, and there are things I'd have done differently with it now, but it holds up reasonably well, I think.

That story also had a song that figured very prominently in its flowering. I'd started fiddling with the basic premise of the story shortly before we moved from Illinois to South Carolina. I knew what emotional statement I was looking to make--a choice between selfishness and selflessness that turns out to be not quite what it first appears to be, framed in the eternal but everyday search to find happiness in a world that sometimes seems dead set against allowing such a frivolous thing. I even had the main characters in mind (more or less). The personalities of Ven and Bertam were based on those of a couple of my favorite gaming companions. The usual pattern of our EQ adventures usually involved Tim (Ven's inspiration) hollering with glee and enthusiasm as he led us headfirst into trouble, with me giggling helplessly, and Eugene (Bertam's inspiration) following stalwartly behind, shaking his head and preparing to pick up whatever pieces of us remained once the damage was done. (No priest class has ever worked harder or endured more. Tim was a warrior and I was a bard--so we could get into trouble FASTER.) I even had a vague idea of setting--a dreary reality and a place of magical escape. (I'm sure there was some gaming-related influence at work there, too.)

What I was still missing was the SOMETHING that tied everything together, the element of magic that explained how Elspeth moved between worlds. So one afternoon, as the movers were loading the truck under the supervision of my husband, and baby Michael was napping at my mother-in-law's house, I took cranky todder Joey out for a ride in hopes that he'd fall asleep in his car seat and feel better when he woke up. It was a gloomy day, kind of raining off and on, and I played a Pat Benatar CD very softly for some background noise. (Yes, I kinda like Pat Benatar. Just a little.) Enter "Run Between the Raindrops," and I found not only the little piece of magic I was looking for, but an angle involving mothers and children that had not previously existed. (My computer is being all wonky with music and videos today, but in theory you should be able to get a preview listen to the song here.)

Leave the rest for the crows

Not quite 1,500 new words in the last two days, but that includes some cutting of excess baggage, some shuffling and reshuffling of scene order in an attempt to get a better feel for the flow of Crowmaker's opening, and a lot of note-scribbling as I continue to develop and expand backstory information. I could've limped through a short story with the sketchy information I previously had, but I am now harboring a fledgling novel. I'm sitting at 22,250 on total word count right now--that's damn near 25% of a novel, which is right about where this particular portion of the novel should weigh in. I maintain my stance of cautious optimism.

The title of today's blog is a line from a song whose inspiration has formed the glue which took my random set of ideas and dream fragments and turned them into what is growing up to be Crowmaker. The song is "One Blue Sky," by Sugarland. (YouTube alert! Don't click at work!) Yes, it's country. Yes, I actually listen to country. Yes, you can laugh if you like. Then go listen to the song anyhow. I like to think it's pretty good whatever label you want to slap on it. (Music is like that sometimes. So are books and movies and people. Go figure. And if you still don't like it, that's OK, too. Different drummers and all that.)

And because I am in a "God, I am so enamored of this story I can't stand to not share with anyone" kind of mood today, here's a snippet from the rough draft:

The raft drew close enough for Ein to spot a gun belt around the stranger's waist. Ein took a step back, figuring she should go and holler for Udale or Big Fraze or maybe even the preacher boy, Had. That's when the figure on the raft looked up, and Ein could see by the soft lines of her face that the stranger was female. The woman's black eyes fixed right on Ein, but that wasn't what froze Ein in her tracks.

Dark lines criss-crossed the stranger's face and neck, shaded by the floppy felt hat she wore but still the deepest, most living blue Ein had ever set eyes on. Ein stared, trying to decide if the lines moved, and after a startled second she recognized them for what they were.

Birds. Crows.

Ein craned her neck, forgetting all about the stranger as she searched the cloud-ridden sky for the sleek, dark shape so familiar to Ein from her father's journals.

I hope you'll all forgive my giddiness and not mistake it for boasting or pride. It's a strange thing, but I think everyone here will understand what I mean when I say that most of the time what I write feels less like something I can brag about and more like something I am grateful for because it happened to show up on my doorstep and allowed me to be the one to write it.

More musical influences tomorrow (maybe). Also tomorrow, the return of the fishing guys. Can you all say, "Mmm, fish fry and potato salad. MMMMM."