Posting on a Tuesday? What?!

Does everyone here know about Dracunculiasis, which people in places with no access to clean water can contract by drinking water that contains guinea worm larvae? The infected person becomes a host to a worm that, a year or so later, decides to leave by erupting through the skin of the leg. To keep the worm moving, the people treating the infected patient will allow the worm to bite a matchstick, then rotate the matchstick so that the worm is wrapped around it. They continue to wrap the worm around the matchstick incrementally as it slowly emerges, until finally, from hours up to a week later, the worm has left the body. Breaking the worm in the extraction process is not a good idea, since the remains of the worm can cause problems in the patient’s body.

That’s pretty much how writing my outline has been.

The upshot is, from objective reading of my outline so far, it seems much more in line with the traditional format of the detective novel. Less meandering, less navel-gazing, less weird uncertainties about motivations or progression of events. I really like how it’s shaping up in this draft. Of course, the actual writing writing hasn’t started yet; I’m very much itching to do so, but I know the importance of finishing the outline. I carefully wrote down most of the good ideas I was having during my research month+, and when I came back to visit my vault of genius I learned that I didn’t actually write down all that much: I had inflated it in my memory. My outline must be complete, because I know that I’ll accidentally get to the end of it, flying along, then go back to it to figure out where to go next and realize that I left myself hanging.

But yes! I did start writing my outline last Friday. I put on my music and turned off the faucet that likes to spew forth uncertainties, distractions, and the idea that I have a choices in the matter. I learned that writing an outline with kittens frolicking in your lap is actually possible. (Not easy. But possible.) Made easier by moving the work station upstairs, where kittens get easily bored.

The tragedy happened when I finished for the day: I brought my laptop back downstairs and plugged it in. Found out the next day that it hadn’t charged at all: finally, however-long-worth of kittens using my power cord as a toy had finally done it in. (At least, I hope and believe that’s the problem.) A new power cord is on its way to me as we speak, but in the meantime, Branden has kindly allowed me use of his Chromebook. And Google Docs, amiright? Why would you use anything else? Or at least, anything stored locally?

And so, today, I am back to the grind of the outline, as soon as this post is posted.

But that’s hardly exciting. The exciting thing I have to report is this: This coming weekend, Branden and I are visiting Seattle, mostly for fun but using my novel as an excuse! I really, really shouldn’t write a book set in a place I’ve never been. And even though we will only be there about two days, I’m hoping to squish a bunch into the visit. I’ve been aimed at the Chihuly museum, the troll under the bridge, and the library; is there anywhere else we should endeavor to visit?

I’m hoping to finish my outline in short order and get to the meaty meaty writing. Wish me luck, everyone!

Reading complete!

I finished The Big Sleep last night. It’s a wonderful book and I’m certainly going to be reading more Raymond Chandler from now on (in fact, I have just now checked out Farewell, My Lovely from the library). He is where all the awesome hardboiled tropes come from. He warms my guts.

I feel like I am armed and armored, where before I was naked and wielded only a stick. Yes, I survived the wilderness, but I wasn’t pretty at the end.

My metaphor isn’t holding up too well. That’s okay.

I am very excited to begin writing again. Given the changes I feel are necessary to make my book not just good but great, I’m going to have to start by outlining—again. Yes, I’m starting completely over once more. But this time, I’m keeping all the same characters and they’re playing the same roles, if in different ways. This means that I will almost certainly need at least one more draft between this one and the final draft, but hey, what else am I gonna be doing? Might as well write something worth reading.

As with the first day of anything, I start out excited and quickly become overwhelmed and terrified. (Not to mention that I’m tired as balls.) My brain is trying to tell me that it’s okay to play some Don’t Starve before getting started. My brain is wrong. The metaphor for my feels about writing is, if I were to have five energetic kittens fighting each other in my lap, playing with my hair, pulling on my earrings, that’s about how focused I feel. This may be at least partially because this is actually happening to me right now. I need to put myself into an environment where I control the stimuli. It doesn’t have to be quiet but the noise and tumult should be present by my will.

I wish I had more to say about writing right now. Being at the very beginning of a new draft makes for thought storm but word drought. So I will talk about other things.

My friend and Writers’ Group cohort Becky has been participating in Twitter pitch contests, and that is most excellent! She actually has a finished book to pitch. I’m a little jealous, not gonna lie. But it’s been making me think that I could really use a community. Blogs I follow, comment on, and/or contribute to. Twitter banter. Forum friends. Self-promotion would probably be a lot easier if I felt like less of an internet spectator and more of an internet participant.

I would love to have shorter stories to share, so that people might read my work and enjoy it, and maybe long for more. I have shared a few things on deviantArt, but have never gotten any feedback. Does anyone have suggestions about where to share short fiction with a community? I’m not a writer of fanfic, though I sort of wish I were; that comes with some built-in exposure.

Later today I’m going up to the city park to sign a petition to recall all members of the Jefferson County school board, because reasons. Though I do not and will not have a child in any school district, I still believe that education is basically the most important thing when it comes to bettering one’s life, becoming a creative person, and becoming a good neighbor. Having a school board dominated by people who prioritize money and “patriotism” over quality of education will simply perpetuate the problems that exist in society today.

Anyway. I’m gonna wrap this up, I feel I may be participating in avoidance behavior at this point. Wish me luck, and happy writing, all!

Still. Reading.

So, July has begun. My high hopes of having a third draft by now are flapping, shredded, in the wind. My hopes of having a third draft sometime this year are hiding behind things, hoping to not get stomped by hard-hearted reality as it thunders past.

I finished The Maltese Falcon (67,000 words, by the way). 179 pages (the other 10 were discussion questions) never took so long to read, ugh. The book is good, and tight, and I enjoyed it, but it would never have gotten published today. The book starts off with the physical description of the protagonist, followed immediately by the physical description of the secretary, followed immediately by the physical description of the femme fatale, followed immediately by the physical description of the protagonist’s business partner… there were step-by-step descriptions of how Sam Spade rolls a cigarette, how he sits up in bed, how he eats. I can’t imagine how long the book would have been if Hammett had been forced to cut those descriptions, like he would be if he were trying to get published now. The prose is utilitarian and without flourish. You can clearly hear the whisky-and-cigarrette-smoke-ruined voice reading the book; growling, begrudging, yet trying to hide the fact that he’s enjoying himself.

It was a relief to finish the book, and I immediately tried to check out The Big Sleep, but of course it was checked out of the library. Instead I checked out a copy of K Is For Killer, a book that was picked on by Hardboiled and High Heeled as dealing directly with women filling traditionally men’s roles, their independence, and the theme of the “wrong body” that pervades the female detective genre. I read it in about three days and found it highly enjoyable, and when I finished it, The Big Sleep was still checked out. What to do now?

I read for pleasure for a few days, but today I was just starting to get an itch in my britches to start writing again. Just in time, I got an email saying that The Big Sleep was back in stock—thank god! Who knows what may have happened if I had started writing, all willy-nilly. Perish the thought.

My third draft is going to be very different from the second; all in good ways. It’s not going to be quite the reinvention that happened between Cassidy0 and Cassidy1, and I’m very happy about that. It is in my nature to look at my experiences and average them, and make predictions based on them. Like, “The first time I ever wrote a second draft, I completely rewrote the whole book from the very ground up.” So, obviously, that’s what every subsequent draft will be… until I have a larger sample size to draw from. Now, I’m looking at keeping most or all of the same characters, tweaking their roles minimally, tweaking their personalities considerably, adding scenes aimed at developing characters and themes, and generally grab the steering wheel and aim the car back onto the more acceptable, less self-involved road (where the “self” is Cassidy). It’s fascinating to me how a book can be vehicles for themes and messages that aren’t visible to the naked eye; one must unwrap them, one thin layer at a time, like an onion, to arrive at the pungent nugget of truth underneath.

Maybe it’s just true that, when you’re writing, you see the jewel of the message you’re trying to convey. The words are the wrapping paper. Your finished product is never going to look like that jewel, but that’s okay, because if it did, it wouldn’t be interesting—it’d be a necklace with no neck; a mustache with no one to twirl it. The reader needs to arrive at the jewel on their own to grasp the full impact.

Anyway, I post this and I begin The Big Sleep, as one. Happy reading to us all!

Social reading

I grew up in a fortunate environment, surrounded by people who loved to read. My parents, my brothers, and all of my friends: all heavyweight readers. In elementary and middle school, I lacked close friends, so in high school, my newly-discovered joy was social reading. When someone recommends you read a book… or you reccomend they read a book… just so you can geek out about it together.

The first of these was probably the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan. At the time that I first started reading him, I believe he had published book seven, Crown of Swords. All my new friends had already read to that point and some of them had had to re-read several as new ones came out. Each of them was impatient with the wait. I, newly exposed, was exuberant to be reading them. Most of my friends gave up on the series at about that point, saying they’d come back and read it when the series was complete, but I didn’t mind—gamely, I’d buy the next one and read it without a refresher, and I caught up.

I honestly didn’t understand why reading a book series you enjoyed was considered by so many to be work. I mean, you don’t go back and re-watch the first four seasons of a show when the fifth comes out, right? There’s a sixty-second blurb at the beginning of the first episode that explains where the last season ended, and we’re all back in the game.

At any rate, I read Wheel of Time, Ender’s Game, Ender’s Shadow, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Stranger in a Strange Land, The Dark is Rising series, and The Rook (the list goes on, but those are the ones I can remember off the top of my head) in the spirit of “OMG you have to read this book!” Since then, I have recommended books I’ve discovered to my friends with mixed results. The Time Traveler’s Wife, Her Fearful Symmetry, and Rant—all books I deeply enjoyed—didn’t go over as well as I expected among my friends. This is, of course, fine. Everyone is completely entitled to his or her own taste. But I feel I must have spent my “OMG you have to read this book” capital, because since 2010 or so, it seems like I can’t get anyone to read anything I recommend.

Mindful of the fact that my last series of recommendations were met with lukewarm responses, I’ve kept my finger off the trigger when it comes to recommending books. In fact, I’ve only recommended three—Daughter of Smoke and Bone, Days of Blood and Starlight, and Dreams of Gods and Monsters. I started with gentle nudging: “Hey, I think you might like these books.” I continued, weeks or months later, with equally gentle reminders. My volume got louder and louder until I finally offered to buy the first book for any of my friends who would read it. I succeeded in getting one of my friends to read the first book, and she absolutely loved it and couldn’t put it down, and we geeked out about it a little bit—but she never read the second book, or expressed any interest in doing so.

What the hell?

I know that everyone’s not only busy, but mentally and emotionally “occupied.” People are either not reading or they’re re-reading books they know they love, the same way you put on your favorite slippers.

I miss the days of social reading. I think that, like other things, when we’re stressed and tired we convince ourselves that reading is a chore. I wish I could re-show people that it’s really not; really, it’s an escape from the things that stress us out. Forget a chapter a night—a page a night is such a good winding down from the day. And, when we read the books our friends recommend, we have more things to talk about when we’re together; more lines of connection that are, frankly, becoming more and more scarce as the years go by and our roads diverge.

Just a thought. Happy reading, all!

Reading progress, with a side of exhaustion

I’ve finished reading UtToDIBT and HaHH as of yesterday. After finishing the former, the latter started out weak, but I got used to the differences and, side by side, both were extremely valuable resources. It gave me many pointers on how to strengthen my story, establish and reinforce themes, be aware of the literary power—and be a good feminist while doing so.

My current concern is that the hardboiled genre is unkind. In its original form, its conceptualization of women tends to be victim, villain, or virgin (and the “virgin” trope really doesn’t show up much); all that’s important is how they relate to the men in their world. The power of the woman lies in her sexuality. None of these women ever come out on top. The flip side of that, is that in noir, no one really comes out on top. The detective prioritizes his “code” above his personal life, and the book ends with the feeling that he does his best in a flawed world.

The problem lies in trying to have a hardboiled novel in which a woman is the investigator. It isn’t a problem if you don’t care about the underlying sexism of the genre, but since I do, I’m ending up with some problematic choices.

The premise of a detective novel is, of course, crime. In my case, murder. And yes, murder of women. I am once more transforming women into bodies. I think that the way to deamplify this is to make sure that there are women in the story who are more than bodies, and I think that I achieve this just fine (and am cultivating ideas on how to do this even better). But when you have a genre that makes a point of shitting on women, and you add to that the systemic sexism of the professions of law enforcement and private investigation, you possibly end up with a protagonist who reinforces the idea that doing this “man’s job” is wrong and will bring her nothing but pain. When the male investigator makes that choice, we can say, “He chose this; we know that he could have made a different choice and no one would have been surprised or judged him more harshly than any other man;” but for a woman, there’s an added layer of judgement and expectation of failure. If she prioritizes her professional code over a man, she’s unwomanly, possibly even inhuman; if she gives in to her given temptation, she’s pathetic. So, do you give your character the opportunity for a happy ending and flout the genre conventions in favor of a more empowering feminist work? Or do you stick to the genre conventions and run the risk of reinforcing the idea that women are doomed from the moment they step out from behind the stove?

Branden suggested I minimize the sexist aspects of the world. “It is near-future; maybe things aren’t so polarized anymore,” was his argument. It’s not a bad argument, but exploring the boy’s-club aspect of this was a thing that intrigued me and excited me, and to be honest, reinforces one of my themes. So, I consider it to be an important part of the story. And, in line with my themes… a happy ending just doesn’t seem to fit.

I hope that doesn’t make me a bad feminist.

Since June tenth, I’ve had some real issues with fatigue. I’ve been tired and sleepy from the moment I wake up until the moment I go to bed, and it doesn’t matter how much sleep I get or that I’m taking Adderall to help me be human. I don’t know if I’m thinking straight anymore. Some things seem insurmountable. When I think about my book, it seems like I have too many conflicting things going on and I can’t reason my way through to a solution. I try to keep in mind that exhaustion is a mind-altering drug and I shouldn’t make decisions while exhausted, and that definitely helps me not overthink things too much, but I worry that I’m never going to not be tired again. I have to make decisions again at some point, right? I can’t keep track of everything, and I’m going to screw up my book, I just know it.

So… on a lighter note, I started reading the Maltese Falcon. It’s 187 pages. Right at this minute I can’t do a word count, but I suspect that’s really short. It also starts with a physical description of the detective, followed immediately by a physical description of his secretary, followed immediately by a physical description of the femme fatale, followed immediately by a physical description of his partner… I’m fairly certain that if this book were written today, it wouldn’t have gotten published. That being said, it’s fully engaging. It’s extremely descriptive: every action explained in minute detail, every feature scrutinized. That is not something I have done in my book so far, and honestly I can’t see myself doing it. But that’s okay. It’s good to know the established tropes.

Well, my train of thought just derailed. Until next time, faithful viewers!

Well, this has been anticlimactic

Just as I embarked on my third draft journey, I received the feedback from my writers’ group that I had so craved. While it has been overwhelmingly positive, the things that got picked on surprised me, and to my surprise, stung me quite a bit. I don’t want to go into them at this point, since I haven’t even mustered the courage to finish reading all of it. I know that intentions matter little when writing inclusive fiction—just because you don’t realize you’re furthering a negative stereotype or trope doesn’t mean you shouldn’t correct it when it happens. Still. I feel a little picked on, which I know is something I need to get past.

I found myself reacting to some of the feedback with, “But... I feel like that’s true to the genre,” which made me realize that I’m actually not all that well-versed in the hard-boiled detective genre (previously mis-identified [by me] as noir, which is a whoopsie made by the film industry, check it out if you’re interested) despite reading many contemporary examples of same. As they say, you can’t break the rules until you know them.

I picked up a couple of academic-style books about the Hardboiled genre, Unless the Threat of Death is Behind Them by John T. Irwin and Hardboiled and High Heeled by Linda Mizejewski. So far, I’m about 82% of the way through UtToDiBT (that’s a fun acronym), and it’s really opened my eyes to what’s “important” about the genre. The tropes are fun, but they aren’t what makes it literary. It’s surprised me on many levels: one, how close I came to a lot of the marks without having been aware of them. Two, the fact that there are a lot of different ways to write correctly within this genre. Three, the best things about literature are present in the best Hardboiled and/or Noir novels.

Discovering this stuff has really raised the bar for me. I’m simultaneously invigorated and goddamned terrified. I have seriously considered straight giving up. I have reminded my writers’ group that wunderkinds are bullshit, but it seems like the inventers of the genre all wrote literary-level novels on their very first try. I have a hard time imagining juggling all those balls, to be totally honest. But, if I think through the process, I have realize that either, they actually got very lucky without realizing it (which actually is a thing that happens), or they had this in mind as they wrote, and possibly shoehorned some things in which might have felt very unnatural to them at the time in order to get that level of literary value. Dashiell Hammett may have had a notecard that said: “Theme: contrast the repetitive with the extraordinary with the singular” and then another notecard that said “parable: Flitcraft? Features: flying shrapnel, breaking machinery” and looked back at these notecards as he crafted the dialogue—certainly a final-draft problem. The Maltese Falcon didn’t spring forth from his forehead, fully formed. It was designed, and he took as much time writing it as it took to get it as close to right as he could. (And, to be fair, it wasn’t his first work in the genre.) Hammett, Chandler, Cain and other authors within the genre were all striving throughout their careers to master their craft—more than just telling stories, they were telling the Human Story, even if those who fancied themselves authorities in the world of literature considered detective novels to be pulp fiction.

Writing is a marathon, not a sprint.

I was reading UtToDiBT earlier and was suddenly overcome with the urge to fill out some notecards before I forgot all the brilliant things that had just occurred to me. So, instead of being OCD and forcing myself to keep reading, I went and got my notecards. I filled out six notecards with two character’s starting and ending points and the events that trigger the changes. I am happy that I did this. Now I’m done and am going to go back to reading. I’ll notecard again if the mood strikes me. If not, I’ll roll right into HaHH. After that, I’m going to be reading at least The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett and The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler. And then I’ll feel at least a little more secure in asserting that something that may be considered a “bad” thing to do falls within my genre.

I may even feel empowered to do it differently.

June first! Back to the novel!

Yesterday, I was chafing against the “rules” keeping me from starting to edit my story again. I had over-filled my video game and TV meters, and was craving a creative outlet. I was sincerely frustrated, and felt thwarted in life in general. Luckily, I realized fairly quickly the cause. (That sort of existential crisis can seem world-ending if you don’t know why you’re having it.) The fact that it was May 31 and I was a mere twenty-four hours from being able to pick up my manuscript again gave me a lifeline.

In May, I had hoped to resume my four-day-a-week gym schedule, but alas, it was not to be. Branden and I went this past Saturday, skipped Sunday for sleep reasons, and today I attended the gym all on my own. I’m shaky all over because my muscles aren’t used to this kind of exertion any more. My stomach is upset, I think because I’m hungry. But for the first time in weeks, my back isn’t in searing, terrifying pain. The shakiness will subside, the hunger is treatable... I’m so glad I went.

Today has been a good day, so far. In addition to the gym, I ran a couple of errands and have knocked out about half the chores I need to do today. Although I could extend myself and finish them all before starting to write, I decided that starting the process is more important, more fulfilling. Also, if I can lasso the muse while she’s hanging around, I have a much better chance of actually being able to do something today, rather than staring bleakly at the page wondering where to begin.

Once again, I have high hopes of note cards and cork boards, and it seems slightly more likely to happen this time if only because everything is already there, waiting for me, not floating in the ether. But I don’t care too much if it doesn’t happen, because trying to force a certain method will only end up stifling me instead of helping. So I’ma let it flow as it flows, we’ll see what ends up happening. I may start out simply making notes in the margin, as it were, like “develop setting here” or “you could fit in more worldbuilding here.” I think that I may have the most luck trying to make a scaffolding for future edits, rather than trying to make the edits themselves. My idea, originally, before I knew what revision was, was that I would read a scene and rewrite it from scratch, telling the same story but in new words. Don’t know if that would help me. OMG I’m so out of my depth. At least I’m not getting graded, right?

My goal is to have my third draft, Cassidy2, done by the next Writers’ Group meetup in the end of June. I think it might be possible? I might also be proposing that I could have the Ark done by the end of June. We’ll see. Wish me luck!