Katherine Mankiller

Um, hi.

Where was I before I got sucked into email migration hell?

Oh, yeah. Wiscon. Why is the con over again?

My reading went really well. In fact, my favorite author read right before me--she read an excerpt from an upcoming book that I'M SO EXCITED ABOUT!!!--and then she gave me a thumbs up after my reading. Surely there has never been a more squee-worthy event in the history of squee!

Then I came home and started working late every night. One night I came home at 11:30pm. Which is better than the 1:30am I did right before the con, but still.

Don't ask how my writing is going. Ugh. *facepalm* I need to get cracking before I run out of things for my crit group to critique.

Ouch.

I just lopped 4555 words off Lizardfic, which dropped me back down below 60,000 words. (59,746.) To quote Spock in "Devil in the Dark," "PAAAAAAAAAAAAAIN!!!!" I have short stories in circulation that are shorter than 4555 words. I may be able to recycle some of them, though. It makes me sad, because there was some stuff I liked there, but it's for the structural good of the story.

I should go write at least 254 words so it doesn't hurt as much.

Bad Outline, No Biscuit

My novel has changed during the course of writing, which is okay. And I've updated the outline to reflect the changes. Sounds okay, right?

Only there's a bit of a problem. My main POV character is away from all the action for several scenes. Ack! There's a list of five to eight scenes in a row where the POV character isn't her.

No, no, no. I can't do that. I need to restructure things so she's involved in the big bang finale. She is at A. She needs to be at B. In the original outline a bunch of stuff happened at B and she headed out to B to [spoiler redacted], but no, she needs to be involved in the stuff at B.

I may be junking a chapter or two. Sigh. Oh well, it's more important to have it be good, right? Of course it is! Pay no attention to my wibbly lip at the thought of my decreased wordcount.

So, where've you been, Katherine?

Pretty much working, exercising, and writing my novel. And nagging my sister to put dog pictures on Flickr. I think the world needs more pet pictures, don't you? Isn't that an Avenue Q song? "The Internet is for Pet Pictures"?

Current novel wordcount: 48,828. We've made it to the city, where lots of important things happen. Ooh, I need to tweak my outline spreadsheet to match some of the changes in the text outline. A whole bunch of unplanned characters showed up in Chapter Ten and have become important, and need to be reflected in the outline.

Congratulations! it's a novel.

My novel-in-progress is over 40,000 words. Yay, it's a novel!

It's not a complete novel, mind you. In fact, it's a half-complete novel. But it's 40,000 words, and a girl needs milestones.

I've been quiet...

I've been writing a lot. Well. Last weekend I was sick. Let us not speak of it.

My action chapter is still kicking my butt, because, well, it's action. It'll be okay, and the next chapter should have fun stuff in it. Well, there was something fun tonight--I wrote a kiss. It's more than just a kiss, though, it's a sexual awakening. Yay!

And, you know, just to make up for my not posting in so long, have a LOLcat. Aw, Pandora is so cute!

Sigh.

Action scenes are hard. Let's do math instead!

Uh oh...

I'm currently working on chapter seven. My writer's group just critiqued chapters five and six.

I think I need to write faster.

Bad subconscious, no biscuit.

I've been procrastinating about writing. I thought it was because I was stressed about car repairs and the like, but no. I think I just didn't want to write Chapter Four.

Well, I went ahead and started it, and it wasn't so bad while I was writing it, but now I'm all moody again. I don't know why I decided to write something that's so personally button-pushing, but I did.

Things will be better after Chapter Four. Then I can get into more of the things that I liked about this idea, like the love story. But until I finish Chapter Four, I'm probably going to be cranky.

I hate to jinx things, but...

Lizardfic is a lot easier to write the second time around. Okay, chapter one had its hard parts, but that was because it was chapter one, and because I need violence enablers. (I really, really need violence enablers.) Chapter two is my friend so far.

Maybe it's that wacky outline thingy. Who knew?

Holy hand grenades, Batman!

I generally think of myself as bad at plot. Maybe I think this because I sometimes end up writing a first draft in which I follow a character around a setting and nothing happens to him or her. (This is generally what's wrong with the hurricane story, by the way--I followed Chinequa around for 10,000 words, and lots of stuff happened, but there wasn't really, you know, plot.) That happens sometimes when you're a pantser, and apparently I think with my fingers sometimes--sometimes I just need to follow a character around and type.

I feel like I made a lot of plotty breakthroughs in my Outline of d00m. I still don't have anything really resembling an ending, but, you know. I have time to come up with wacky things like endings, especially since I now have what I think are fairly logical, interesting, and conflicty beginning and middle.

Wow. I may actually push this novel out of the ditch by the side of the road yet.

Lots of work for not a lot of prose, and nonfiction reading.

My outline for the novel codenamed Lizardfic is currently 5008 words. That's longer than most of my short stories. This is more outlining than I've ever done for any project, ever. On the other hand, stalled novel, yo. Horrible feeling. Must unstall novel. I'm probably going to outline even more, until I am half-mad with outlining. It's not that I don't like writing from an outline, it's that I really suck at outlining. Hopefully, this will help.

In other news, if you've heard Twyla Tharp's The Creative Habit is an excellent book, you heard right. I'm already a Twyla Tharp fan--my sister is a dancer--and she has a lot of advice for creative people of any discipline. It's very applicable to writers. If you don't want to buy it, go to your local public library or bookstore and fondle it. Trust me. I've been reading slowly through it, and finished it today.

I'm not sure if Thomas A. Limoncelli's Time Management for System Administrators is as applicable to writers, but it is applicable to people with day jobs (especially scary devil monastery day jobs) who want to have time to write, so there you go.

Edit, edit, edit.

I've been collapsing characters in the hurricane story. It's done some cool things to the minor characters that have been combined.

I still haven't tackled the plot stuff. I think I'm a little intimidated by it. I have a pretty good idea of how this story is broken, but the NaNovel has left me feeling a little edited out.

In other news, I'm still outlining.

Getting Things Done

I'm getting lots of things done today. I just don't have any new prose to show for it.

• Critiques!
• Edits on the hurricane story.
• I'm pondering the outline for the new improved Lizardfic.
  

The outlining in particular feels productive. I'm pretty sure that novel stalled because my outline sucked so much. The outline for the NaNovel was a lot better, and I still blew right through it one third of the way through, so clearly it also sucked in its own way.

We'll see how much better I can do this time.

Nerd stuff.

I was having this problem. Moving the mt-static directory to the top level of my webspace fixed it. If you're getting a funky error on the comment page about whether you're logged in or not, log out and log back in.

In other news, I'm using this site's outline helper to make my outline suck less. Thus far it's helping, even though it didn't want to work on linux, sigh.

In other other news, Amy's Macaroni and Soy Cheeze is yummy. Mmm. Tasty soy goodness!

Wow. My outline sucks.

I'm rereading Lizardfic and the outline materials associated with it, because I've been thinking that it may be time to work on this one again. You may or may not recall that this was the short story that turned into a novel that turned into me rewriting chapter one over and over and over again, and I've made a startling realization:

My outline sucks. Like a black hole.

Seriously. It has almost no plot or character in it. It's just a setting. I cannot believe how much this outline sucks.

No wonder I couldn't write it.

Meh.

Summaries are hard. Let's do math rebuild a RAID array instead!

Showing Its Origins

I'm running the NaNovel through critique group right now, and even though I made several passes through it and tried to flesh it out, it's still kind of rushed. It used to feel very much like... if you've ever heard Jaws, the screenreading software for the visually impaired, it used to feel like that. It's not so bad now, but it's still...

Well, you can still tell it's a NaNovel: "Can't stop, will lose momentum. Can't stop, must finish wordcount. Can't stop, clowns will eat me. Clowns will eat me!"

Anyway, my crit group is most awesome. Now I just need more time to rewrite!

NaNoEdMo update

Editing is still more fun than drafting. What do you know? Whee, edits!

Well, obviously, there's going to be the point where I go blind. Hopefully that won't happen for awhile, since I didn't look at it for three months.

Some observations:

• The character arc on the two main characters is muddled. They're the ones I planned the most. The improvised trio of minor characters, on the other hand, are very clear. Maybe I'm just not a planner.
• I fixed the horrible awkward POV switch mid-Chapter One. I remember just staring at it in horror and then moving on during NaNoWriMo.
• Chapters! It has those now, instead of being a big wad of text.
• The plot is kind of lumpy and misshapen. I tried to plan that, too, and ran out of outline. I suck at outlining. I think I can make it "wacky and fast-paced" instead of lumpy and misshapen, though.
• This thing has some funny parts. I laughed out loud at the voicemails from one of the lead characters' mothers.

I'm going to try and build up a ginormous lead this weekend, since work is crazy. But I don't think I'm going to have any trouble editing for 50 hours in a month.

Opening lines meme.

Jen has a "post the first line of five works in progress" meme. What the hell, I'll play, although I don't really have five things in progress at the moment. I'll include recent stuff.

The Wasicu towers still exist, rising up out of the turf.

From "The Last Wasicu."

Yvonne looked up from her monitor, the beads in her cornrows clattering as Roger walked into her office.

From "In the Water."

"Magdalena!" Mr. Libby shouted.

This is from the hurricane story that's currently in the Critters queue.

They stopped for the night, off to the side of the canal in a clearing.

This is from the infamous lizardfic, which I need to get back to at some point. Maybe this summer, between Script Frenzy and NaNoWriMo. I'm trying to build up more short fiction, but that's no reason to ignore my neglected, whimpering novel. Hopefully NaNoWriMo will have broken me of rewriting the same first chapter over and over and over again. If not, maybe doing it again will.

Alan was rushing to class when he heard a voice call his name.

This is from the 2006 NaNovel. Revisions start tonight!

Flash fic update, and history.

My online critique group is oddly silent about my under 500 word flash fic. Perhaps they're struck dumb by its brilliance. Or its badness. Heh.

For NaNoWriMo this year, I'm considering going Greek. I have an idea I've been kicking around for years--2001 at least, but the basic idea came from my classical literature class in 1988 or so, from feminist interpretations of the Iliad and Oresteion. The interesting thing is that "The Last Wasicu" is also strongly rooted in history, and I also have another idea based on Roman religion that I'm kicking around. It seems to be a trend, in other words. Hmm.

The Year of Getting Serious

My Hollywood Creative Directory is on its way. I received one of my two first script queries back in the mail as undeliverable. D'oh! Short fiction markets are all over the Internet, but this is not the case for the places I want to send scripts. (The online version of the Hollywood Creative Directory is $250 a year. Ulp. Maybe if I start selling or win the lottery.)

I'm running a little behind on the short story a month plan, but not badly. I still think I can crank out nine this year if I try. (No short stories during NaNoWriMo, NaNoEdMo, or Script Frenzy.) I may write a play instead of a short story one month, or for Script Frenzy. Or not, but it's an idea I've been vaguely contemplating for awhile. I just think it would be fun. I've improved the script reporting in my submissions tracker. I'm also not sure how I'm fitting Lizardfic into that plan, but I really need some short fiction. I don't have enough in circulation.

After NaNoEdMo comes Critters for the NaNoWriMo novel, unless I decide I hate it. ;) If I don't hate it, I'll have to do something with it. I've updated my submissions tracker to handle novel queries and submissions. (Fear me! my Geek-Fu is powerful.)

New Year's Resolutions

Yes, it's the obligatory New Year's resolutions post! I'm sure you can hardly wash. Yay!

• Write more. I did poorly with the short story deadlines, but maybe they were too short. One short story a month, excepting March, June, and November, which I'm going to set aside for other writing.
• NaNoEdMo. It looks like the site is dead, Jim. That doesn't mean I can't set aside March for editing my NaNoWriMo novel.
• Script Frenzy! Rather than try to write a script for the Austin Film Festival, I'll do NaNoWriMo's new screenwriting challenge. That'll give me time to edit properly. I mean, I sent Double Feature off to Austin while it was still lying around the Critters queue. That's no good.
• NaNoWriMo. I probably want to do that again next year.
• I also want to finish Lizardfic and Hurricane Maria.

In other news, I just tossed a story into the Critters queue. A sample:

The Wasicu cities still exist, rising up out of the turf. When the buffalo herds run across the plain, the towers shake and glass falls out of them.

Kicking Horse walks between the towers. He knows that under the soft, tall grass lie the bones of Wasicu. He's not afraid of ghosts--helpful ancestors teach the children to hunt and fish, gather herbs, speak their own language--but the evil dead are another thing. Some of these Wasicu were women and children, but some of them were bad men. He wouldn't come at all if he weren't looking for Snow Deer.

Oh, yeah. And continue to shrink. (35 pounds so far; go me!)

Year in Review

Short stories completed: 1
Scripts completed: 1
Novel first drafts completed: 1
Short stories that somehow morphed into novels-in-progess: 2
Short stories that were pulled from circulation and completely rewritten: 1
Short story submissions: 32
Short story rejections: 28
Short story sales: 1
Short stories in circulation: 3

Lo, I am dissatisfied.

I win at life!

I think it needs to expand out, like an accordian. Later.

I reread part of the beginning. It's better than I remembered. It's... funny. I'm still a couple of rewrites from the decision of whether I want to 'fess up to it in public, but...

I wrote a novel. In a month.

Sigh.

Deciding a scene needs to be moved to the beginning of the story is one thing, but then there's rewriting every scene that came after. Oops.

But as long as it makes the story better, that's more important than an increasing wordcount... right?

Whoa.

So, I went to introduce the love interest, and...

This scene needs to open the book. I just accidentally incorporated information that used to occur in an unlovely infodump that I planned to edit out later. No, really, I didn't plan it, but it works.

I love when that happens.

*hangs head*

I'm kind of...

...not writing.

I suspect I'm less well prepared for my novel than I thought I was--I've been opening the document file and staring at it and closing it without adding anything new. Perhaps making the outline a bit clearer would help.

Tonight, I'm meeting some other screenwriting people, which may end up in critiques! Cross your fingers!

Paradigm shift.

Now that I'm working on a novel, I keep having to tell myself to slow down, that I have plenty of room.

I'm not convinced it's working. In fact, I think I'm going to have to go back and flesh stuff out. I've got stuff in here that's taking paragraphs that probably needs to take pages.

It's okay. I not only have room, I have time. As long as I meet my daily wordcount, I'll finish.

Coping with novel anxiety.

I actually have... an outline. And the motivational spreadsheet of doom to track my wordcount. And... version control. Yes, version control, like programmers use. Why, yes, I am a geek. But I could have used version control sooner--I realized at one point that I'd been sending out copies of "Corporate Oversight" that had an error I'd corrected about six months previously, only I'd also overwritten the file with an old version. Ouch.

I wrote 500 words on Lizardfic the Novel today--well, some of those were pasted in from Lizardfic the short story, but... close enough. I just felt like it.

I also added some minor script tweaks the SO suggested. One word change and one short scene.

And now, bed.

On second thought...

...I don't think NaNoWriMo is what I'm looking for with Lizardfic the novel. NaNoWriMo still might be fun, but... not for Lizardfic.

Which means that I need to come up with an outline, and a daily wordcount goal. Otherwise it'll sit around my hard drive doing nothing.

I think my other "story" in progress is also a novel.

This might sound odd, but I'm slightly disgruntled that both my current ideas are novels. It's a lot easier to throw short fiction into a slush pile. I can think of three places off the top of my head that take novel slush. If those don't pan out, well, it'll be agent-seeking time.

In other news, my script is done. *throws confetti*

Yikes.

I may be writing a novel.

I received some crits for lizardfic today, and one of the critiquers agrees with Brian that the story might work better at novel-length. I suspect they may be right.

Of course, I don't have time right now. I need to finish this script. But after, I need to plan this one out. I'm considering doing it during NaNoWriMo, for the support. Which makes me wonder if they're doing NaNoFiMo again this year.

Speaking of the script, it's still going slow. And that's what I should be working on now.

Hmmmmm.

I was talking to the SO in the car this morning on the way to work about our respective writing projects. He thinks that the problem I'm having with the story formerly for the cliché challenge is that it's not a short story, it's a novel.

It's definitely a long one, that's for sure. Oh, not at the moment. At the moment it's over-compressed, and needs unpacking. But when I put in all the stuff that needs to go in, it'll be a long one.

As opposed to the other story I have lying around, which is a shorty. And I still have a novel idea percolating--again, I have characters and a milieu and a situation, but not a plot per se.

I was going to try to power through the former cliché story this weekend come hell or high water, but maybe I should finish the short one instead. Or maybe I should unpack and reevaluate. Yeah.

In other news, I'm reconsidering the running thing again. Yes, yes, I know. But I want to. I'm going to try something I read online--walk 10 minutes for a warm up, 15 minutes of walk, run, or both as I feel like it, 5 minutes of walk for a cool down. My cardiovascular system really feels like it can take whatever I dish out to it on the treadmill, but my legs can't. Maybe the stretching/weightlifting/"whatever I feel like" plan will make my legs cooperate more.

Also, the SO's next project sounds cool. I smell movie rights. ;)

*gibber*

I'm trying to exercise more, mainly so I feel like less of a slug. Lots of people (Orson Scott Card, etc.) recommend exercise for authors on the grounds that it's hard to force lively prose out of a sluggish, tired body, and it's true. I may have to buy a copy of The Athlete's Diary on the grounds that obsessive record-keeping inspires me to greater effort. (You should see the Motivational Spreadsheet of Doom I wrote for the SO and my friend Milly.) Right now it's a pathetic ten minutes on the exercise bike a day; I hope to gradually bump that up to forty-five minutes, followed by weights.

Um, yeah. I mentioned running here ages ago. That didn't work out; my knee started calling me names. Alas.

I have several ideas from Dragoncon--I mostly went to writer's panels this year. One of them is an odd kind of cyberpunk, and I have no idea if it's going to be a short story or a novel. (Meep! although that would give me an opportunity to use the Motivational Spreadsheet of Doom.) It could get long. Which I suppose is good, either way. I have notes, and will let it percolate. I also contemplated the other novel idea I had lying around my hard drive and made more notes.

I still want to write something for Scalzi's cliché challenge. I started a draft of something, but... eh. I'll go reread in a day or so and see what I think--right now I think I would reread and say "Eh."

I like the Sidekick, but I had to rewrite the php browser detection routine to get this site to work with it. Interestingly, the browser string says it is ProxiWeb/AvantGo. I used to use ProxiWeb on Palm, back before AvantGo bought them. And I haven't seen whether they support J2ME yet; I keep seeing things that suggest that they will next month. I want Azure!

New Story in Progress

This weekend I've been working on my latest story, which is based on a nightmare I was having on August 29, 2003, right before my mother-in-law woke me up to drive her to the doctor for her broken arm. Yes, I know the date, because we went to Dragoncon right after the doctor.

I've been letting it percolate since then. The plotting is pretty slow slogging at this point. It was a dream, and therefore doesn't make much sense. I suppose I shouldn't worry about that and should just try to get a first draft, however illogical.

It's probably too early to sit around wondering which markets want dark urban fantasy, too.

I had an idea that may end up being a novel, too, but it's still in the percolation stages. I have notes lying around my hard drive. Meep, novel! Maybe I should let that one lie around for awhile.