Revising's Bouncing My Head Back and Forth

Learning from My Reading:  Out of all the books I bought over the Christmas holiday, I find myself reading Victoria Hanley's Violet Wings.  She uses an interesting structure of quoting a "genie historian" to fill in the back story of how fairy magic works.  Sometimes I kept it straight.  Sometimes I didn't and had to go back and check.  

Found it interesting since I used a similar device for Demons.  Only I gave clues to what the demons were plotting in the form of letters to the demon prince.  Wish I could say great minds travel in the same circles.  My using the structure was just beginner's luck.

Progress:  Started revising Emma.  No longer feel good about it.  Spent almost an hour on chapter 3 going over the same paragraphs until my head felt like a ping pong ball.

Maren.  Plan to start working on the characters tonight.  Nothing is on TV I want to watch so I might even get something done.

Trivia:  Company's gone.  Feels good to be writing again rather than talking.

Hippy, Hippy New Years

Still Celebrating ...

Learning from My Reading:  Spent the last few days reading Moyra Caldecott's young adult The Tall Stones triology set in still ring-worshipping Britain -- maybe Stonehendge though she doesn't name it as such.

Read the books in the late 70s, and my son brought them to light again because he remembered how impressed he was with them.  Boy, has writing changed since she published.  The first book was so bad, but the last two are mostly telling.  Cadecott has some interesting takes on spirit travel (very close to shamanism) but, to me, her characters were drawn in primary colors.  --  I like shades with even my evil comes in shades of gray.

Now, I'm old enough not to mind a fair amount of "telling" in the books I read.  But I'm finding telling slows things down.  Maybe movies and telling a story as if it is appearing on a stage have done us a favor.  Too much "telling" feels more like the outline of the story rather than a complete presentation of your imagining of the happenings in the story.  I know I'll keep "framing" the beginning of my action with a brief description of the scene, who's there, and any needed transition info before push my characters into action.  Still, now I have to go back and look for those "filter" statements (thinks and seems) in my first person narrative as well as where I lay on the back story.

Why is writing such work?

Progress:  Still on vacation.  The revision binder for Emma made it upstairs to my computer, but I haven't opened it yet.  Too busy watching DVDs, talking with visiting son, and looking at bookstores.

 Trivia:  Just got back from Denver where we visited yet more bookstores.  Crowning achievement?  We found two of Jim Butcher's Codex Alera series used, and I bought signed copies of Pat Stoltey's mysteries.  That and a great gyro meal at Pete's made for a satisfying day.  Even managed to avoid tight traffic.

'Tis the Day Before Christmas

Trivia:  and the bread is doing its first rising.  The pies are baked.  The vacuuming of the spare room is done.  The washing is getting done.  The walks are shoveled after the foot of snow thanks to the old man.  And, we're thinking of driving to Brighton tomorrow???!!???

Mothers are sometimes crazy.

Lessons from My Reading:  Finished Kim Harrison's White Witch, Black Curse.  After my original bitch about her lack of tagging on the first page so I could figure where the people belonged in the story, it turned out to be a good, if slow read.  And, not only because the book is over 500 pages long.

Had another insight as I plowed through learning all the people she threw at us.  [MC's whole circle of friends and family gets involved in the story.]  Every writer should know that your characters have to overcome the obstacle in the way of achieving their want/desire/etc. in a book.  Light-bulb-time revealed that Harrison does this for most of her chapters.  There is always a new challenge for the MC to solve.  If I wrote it, it'd have all sorts of ends dangling from the ceiling.  Fortunately, Harrison isn't me and ties them all fairly neatly -- even the opening question of who killed her lover from the previous book.

Of course, the ending is open ended enough to lead into the next book.  I don't know if I'll be reading it.  My to-read-pile is over 30 books at the moment, and son is bringing more plus DVDs.

Progress:  Emma... Got the pencil revision done.  Now I get to transfer them all to the computer version, but I'm not going to think about it.  I have to get the rolls baked for tomorrow's dinner.

Have a merry, merry holiday.

Coming Up for Air ...

As far as I'm concerned ... 

Christmas is over (except for the easy part --
eating, and talking ... and revising???).  

Now, it's on to Los Reyos and more seasonal excess.
Happy Solstice, by the way.

Lessons from My Reading:  I'm slogging through Kim Harrison's White Witch, Black Curse, as a part of my best seller read-a-thon.  It's as dense as chewing taffy with dentures.  Of course, I'm jumping into book seven in a series, but I get a little annoyed when Harrison mentions a bunch of characters and proceeds with the action without giving me an idea of where she's going.  I started the first chapter at least three times.  I'm now 200 pages into the book.  It's a nice complicated story with several plot threads twining around each other.  --  But I think the editors should be on alert that not all readers of a single book ... have read all the other books in the series.

Guess I should define "dense".  Like on page one, Harrison mentions three characters -- Kisten, Ford, and Edden plus the narrator/MC Rachel Morgan.  You get an idea of who Ford is by the action in the next two pages.  You get an idea of who Rachel is by her first person viewpoint of the events.  Kisten's murder is mentioned, but not who he? or she? was.  Edden is just a name in the middle of a sentence.  Having reached the middle of the book, I now know that all these people were/are important continuing characters.  A simple tag (like what she used to describe "... Ivy, my roomate and business partner," on page 2) would have made following the text much easier.


Compare this to my current gold standard (along with Lee Child), Carol O'Connell.  On page 1 of Bone by Bone, she sets up one character the M/C Oren Hobbs.  On the second page, O'Connell introduces the secondary M/C, Hannah, around which the two related mysteries in the book intertwine.  She also begins defining the structure of the relationship between the two people mentioned.  --  In comparison, Harrison was still confusing me on page 3.

In plain English, I'm complaining about Harrison's handling the back story of the series.

Progress:  Emma.  The revision progresses.  Actually, I've almost finished going through it once.  But ... I'm thinking after I transfer my corrections to the confuser, I need to reprint it and revise again.  I may get a friend to read it to see if its a bunch of  *^#%*^@*.  Only, I don't have friends who read fantasy.  Or, I may see if I can find someone willing to read a full novel at the AW Water Cooler.   First, I have to decide whether I want to read a full novel in exchange.  Decisions.  (Or, is that just more work?)

Critiquing.  Finally got my obligations done.  Must say I like seeing stories getting fleshed out chapter by chapter.

Demons/Gargoyles.  Haven't heard a peep or seen an ejection. 

Trivia:  I'm baking pies for Christmas dinner ... for which we have to drive down to Brighton (CO).  We'll be picking up the NYC son ... so I probably won't be blogging much until the New Year.  Hopefully, I'll soon be able to get this thing whipped into shape.

Have a safe and comfortable Christmas.