Technical Difficulties

I should descend into the endless hell of revising The Goblin Emperor, and I may even do so this evening.

(Seriously. This book will not fix itself, especially not the big structural problems. And I know what to do; it's just the how that's beating me up.)

However, this afternoon, I have been making notes on projects that aren't ready to be written yet, because if I don't write things down, I will not remember them.

• This AU-America novel is way more ambitious than I am. Which is a problem, since I actually don't like novels with as much scope as this one is trying to claim it needs (Salem! Mormon Utah! Airships! Lansford Hastings! Circuses! Helen Keller! Frankenstein! George Armstrong Custer! Mammoth Cave! Angels! Demons! Dogs and cats! Living together! Mass hysteria!)
  
• otoh, the great thing about writing about Puritans is that you can name characters things like Dread Not Dawson; I don't know anything else about Dread Not yet, except that her older sister is named Remember, but the name is full of promise.
  
• Mélusine's equivalent of Jack the Ripper is Jean-the-Knife.
  
• Now I just have to figure out which district he preys on. (And approximately three thousand six hundred and fifty-two other things as well. I am terrified that by the time I get Yes, No, Always, Never worked out to the point that I can write it, I will have forgotten most of what I know about Mélusine.)
  

In acknowledgment and celebration of the fact that I'm working at all, here's that first line meme again.

( click here )

The RLS is giving me hell. Ironically and illogically, it seems to be getting worse as I become more mobile. We've just upped the dose of Requip, and hopefully that will improve things SOON, but in the meantime, I'm taking more narcotics than my GP is happy with, and it's actually not knocking the RLS out very effectively anyway.

HULK SMASH.

I am also still in the Hell of the Unreceived Edit Letter, and while I am trying to make constructive use of my time (going through The Goblin Emperor again on my own recognizance to fix the things I know are wrong, getting mirrorthaw to poke more holes in my worldbuilding, etc.), it's hard to stay focused, especially when part of my brain is SCREAMING, "Publish or perish! Publish or perish!" and I can't seem to finish a short story to save my goddamn life.

So, it's the first line meme again, this time arranged by estimated closeness to completion, in hopes that it will help me organize this embarrassing plethora of unfinished stories into a list of manageable tasks.

Well, it's worth a try, anyway.

( cut for length )

And now I'm going to walk to the pharmacy for the first time since I broke my ankle. Viva l'independence!

So.

The Goblin Emperor is safely Someone Else's Problem for a while, and I have no idea of what novel I'm going to write next (except, of course, for A Reckoning of Men with matociquala, but we're not doing that until she's cleared at least some of the carnage off her decks*). Partly this is because The Goblin Emperor is a standalone. Partly this is because Cormorant Child, the novel which would be next up if writing was a purely rational, efficiency-oriented profession, has a lot of the same thematic issues and concerns as The Goblin Emperor, and I want a break from the problem of kingship. (Honestly, who do I think I am? W. Shakespeare?) Also, Cormorant Child still won't tell me what its shiny sfnal set-piece in Chapter Two is, and I think that means that there's something back there that isn't quite done yet. Collaboration between two authors is much easier than collaboration between an author's conscious and subconscious. Unlike my subconscious, Bear uses her words.)

I'm okay with everything on the novel board being TBA. Because it means I've got something for which I have been yearning for at least a year and a half: time to write short stories.

I wrote three and a half short stories last year (using the term "year" pretty loosely, as I can't actually recall whether Bear and I wrote "Mongoose in 2009 or technically 2008). "White Charles," "After the Dragon," "On Faith" (Shadow Unit 3.00), and "Mongoose." Now, my finished-to-published ratio there is looking pretty awesome, but, however gratifying to my ego, that's not actually my point. My point is that I wrote three and a half short stories last year, and that's a woefully sparse output.

I have two finished short stories which won't sell, "Coyote Gets His Own Back" (my beloved zombie coyote story) and "Imposters" (a Ghoul Hunters story), and two which sold in 2006 (to two different markets) and have yet to see the light of day. But essentially, along with having barely any new output in the past couple years, I have no backlog, either. In one sense, this is good, as it means all those stories from the (halcyon) days (of yore) when I had fifteen circulating at once have either sold or been trunked, but it makes me feel like I'm not doing my job right.

ERGO, my goal for this next chunk of 2010 is to write some damn short stories. And to aid me in this endeavor, well, I think we need a list:

( behind the cut, first lines and commentaries )

And now, having laid this all out, I'm off to take the Elder Saucepan to the ophthalmologist. Perhaps all the driving (45 minutes each way) will help this roiled muddle clarify.

Hey. A girl can hope.

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*A writing career is like a pirate ship. Discuss.

"After the Dragon"
first draft, 2600 words
After the dragon, she lay in the white on white hospital room and wanted to die.

Actual finished story--and with an actual story in it! Even if the story is not very good, this is a great improvement over the floundering and flailing and failing to finish things of the past year and change.

And I think I've figured out at least part of where I went off the rails. It's John Gardner's thing which I cannot remember well enough to quote about a short story needing a single action. What I think my stories need is a central action, an act or a choice or a conversation that is what the story is about. The short stories I'm stuck on right now, and there's quite an array of them, all lack that central action, that axis to spin around. And I think that where everything started going wrong was when I started trying to replace a central ACTION with a central THEME. For me, that does not work so well because I am no good at translating theme into action or character or any of the other things a story needs. But if I have a central action, my odds improve dramatically that the rest of the story will come trailing along behind.

So, to celebrate, here's the first line meme:
( for the kitties! )

[ETA: WHOA! This'll make a lot more sense now that I've fixed the mark-up. Sorry about that.]

Another question asked more than once: What are you going to do next?
( first line meme, this time for novels only, but with annotations )
My first priority really, once my brain has grown back some, is to write some short fiction, but there are so many stories I want to write/finish, I don't even know where to begin.

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[To ask your question, go here.]

I mean, a meme.

First lines of unfinished stories, behind the cut. Because I have nothing better to do.

( Really, I'd crawl out of my own head if I could. )

No, really. I just discovered that Wolverine (who guards my printer) can in fact be posed--so that he BALANCES--on his knees. He is by far the most genuinely posable action figure I have ever had and is a stalwart guardian--even if his true nemesis is the smaller of the two Formerly Feral Ninjas, who routinely knocks him over with her tail.

It's hard being a superhero when you're only six inches tall.

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My keyboard has returned. Loud hosannas. And I need to figure out what the hell I'm doing.

Deadline the First: October 1st, for "Thirdhop Scarp." I have 2,000 words typed in, and more than that in the indefatigable notebook (up to about a third of what I think the final product is going to be); the story has no particular word limit, but needs to be greater than or equal to 8k. I do know all, or at least most, of the plot, and, well, let's just say that I don't think 8k is going to be any noticeable hardship.

Deadline the Second: November 1st, for The Mirador revisions. Insert scream of agony here.

Deadline the Third: August 1st, 2007, for Summerdown. (It doesn't do to lose track of that one, because that's a whole novel there to be written.)

Other stuff: With the recent rash of short fiction sales, I'm down to eight stories in inventory. I need to write some more. And would in fact genuinely like to do so. And then there's that handful of novels in varying stages of completeness and/or brokenness.

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Last night, I walked into the kitchen, and there was the Elder Statescat on the stove going, "Oh shit! Quick! Look like a saucepan!"

Needless to say, this improvised effort at camouflage was not successful.

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( for encouragement: a list )

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Do I look like a saucepan yet?

I need a conversation about politics. My characters insist on talking about eschatology.

::facepalm::

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It's time for that thar meme again. First lines of works in progress.

( behind the cut )