Technical Difficulties

I have a complete revised draft of The Goblin Emperor . . . 20,000 words over budget.

This is what one might call a mixed blessing.

So, it's NaNoWriMo again.

(For those of you who do not know, that's National Novel Writing Month.)

In her post about the recent NaNoWriMo kerfuffle, Mary Robinette Kowal, explaining the benefits NaNoWriMo provided to her, said, "When you are getting your legs, writing long form is really intimidating."

Now, I don't doubt for a moment that this is true for Mary. It's her post and she has no reason to lie. But I read that and I thought, Wait, what? Long form is EASY. It's short form that's scary like whoa.

And then it occurred to me that perhaps this was worth unpacking.

When I started writing (at the ripe old age of eleven), I started writing novels. Or, well, "novels," since I doubt any of my first efforts was any longer than what I'd think of as a short story or maybe a novelette today. But for me, at eleven, they were novels, and they were what I instantly and automatically gravitated to when I started trying to write. I knew the old chestnut about "if you want to break into publishing, you have to write short stories," so I tried, on and off through high school and college. (And then there was the most poisonous form rejection letter known to humankind, and I stopped like a lab rat hit with an electric shock.) But I never got the hang of it. Short stories were scary and hard and I didn't understand them. Novels, I just flung myself at; I started dozens, and every time one broke down, I just started another. I finished maybe three or four (using the word "novel" loosely, remember) before I started writing Mélusine, and got more than 50k into at least two others, but I never stopped trying, and I never had any fundamental doubt that I could do it. (Doing it well was a different question, but that's also a different post.)

I didn't go back to short stories until 2000, when I got handed the old chestnut about "breaking into publishing" again, this time by my then-agent. And, serendipitously, I met elisem and her jewelry. (I sometimes think my ability to write short stories is really all Elise's fault.) The first successful short story I wrote, in 2000, was "Letter from a Teddy Bear on Veterans' Day", from one of her necklaces. The second was "Bringing Helena Back," which is the first Booth story. And, of course, obviously, I've gone on from there, but I've always felt like my grip on the form was tenuous; I'm never sure why one short story works and the next one doesn't. They're still scary and hard, and I still don't understand them very well, even though I've published nearly forty of them.

NaNoWriMo doesn't work for me because I'm a competitive, literal-minded over-achiever, and if I focus on word count, then word count is all I will get, and the novel will be drivel. (See also, Why Corambis Was Six Months Late.) This does not mean that I think NaNoWriMo is a bad thing in and of itself--and honestly, I don't have any right or ability to judge whether it's good or bad for other people. It's just bad for me.

All I wanted to say, really, was that if you're a beginning writer and NaNoWriMo doesn't work for you, that doesn't mean you can't write a novel.

Learning how to write is a never-ending process of trial and error. You have to try things to find out if they work for you. If they do, that's great. If they don't, it's not a disaster. It just means you try something else. There is no "right" way to do it; it's all down to what works for you and what doesn't. And nobody but you can make that call.

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.

I have made it to 100,000 words.

Also, something interesting and difficult and really quite unexpected just happened. I like this, as a writer, because it means the story is alive and kicking. It is also an incredibly mean thing to do to my protagonist, about which I should perhaps feel guilty but don't.

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My infinite loop playlist has been slowly expanding. It's now:

1. "Jesus Etc." (Norah Jones)
2. "Long Black Veil" (Roseanne Cash)
3. "Song for Sonny Liston" (Mark Knopfler)
4. "Belated Promise Ring" (Iron & Wine)
5. "Folsom Prison Blues" (Keb' Mo' -- and, OMG, the awesomeness of Keb' Mo' is beyond the ability of mere words to describe)
6. "Cold Missouri Waters" (Cry Cry Cry)
7. "Choctaw Bingo" (James McMurtry)

I still don't know what this playlist is all about (20th c./contemporary American fantasy of some sort? if I wrote by assembling soundtracks, which I never have before), but putting it on repeat for a couple hours makes my brain happy.

95,000 words and it's all dénouement from here.

Meanwhile, on the internet, cmpriest talks about what authors do and don't control, and jaylake describes the Larval Stages of the Common American Speculative Fiction Writer. Go read them because I got nothin'.

Got unstuck (by the expedient of skipping the scene I was stuck on, which I almost never do, but the deadline loometh), and am feeling weirdly cheerful and optimistic. Possibly because I got to describe a goblin traveling coach, and it's completely awesome. I want one.

But since that's not likely, I'm going to bed. First day of 2010: not too bad.

77,400 words, the end of Chapter Twenty-Four, and no ?s except as punctuation.

A little work on the start of Chapter Twenty-Five, and a number too felicitous to resist: 77,777 words.

Chapter Twenty-Four was hell on toast to write and it's probably going to need considerable shaping once the draft is done. But this is why first draft != final draft, and that's okay.

Not a very good day health-wise, so I'm pleased that I've accomplished as much as I have, even if most of it was just typing in what I wrote yesterday. We take our victories where we find them.

In other news, Elise struck like lightning from a clear blue sky, and these will soon be mine. And demanding a new dragon story as they come.

I have no idea what this story will even be like. Thus far it has offered two potential first lines:

1. Like geology, dragons happen.

2. The dragons of earth and sky are sleeping.

I don't know that either of these is right, nor do I know that either of them is wrong. They can mutter around my back brain while I write this damn novel, and maybe come springtime, the dragons and I will know each other well enough to say.

(I really need an icon for this book. Unfortunately, I can't think of anything suitable.)

69,029 words. I will make it to 70,000 tomorrow. I kinda wanted it tonight, but the novel explained to me that this next bit needs more thinking, and I have become leery of the whole words-for-the-sake-of-words thing. (Why I will never do NaNoWriMo, short version.) Sometimes, you know, that's what you need, is just to push the damn hippopotamus another two inches up the hill, but it's too easy for me to get my perspective out of whack and get all invested in chasing the word count and let the important things kind of slide out of the story. Which is bad.

I am not, by the way, saying that measuring progress by word count is a bad thing or that people who use that as their metric are Doing It Wrong. I'm saying I found out the hard way that, FOR ME, it's a double-edged sword.

Also, today, I got my share of the money for "Boojum" being translated into Russian. I'm much more geeked about the translated-into-Russian part than the money, and would be even if the money were rather more substantial than it is. (Translated into Russian! A story I co-wrote! This is the glamor, baby. Right here. -- I get this way every time something of mine gets translated into a language I can't read, which thus far has been all of them.)

And for some reason, the sf espionage novella has woken up in my head again. This is why I never throw anything away. You never know when the wheel is going to turn round again.

1. Thank you, everyone, for the birthday wishes on Wednesday. So far, thirty-five is going pretty well.

2. One of my birthday presents was a ring made by Sara Jayne Cole. I think I've linked to her work before, but I gotta say, it's worth linking to again. (Disclaimer: she is a friend of my mother's.)

3. My birthday present to myself--and mirrorthaw--was buying a new bed with the advance from the goblin book. Since the bed we were sleeping on was the one I bought when I moved to Madison in 1996, you may rightfully say that this birthday present is neither self-indulgent nor, indeed, a moment too soon. Also, for the first time in our adult lives, we have an honest-to-god bed frame.

4. The bed frame has taught me that I do actually have a (rather dim and rudimentary) sense of spatial relations. I walked into it in the dark yesterday because I knew exactly where the bed was. Or, you know, used to be. I'm developing a lovely bruise on my thigh.

5. I have reached 65,000 words in the goblin book. 45,000 to go. Which will be easier once I figure out what the captain of the palace guard wants to talk to the emperor about.

1. I reached 60,000 words on the goblin book today, and most of the rest of it is spinning its armature in my head, like weird cyborg nano-spiders and maybe I'd better just abandon that metaphor right there.

2. It is finally November here, cold and dark and rainy. Secretly, I like this kind of weather.

3. So last year, the entirely cromulent Pat Rothfuss did a huge auction-type thing to benefit Heifer International. This year, he's going to do it again, which I mention because (a.) hey, heads up, especially though by no means exclusively to Rothfuss fans, since I understand there is to be lots of non-Rothfussian Cool Shit as well, and (b.) I have donated two item-sets for the auctioneering thereof:

i.) A complete signed set of the hardbacks of the Doctrine of Labyrinths (Mélusine, The Virtu, The Mirador, Corambis).

ii.) A signed copy of The Bone Key, plus signed manuscripts (for which read: print-outs) of the four uncollected Booth stories: "The Yellow Dressing Gown," "The World Without Sleep," "White Charles," and "The Replacement."

Watch Pat's blog for more news on the auction. Right now he's raffling a Tuckerization in The Wise Man's Fear.

4. Speaking of the Doctrine of Labyrinths, I got the cover flats for the mass market paperback of Corambis last week, and my editor's assistant is making page-proof noises. So, yes, there will be a mmpb edition--although I don't know for sure, it'll probably come out in April--and if you have noticed any typos, you may win my eternal gratitude by posting a comment with the specifics here.

5. And speaking of the Doctrine of Labyrinths, I had a dream Sunday night that, while it claimed to be a new subplot for the goblin book, was actually an AU about Methony, including Mildmay as a toddler.