 Factotum by D.M. Cornish I took twenty-five pages of Hannah’s Tale, a novel project I’ve been working on this year, to the PNWA Conference this past August. Actually, I sent the pages ahead of me, to Book Doctor Jason Black. I’d used Jason’s services before and found them invaluable. While twenty-five pages isn’t a full doctoring, I hoped it would be enough to get me thinking in new ways about a novel I was a little sideways on. Hannah’s Tale is set in a fantasy world, and part of what Jason and I ended up talking about during our session was the use of fantasy words to replace regular words in an effort to preserve the illusion. For example, I had described something as being “a foot and a half long”. The use of an English measurement tends to draw you out of the story, causing thoughts of comparison that maybe you didn’t intend. Better to have said that it was “three handspans across” or something like that. Of course, you can go too far. Then, and this part alone was worth the price of admission, Jason recommended D. M. Cornish’s Monster Blood Tattoo series, as an example of well done language and word creation to build a fantasy world. By the way, that previous sentence is a massive understatement. I immediately enjoyed Foundling, the first book in the series. From the beginning, Cornish’s word-building was apparent. Mashing together latin-esque sounds with Germanic accumulations and covering the result in straight-up fantasy sauce, these new words are dropped into the story so smoothly that you’re never left wondering about these new words; they just fit, and you are compelled to accept them, their meanings and permutations creeping into your brain through an odd osmosis of the subconscious membrane. In addition to these subtle insertions, the author begins each chapter with an entry from an almanac that the main character carries with him through most of Lamplighter, the second novel of the trilogy. These entries both serve to expand the world and to teach you new words, while also foreshadowing the events and actions of the chapters to come. I had two frustrations with the series, both due to my own linguaphile obsessions. First, in reading a copy of Foundling borrowed from the library, I was brought up short by the one-hundred-plus-page appendix. I thought I had enough reading material to last the day, and I was instead almost done. Of course, I got to spend several hours perusing the maps, diagrams, drawings, and definitions of the extensive end material. Second, because I read Lamplighter on an eReader (again a library copy) and had access to a lookup feature, I was constantly being fooled by the author into looking up words that didn’t exist. Or did they? Cornish would occasionally drop a word into the manuscript that was a real word, in the real English language, but of such obscurity that the built in dictionary didn’t suffice. This constant doubting of my own ability to distinguish English from Nonsense was a bit troubling to my ego. That said, I so very much recommend you try these books out. In the author bio printed on the inside dust jacket (I eventually bought copies of all three novels for my collection) Cornish claims to have spent the past seventeen years creating the world in which this story takes place. I believe it, and further, I believe it to have been time well spent. View all my reviews
It was a fairly quiet week, writing wise. Monday was the first meeting of the group I’m calling the Puyallup Writer’s Co-op. We had a small turn out, but I’m excited about the potential of the group, and I’m psyched to have a writing community right next door at my local library. It’s an enriching experience to have different kinds of writers around, talking about their experience and learning. Further advertisingments will be forthcoming, and hopefully next month’s event (Monday, May 2nd, 7:15pm) will be better populated.
The Excel tells me I’ve had a fairly productive week. I wrote five of the past seven days, which is pretty good for me and my goal each week. I spent just 3.5 hours writing and got 4442 words out of those hours, which is a higher than usual ratio (should I nerd it out? Figure the ratio? Do the math? OK, 21.2 words per minute. Woo!) I’ve no idea what that means, but it seems like a positive development, so I’m congratulation myself.
In story terms, I started off in chapter three with Hannah. Honestly, I could have spent all week with Hannah. She seems to have more going on in act I than Pol (my male protagonist) does. I’d anticipated alternating chapters between the two protagonists, but now that I’m writing I don’t seem to naturally know where these chapter breaks are. Not a big issue really, as I can just write each character as long as I like then go back in afterwards and fit scene and chapter breaks where the story needs them.
It’s nice being back with Pol, as I was for the second half of the week. I tweeted Friday that having two main characters this time is nice, because it does feel really fresh when you switch from one to the other. It’s almost a built in writer’s block buster; and integral creativity enhancer. Then again, it’s also a bit disorienting after spending a week or two in one character’s head to try and find your way back into the other’s. I started Pol’s chapter thinking, “wait, who are you?”
This week’s forecast for writing looks pretty good. I should be able to get good words in Monday through Thursday, volunteering for the PNWA Friday, and this weekend is actually the Society for Children’s Book Writers and Illustrator’s annual conference, which I signed up for long ago and nearly forgot. I can’t get to Sunday’s sessions, but I’ll probably check it out Friday evening and Saturday.
Have a great and creative week!
This Sunday Writing Update is brought to you by: Monday! It was a crazy Sunday, as can happen occasionally, and I had zero chance to sit down and reflect on the previous week’s writing. So here it is Monday noon and I’m still a little busier than I frankly prefer, but I’m going to do this anyways. I had a better week, in terms of procrastination. Got some good writing time in Tuesday through Friday mornings for a total weekly word count of 4,440. It’s not all about the word count, I know, but that and hours spent are the best metrics I know for keeping myself on task. I spent the week with Hannah again, which has been fun. I’m still trying to get her out of her establish reality and into her adventure. It’s hard to know with a first draft how much of this will end up being useful. The third chapter is really long at this point and there’s more I want to say. Some of this will inevitably end up on the cutting room floor, but that’s actually a good thing, since then I’ll have something to add back in when the 25th anniversary edition comes out after I’m as famous as Stephen King (likelihood factor: 0.02359). The first meeting of the Puyallup Writer’s Cooperative is tonight! Come on down if you’re in the area and like to/want to write. I’m looking forward to it, and will report. Now, back to the rest of my life. Peace(out)!
One of the principle fantasies of the unpublished author is “quitting the day job”. The idea is that we should become a published author, get famous, make a bazillion dollahs, then quit whatever gainful employment we’ve got in order to spend all our time gifting the world with our writerly skillz (mad skillz, preferably). I think this might be a fallacy of a fantasy (not to be confused with a phallic fantasy, an entirely different order of thing). This past weekend I had TONS of alone time. My beloved spousal unit left town Friday morning and returned unto me only this Sunday afternoon. My aspirations, writing wise, were weighty. “All that uninterrupted time!” I said to myself, “I’ll get so much writing done!” (for some reason I speak to myself primarily using exclamation points.) Wrong. I had a good week of writing, but none of it happened on my days o’ freedom. All of it came on the regular days, when I was carving an hour and a half out of my morning to get the words in. The empty days yawned before me, gaping maws of potentiality that begged for grist. Grist I supplied in the form of going to a movie, shopping for toys, playing with fake swords, and drinking with friends. Not so much writing. It is possible that the fight to find time to write is connected with the will to write at all. At least for me. Further experimentation shall be embarked upon. Before the ambush by all that nasty free time, I got 4300 words in this week. I wrapped up chapter two, the first of the chapters with the male protagonist. I love the start I’ve made on this novel, and am excited to get back to Hannah in chapter three. Also, a new writing group in Puyallup of which I am the facilitator! More info tomorrow. And words!
This is probably my least favorite Sunday of the year. I detest daylight savings time as a policy, and of course Spring is the worst. I thought I had all my characters named up last week, and I did, but then I remembered The Victorian and Steampunk Name Generator on Monday and had to make some modifications. It was time well spent, as I now have some seriously awesome names to work with. They're all faked up names, with the exception of my niece Hannah (Hannah Sabriella Weaver) and my nephew Gaius (Chief Petty Officer Gaius Victor Crowmere). Possibly also my sister-in-law, though I named a ship after her rather than a character, so that might not count. Besides the name tweaking, I spent two hours in class at the monthly meeting of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, of which I am a member. I picked up a pretty cool idea during the first session that I'll share with you at some point, if I wind up using it. I also put in 4 volunteer hours (minus lunch of course, we aren't cavemen here) at the PNWA Writer's Cottage on Friday. Mostly my job is to run interference (also called 'being friendly') with anyone who drops in so the muckity-mucks in the back can get on with their jobs. I only really pulled that off once, but I did get some great writing chat in (and there's never enough of that, really) and in the afternoon put to use some alphabetizing skills I hadn't needed since I learned them in third grade (which comes first, Lind-Snyder or Lindsay? None of us knew). I put in an hour or so on a writing group that I'm going to be running through the Puyallup Public Library. Hopefully there will be a big post and lots of little tweets about this in the coming week, so I won't say more here.And finally, the biggest milestone of the week came Monday morning. I'd spent a good two hours Sunday evening preparing a submission for Magic Bullets. Last year at the PNWA conference I had two different agents ask for a query on this novel, and it was finally time to send it out. I'm doing this one at a time like a noob, but oh well, they said exclusive queries got looked at first. Really, the most likely result here is going to be rejection, but I'm really pleased to have gotten to this point anyways. I'll keep you posted if I become a famous author before next Sunday's update. This week's goal writing-wise is to get a pretty complete chapter list for Hannah's Tale put together. Basically, I'm going to translate my detailed summary into a scene-by-scene document. Not sure how useful it'll be, but it feels like the right next step. I also need to set a goal about first drafting this, so maybe I'll have that next week. First draft by the PNWA conference in August? We'll see. Also another SCBWI event this week, and the monthly PNWA meeting on Thursday, so it looks like a busy writing week ahead. And, oh yeah, it's Lent, so I think I might have to work as well...
I spent some good hours (6.5 of them, according to the spreadsheet who’s job it is to keep track of these things) with Hannah’s Tale this week, clearing two major hurdles. First, I’ve been roughly following the steps outlined in Nail Your Novel by Roz Morris. One of the big steps in preparing a story is writing a “detailed summary”. She calls it the underwear of the novel: essentially a document that says what will happen to who and in what order, also perhaps why. My detailed summary runs onto 14 pages and up to 7000 words, divided into the three acts of the novel with another overview summary from the evil villain’s perspective. I’m pretty excited to have taken this step. I’ve completed two novels before this one, but in each case I simply started writing with a couple characters and a setting in mind. I’d let the plot develop itself, which frankly wasn’t that brilliant a way go. In the first case, the novel kinda sucks. In the second, I had to go back and add a ton of plot, which is hard to do. For me anyway. So here I am, not one word on paper, but I already know where this story is going and how it’ll get there. I’m sure things will change as I write the first draft, but wow does it feel good to have this document in my electronic pocket. The second hurdle crossed is that I have a fairly comprehensive list of the characters I’m going to need. Again, more will likely appear, but this is a great start. I wrote it like a playbill, with character’s names in the order of appearance, and just a short line describing who they are, primarily in reference to the protagonists. Not only do I have a list of them, they all have names! I named my protagonists weeks ago, but have been referring to everyone else by description as I wrote the detailed summary. On Friday I spent more than three hours naming these people. I used a couple different name generators online, the creepiest and most useful of which was the Fake Name Generator. Useful because it has a reasonable number of variables to tweak when coming up with names, and creepy because I’m pretty sure it’s designed for fake ID manufacturers. Really, when generating a fake name I don’t have to know their fake blood type. That’s just a little too much. The weird side effect of this naming process is that I feel like I don’t know these people anymore. When I was just referring to him as “Hannah’s officer/nemesis” I knew what kind of guy I was dealing with. Now that he’s Lieutenant Jonathan M. Law of the Logistics and Internalistics Department of His Majesty’s Circle Union Navy, I’m not quite sure who this person is. Hopefully I’ll get to know him as I write. My goals for this coming week are mostly unrelated to Hannah’s Tale. I’m going to get Magic Bullets submitted with an agent who requested it last summer at the PNWA Conference, and also on a peer review indie publisher’s site called Long Tale Press. I’ve got another monthly meeting of the SCBWI on Tuesday evening and I’ll be at the PNWA Writer’s Cottage on Friday. In my other life it’s Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent this week as well. A busy week ahead; I’m excited!
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