To the snow.
To those who have gone before us.
To a warm house.
To work, which warms our house.
To our friends, and to our pets.
To our family, near and far.
To laughter, may we have it in abundance.
To the snow.
— First Snow, 11/18/18, Maryville MO
Category: Uncategorized
One of those sex scenes (warning: no sex. I’m a wimp.)
At that point I had heard too many horrible things: the deaths of several Travellers, Harold’s motives, Ian’s impending death. I started crying, horrible sobs. Ian gathered me into his arms as he murmured in my ear: “My dear Kat, all we can do is be and find meaning in the moment.”
I hiccuped trying to stop the tears. I wondered what he meant.
“I want to stretch this moment into timelessness. With you,” Ian breathed.
That I understood. It was a Traveller phrase, “stretching time”. There were few ways that Travellers could escape time, and sex was one of them.
“Yes,” I barely managed to speak. “I would like that very much.”
He took my hand and led me to my bedroom, and I remembered that he had been tutored under Berkeley, so he would know the layout of the house. I struggled to determine what year that would be. Then he backed me against the wall and kissed me, and math didn’t seem so urgent.
When we backed off from each other, panting, we stared at each other. “Are you going to back off again? It’s okay if you — “
“No, I want this.” And I dropped to my knees before him and began to undo his pants.
“No,” Ian said, squatting before me. “Not like that.”
“That’s the only way I know how to do it,” I sniffed. “If you don’t want to …”
Ian put his arms around me. “You’re no longer the girl who lived on the street. You have a say in this. You have a right to joy. The only thing is,” he sighed, “I have no idea how to do this.”
“You’re a virgin,” I guessed.
“I haven’t had much time to date,” he shrugged. “But it puts me at a disadvantage. What would you like me to do?”
I thought of what my Johns never did, things I’d only read about. “I want us to take our time and kiss a lot. And touch a lot. I don’t want things to be over right away.
“Let’s see what we can do about that,” Ian smiled. “I have a good imagination…”
As he laid me on the floor and slid on top of me, I had to agree.
Four Sex Scenes
I’ve finished the latest edit on Voyageurs, and it’s ready to go into dev edit as soon as I do one more thing.
Write four sex scenes.
After all, it’s a romance novel, or at least a soft SF novel with romantic elements. There are four places in the novel where they’re having sex, but I don’t go into detail. I suspect that romance publishers will need sex scenes.
I’m terrified.
I have nothing against sex — in fact, you can think of me as sex-positive. But I have seen so many bad sex scenes in my writing time that I fear that sex can’t be written well. There’s over-the-top tentacle sex . There’s overwrought adjective sex, where the men and the orgasms are bigger than life. There’s contractual obligation sex scenes and there’s tab A- slot B clinically detailed sex scenes.
I don’t want to write any of these. I want to write something emotionally fulfilling, heavy on relation and light on mechanics. I don’t know if I know how to do that.
If you hear me screaming today, know it’s because I have to write four sex scenes.
Interrogating the villain — Harold from Voyageurs
Harold strolls up to me while I’m sitting at my computer typing. I feel his presence before he speaks, and I look up.
“Harold Martin,” he says, shaking my hand and sitting down across from me. “But you can call me King.” His air is self-deprecating arrogance, as if the arrogance was a put-on, but I can feel the tentacles of the con reaching out for me.
“Hello, Harold,” I respond firmly. “What can I do for you?”
“I have a favor to ask,” he said smoothly. “No — hear me out.”
I sat there, waited for the pitch.
“You’re writing this book, right? The one where people keep messing up my arm?” He gave me a knife-sharp smile. “There’s no reason you couldn’t let me win, right?”
“Well, except for the fact your goal is the obliteration of humanity, no.” I paused, curious. “Why do you want to obliterate humanity?”
“I want to be best at something. To do something nobody else has done.” His eyes glittered, and I understood at that moment that the suave exterior contained an evil insanity.
I spoke carefully, knowing that I sat across from a madman. “Why do you have to be the best?”
“My brother was always the best. My father said I wasn’t manly enough, and he did anything he could to make me more manly. It worked — I became what my father wanted. Still it wasn’t enough; my brother got all the compliments. I finally found a way to deal with both my father and brother, who disappeared in 2003. Families go missing all the time.” He smiled, and this time it was a genuine smile that reached his eyes.
I felt my muscles crawl, and I counted the steps to the exit.
A bout of depression
I’m sorry — I have been gone for most of a week.
A week is not long enough for people to wonder what happened to me — perhaps I was playing catch-up on my grading (I was), or dealing with student projects (I was), or editing my book (I was).
I was also falling into depression.
The medications are not perfect — some need to be adjusted or even replaced after a while. Stress or tragedy can kick someone into depression, and some medical conditions such as vitamin deficiencies or low thyroid can cause or exacerbate depression.
In depression, my survival mechanism is to just keep pushing myself to go to work and get things done. It’s a good survival mechanism, because it keeps me from digging myself deeper. I may do nothing but sleep when I get home, but I get my work done. It preserves my identity.
I’m on my way back up, and I will be writing again in this space. Glad to be back.
The best use of my time
I have decided to quit NaNo this year. Not because I can’t finish it, but because I don’t need to finish it. I have serious editing to do on everything I write because a bad habit of mine has been pointed out to me (telling rather than showing). My past dev editor didn’t pick these problems up, but the current publishing editor (who missed the problems in my query materials) did. Go figure.
I need to learn to deal with these myself because I don’t know if I can afford another dev edit on the same document. I need to get better, and someday I might be good enough to publish.
I’m scared I’ll never be good enough to publish, but if I can’t find the problems in my writing, I know I’ll never be good enough to. Becoming Kringle can wait — the best use of my time right now is re-editing.
One week down on NaNo …
At the end of the first week of NaNo, I’ve written 16,000 words or an average of 2000 words a day, split halfway between Becoming Kringle and Whose Hearts are Mountains. I’ll be honest — writing lately has been challenging, with a lot of self-doubt after working with one of the publishing editors I tried. This week has been vindicating.
(A hint from case management class to editors of various types: You have to talk about the strengths as well as the failures of a client’s work, not for flattery or reassurance, but to remind the client that the manuscript is worth the work being put into it.)
I’ve finished Whose Hearts are Mountains — by “finished”, I mean “written a very rough draft that has plot holes you could probably drive a truck through, and desperately needs an edit or two.” I remember when I arrogantly thought my drafts weren’t rough and so I sent them out. Writing has been a humbling exercise.
From here on out, all of my words are going to Becoming Kringle. I think this will be more of a challenge, in fact a huge challenge, because I have the barest of outlines to go by. On the other hand, with yesterday’s snow, it’s beginning to feel a lot like Christmas.
Day 7 NaNo — one week of writing
I’ve finished 14,000 words so far (2000 words average; I like to round things up) and I’m still going. If I have any NaNo readers out there, how are you doing? Post in comments.
I’m nearing the finish line with Whose Hearts are Mountains, which as you recall is a book I started 30 years ago while sleeping through a kidney infection. The thought that it might be done (not done-done, because it needs a fierce edit or two) floors me.
Then it will be back to Becoming Kringle for the rest of my words. I am going to try to stick to the NaNo credo: Write first edit later.
Day 6 NaNo — still chugging
I can’t wait to write again today.
This is what NaNo does to people, I hear — somehow writing without self-censoring (which is necessary to get 1,667 words a day in) — makes your connection to your words and your characters and your plots flow.
By the end of this, I should have Whose Hearts are Mountains’ rough draft finished, and probably 30,000 words on Becoming Kringle, which I will finish in December as the bells jingle along.
Off to write. Sorry this is so short, but maybe I’ll drop an excerpt of Whose Hearts are Mountains tomorrow.
Oh, yes — up to 12,000 words as of this morning.
The Beauty of NaNo
Last night, I hit the 10,000 words mark — twenty percent of the novel is done! No, not really — first of all, there’s the fact that I’m writing between two novels. Second, 50,000 words is not the optimal length of a novel.
But it’s a big, round number, and that’s the idea. Not even NaNo pretends that you’ll have a publishable final product at the end of November. But you’ll have something to start with, or something that you keep to yourself and say, “I wrote this!”
Progress as it stands — I can see the finish line of Whose Hearts are Mountains, knowing that I have a lot of work to do afterward. Richard has restored some of the stuff I took out in the edit of Gaia’s Hands and emphasized things I need to emphasize. He has lots of work to go. It’s nice to think that that novel can be salvaged.
I’m still waiting for the other publishing editor to come up with edits of the first 50 pages of Prodigies. I am beginning to wonder about her — she couldn’t find anything wrong with my query letter, whereas the other publishing editor helped me improve my query letter in ways even I could see. I would work with one of these people again — not so the other one.
I’m beginning to feel like a writer again. That’s what NaNo does for me.
Words Like Me 