A Little Reassurance in Pantsing

Today, I got reassurance about pantsing (aka “flying by the seat of my pants”). A reminder: I’ve been pantsing Carrying Light because I didn’t like the outline I set up for it. I found the outline rather weak and not supportive of any real depth, so I’ve been writing without the outline. As I’ve said before, I hate writing like that because I feel like I’m just making things up as I go along.

I encountered something that made me feel a lot better about this method, though. A book I wrote a few years ago in the Hidden in Plain Sight series (it’s got two books or maybe three ahead of it for publication) is one of my favorites. I had to go back to it because the end of Carrying Light refers to the flashback events in Whose Hearts are Mountains. I needed to know the names of six people killed in the siege on the University of Illinois campus. (Yes, I trashed my alma mater.)

What I discovered is that I did not empty the trash in the Scrivener program, and that I clearly edited a great deal of the book, to where I found more pages in the trash than in the book. I hadn’t remembered that until looking at all the material in the garbage.

I remember now what happened — I got a developmental editor involved, and she did not make the suggestions that led me to the drastic remodel of the book. I finished her developmental edits (which were excellent) and then realized that the story needed better flow. Then I completely gutted the story and reorganized it.

I will doubtless do the same with Carrying Light once I set it in a drawer for a while. I don’t know if it will require as much attention, because I’ve learned something about plotting from tearing apart Whose Hearts are Mountains.

I got this!

My Vocation Becomes My Writing Focus

I know I don’t talk about this often, but I am an associate professor of human services at Northwest Missouri State University when I’m not writing. My speciality is family resource management, or how families allocate time, money, and other resources to meet goals and deal with events. I deal with not only the specific actions they take, but the process to get to those actions.

Right now, I am writing about a decision that the collective Barn Swallows’ Dance has to make. Barn Swallows’ Dance has some special characteristics that make any decision-making harder — first, the fact that two trees beloved of Gaia distribute talents to the residents. The second is that some of the residents are not human, but are preternatural, energy-based beings and their offspring.

The question is “how do we deal with people in need who come to our collective?” This discussion happens during a time of turmoil and economic disaster. There are concerns of safety vs. hospitality, charity vs. the needs of the collective to support themselves. A discussion of who is “worthy” and “unworthy”, and who is an outsider. In other words, a discussion of how the collective will allocate scarce resources, which is exactly what resource management is about. Any American who was alive in the 80s will recognize arguments on each side of the welfare question in the US., arguments which persist to this day.

There are no wrong arguments among the people of the collective, because decisions there are made by consensus. Consensus decision-making requires that the decision not be made until everyone agrees, or at least nobody stands in the way of the decision. I have an idea of where the decision will go, but it’s fascinating watching the characters argue their positions.

I wrote an easy 2k words today (it helps that I was at Starbucks), and I look forward to the final decision at Barn Swallows’ Dance. In the meantime, I appreciate how my day job contributes to my writing.

A Good Day and a Shameless Plug

I finally got 1200 words on the work-in-progress written today at home. It doesn’t hurt that l got a venti flat white Door Dashed in the morning. I also listened to good writing music. The most important thing is that I had an idea of what needed to happen in the story.

I should point out that I am self-published and relatively unknown. The big thing for me is the writing; although I really want people to read my writing, I have not mastered marketing the books.

If you want to read some, there’s the fluffy Christmas romances and the more serious fantasy stories. And all of them can be found Right Here.

Road Warrior Go!

I write better at Starbucks. It’s official. I’m at Bux and I’ve written 500 words without a lot of effort. Yesterday’s writing looks better. Apparently, it takes a hot lavender latte for me to get writing done.

Or maybe it’s the split mind thing. Part of my mind is paying attention to the activities around me. Two of my acquaintances are talking at a table to my left; a group of women my age or a little older are chatting behind me. To my right, the baristas are puttering around behind the counter. There’s some innocuous background music playing. While all this is happening, I am picking words and writing this. It’s so much easier when there’s noise in the background than it is in my silent home.

Or maybe it’s because I’m writing on my road warrior gear. This consists of an iPod Pro, a Logi keyboard and mouse setup, and a cable to plug in for power. (All in lavender). The keyboard feels springier than my laptop keyboard, and the colors are more stimulating. And my setup can go just about anywhere (with the exception being someplace without a table).

I have to fix my home space to make it easier to write. I said this yesterday, but today it’s obvious that I write better out in public. Or at least at Starbucks.

What is the opposite of progress?

I continue to pants^* this book (Carrying Light) and as I write, there’s so many questions I need to address in the edits^**:

This represents the plot holes in the current draft.

Is the collective’s reaction to the chaos outside too much, too soon?
Will they really invest in self-sufficiency when Luke, an Archetype who has seen collapse before, suggests they empty the coffers to buy items that will help them be self-sufficient?
Will they then realize that they can’t be entirely self-sufficient, that they can’t grow all the foods they need to survive given the amount of land they own?
Does the stalemate at the college’s gates last too long?
Do Sage and Forrest do enough drifting apart before they join forces again?
Is all their looking for alternatives to their current lifestyle filler or necessary world-building? (I’d say necessary world-building; otherwise their adaptations seem like magic)
Are there enough fantastical elements in this story?

^* Pantsing: writing by the seat of one’s pants.

^**This story is taking about two months to write. It will take about forever to edit.

Writing about Writing about Writing

Sometimes I write about writing. I don’t do this nearly as often as I should, because I don’t have meta-thoughts about writing that often.

I could write about exposition, for example. What wisdom do I have about exposition? Only the big one: Show, don’t tell. And the not so big one: Conversations can be a form of exposition if you’re not writing things like “Did you hear about Betty? She ran off with the milkman last week.”

I could write about writing characters. Where do my characters come from? They come from an amalgam of people and stories I have known. Then I “interrogate” the character to see if they feel consistent in who they are. I have conversations with the characters, I put them in situations. I talk to my husband about characters — for example, “Would they talk back to the police?” Gideon would; he tends to be human and somewhat anti-authoritarian. Most of my Archetypes and Nephilim would never talk back lest they be discovered. They’re not quite immortal, after all, and they would alarm the authorities. Luke would talk around the cops, though. He’s a lawyer, after all.

I could write about publishing. There are many steps to publishing yourself; some of them go surprisingly smoothly, like most of the process on Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP for those in the know). Others become a great source of frustration, like putting my book cover up on KDP.

I could write about hitting it big as a writer. No, I can’t, because I have not hit it big. Nor is it likely that I will, but that’s okay. I have a story to write, and it nags me at night. My characters (Sage Bertinelli and Forrest Gray at the moment) demand to be written.

I need to write more about writing, because there are so many topics … thank you, Hannah, for obliquely suggesting this!

The Home Stretch

On the professing front, all I have left to grade for the semester are two class assignments and one final. Not a bad thing; Finals run next week. I will make it.

Summer might be a light one — I only have 10 interns so far for summer. Normally I have 20. I could use a light summer, because I still don’t know what’s going to happen with my medication. It hasn’t happened yet, at any rate.

That means writing. This means finishing Carrying Light, editing Kringle Through the Snow for October 1 publication, and doing a final edit of Reclaiming the Balance, for Jan. 1 publication. If I get the guts to publish the latter. It’s such a unique book. The conflict is personal and internal to Barn Swallows’ Dance and its residents. One of the main characters is non-binary, so I wrote the book with they/them, so I expect reaction from the more bigoted.

I might also write on Walk Through Green Fire, in which the lead female rescues a prince of Faerie. That one is hard because I expect it to have sex scenes, at least one. Unless I chicken out.

We shall see what the summer brings when it gets here, which is a couple weeks from now.

My Go-Kit

As a writer, I want to be prepared for writing wherever I go, because who knows when I’m going to have an hour or two to work. I write my works on computers unless I have to interrogate (interview) my characters; then it’s pen and ink. So I have to have a keyboard with me at all times.

The problem with that is that my laptop is powerful, which means it’s big. Heavy. It has to be, because it’s the computer I do my graphics work on. Graphics to me is layout for book covers and not actual drawings or renderings, but I still feel like I need muscle in my laptop.

That means that I need a lighter computer for on-the-go. Thus, my go-kit.

My go-kit is centered on an iPad with an M1 chip and 256 MB storage at just over 1 lb weight. It’s quite useful for information gathering, word processing, and most of what I need to do to produce a book. (I understand it uses Photoshop as well, but I have some trouble accessing the materials I need on here.)

To make this a computer substitute, I need input devices. Rather than get one of Apple’s expensive magic keyboards, I am content with a matching Logi keyboard and mouse, which together cost $50. They match the protector case on the iPad as well, all in what Logi calls “Lavender Lemonade”. See above.)

All this, including the cable, fits in a small computer bag (also lavender) that goes with me almost everywhere, hence the name. I have yet to utilize it fully, however, because I have trouble using the Apple Pencil without glitches. If I can get that taken care of, I wouldn’t even need the pen and ink.

So here’s my solution to not wanting to haul a heavy computer around so I can write when I’m inspired.

I’m Done!

Ok, that was random. I’m done writing Avatar of the Maker, at least the first draft.

It needs a lot of work, enough that I don’t know where to start. At the beginning, I suppose. I think I need to make lots of notes on it and I don’t know whether to make these on paper or on electronic sticky notes. Or both; some of these notes are on the overall body of the book and others are specific. Writing a novel is hard; editing is harder.

I think I can describe the novel in one sentence: One death in this battle could kill millions.

In a paragraph: Leah Inhofer sees visions of a battle held in a dim place. Her best friend, Baird, draws her from her sheltered upbringing by his very existence as a Nephilim. They meet with Luke, a near-immortal Archetype who reels from the loss of the human patterns he carried. The battle Leah sees will happen, a battle of Archetypes. One death in this battle could kill millions of humans. Leah knows that she must act to stop the battle, at the risk of her life. She carries the responsibility as the Avatar of the Maker, who has the power to change the flow of reality.

My mind is already working on the book cover. That’s a long way from now.

Summer ends here

The week has gotten away from me, but at least I have been busy while I’ve been gone:

I’ve finished out my summer internship class
I’ve finished up laying my fall courses (except one, which is largely out of my control)
I’ve re-edited Reclaiming the Balance in case I get the courage to publish it
I’ve started editing a reader magnet of short stories in the Archetype universe
I’ve been working with my niece Rachel (a talented artist) to design the cover for Apocalypse, and a rework of Gaia’s Hands. The cover for Apocalypse is so good it makes me happy cry.

And there’s one more day until the beginning of semester meetings. Summer is over, and it was one of the most productive summers I’ve had in a while.