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Asking Robin more about the writing process
I shouldn’t be this tired. I feel like I must have just reinvented the wheel or something.* And I’m supposed to write a blog entry?**
However I did have an important bit of story delivery today. You can fake around the holes to some extent and for a while, especially if you can feel the main story dragging you on*** but eventually you do need to know certain things. In this case I have a war to direct.† And the particular consignment that arrived today had some fairly critical Background World Development stuff in it: I know this world fairly well at this point†† but I mainly know it as, ahem, I might know it. And I’m not a magician.††† Magic. Feh. If this were your standard swords, archery and leather armour with some chain war, I could just research the freller. As it is I have to wait for somebody to send me something. And you know how delivery companies are.
But I am reminded of some comments to the forum ten days or so ago, in response to The Cluelessness of Writers.
EMoon wrote: I have a character in peril. He may end up dead, or inhabited by a demonic presence, or suspected of same but not inhabited, or fine. I don’t know which it is. I have written all around the critical moments from other viewpoints. I have been inside his head to find out and…when I get near the critical moments there’s a blank . . . not one…single…person will share what’s actually happened. He’s important. . . . But they’re all in hiding from their writer. . . . thus I have to chase that fast-moving blurred shape down a very uninviting hole until I finally catch it and bring it up to the light, squirming in fright and biting my hands. . . .
Yes. Sometimes they bite. Sometimes you’re groping around in the dark and you know you’ve found something because it hurts. YOW YOU LITTLE RATBAG.‡
On the forum I answered: . . . I had one of those GOOD GODS OF COURSE moments out hurtling this morning–about some other story than PEG II of course, but it’s one that I even know the shape of . . . ‡‡ and there has been something Not Quite Right about it . . . which I think I now know. Where has it BEEN all this time? And what finally flushed it out where I could see it? (Actually . . . Pooka did the flushing. Which I hope means she IS in fact a force for good in this universe. There have been moments when I wonder. And I’m sure there will be MORE such moments.‡‡‡)
Aaron wrote: So I gather it is not always seeing new action that resolves these matters. Sometimes you realize you know something that you hadn’t realized you knew, perhaps because you asked yourself a different question. Do you also do detective work on the things you have seen? As if watching a mystery movie over again to see if you missed a clue?
Both ‘seeing’ and ‘action’ are mutable concepts.§ In this case it was more of a kaleidoscope turn: somebody moved the endpiece and all those same flecks and fragments fell into a new pattern. Eureka! Sometimes—as in this case—there is an almost physical jolt to it—like having something bite your hand in the dark.
Sometimes it is a kind of seeing that there’s been a cat curled up on the cushion all this time and it’s your own fault for thinking it was just a shadow—but cats are treacherous, and maybe it wasn’t there the last time you looked. –Don’t give me that fat purring sleepy-eyed thing.
I wouldn’t call it detective work, the way I do it, which sounds much too calm and rational. It’s more like looking for the car key (which is supposed to live in your pocket for just this reason) when you’re about to be late for an appointment, or trying to get your shoes tied while being cavorted on by a brace of happy hellhounds looking forward to their walk. It’s got to be here somewhere/aaaugh I can’t see what I’m doing if you’re licking my glasses. But going over and over stuff you already know—you think you know—you hope you know but you know you’ve missed something? Yes. Very much so.
Diane in MN quoted me: Meanwhile I’m well over halfway through PEG II and I still don’t know if Fazuur is a good guy or a bad guy. And this is starting seriously to get on my nerves.
And wrote: Do you find that this is a character who wants to grow as the story has grown? Given that you say he hasn’t been an important character yet, is he trying to become one? I can see that if you don’t know his ultimate role, he could really affect the arc of the story by becoming a bigger presence.
Oh, arc of the story, please, you’re going all rational again. The arc of the story is one of those hindsight things for me. Climaxes, for example—and all of PEGs I & II began with a climax that comes I think about halfway through PEG II—are merely the Really Exciting Bits that I don’t get to write unless I write all the stuff around them so they’ll be climactic enough. The pulling down of a mountain on someone’s head§§—which is where SWORD started—wouldn’t be nearly as much fun if it hadn’t taken over two hundred pages to get there. There are writers who plan extensively—there are even writers who follow their extensive plans—I’m not one of them. The nice way of describing my lack of method is to call it organic: I write as the thing grows. It grows longer as it goes through drafts, and there are always the bits you know, the bits you don’t know, the bits you wished you knew, and the bits that you think you know and don’t. Fazuur is a bit I wish I knew and don’t. The fact that it’s bothering me that I don’t know is probably significant—like one of those hunches fictional detectives get just before they uncover an important clue. But whether Fazuur has a significant role to play . . . ask me at the end of the third draft. When I’m handing it in to my editor. I should know by then. I hope.
* * *
*The elimination process that involves dragging all those things that aren’t wheels is really hard work. It was a very thorough elimination process. And my condition has been intensified by my being too stupid not to go to Colin’s bell practice tonight—which for arcane reasons, was held in his garage. No, really. He has a mini-ring, which is to say a bunch of bells the size of flower-pots hung upside down above the specially-soundproofed ceiling of his garage (and under the specially soundproofed roof of his garage: there are neighbours). And they (the bells) have (teeny) ropes with (teeny) sallies on them and everything. But because the bells are so small and the wheels they turn on are also so small, your stroke—which is dependent on the rope going round the wheel to spin the bell—is very short. So your bells are making their 360 degree turns forward and back really fast. Which means you are ringing whatever method you are ringing really fast. And I can’t handle the flighty little monsters, they keep going grand battement SPROING at me—and because they’re all so little they sound way too much alike, dingdingdingdingding, so picking out the sound of your own bell or the treble for guidance is not an option—let alone ring the wretched things at twice the usual proper-big-tower-bell speed.
They didn’t quite put me out on the kerb after practise for the dustbin men to take away tomorrow morning, but nearly.
** Remind me what that is again? I believe I do it every night? Is it anything like falling asleep in the bath?
*** Author as square wheel
† I was really hoping I wasn’t going to have to run any more wars. Two^ of the several Third Damar Novels have fairly comprehensive wars in them, which are among my reasons for not having got round to writing them. Damar seems to be a curiously bellicose place.
^ Probably three.
†† !!!!!!!! How do people survive writing series?????
††† In this world. There have been worlds I could do magic in. Ahem.
‡ I think I’ve mentioned here that there are, as there always are, stories that I don’t dare let loose my feverish grip on PEG II long enough even to write down rough outlines of^ hanging around TORMENTING me. One of them, which I know I’ve mentioned, presumably here because where else is there^^, is about a middle-aged soldier who unexpectedly survived the assassination attempt she knew was coming, and now has to figure out what to do with the rest of her life. While she’s escaping further would-be murderers, since it seems ungrateful to let them get her after all, various of her old colleagues catch her up and say ‘I’m coming too’. The king who wants her dead is not popular. She’s perhaps a little cranky^^^ about picking up an entourage. . . . And now there’s a baby. A what? Her feeling exactly. And mine. I strongly object to being kept awake nights by the screams of a fictional baby I’m not even writing about.
^ I belong to the philosophy that says that if it’s important, it’ll either stick around or come back. And if it comes back as something else, that’s okay too.
^^ The idea of multiple blogs—which, for example, EMoon herself keeps—is more horrible than vampires to me.
^^^ Now, where would that have come from
‡‡ Tam Lin, in case you’re interested. It’s a sort of . . . long short story. HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA. Short stories are a little like wars. I know going in I’m in trouble. Although the first draft of this one exists, and it is a short story. Well, maybe a novella. . . .
‡‡‡ Er. Yes.
§ I want, irrationally, to call them verbs. Which is perhaps a minor metaphor for the peculiarity of the writing process.
§§ Please admire my lack of spoiler here, although I’d be surprised if there are any regular readers of this blog who don’t know THE BLUE SWORD.
News
So I flung myself weeping on the (virtual) neck of my Marketing Person about the awfulness of the PEGASUS issuu excerpt (citing, among other things, some of the comments on the blog thread here and thank you all very much for taking the time to respond) and look what she has done for all of us!!!!
http://www.scribd.com/doc/36512923/Robin-McKinley-Esampler
I think this one is hugely, hugely, HUGELY better, and I hope you will agree, which is to say I hope it looks better on all your computers too.*
Now then. On to my NEWS.
I HAVE A BRITISH PUBLISHER.
PENGUIN UK** HAS JUST BOUGHT PEGS I & II***
Let the feasting and diverse merriment begin.
* * *
* Maren adds, for the comfort and succour of people like me: you might want to mention that the zoom buttons are at lower left under the page image. Also right next to the zoom buttons is a drop-down menu where you can switch to “book” (layout).
** Yes, I’m published by a division of Penguin USA in America. This apparently has nothing to do with anything except that they talk to each other. But all publishers talk to each other. I have no clue, so don’t ask.
*** So I’d better get back to it. I’ve got at least two more sentences in me tonight before I fall face forward into my Green & Black’s.
Interview
It’s not even 4 pm yet. What am I doing posting? Makes me feel like the world is on backwards.
However. Lucy, as she told me she would, hung her interview early so I will briefly drag my concentration away from PEG II and post the link. Here: http://scribblecitycentral.blogspot.com/2010/08/mythic-friday-interview-number-21-robin.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
I didn’t get it to her till slightly past the last minute thanks to the awkward timing of stomach flu, so we didn’t have a chance to confer. And I notice that my tendency to extreme typography didn’t make it through the email gremlin filter* when I sent my answers. Regular readers of this blog I feel however will have no difficulty reading unmarked emphases in for themselves.
And I promised you some Beguiling News, didn’t I? Mmmmm. . . .
Oh, who tells secrets at four o’clock in the afternoon? Flapdoodle. I’ll tell you later.**
* * *
* That’s filters of gremlins, you know, not filters to remove gremlins
** More mwa ha ha ha ha. Although in truth only a minority of you will be interested. But I’m interested.
More contest winners!
It’s been a murky sort of day, both exteriorly and interiorly. Interiorly neither my brain nor my digestion is returning my phonecalls.* Exteriorly it’s been another dashing-among-the-raindrops day with slitty-eyed and grumbling hellhounds. This morning I eventually said All right! Fine! But if you think we’re going to play throw the tennis ball up/downstairs just because of a little rain** you are sadly mistaken! —And stomped back outdoors myself to stand with the rain running down my neck to deadhead petunias. Especially that frelling hanging basket at the foot of the front stairs, with the nonhanging petunias: gone-over petunia flowers are among the least attractive anyway, and even more/less so when sodden, and these are so awfully dranglefabbing conspicuous. Since the wretched plants insist on growing UP they are also getting harder and harder to deadhead. Even my gorilla-length arms eventually reach their limit. And getting smacked in the face with falling smeary wet ex-petunias is one of those remind-me-why-I-like-to-say-I’m-a-gardener experiences.***
I was lurking around the cottage in a restless and unable-to-concentrate manner because the Aga Man was due. Herself† has been cold for over two months because after a hot spell severe enough for me to decide to turn her off I couldn’t get her back on again and thought, never mind, it’s summer, we can wait till her annual tune-up and shampoo and get a refresher lesson on the proper ritual.††
My Aga is now on. I have an oven at the cottage again.
So what better day for an announcement about baking?
Anyone who’s been keeping an eye on the contest thread will already know that mayasings’ Bloody Doomsday Chocolate Raspberry Swirl (Vampire) Muffins won the recipe contest. Huzzah mayasings! Huzzah Vampire Muffins!†††
I also promised you‡ a random winner among the voters. And that winner is Stephanie, who very properly lists ‘baked goods’ among her interests, and while I will not breach her privacy by quoting her email address here, I wish to remark that it has a very pleasing and suitable Green & Black’s atmosphere about it.
Congratulations, you two! And now if you would please contact a mod—Ajlr, perhaps, since she’s done the actual work on the contest—with street-mail addresses and instructions for dedications, if any, I will go fish out two more glittery gold SUNSHINEs from my dwindling hoard and prepare to dispatch same.
Contests are good. Thanks, you lot, for making them good.
* * *
* Not that I have (i)Phones on the (missing) brain or anything. I had a seriously bad night last night. Sleep? What would that be again? And then the phone rang at 8:30 a.m. KrzzzznARRRRGHblhhhhhhhnnggg. I decided to go back to bed afterward anyway, despite the re-enactment of the Battle of Hastings apparently going on across the road and the four-part dog chorus^ at the top of the hill, no doubt in response to Devil Cat sitting just on the other side of the (closed) iron gate from them and washing his paws thoughtfully. I could seriously do without Devil Cat. I could probably even more seriously do without the 1,712 vehicles belonging to his owner, who has one parking slot on our cul de sac and therefore has to be creative with the other 1,711.
Anyway. I went back to bed. Whereupon Pooka started erupting with sound effects. I’m sure it’s very clever and thoughtful of the programmer to give different ringtones to email, voicemail, texts, twenty-one gun salutes and elephants, but it’s not at all popular when you’re pretending to sleep. I have noticed that there’s the odd ping, pong or trill overnight in Pooka’s live and lively company, but it hasn’t been a big deal. Maybe I’ve had the pillow arranged over my head better. Maybe I had been sleeping lately. Maybe I suddenly became fabulously popular overnight. But this morning it was the Chinese water torture only with dings, chirrups and gibbles. So the first thing I did when I finally gave up the unequal struggle with the Normans^^ was figure out how to turn the sound effects off.
^ Three dachshunds and a Labrador
^^ Norman arrows caroming off the English shield wall sound remarkably like messages arriving on your Apocalypse.
** It’s more to do with almost losing four shelves of books and china that hang at the bottom of the stairs, the last time we played this interesting game.
*** At least there were no earwigs involved. Ewwwwww. There are almost always earwigs involved when you deadhead dahlias. Note: if you are harbouring any seven-foot dahlias this year, stand at arm’s length when you deadhead.
† You’re right, I’ve never named her. Shameful. I think it has seemed impertinent since she was here long before I was. But I hereby declare that five—no, wait, six years, big yeep—six years is enough to presume upon the company of a nameless Aga, and address myself to the lack.
†† No, no, no, not a black goat. A bowl of virgin popcorn, and don’t forget the butter^.
^ Which I’m sure ought to be from a virgin cow, but this might be a little hard to arrange, milk being tied to the non-virgin end of things.
††† I’m convinced it’s the fang holes that did it. Although as Ajlr says: . . . which, as a title alone, may be one of the most all-encompassing collections of ‘Words Likely to Appeal to Readers of Robin’s Books’ that we’ve seen here.^ Add that to the end result of the recipe and we have a very worthy winner. And I may say that the recipes assembled through this competition are probably one of the best gatherings of foodstuffs with few socially-redeeming features^^ that I’ve seen for some time…
^ I wish to observe that on the contrary, this is a SUNSHINE specific recipe, and very appropriate too. A truly all-McKinley-encompassing recipe would have to include something about dragons, swords and horses, at very least. Which might prove challenging even to this reservoir of forum members.
^^ Few? You mean there are any? Oh dear.
‡ That is, I promised after I had double-checked with Blogmom
Three, count ‘em, three chapters of PEGASUS
NOTE FROM AUGUST 30TH: DON’T USE THE ORIGINAL LINK FROM THIS POST (BELOW). THIS ONE IS MUCH BETTER AND EASIER TO READ: http://www.scribd.com/doc/36512923/Robin-McKinley-Esampler
Here:
http://issuu.com/penguinyoungreaders/docs/robin_mckinley_esampler
Knock yourselves out. Please.*
And, while you’re at it, feedback would be welcome about how easy (or otherwise) you find it to navigate and read. Hint: I find it neither. I’m asking Putnams to please sort it anyway, but reader reaction is always good for the bolstering of a viewpoint that is not going to be popular.
I’ve already asked the mods for their reaction, and Maren has come up with these suggestions for the untechie-minded like yours truly for making the experience a little less like [MMMGLRMNTH: censored to keep Robin out of trouble]:
1. The default view you’re in when the page loads is called “magazine view.” When you zoom in while in magazine view and it goes all jumpy, click the button at the top that I suppose looks like an eye? It’s between the envelope and the +/- slider. When you click on the eye, you get a menu that says “read” and “drag.” Counterintuitively, you are already in “read” and you want to switch to “drag”–it will stop jumping around.
2. OR before you even zoom in, hover your cursor over the button at top left between Fullscreen and the globe. (I don’t care for the wordless buttons at all, either.**) This will allow you to choose either “presentation view” or “paper view.” Presentation view displays one page at a time and you have to click the arrows every time you want to turn the page. The page still moves when your mouse does, but only vertically. Paper view is closer to a .pdf file–you get the whole document at once and scroll like normal. The text is a bit blurry in paper view, though–it looks best to me at 125 or 150%, but still not great. To get out of paper view again, click the button to the right of the search box at the top.
* * *
* The beginnings of both SUNSHINE and CHALICE are excerpted there too^, but you’ve all read them already, right?^^
^ Not very eptly.
^^ I still think the idea of an author blog is a bit bizarre. She eats! She sleeps! She has hellhounds (and ME)! Who cares! I’m going to go read some fiction!
** This was one of my original complaints about it. How are we supposed to know? Telepathy?
