Ravenel is leaving the Muddlehampton Choir (in the lurch)!*

            He’s retired, for pity’s sake, but like a lot of other old people who are only old chronologically**, he’s a consultant, and they love him in Bandar Seri Begawan.  He’s been out there several times and that was supposed to be the end of his contract—but they’ve just offered him a longer-term one and he’s TAKING it, the ratbag.

            I was all ready to be devastated . . . and then he started us on a new song*** last thing tonight which is so unutterably loathsome I found myself unable to pry my tongue from the roof of my mouth and sing it.  Arrgh.  People have frelling quit choirs for less.  (It’s supposed to be funny.  It isn’t.  And the music is BORING.)  So maybe I’ll like having Ravenel in Bandar Seri Begawan better than I expected.  Meanwhile . . . the post of director/conductor is open† and to some extent the structure of the choir with it.  NOW IS THE TIME FOR OISIN TO START THE NEW ARCADIA SINGERS.  AND WE WILL SING NO LOATHSOME SONGS.†† 

* * *

 The problem with writing the blog on fumes is that you tend not to say what you mean to say, or you leave stuff out, or you fail to express yourself clearly enough, or you don’t make all the caveats you should make.  Caveat number one:  I know I’ve said much of what I said last night before.  But the doodles remain undone, and I owe you an update occasionally.  Blogmom also needs to be able to say something useful to understandably plaintive non-blog-readers about what’s going on.  

Catlady

Well, I am the one who originally suggested 2017 as a possible mailing date for the doodles, 

Yes, I remember you ’17ers.  I like you a lot.  

and I’m sticking to that, so by my count, you’ve got five and a half years (if we’re counting to the Christmas season in 2017, so that we can, if we desire, give doodles as gifts. To ourselves.). 

I’m also a strong believer in self-selected gifts.  Who needs surprise when you can have exactly what you want?††† 

And I am quite looking forward to Shadows, and am glad that it’s taking the time that the doodles would take. The motto I’ve been trying to live by recently is: there are always important things I’m neglecting in favor of the important things I’m doing, but that doesn’t mean what I’m doing is wrong. 

Yes.  I’m with you all the way on this one.  Prioritizing, and all those clever punchy annoying business-speak words, only work so far.  We’re still waiting for our thirty-six hour day.  With the brain stamina to go with it.‡ 

katinseattle 

Robin, stop whacking yourself over the head. 

Huh?  Um.  How am I whacking myself over the head?  I’m fairly cranky at fate, but then I am often cranky at fate.  And I might have handled last year better, but that would mean going back to about this time last year and realising expeditiously that PEG II had a serious and insoluble from the then-current approach problem,‡‡ and when one’s critical errors start fading into the mists of time . . . maybe it’s just my short attention span, but I’m much more interested in coping with now.  And it’s more what catlady said:  I may be screwing up, but that doesn’t mean what I am doing is wrong.  I’ve prioritised:  SHADOWS must come first.  This isn’t getting the doodles done.  And I’m sorry about that—as I should be.  That’s not whacking myself over the head.  That’s being fate’s hellhounds’ chew-toy. 

We’re here because we like and admire you. 

Thank you!  But some of the people who ordered books and doodles last autumn just wanted their merchandise.

Personally, I’m sorry for your sake that Shadows is taking longer than you wanted, but I’d much rather have quality McKinley than earlier McKinley.  

Well, so would I . . . but it’s also not really my choice.  The Story is the Story, as I keep saying.  I can only do what it lets me do.  And if it doesn’t like the quality of the blood flow it’ll make me find another vein.  Ow.  

lorelibrarian

As for the doodles, well, I’ve forgotten I sent off the money now, so it will feel like I’m getting a free amazing gift from the universe whenever it does arrive.  

I love this.‡‡‡  

* * *

* jmeadows

She doesn’t knit because nothing happens fast enough? Hee. Someone is clearly not a process knitter. I like the way knitting feels! I’m perfectly happy to wait for something to happen. (Though I don’t like waiting TOO long. I’m not made of patience, you know.)

 This would be me too.   Especially given that I’m still doing the knitting equivalent of moving my lips when I read, if I were into product I would be in big trouble.  Certainly at my level—squares, and Very Basic Ribbing, knitting is meditative, and I can use all the calming options I can get.  And wasting time winds me up something vicious, so it serves a dual purpose:  the knitting itself is soothing, and the not wasting time is sort of soothing-plus.  And I was casting off The World’s Longest Leg Warmer during break tonight.  Because I’m not made of patience either^ and I would like to wear these things, that’s things, plural, as in TWO of them, next winter. . . . 

^ Shock horror.  Film at eleven. 

**  . . . Ahem. 

*** Remember I said that nobody knows the playlist for the summer concert? 

†Nice young Japheth is going to a new job inYorkshire or somewhere equally extreme at the end of the year, so he’s not a candidate.  But we may have him through the summer concert if Ravenel slopes off early. 

†† I will be sure to be on the board, and the first rule we will pass is that all items on the musical programme must be okayed by the board.^ 

^ The Muddles are looking for more board members . . . NOOOOOOOOOOOOO.+ 

+ Not unless we can pass this one little new rule. . . .  

††† And some people want vampire muffins.

 ‡ Last night as I lay sleepless in my icy cold bed^ I was thinking about kinds of energy:  creative, which overlaps with but is not the same as intellectual;  emotional, which also overlaps with and adds resonance to creative, but is definitely not the same as, and which is in a constant running fire-fight with intellectual which is inconvenient, wasteful and stupid;  and physical energy, which is a crucial support for all the rest, as well as necessary for hurtling, gardening, and singing exercises at your computer.^^  I no longer remember what it’s like to be juggling all this as a normal, un-ME’d^^^ person, but with ME you also have the spoons issue.^^^^  Different kinds of energy also demand different numbers of spoons.  And I’m terrible at maths. 

 ^ My electric blanket went phut the moment the temperature dropped back to gelid again.  Thanks so much.  Maybe there will be a nice sale on electric blankets in April. 

^^ There’s at least one more but I’m not sure what to call it.  Moral energy, possibly, which is a kind of immaterial resilience or fortitude. 

^^^ And possibly younger.  Something else I’ve said here before, I’d rather blame the ME for being stupid and feeble, than just that I’m getting old.  

^^^^ http://www.butyoudontlooksick.com/articles/written-by-christine/the-spoon-theory-written-by-christine-miserandino/

This link is also in the ‘about’ section of this blog.  I have a very mild case, as ME—and lupus, and fibro, and a lot of other auto-immune things that lead with tiredness and pain and general offness—goes.  

‡‡ And, you know, there’s a first time for everything.  I could do expeditious one of these years.  I could.  

‡‡ This is also the argument for, for example, pre-ordering books.   You can forget they’re coming.  And then . . . what’s nicer than a desirable new book to read??

            Aaaaaaand it won’t load.  It downloaded onto the laptop all right and appears in my app library.  But it won’t climb into Astarte, which is what I want it for.  Astarte’s main failing as the perfect bedtime companion†† is that you can’t type on her.  I’m kind of fascinated by all these people who apparently churn out great novels on their iPads:  not me.  I can’t even type two-fingered without going qwk7\7+km££BLERG?xx#.  Arrgh.  But the relentless little error message in this case says ‘app will download when you are logged into iTunes on your computer’.  I AM LOGGED IN ON MY COMPUTER YOU FRELLING PIECE OF CLOTHESHANGER WIRE AND CHEAP GLUE.†††  I AM SITTING HERE STARING AT THE APP IN THE ‘ROBIN’S LIBRARY’ SCREEN.  And the ‘help’ is useless, of course:  it doesn’t even allow for the possibility of troubleshooting:  all of its answers appear to be based on the indisputable fact that Apple is god and therefore perfect and its worshippers are merely sometimes rather stupid and have to have the same things to explained to them more than once in a patronising tone.  ARRRRRRGH.

            So in this spirit of weekend cheer and relaxation‡ I thought I’d re-answer one of those questions that comes up again and again AND AGAIN AND AGAIN because . . . sigh.  Because people not in the publishing industry don’t know any better.  But if I’m lucky a few of them, who will now not write me emails, will be reading the blog tonight. 

. . . I am a very devoted kindle reader. I had your book, Sunshine, recommended to me by friends. Eager to read it, I search on my kindle right away. I’m sure you can imagine my disappointment when I found that it was not on the kindle, despite being a popular book. Perhaps, you would consider having it put on there, so that ereaders like myself can enjoy it. 

Any of my books’ availability or lack thereof in any format has essentially nothing to do with me.  Nothing.‡‡  I have no control over this and—once I’ve signed the contract with the publisher, and contracts pretty much all now include electronic rights as standard—ebooks as well as all that hard copy stuff are the publisher’s problem.  Just like getting the book out in any and all other formats is.  Your contract will say that the publisher does have to publish, and if it doesn’t you get your book back.  (Which is not what you want.  You want it published.)  And you can lobby for the format du jour, or something special—like the illustrated ROSE DAUGHTER which we had to get special permission for.

            But if you assume that all the writer does is write you will not be far wrong in most cases.  Yes, some writers are a lot more involved with the rest of the business than I am—I don’t know and don’t want to know as much as I can possibly avoid knowing‡‡‡ because, ahem, I am prone to blood pressure headaches and chewing the wallpaper over something I can do nothing about is too frelling demoralising.  Yes, you can write letters and make phone calls—and badger your long-suffering agent—and get to know people and network and some writers are good at this, and some of them do make a difference to the rest of us.  And I’m grateful.  But I have no talent in that direction.  ‘Negotiation’  and ‘calm rational discussion of a controversial subject’ are not in my skill set.  I want to kill myself over jacket art regularly even now, when I do have some leverage.

            I’m actually surprised SUNSHINE isn’t available as an ebook§;  mostly it’s the books that came out before electronic publishing was beginning to be an issue that get trapped in the mincer.  But if it isn’t, there’ll be a reason.  The publishing behemoth regiment is still having trouble lurching into the electronic age, and older books by people who aren’t JK Rowling and Dan Brown fall through the cracks sometimes.  

            And self-publishing?  Not me.  Thank the gods for publishers, however paralytically, blood-pressure-headachingly behemothy they can be.  I do read some of the articles (on line, speaking of ereading) about sisters doing it for themselves.  I can barely do the laundry, and every year when I’m trying to produce a full set of bank statements for the accountant—I fail.  If I tried to self-publish I’d be reading the want ads for shelf-restocker openings§§ within the year. 

* * *

* Atama ga itai desu.  Which may mean ‘I have a headache’.  Note:  when they say that Japanese [grammatical] particles are a nightmare, believe them.  

** Who is coming to visit.  And thinks we should SING something together.  Aside from my extreme peculiarity on the subject of other people hearing me sing—and, after all, she would be singing with me—we have a slight repertoire problem:  I sing classical and folk.  She sings musical theatre and barbershop.  Can This Friendship Be Saved.^ 

^ I’m not sure.  She hates Sweeney Todd.  I can just about allow this in someone who doesn’t like musicals generally+.  But in an avowed musical-theatre devotee?   This is like someone who claims to love dogs making an exception for sighthounds.  The door’s that way, honey.  

+ No, it’s not an opera. 

*** On the sofa, resisting entropy and the strange hierarchical struggles of hellhounds.  Guys.  It’s a sofa.  Play nice or the hellgoddess will go all hellgoddessy on your ass. 

† I’m puzzled that they haven’t gone the amazon route and started targeting you.  Hey, last time you were here you bought Demolition Bingo and Space Pastry Chef!  We’re sure you’d love Washing Machine Lint vs Sink Elbow Trap!^ 

^ Has anyone played Pizza vs Skeletons?  Which sounds about as likely. 

†† Hey, I’m old.  And possibly a little strange. 

††† Ee, ah, eeee ah, eeee aaah eeee ah.    

‡ Are you KIDDING?  I’m writing a novel.  Novel-writing is a 24/7 activity.^ 

^Barring hellhounds, blogs, and scream—I mean singing. 

‡‡ In deference to Hannah and Merrilee’s sensitivities, I am NOT CAPITALISING THAT SENTENCE. 

‡‡‡ Yes.  It’s a very good thing I have an excellent agent. 

§ No, I’m not going to go doublecheck on amazon.  If you want to, feel free.  I avoid pages with my professional self on them like six kinds of interstellar plague.  And even if the person who wrote to me is wrong and it is available, and she or her frelling device was having a brain spasm, the principle remains:  once the story I’ve written is out of my hands, it’s out of my hands.  

§§ Shelf restocking at a big supermarket during the graveyard shift sounds quite restful when novel-in-progress is being unendurably wayward.  And no, SHADOWS isn’t.  As I keep moaning to Merrilee, if I hadn’t been trying to finish it in five months it would be going really well.  Unfortunately . . .

Another day when by the time I am facing The Horror That Is The Blog again* I have no brain with which to harry and feint.  I haven’t even done anything today.**  Except SHADOWS of course.***  

PamAdams

No, no!  That’s not it at all!  I’ve been meaning to respond to this . . . since last autumn when someone at Forbidden Planet asked me something similar, and I’m glad of a forum comment to prod me.  But this is a good example of how dangerously different the writer’s eye view may be from the reader’s.  I had two purposes in having people swear by odin and thor and kali and carthage and by gods instead of God and so on in SUNSHINE—first because I did want to spread the net a little wider:  this is a world where there are more active religions jostling for place in an alternate America than there are in the world we live in.  But I didn’t leave Christianity out deliberately—I didn’t mean to leave it out at all.  But I didn’t realise the extent to which I’d, um, obscured its presence.  Because the subsidiary reason for the other gods is that ‘thor’ and ‘kali’ aren’t swear words—in this world.  It should have been ‘thor’ and ‘kali’ and ‘christ’ but ‘christ’, in this world, is rude.  And, believe it or not—says the woman who used the c-word in SUNSHINE and no one is ever going to let her forget it†—I prefer only to cause fury and outrage either when I mean to or when I haven’t got a choice.  Thor and odin and kali look like swear words and perform the function of swear words without causing the swear-word reaction in this-world readers.

            This is also on my mind because while the slang differs in detail, the exact same thing is happening in SHADOWS.  They swear by gods and hells just as Sunshine does.  (But not by thor or kali.)  If I ever did write that sequel to SUNSHINE I’d put jesus and christ back in—yes, no init cap, because none of the other gods are—and brace myself.††  I used the c-word last time.  How much worse could it be?††† 

* * *

* Another really excellent reason for 36-hour days is that the frequency with which the blog presents itself to me to be written^ would be cut back by 50%.^^

^ With a demeanour rather awfully like a hellhound feeling that a hurtle is overdue. 

^^ At least I think that’s what I mean.  The fact that I read Prof Stewart’s mathematical prodigies in the bath, and laugh, doesn’t mean I can do any of the stuff.

 ** Well I did take redelivery of the Laptop Monster.  Remember the new laptop I bought . . . something like two months ago?  And that Raphael and Gabriel have been hosting hot and cold running engineers for about the last six weeks because Large Nameless Stupid Computer Company is too anal retentive simply to give me a new one and get it over with?  I remember ranting about this here not long ago.

            So it came home (again) today.  It’s still shiny and silver and large and weighs too much.  It also, allegedly, no longer discharges its battery by 50% overnight.  So, should I join Lovefilm for my 3-month free trial^ and test the freller out?  I asked the angels to strip some of the stuff off this old laptop so it’s not straining at the limits of its hard drive any more—can’t say I’ve noticed any improvement in speed however—since I am, on mature^^ reflection, just not going to change ungleblarging operating systems mid-final-draft.  Life is harrowing enough.   But that still leaves me with a large shiny silver object to do something with.

^ I’ve got some kind of extreme voucher here somewhere.  

^^ Gabriel was wearing a kidney belt and—bending himself over the back of a chair because sitting down was Not Good for his sciatica—said well, you know, when forty is rushing up on you.  Tell me about it, I said, I turn sixty in November.  Both of them successfully managed to look surprised, but then Raphael blew it by saying ‘I wouldn’t put you a day over forty-one.’.  Snork.  Have I mentioned that our service contract is due for renewal? 

*** I also ordered a ‘like new’ copy of Japanese Cooking, A Simple Art by Shizuo Tsuji as recommended by Jacky on the forum.  I went and looked it up on amazon and it gets like twelve stars from everyone.  Only it’s not available.  Well, frell this for a lark.  So I hit the ‘abebooks’ button and found a nice clean cheap copy on the east coast of America since there don’t seem to be any on this side of the pond.  Feh.  This is the second time I’ve done the abebooks button-pressing thing in three days.  I am bad.^

            The first time was about looking at kanji.  I’ve been reading this book http://www.amazon.co.uk/Read-Japanese-Today-Practical-Languge/dp/4805309814/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1329871721&sr=8-1

which makes those diabolical little squiggly things—and kanji are the seriously squiggly, borrowed from Chinese ones, as opposed to the comparatively straightforward katakana and hiragana syllabaries^^—actually look friendly and comprehensible.  No mean frelling feat.  And before anyone climbs all over me again about Going Too Far, kanji are one of the stronger memory-flicks from my five years as a child in Japan.  Kanji tell stories.  The problem with Read Japanese Today is there’s no INDEX and also no stroke order—one of the fifty-year-old books I’ve hung onto about the Japanese language is an extremely intimidating list of the 2000 or so basic kanji you need to know if you’re going to read Japanese, and while it scares the living daylights out of me, I find that to decipher the squiggles I seem to need to know how you build the suckers, line by line.  And the First Two Thousand has changed in the last fifty years.  So I’m reading my Japanese Today and trying to find the squiggles in my old book and going wait, that’s not the same.

            Also, I want fewer than 2000 to grapple with, even in my slithery dilettante way.  So I looked up kanji again on amazon, and the book that includes how to write the first few hundred kanji that got twelve stars was not available.  (Which is probably why I didn’t order it in the first place.)  So I hit abebooks and . . . 

^ I also have trouble remembering that books cost money.  I mean, I do know they cost money, I just feel that book money shouldn’t count when you’re figuring out how not to run out of money before you finish something that someone will pay you for. 

^^ Clearly one of the additional purposes of kanji is to make you think you can learn katakana and hiragana at least.

http://www.omniglot.com/writing/japanese_katakana.htm

http://www.omniglot.com/writing/japanese_hiragana.htm 

† And the reason why, as I’ve said as many times as it has come up, is because there are no casual slang words for female genitalia.  There is no ‘dick’ equivalent.  Dick isn’t a word you use with your gran, I know, but it doesn’t make averagely crass people come out in hives the way the c-word does.  In Sunshine’s world, that word is the dick equivalent. 

†† Which is to say there will probably be ‘jesus’ and ‘christ’ in ALBION.  I won’t know till I get there.  

††† Don’t answer that.

WOLFGANG IS HOME AGAIN. 

AND I’VE HAD A BRILLIANT DAY WITH SHADOWS.* 

I’ve also been pursuing this learning Japanese thing.  Oh dear.  Enthusiasm is dangerous.  This particular manifestation of my lifelong tendency for rushing in all directions simultaneously started several weeks ago.  Takahiro was already in the second draft of SHADOWS—he has been there from the beginning—so it’s not like he was a surprise.  And I’ve still got a few of my very (very very) old books about Japan and the Japanese language and culture, and I’d had a somewhat nervous cursory look at these.  I do research to throw it away, you know?  It’s just that I like to have some idea what I’m throwing away.  There will be about six words of Japanese in SHADOWS.  But it needs to feel like there could be more—rather like the bees in CHALICE.  I crammed like mad on real, this-world bees and bee-keeping.  There’s precious little of it left or visible in CHALICE, but I know it’s there. **

            So I had been looking at my fifty-year-old Japanese grammar and wondering how much the language had changed.***  When, lo, with a whap up longside the head like fate dropping in for tea, CLANG, frelling www.audible.co.uk sent me a come-on for discounted language-learning downloads.  And, further lo, and further whap, Japanese was one of the options.  Which is how I started listening to beginner-Japanese lessons.

            Fast-forward to a few days ago when I confessed to my latest madness, and several kind people sent me links and recommendations.  OH DEAR.  I seem to have bought both a grammar and a dictionary for the Kindle ap on Astarte† and a grammar and dictionary from the frelling Apple ap store.††

            So I should go study something.  Gakusei da.  Ha.  †††

* * *

* Well, I hope I have.  I think I have.  Maybe I have.  Um..

            I almost never reread immediately;  when I’ve just written—or rewritten—something I’m still in trees-not-forest mode and chances are if I did reread it I wouldn’t be able to tell if it’s doing its job or not.  And furthermore I would know that I can’t tell, and then I’d start to worry and I’d waste time pushing commas and ‘and’s around.  So I have to Live with Doubt till the next day at least—and probably longer.  Today I stopped in the middle of a scene—I was hoping to reach the end of it before my brain went STOPPING NOW, but then I did reach the end of the previous scene and went a little farther.  Tomorrow I will not reread except the last paragraph to make sure I know where I am, and then I will keep going.  I know.  It seems at least as likely that it would be a better idea to read at least the entire scene that I’m starting in the middle of before I set off again, in order to match momentum/energy with what has gone before.  But I find in practise that rereading always throws me sideways and undoes impetus^—and I write at all by motion, by the vigorous flow of the story.  I can fix bad connections later.  While I’m still writing drafts, even if it’s the last draft, forest—flow—is more important than trees.  I don’t always even reread entire scenes mid-draft—if I think I can keep going, I probably will.  If I have to go back and stick something in or take something out I’ll do it with as narrow a focus as possible:  six trees, not a quarter of the forest.    

^ Unhurtles hurtling.  

** I was talking to Alastair about this as we were walking out to Warm Upford.^  I know there are writers who write wonderful fabulous deeply felt and exquisitely expressed books, and who do nothing but write wonderful fabulous etc and stuff like read other people’s books and watch films and TV and cruise the internet and basically never get out and it works fine for them.  Now granted I wish I had more time to read other people’s books or watch films and TV at all, and that most people probably wouldn’t count bell ringing as something to get out for, but I totally don’t know how you stand all those hours in front of a flat media screen of one sort or another (paper counts here) without having a garden or hellhounds or a piano or a ’64 Mustang in the garage that you’re rebuilding, or something.^^ 

^ He thinks I walk too fast.  BIG HMMMPH.  He’s six foot four.+ 

+ He’s also the skinniest 6’4” you have ever seen and eats like a starving man.  ARRRRRRRGH.  Okay, how skinny is he?  He can fit into my jeans.  Have I told you this story before?  I’m sorry, I have to tell it again.   Many years ago, he and his wife were the prince and the principal boy in their local Christmas pantomime.  She wore my thigh-high purple suede boots with the smooth-leather purple turndowns#.  He wore my old Harley Davidson black leather jeans.  It’s true he had a little trouble kneeling, but that’s leather for you.  The zipper went up fine.  The legs were a little short, but he wore (ordinary) boots.  I believe the pantomime was a great success. 

#You need the turndowns to hide the elastic bands you’re wearing to keep the frellers up. 

^^ Or possibly a frivolous stab at learning another language that requires a whole frelling new alphabet+ which certainly changes the parameters of your flat media screen. 

+ Japanese has three alphabets, except they’re not alphabets, they’re syllabaries.   

*** Think of a fifty-year-old English grammar.  –Quite a lot, in practise.  Konpyuta^ wa doko da? 

^ Say this out loud.  And then there’s konpyuta-gemu.+ 

OKAY WORDPRESS YOU RATBAG.  GIVE ME MY LONG VOWELS  BACK.  U, A AND E IN THE ABOVE SHOULD HAVE LITTLE LINES–MACRONS–ABOVE THEM.  ONLY WORDPRESS WON’T LET ME. 

+ Hint:  ‘e’ in Japanese is pronounced rather like a long ‘a’ in English.# 

# I’m fond of Fingerzilla and Montezuma myself.  

† Also the complete works of H P Lovecraft and the Collected Ghost Stories of M R James.  That’s the hell of Kindle.^  Old stuff is so CHEAP.  And there’s nothing cosier and more luxurious than reaching for your slender, takes-up-very-little-space-on-the-bed ereader in the middle of the night/morning when sleep has decamped to Pago Pago and being able to scare yourself silly so you really won’t get any sleep now. 

^ Note that because I have an iPad I can suffer all the more extensively with a Kindle ap as well as the entire stock of the frelling Apple ap store. 

†† The grammar told you to download when you had plenty of time so I got out my knitting.^   And I was in the middle of a row when it finished, so I finished my row, and then I made myself another cup of tea, and then I sang two choruses of Leonard Cohen’s HALLELUJAH, and then, assuming it had had enough time to settle down and put its toothbrush in the mug and its socks in the bureau drawer . . . I opened my new grammar.  AND ASTARTE PROMPTLY CRASHED AND FROZE.  THE BLACK SCREEN OF DEATH WITH THE APPLE LOGO.^^  I’M SO HAPPY. 

            This time, fortunately, the holding-two-buttons down simultaneously^^^ trick worked.  It was, of course, after computer angel hours, although Raphael has a silly habit of checking texts on his business account at home in the evenings.  And the grammar has opened obediently several times since then.  Lambasting me with jolly descriptions of the next 1,000,000,000,000,000 hours of dedicated studying, but hey, there’s an off button. 

^ I HAD TO RIP OUT EIGHT ROWS TWO NIGHTS AGO.  AAAAAAAUGH.  But I seem to have got all the little loopy horrors back on the needles again and have caught up and I think it’s okay.  Frogging is like falling off your horse, right?  You’re not a real rider/knitter unless you’ve eaten dirt and had to rip stuff out?  Right?  Right?  

^^ Why the Apple logo, you know?  This seems to me to be teaching the dog to bite the lab technician when it hears the bell. 

^^^ With possibly extraneous shouting

††† Or possibly hai.

Okay.  People.  Listen to me please. 

If you google ‘del toro emma watson robin mckinley’ you will get a very long page of hits.    Here are two more or less at random: 

http://www.themarysue.com/guillermo-del-toro-beauty/ 

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/guillermo-del-toro-beauty-beast-director-290166 

If you leave the ‘robin mckinley’ off your search there are a lot more hits.  Wherein lies my point.  My point further includes the ‘has evolved since’ quote in the clips that include me and the fact that (apparently, this is not a world I follow) del Toro has a habit of running too many projects at once to predict with any confidence when he might get around to one in particular.  EVEN IF THIS FILM IS MADE, WHICH IS IN FACT NOT VERY LIKELY, IT WILL NOT, REPEAT NOT BE THE SCREEN VERSION OF MY NOVEL.

            I had no idea that news of del Toro’s BEAUTY AND THE BEAST project was about to be shot out there—or that there was news of del Toro’s B&B project.  Which is another part of my point.  Yes, Warner’s optioned BEAUTY* a while ago, but there are like 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 options bought for every ONE movie made, so while option money is lovely because you haven’t done anything extra for it except sign your name, I didn’t take it seriously.  I’ve been optioned before.  I did register the fact that it was del Toro and Emma Watson behind Warner’s interest, two filmy people whom I’ve even heard of**, an almost un-heard-of situation, and I therefore asked Merrilee about six months after signing if there’d been—by wild, unforeseen circumstance—any movement on the option, and she said there wasn’t.  At which point I forgot about it. 

            Till this morning when I received an email including a del-Toro-Watson-McKinley link from a friend saying, Oh, hey, I’m impressed!, followed by about forty more emails and a tweet from people who love BEAUTY and are under the erroneous impression that (a) this means it’s going to get made and (b) del Toro’s movie (supposing it gets made) will have ANYTHING to do with the book.

            So to reiterate:  I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT THIS.  I HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS.  Except that I signed an option contract a while ago.  IT IS STILL VERY UNLIKELY THAT THE MOVIE WILL BE MADE.  And IF IT IS MADE IT PROBABLY WON’T HAVE ANYTHING IN COMMON WITH MY NOVEL EXCEPT THE PRESENCE OF A BEAUTY AND A BEAST.  Maybe.  With del Toro you never really know.  Which can be a good thing.  If disconcerting. 

            And as the author of the book in question . . . if they make the movie, I hope they DO render my novel TOTALLY UNRECOGNISABLE.  (Which that ‘has since evolved’ sounds like they will.  Yaaay.)  I’m not a fan of books into movies:  they’re entirely different media, and not only do I think the translation process rarely does the book any favours, the reading experience is . . . well, it’s to be treasured.  I don’t want it spoilt, for BEAUTY or any other good book, by even a dazzlingly first-rate film.   I hate it that GENERATIONS of film-goers are now going to forget that LORD OF THE RINGS was a book first . . . or even at all. 

            I don’t know anything about Watson*** but del Toro has made some brilliant movies.  His take on that very, very old and much retold tale of Beauty and the Beast could be fabulous.  And if my version(s) helped inspire him, great.  And the money I’d be paid for a film that was actually made would be very nice indeed.†

            But I’m not counting these chickens before they’re hatched.  And if they are hatched they won’t be chickens anyway.  They’ll be velociraptors or harpy eagles or dodos or something.

            And sure, I’d be glad of the rights money, if the movie is made.  But what I’d like most of all is that some trifle of the movie publicity rubs off on the unrecognisable book . . . and a few more people READ IT.  That is what makes a writer’s little heart beat faster.  Readers.  

* * *

Peter bought me a pink begonia in a pot for Valentine’s Day.  The funny thing is he used to hate Valentine’s Day.  But he’s gone all soppy with advancing age.  I’ve had Valentine’s Day presents regularly the last few years.  Not complaining.  Not complaining.  I said, I don’t have anything for you for Valentine’s Day†† and he said, no, no, this is one of those remaining genderist things, the bloke is supposed to produce a present.  Oh, I said, burying my feminist instincts under the desire to keep on with SHADOWS, well, if you’re really determined, never mind the dozen red roses, I’d much rather have a houseplant.

            Peter seems to think begonias lack fervour and ardency.  But I like begonias.  I can usually even keep them alive.  It’s not that I don’t love a vaseful of red roses, but they don’t last long.  Don’t you want your Valentine to last? 

            Also, there was champagne.  

* * *

* and ROSE DAUGHTER, because this is how Hollywood works:  they don’t want a rival B&B retelling if they can help it, so they block this one as a clause in the option for the other.^ 

^ Hollywood’s predilection for wanting control over EVERYTHING is a can of worms I’m not going to open here.  But my desire to control my own books’ fate is why I regularly refuse to entertain film option offers.  

** true confession:  I’ve only ever seen the first HARRY POTTER film and . . . ahem . . . wasn’t hugely riveted.  And while I loved the first HELLBOY I’m like, oh, there’s another one?, and I loved BLADE II but I didn’t know till I looked up del Toro’s filmography this minute that he directed it.  I’m a Wesley Snipes girl.  Although even Snipes couldn’t rescue BLADE III.  But del Toro has the fantasy chops, certainly.  They just don’t have a lot in common with mine.^ 

^ If his are chops, mine are sort of . . . pudding.  Chocolate pudding.  

*** Except that she had great hair when she was a little kid. 

† Although loose change by Hollywood standards.  

†† My day was further complicated by taking Wolfgang out to Warm Upford to the garage for his MOT.^  Or rather, driving him out there was not a problem, but it’s about five miles back to New Arcadia over hill and dale.  Peter, coming in to find us crashed out on the sofa, said, were the hellhounds tired?  No, I said, but I was.  We generally have our longer hurtle in the morning, and by evening hurtle time, even early evening so we were back to town streetlights by the time it was dark enough to need them, I’ve been at SHADOWS for several hours and adventures are not entirely welcome.

            Now, all fingers crossed that when I ring up the garage tomorrow he’s passed.  

^ Required yearly road test.

It is unduly late.*  Well, I slept nearly ten hours last night.  That Grandsire Triples will really take it out of you.**  And so everything has been late today, including slamming on with SHADOWS till about six minutes ago.***  ARRRRRGH.†

            And there were handbells.  Hellhounds and I had only barely got down to the mews when we had to slap ourselves back into our coats again†† and crunch back to the cottage.†††  We’re still beating bob major to death but . . . we’re beating it to death more briskly.  Gemma missed ringing at the abbey last night but she was full of back-patting encouragement and positive remarks today‡ as I went blither-blither-blither rounds-on-ninety-three‡‡ leopards-in-the-shadows. 

CathyR

Oh gosh, I know that feeling exactly (Liverpool Anglican Cathedral, huge industrial ringing chamber, 12 bells, heavy – and having to stand on a doughnut-like 3ft raised platform to ring!!!). Total nervous breakdown, looking into the abyss. 

I would not have done it.  I would have taken one look into the abyss, and turned around and fled.  I think I’ve told you about ringing at Chichester Cathedral?  It has a separate tower . . . which is the size of Arundel Castle ‡‡‡ I swear.  The ringing chamber is nearly the size of Forza’s and it’s long draft§ and . . . the whole experience still makes me wake up in a cold sweat swearing that I’m going to forget bells and take up knitting.§§ 

. . . It’s the heaviest and highest peal of bells hung for change ringing in the world. . . .
Mind you, it’s skill not brute strength (although it does usually take two people to ring the tenor up). I’ve seen a fairly slight teenage girl ring that tenor. 

I watched them ringing up the tenor at the abbey last night—they started off with three.  Once they got it going the third person dropped out (panting).  They do have one madman who likes to ring it up by himself when he’s there and in the mood, but I don’t think I’ve met him yet.§§§  And yes . . . these little wisps of people who ring colossal bells are a little daunting to those of us . . . who would be happy to be able to ring a touch of Grandsire Triples on ordinary bells reliably. 

We’ve probably a second visit there in a couple of months. Hopefully I’ll do better. I’ll think of Robin to give me strength! 

THE LAST THING YOU WANT TO THINK ABOUT TO GIVE YOU STRENGTH IS ME.

            We will, however expect a full report. . . . 

* * * 

            It’s still snowing. 

* * *

* It’s also SNOWING.  And I left my yaktrax at the cottage.^ 

Julia
I had [to walk to school in the snow] this week. . . . I’m currently in France (working as an English teacher in a primary school), and it snowed over the weekend. The French aren’t used to dealing with snow… and so the buses weren’t running. In order to get to work on Monday, I had to walk. Through the snow.  Uphill.^^ It took an hour. I only fell down once, so I felt quite successful when I finally arrived! 

I would like to eschew the standard falling-down part.  I did manage to fall down on Chaos yesterday or the day before, but that was one of those everybody-in-slow-motion-AM-I-REALLY-FALLING-DOWN-RATS-YES moments and I was lifting Darkness off his feet with my death-grip on his (short) lead with the other hand as counterweight, so it wasn’t as bad as it might have been.  I’m not entirely sure Chaos noticed.  He may have just thought it was a sort of upside-down lying-on-the-sofa-but-outdoors thing.

            But the ‘not used to dealing with snow’.  Yes.  I leave Wolfgang wherever he’s parked after the third snowflake falls not because he’s hopeless in the snow, which he isn’t, but because most of the locals are hopeless in snow.  One of my least-favourite fantasies is a side-on SUV coming at you at frictionless speed. 

^ You don’t want to know.  Living in two (or three) houses has serious drawbacks especially if you’re perhaps a trifle disorganised in the first place.  See, my yaktrax mostly live in my canvas briefcase equivalent when the weather gets hinky, but occasionally they are transferred to some other mobile living unit.  I took them with me to the abbey last night because while the main roads are all clear, the footpath from the abbey car park to the enchanted portal is a mixture of 14^th-century cobblestones and 16^th-century paving, a trifle unevenly worn, and mostly in shade all day.  I thought it might be yaktrax or hands and knees last night, and I preferred yaktrax.  As it happened, extreme measures were not required, and then when I got home again my knitting came back out of the small evening knapsack and went back into the large day knapsack+ but the yaktrax, somehow, did not.

            There.  You didn’t want to know, did you? 

+ Which frankly wouldn’t fit up the last flight of flower-fairy stairs at the abbey anyway. 

^^ Both ways! 

** Grandsire Triples, hell, it was the rounds on eighty-four.  Or was it eighty-seven? 

*** I talked to Hannah today, who is approximately the only person besides agent, editor and husband who gets a look at a book before it’s done, and she said that she thought I got the emotional reality of a teenage girl (ie in the particular opening set-up of this story) down really well.  I was pleased, of course, but after we rang off I was thinking . . . is it a good thing to be able to write a persuasive modern, if alternative-world, seventeen-year-old—who goes to high school and lives with her parent(s)—when you’re sixty?^  Don’t answer that.  Besides, I need to earn a living, and I’d be really bad at robbing banks. 

^ Okay, I know I’m not the only elderly kiddie/YA writer around.  But it hits me harder when it’s FIRST PERSON AND SHE’S GOING TO HIGH SCHOOL.  Good grief.  High fantasy seventeen-year-olds are different.   

† I also talked to Merrilee today who said, you, that is, I, do need to remember that I may not make the deadline and SHADOWS may not come out in the spring of ’13.  WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH.  Yes.  True.  I know.  One of these years my hurtle toward the last possible scheduling moment is going to fail.  Merrilee was giving me the standard agent lecture about not hurrying but taking the time the story needs and I said, MERRILEE.  HOW LONG HAVE WE BEEN WORKING TOGETHER?  I can only write as fast as the story will let me.  If the third draft takes longer than I’m hoping^ then . . . it does.

            So this is your warning too.  

^ The good sign is that her list of notes matches mine.  There were no, What do you mean, you were not convinced by the history teacher who turns into a manticore and eats the students that piss her off?  Have you forgotten what high school is like?+ 

+ Merrilee is nearly as old as I am.  

†† OOOOOWWWWWWOOOOOOO, say the hellhounds. 

††† It was afterward, Colin, leaving, who said, in sepulchral tones, It’s snowing.  

‡ She’s a GP and has three kids.  She absolutely knows how to be supportive and encouraging. 

‡‡ Yes.  They breed.  

‡‡‡ http://www.arundelcastle.org/_pages/03_visitor_info.htm 

§ Which means the ceiling is very, very, very far away, and the rope is a million feet long.  In the first place that much rope tends to flap around unless you have FLAWLESS handling skills—do I need to tell you I do not have flawless handling skills?—and in the second place . . . the weight of the rope has an effect on how a bell rings, depending on how heavy the bell is and how much rope there is.  This can be DISCONCERTING—and on long draft, probably is.   

§§ I’ve been having this nightmare for years.  When you wake up out of an old familiar nightmare you may not remember acquisition of recent skills that may have a bearing on your equally old and familiar escape mantra.  

§§§ I want to know how he gets ringing-up-the-tenor-by-himself shoulders up that last flight of stairs.

I’ve just run myself into the ground on SHADOWS, it’s after one o’clock in the morning and I haven’t started the BLOG yet.  What a good thing I’m not getting up early tomorrow to ring bells. . . . *

Piankatank

I’m curious about the three drafts in a row. Knowing that the second draft was just delivered and immediately starting on the third, where does the editor come in? I sort of assumed that the second draft went to the editor to review and then once there is input from the editor you worked the next draft.

Good question.  In an ideal world, yes, you turn in your manuscript more or less at whatever stage you want some editorial input** and then you wait till you’ve had your input and you consider it before you embark on your next draft.  That’s in an ideal world.  And some writers do work like this—indeed some want input from friends, colleagues, their agent, their editor, almost from the first sentence***, some want it when they feel stuck, some want it at a given stage—like at the end of a second draft—whatever.  Whatever works.

Me, I don’t want it at all.  Ahem.  This is a character flaw.  It’s all very arteeeeeeestic and romantic that I Can Only Listen to The Story, but it’s also a great big fat failure because I’m still only mortal and it would be a good thing if I could use more of what other (intelligent) people tell me.  But mostly what other people tell me—even when they’re right—comes over as static on the line.  SHUT UP, WILL YOU, I’M TRYING TO LISTEN TO THE STORY.

In my ideal world I don’t turn my manuscript in till I’ve done as much on it as I can, or anyway nearly.  Even I recognise the need for someone else’s view of a story which I, by this point in the writing process, know too well or anyway from too close a distance.  I need someone who doesn’t know the story as well as I do (including all the parts I decided to leave out, like the revolving door and the doorperson’s uniform) to tell me what I need to put back in.  Or that the intensity of scene A needs to be balanced a little better by some relief of tension in scene B.  BEAUTY’s editor asked me to shorten the beginning so that Beauty arrived at the Beast’s castle sooner.  SWORD’s editor wanted a little more about Harry feeling dislocated or disoriented or homesick—she took to her new life a little too well.  And so on.

Mostly I’m not edited that much.  I am very lucky that—mostly—what I turn in as finished copy is acceptable.  If I had to make huge changes to satisfy my publisher and get me paid . . . I probably wouldn’t be a professional writer.

The last few books I’ve had to hustle for one reason or another—mostly to do with scheduling and money.  This puts a strain on my editor as well—is she going to have a book for this or that list or isn’t she?—and the compromise we’ve perhaps almost inadvertently reached (although Merrilee might whap me up longside the head for that remark) is that I turn in, for example, a second draft, so that she can judge if I’m far enough along to finish when I say I’m going to finish—and she can then hold a place in the schedule for it.†  I may be a good writer who can (mostly) get away with a light editorial hand . . . but my sense of time sucks pond scum.  And even if she does say ‘yes, you’re on’ (and please the gods she will about SHADOWS) she’ll send me some notes . . . which I probably won’t do more than glance at at till I finish the third draft.  I listen to the story, you know?  And then I’ll check that I’ve already fixed everything on her list—or not.  If she’s found something I’ve missed—and she found stuff in both CHALICE and PEGASUS in recent memory—I’ll go back and tinker.  I’ll be going back and tinkering anyway.  But by the end of the third draft the story is stable.  I can afford to listen to other people about it.††  It’s also busy hardening into its final shape—see:  can’t make huge changes—but I can still tweak and smarten.†††

Mostly.  Usually.  I hope . . .

* * *

* This is actually dangerous.  Heretofore having to get up at a (comparatively) respectable hour once a week has kept clawing me back toward some brief, glancing relationship to normal life.  One seventh of my mornings looked rather like other people’s mornings.  Now . . . I may split off from John Donne’s mainland and float away forever.^

^ After all, he was specifically only talking about men.

** Of course you don’t abuse the privilege.  Any editor (and any agent) has lots of other authors they also have to respond to and work with, and we’re all big boys and girls and self-motivated and sensible.^

^ Hahahahahahahahahahaha

*** But see previous footnote

† Remember publishing is a business.  And the widgets it sells are books.  It needs x number of new widgets per season to produce its hoped-for sales figures.^

^ Of course books are not widgets and publishing is insane . . .

†† I can’t really explain this.  Static on the line is as good a metaphor as any.  Or it’s like walking a narrow path in a high wind and somebody comes running up behind you and gives you a shove.  I know it’s not supposed to be like this.  Intelligent thoughtful reader response should be helpful and welcome.  Um.  Well.  —This is also related to my extreme aversion to reading reviews.  I’ve talked about this before:  very few critics are writing from a perspective that has any relationship to mine or is of any use to me in (for example) explaining why something doesn’t work and why I shouldn’t do it that way again.  The good reviews tend to be pleasing but alien (I did?  The story what?  Oh) and the bad ones just make me want to tear my entrails out.  (The bad ones that are factually incorrect make me want to tear the reviewer’s entrails out.)

Although a good review that also gets it pretty well makes my YEAR.  And it does happen.   Mmmmmm.

††† And given the time pressure, if she does decide we can cram SHADOWS through for spring ’13, I may receive final editorial notes on the third draft more or less simultaneously with the copyeditor’s queries.  ARRRGH.  This creates a brief, hair-raising, high tea-and-champagne-consumption period which includes bloodshot eyeballs, shaking hands and insomnia.

No.  Not quite.  Nearly.  Tomorrow.  I know I said that yesterday.  Well, I’m more caught up than I was yesterday.  It still seems to me going well.  I can risk saying that (I hope) because I know there will be days between now and the rmmph of March when it is not going well, when I am not a writer, I never was a writer, and I’m starting my retraining as a mechanic* in the next uptake.**  Which is to say I know I’m going to be paying for good days whether or not I admit to having them so why not admit it?  See:  wrestling alligators, below. 

Stardancer

I learned how hard it is to make a story. . . . I did learn to take something in the range of horrible/okay and shove it around into okay/pretty okay, even if I didn’t think it was anything I’d want to read. It’s HARD. I’d never realized before how much work it was, even for those gifted people in my classes who did “hear” their stories right off. Drafts and voice and tweaking and word choice and why is that character there again? 

Thank you.  Yes.  It’s HARD.  This is why The Urge to Kill people who offer to split the money with you if they give you their Great Idea and you do the dull stupid labour of writing it up because the idea is the hard part and besides you already have the name and the publishing contacts, is pretty overwhelming.  Fortunately most of these offers come by post/email.  Back in the days when I went to more live things and people used occasionally to offer this blithering asininity to my face civilised restraint was more difficult.

            But.  Yes.  It’s like wrestling alligators.  WHY IS THAT CHARACTER FOLLOWING ME AROUND?  GO AWAY.  YOU DON’T BELONG IN THIS STORY.  Er.  Do you?  What have I missed this time?  Writing is also brilliant and fascinating and enormous fun . . . but those alligators bite hard.  And the regeneration of major body parts is tiring and demoralising and takes time, which you probably haven’t got.  

EMoon

It’s downright scary sometimes how much your process is like my process…the whole thing about each character’s voice, each book’s voice, each book’s vocabulary, so sometimes I can’t hear the word I need–none of the first/second/third choice words works in that sentence and I can spend hours digging through dictionaries hoping to find the one right one. The stuff I have to write down (revolving door, uniform, etc.) that has to come out later because who cares, it doesn’t matter only some of the details DO matter and I don’t know which ones until the book’s done or nearly done. 

Scary?  Hmm.  I find it exactly the opposite—this seems to me so obviously the way stories must break into storytellers’ brains, get heard/figured out, get written, that I find it far more unsettling when I hear about some other writer’s entirely different process.  Those people who write out complete outlines—story arcs, what happens in each chapter, characters’ names, descriptions and relationships—people who create files on different aspects of story and characters before they ever settle down to write the story part of the story—that’s scary.   I went through a period when I was a teenager of (mostly) secretly reading everything I could get my hands on on how to write—secretly as one pursues any vice, or any unadmitted longing—and some of the advice clings round me still in cold, sticky, cobwebby sorts of shreds.  I absolutely believe in ‘whatever works’ but . . . brrrr for the file-keepers.

            I mostly don’t write down stuff that will come out later.  I tend to have faith that if I’ve left something out it’ll clamour to get into the next draft.  Certainly stuff does come out, but not usually the revolving door and the doorperson’s uniform.  But I do keep some notes as I go, and sometimes the marginal notes to the notes to the notes (to the notes) get a little cramped.  

* * *

* jaccairn

Also, MOT – I think I remember that yours is due sometime this month, It’s the sort of thing that might slip your mind when you’re so busy. 

Snork.  The things some people’s blog forum members remember.  Thank you.  Yes, Wolfgang is due this month and I’ve already booked him in.^  I hope you’re impressed.  I’m so impressed I can hardly bear myself.  (I think this is the first year I’ve ever remembered before the last minute.)  Now I just have to implore the weather gods to be kind since the remains of the bus system between here and Warm Upford is not worth discussing.  Hellhounds and I can perfectly well walk home one day and walk back the next, but not if we’re having gales and hail and winged monkeys and so on.  Which we’re apparently going to have overnight.  This is all because Peter had planned to go to Oxford tomorrow and have lunch with one of his cousins.  No, no! said the weather gods, shaking themselves out of their long winter slumber, we can’t have promiscuous peregrinations!  Where is that blizzard, we know we put it somewhere!  —It hasn’t got up to freezing the last three days^^ and now we’re supposed to have SNOW.  Ah . . . frell.  Well, my yaktrax have been lonesome so far this winter . . . and snow will certainly keep me at home where I have nothing better to do than work. . . . ^^^ 

^ And he has to pass.  Has to.  In the first place I can’t afford a new car this year.  In the second place . . . I still don’t want a new car.  I want a new car less and less as I hear friends with shiny new cars talking about the way the computers in new cars run their lives.  And go wrong, of course.  You can learn to ignore that little flashing red light on the dashboard after the third time you’ve taken it in and paid £100 to be told there’s nothing wrong.  Not so much the robot voice continuously telling you to fasten your seatbelt/add grinchflobby fluid to the ziggury system/placate the trolls with ham sandwiches. 

^^ And my chocolate cosmos hate being indoors, so they’ll probably frelling croak this year too.  Arrrgh.  Furthermore, my gladiola bulbs arrived today.  Gladiola bulbs are tender.  Mail warehouses are rarely heated.  At least mail warehouses where tender plants are held are rarely heated.  Arrrgh.  Don’t these mail-order bozos ever, you know, listen to the weather forecast?  Hey, guys, we’re supposed to get three foot of snow tomorrow!  Let’s ship all the banana trees!  

^^^ Ajlr

I also wondered what the reaction of the hellhounds had been to the new Amazingly Loud Voice? 

Chaos has always found my singing . . . disturbing.  Darkness has always assumed that it’s just another daft human activity.  It is perhaps hard on hellhounds that both at the mews and the cottage their bed is next to the piano/cheap electric keyboard.  Chaos gets up and moves toward me cautiously, staring at my distorted face for clues.  GO LIE DOWN YOU WRETCHED DOG. 

            I’m more worried about the neighbours.  Do you remember—probably nearly a year ago now—I was fretting about singing at the cottage, where my office, with the keyboard in it, has the common wall with my semi-detached neighbour?  (The keyboard itself, plugged into headphones, is silent.)  The wall is floor-to-ceiling with bookshelves, but I can still hear my neighbour climbing the stairs on the other side.  Don’t worry, said Nadia, you don’t make nearly enough noise.

            I think I probably do make enough noise now.  Ah, the disadvantages of success.  I can still sing while I do the washing-up—it’s on the far side from the common wall.  I also sing out hurtling, while hellhounds pretend they don’t know me, and my impression is that people are starting to move to the opposite pavement (I used to think this was just a reaction to rampant hellhounds).  Hey, this probably happens to Deborah Voigt too.   I wish it had any effect on aggressive off lead dogs.     

** The GUARDIAN is running a publicity draw to win a full degree Open University course.  Details tomorrow.  The OU is highly thought of so I, who don’t have nearly enough to do, had an idle look through their course list.  Their language department is terrible.  French, German, Spanish, Italian, Chinese, Welsh (Welsh?^) and Latin and (classical) Greek.  That’s it?  

^ Yes, I know, good for them, Celtic languages are struggling for survival, but in the context of only six modern languages offered it seems to me a bit startling.

I have just been figuring out how much of SHADOWS I have to get through every day for the next thirty days.* 

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH.**    

* * *

* Yes, I know.  It’s already the 2^nd of February and February is a short ratbag to begin with.  But I’ve already told you I’m going to whine for a few days of March because February is indecently short.^  If my editor says ‘no’ I’ll sic Mongo on her.  

^ Ask Frederic in The Pirates of Penzance. 

** In case you’re wondering, yes, this does mean that I failed to reach my quota today.  This is of course Very Bad . . . but it’s also not at all surprising.  Or catastrophic.  (Probably.)  There are advantages to being old, wizened and cronelike in your chosen career:   your standard errors and pitfalls become familiar, as do ways of coping with same, and less blood and hysteria are spilt. 

I don’t know how common this is among the author sorority^ but one of the ways I know a story is ready to be written is that I know the first sentence, the first paragraph, the first page, the first scene.  I know where to begin.  Since my experience of writing is more about channelling or translating rather than some kind of pure feat of creation^^, and that the worst of the job is choosing the EXACT words, including what to write about and what to leave out—the famous getting character A from point B to point C problem^^^—being given a run at the obstacle to begin with is one of the ways I manage to wind myself up enough to begin.  The first few pages of the first draft usually go down relatively straightforwardly and, as I work, which is not fast, relatively fast.  Those first few pages of first draft usually feel—no, must feel—like a nice solid base . . . to start going spluuuuurgh smush GAAAAAH on, later.

In fact my first pages often change pretty dramatically over the three drafts.  I get back to the beginning#, having learnt a lot about the story and characters in writing the previous draft, and realise that while the ‘voice’ is there it’s obscured by a lot of fluff and fuddle.##  This awareness, not to say shock, tends to be most dramatic in stories told in first person, as SHADOWS is.  Yeeep, Maggie would never say that.  And then by the time I’ve got the first pages sorted (again) so that the book’s voice sounds as clear as I can get it at present, that draft is that much stronger because the first pages are . . . that much stronger.  There’s a lot leaning on the first pages.  If I haven’t got the first pages, I probably can’t write the book. 

So I’m back at those crucial first pages again now.  And this is the last draft.###  Every frelling word needs to be right.  I’m going to get words wrong because I can only write as well as I can, and I’m only too drearily mortal.  But I need to get about 99% of the words right in the first half dozen pages.  I can slip to 95% later on. 

One of the peculiarities of this business of hearing the story’s voice is recognising it as different from your own.  Well, duh.  But it makes the translation/channelling/word-choice that much hairier, because you can’t just go for saying or describing something the best, whatever ‘best’ may be, you can.  You have to do it with, and within, the story’s voice.  There are times when I CANNOT think of another word for this or that~ that fits in the story’s voice.  I can only think of how to say it in my voice.  Arrrrgh.  (So I highlight it, and keep going.)  And I’ve given myself—or no, I haven’t, the frelling Story Council has given me—a trammel and a trickiness, this book:  first person narrator, seventeen years old, in an alternative-modern world.  (At least she’s a girl.)  What I think of as my semi-forsoothly style, so any of my high-fantasy third-person-narration books, including PEGASUS~~, is the easiest base line for me the struggling scribe—although even semi-forsoothly varies from book to book because no book’s voice is like any other book’s voice.  The bright sharp individual edge of a first person narration is a lot of fun, as is trying, an especially taxing exercise in these alt-mod stories, to ride the frelling slang till it settles down enough I start understanding it—but it also means that great swathes of my own vocabulary and my own way of expressing things are gone.  Speaking of ‘yeeep’.

So.  Anyway.  I’ve done about half my necessary word-count today, but that’s not actually too bad.  I’ve got several pieces of important slang imperfectly heard for two drafts nailed at last.  I tend to ‘hear’ slang the way I ‘hear’ characters’ names, and especially when these are not words or names I know, it can take a lot of repetitions before I finally have what I need~~~. 

Onward.  Tomorrow I will catch up.  By the end of tomorrow I will have accomplished the full page count for day two, as if day one had . . . behaved.  —This sentence originally had the word ‘schedule’ in it but . . . that word and I have a matter/anti-matter relationship and I have a book to write.    

^ Or even fraternity 

^^ I wish.  I’d love to feel that I was in control.+ 

+  Yes.  I would write a sequel to SUNSHINE.  And I would have finished PEG II this year.  No, wait, I would have finished the one volume version two years ago.  No, wait . . . it was an ELEMENTALS AIR short story. . . . 

^^^ NO WE DON’T WANT TO KNOW IF IT’S A REVOLVING DOOR OR WHAT THE DOORPERSON’S UNIFORM LOOKS LIKE OR HOW MANY STEPS THERE ARE ON THE STAIR(S) OR WHAT THE COLOUR OF THE CARPET IS OR HOW MANY DOORS THERE ARE ON THE CORRIDOR OR HOW MANY GOBLINS WAITING IN THE LINEN CUPBOARD.+ 

+ An estimate of the goblins will do.  

# Remember that I tend to write three drafts serially:  first draft, beginning to end.  Second draft, beginning to end.  Third draft, beginning to . . . please the gods, end.  I will go back and make notes or minor changes for consistency mid-draft, but mostly I keep going, and what I absolutely do NOT do is get bogged down rereading and tinkering.  For me this is death and disaster.  The story tells itself to me in flow and motion.  My first priority is to keep it moving.  I will read through the final draft after it’s FINISHED and tinker then. 

## This time around this is reminding me of Nadia saying, at my first lesson, that she can hear what my voice is, and that we’re going to let it out of prison.  The most extraordinary thing about leaving New Arcadia has been the live metaphor of my throat/voice/speaking up for myself—and singing.  Nadia has always been able to get noises out of me I can’t get out of myself, but this week I swear I’m twice as loud as I was a month ago—before the sore throat closed me down.  Twice as loud even when it’s only me reminding myself to relax my tongue and jaw and to let the air all the way in and to engage. 

            Wheeeeee. 

### I hope. 

~ Of course I am also afflicted with Menopause Brain. 

~~ Despite the rabid gremlin infestation of other aspects of PEGASUS. 

~~~ CHARACTERS MUMBLE.  And since I’m mostly a ghost in their world saying ‘would you repeat that please’ doesn’t work.  At best they probably stare at me and wonder what the cold patch in the room is.

YES. 

DONE. 

I just sent the finished second draft of SHADOWS to Merrilee and my editor.  Pressed that email button.  Zap.

            And I’m so tired I could sleep for a week.  Except I’m not going to sleep for a week. *   I am going to take hellhounds on a long country hurtle tomorrow morning, I am going to order some plants for my garden(s) tomorrow afternoon**, and then I am going to go RING BELLS at Forza tomorrow evening.

            And I will start on SHADOWS’ third and final draft on Thursday.  Which I have promised for the end of February.***

            But at this moment I am falling down with tiredness.  †

* * *

 * Well, maybe I can sleep for a week between now and tomorrow morning?  Has anyone figured this out yet?  It’s not quite the thirty-six hour day (or thereabouts) we all want, it’s just a little bulge off to one side about a little extra sleep. . . .  

** The backlog of plant catalogues with corners of pages turned down has become a bit extreme.  Also I have empty space to fill.  There is nothing more beautiful to a gardener than empty space.  

*** But I’ve already begun whining for a few days of March because February is so short. 

† But I bet I could sing just a little before I fell down.