skzbrust

My fellow members of the Society of Voluptuaries who were with me at the con type much faster than I do, so they took on the task of attempting to transcribe the panels. Which they should be finishing up for sharing any day now. (Hint, hint.) My job was to write down anything that particularly jumped out or caught my interest (or that Steve wanted written down, since he had neither laptop nor analog input devices at hand). In the interest of avoiding other writing work, I present the tidbits noted from the first Friday evening panel. Feel free to discuss any or all in comments.

Panel 1: From Cool Idea to Story

“It’s not about the characters, it’s about the relationship between two characters.” — Marissa Lingen

“I like a last line that leaves you wondering while still wrapping things up in the story.” — Ellen Klages

“The scale of the beginning dictates the ending.” — Will Shetterly

“The beginning you have creates very specific expectations.” — Alec Austin

“Narrative proprioception. ” — Ellen

“I think it’s a good thing to have a closet full of unfinished story ideas.” — Will

“Your trunk stories are like the nurse logs in a forest ecology.” — Mris, quoting John M. Ford

“Part of the art of writing is making everything in the story count.” — Jim Frenkel

“Marissa and Ellen both use a lot of touch-oriented words in their descriptive speech, and both also write their stories out of order. Is there a connection or just coincidence?”

“Sometimes I like to write down my scenes on 3×5 cards so that I can arrange them in front of me and touch and move them around.” — question from audience, answer from Ellen

(Originally posted at Words Words Words by reesa. Please leave any comments there.)

http://www.attract-mode.net/2008/07/03/writing-update-and-a-strange-sense-of-history

http://www.attract-mode.net/?p=722

June was a bad bad month for the writing. It was a great month for learning what not to do, though. Let’s see if I can apply the lessons in July.

I’m going to skip past the section I was stuck on, and start up at the next scene I feel confident about, and just crazy-write, whatever seems like a good idea, within the boundaries of what I already know. I was torn between skipping the stuck part and rereading what i’ve written so far in the hopes of getting unstuck, but I’ve had bad luck with rereading  in the past, and I haven’t skipped a hard part since, oh, a long time ago. Ten years? Possibly ten years.

Wow. Remembering the story in which I skipped a hard part triggered a rush of memories about the house we had in New Mexico. I apparently visualized a scene right before the scene I skipped as being set in the hallway of that house. It’s been… 14 years since I was there? It was the last house of my family that felt like home. It doesn’t seem that long ago. 12 years since I left college… And so few stories I’ve really developed since then.

That’s one thing I’ve learned, or tested and confirmed, anyhow. I need to write my stories fast. I need to work on them everyday, including weekends and holidays. I don’t quite know how to manage that, but I know that every weekend I allowed myself (and I did allow them in my planning) made Mondays hard.

I need to outline a bit more than I did for this story, too. I did a ’snowflake’ outline for Citadel, but I skimped for this story. And it just means I’ll have to do more rewriting and revision. And additions. I may even add another point of view.

http://www.parenthetical.net/2008/07/03/sequel-summer-kiki-strike-the-empresss-tomb-by-kirsten-miller/

During the school year, I mostly read for work: how will I know what to give my kids if I don’t tear through as many YA novels as possible? Consequently, I almost never read sequels; I got enough of a taste with the first book, so I feel guilty if I linger. This summer’s reading project is to catch up on the sequels to some books I loved.

Full disclosure: in elementary school, my best friend and I desperately wanted to be detectives. We read the entire Trixie Belden series repeatedly, and played Trixie and Honey with our Barbies. We had maps of each other’s houses and yards, with all the best spying spots marked. We even scoured the obituaries looking for anything that seemed related to her neighbor’s plot to smuggle TVs (…don’t ask).

So holy crap, did I love the first Kiki Strike book (Inside the Shadow City, as reviewed on the excellent Bookshelves of Doom)! I book-talked it non-stop to my middle schoolers before our Book Fair. All I had to do was read the back copy out loud, and they were hooked — we sold out within two periods and had to order stacks of extra copies. “Five delinquent Girl Scouts, a million hungry rats, one secret city beneath Manhattan, and a butt-kicking girl superspy… welcome to the world of Kiki Strike.” How can you not want to read that immediately? (The fact that their teacher said “butt-kicking” in class had nothing to do with it, I’m sure.)

The Empress’s Tomb is only slightly less awesome. The plot was a little more scattered, the resolution of the mysteries a little less tight, and the Harry Potter-esque “all my friends have deserted me” middle of the book was too drawn-out.

But seriously, “only slightly less awesome” than Inside the Shadow City is still more awesome than most things you’ve read this year. I am totally addicted, and if you were the sort of kid who had dossiers on your classmates and spied on your little brother (…you know, hypothetically), you will be, too.

Read-alikes: I never was a fan of Nancy Drew; Trixie Belden was way more badass. (Why yes, there is Trixie Belden fanfic, why do you ask?) Her forty-some books were published between 1948 and 1986. For more recent spunky girl ass-kicking, you absolutely must read Bloody Jack by L. A. Meyer. It’s Alanna on the 19th century open seas — what’s not to love?

mizkit

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Current Mood

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anxious

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I just had one of those “Oh god, I’ve lost it all,” moments, when my writing computer sort of took a breath on start-up, and quietly shut down again.

It booted properly the second time–and, in fact, I’d have lost maybe two chapters of work at most anyway–but you can bet your sweet tush that I have made a backup of Nook and stored it in two, soon to be three, different locations. *heart palpitations*

Ted got up at 8. I thought I’d rolled over and he’d come back upstairs to take a shower, but it turned out an hour had passed between those two things happening. I didn’t get up until nearly 10, which is extremely unlike me these days, and which has sort of thrown me off. Dragged myself to write, and it became clear that the setup for my office wasn’t going to work; I was just getting too much brightness from outside, and couldn’t counter it with the lamps, so I was getting, if not headaches, at least consistent grumpies from the light differential. So I rearranged, after which came the computer scare. I clearly need to go have lunch and … I don’t know. That sentence should end with “write”, but right now I think just managing food will be an accomplishment.

Yoga class tonight. I think it’ll be good for me.