House of Forgotten Thoughts

Thanks to memegarden's kind gift, I went to 826 Seattle's Write Like I Do last night, this month being a two hour workshop on historical writing. (The series is aimed at adults, with proceeds used as a fundraiser for the youth programs.)

The guest author was Elizabeth Kostova, described in the ad as the author of the new book, The Swan Thieves. Whatever. I hadn't heard of either. When I arrived for the workshop, there were two heaps of books. The larger was for The Swan Thieves. The smaller was for...

The Historian, a book that's been OMGOMGOMG at the top of my unread reading list for two years. The exhaustively researched doorstop that's a vampire mystery ranging across three historical eras and heavy into Romania. Oh, that Elizabeth Kostova. Oh my.

So I blew my play money for the month getting signed copies of her work, and had an awesome workshop, in which I got to stand up and say, "I'm M_____ and I write 18th century vampire stuff, so I really need to be here." When she singled me out later as the only person who confessed to already writing historicals and asked me what drew me to the setting, I said, "Bluntly? The clothes." Which gave more people permission to talk about liking the glamor of an era instead of all serious social issues.

She was a great workshop leader. Everything was well timed, she kept us on-schedule and made sure people got fair chances to talk, and was unilaterally supportive of whatever we said we were interested in writing. She stayed a half hour after the official closing time answering questions about the writing and publishing process, as did her agent. I had a spectacular night.

I also made a buddy, the other person there half an hour early who also prefers LJ as a primary form of social communication! Yay! Hi, mimerki! (Edit: Oh, you call me lovely in your journal! Yes, you're lovely too.)

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New prompt generator: "Crushed aardvark falls regarding a biscuit."

Using less than standard U.S. definitions of "biscuit", "regarding", and "fall". And wishing I'd thought longer about how to draw a chocolate chip cookie with the same perspective as the rest of the picture. For the record, anvils are surprisingly hard to draw. But I'm proud of the contract, and of the aardvark paws.

The new generator isn't filtered for drawable concepts, so I have to refresh more often, but it includes phrase, sentence, and paragraph options for more randomtastic flexibility.

Writing group went well last night, and we got to critique what turned out to be a surprisingly enjoyable and complex story.

Then I went home, found tasty chewy author-snacks of my own, and stayed up too late doing the Pronounification editing pass to keep ahead of my lovely and methodical reader. (It's a bit like laying cartoon train tracks.)

This morning I had a terribly entertaining dream in which I was sitting at the writing group's round table, in the Hub. (Yes, the Torchwood Hub.) My critiquers were an anonymous female labelled "fanfiction author", very earnest and sitting forward in her chair, and Jack Harkness, sprawling back in his. They had both read through a large chunk of my work without making detailed critiques so we could discuss the big picture.

Fanfic author was complaining because I had ended some scenes before they actually got into detailed sex. I said, "Well, sometimes it just didn't call for it. I mean, I've written my share of NC-17. I'm not squeamish. But sometimes the rhythm of the story works better without going into that part."

Jack nodded, obviously in agreement but not interested in expanding on the topic. Fanfic author still looked dissatisfied with a shade of disappointed.

I hate leaving people unappeased. I said, "Mind you, if there's something you specifically wanted, I do take requests."

Jack turned on The Grin. I was startled by my mind's ability to call up that expression, which it can't do when I'm awake. I also had no idea my breath could come up short in dreams. "Is that so."

"In writing," I added.

No, that was not an unambiguous statement. I let it hang. I could see him debating the best timing on scribbling down an extremely inappropriate request.

Fanfic author cleared her throat. "Let's stay on topic here."

I thought, You're just jealous, but I didn't feel too smug or anything. (It's not like he wouldn't go after her next week.) Then the sexual tension woke me up. Gnyargh.

Me: I was thinking of folding some laundry.

J: Well, there's laundry in the drier.

Me: There's laundry over there. [We have several clean but unfolded baskets in our room at the moment.]

J: (in a sing-song) There's laundry in the attic, and there's laundry on the stair.

Me: I don't know that song.

J: That's because I just made it up.
Ohhh, there's laundry in the drier and there's laundry over there,
There's laundry in the attic, and there's laundry on the stair...
I don't know the rest.

Yesterday, debriefing after watching Flash Gordon, I was talking, awestruck, about the various sexy plot archetypes presented without any whitewash in the movie.

J: And, of course, the thinly veiled homoeroticism of "Sticking our arms into things with Timothy Dalton."
Me: ... Yes. Exactly.

By the way, I am now awestruck that I have never heard Barbarella and Flash Gordon mentioned in the same breath, since they're the differently gendered flavors of the same movie.

I like that movie very much, and it seems like a weirdly well-kept secret. I've heard Barbarella was 'camp' for years. No one ever told me 'camp' meant 'every brazen sex and heroism cliche rolled into an hour and a half.' Every one. I blushed like crazy.

It makes me want to cast my pen aside in shame and despair for writing both too much and too little, though. If I'm going to write straight out of the Id, why can't I be as shameless as Flash Gordon, nobly executed, and Barbarella, trapped in the city of pure sexy evil? And if I am writing things that strike that nerve in myself, even more subtly, is my writing going to be caught out as the cheesy fantasy-fulfillment that it is?

Then I take deep breaths and remind myself that people keep watching Flash Gordon and Barbarella, so apparently the Id still sells.

Okay, this is really silly, but I've written one utterly gruesome story that, until yesterday, only the supremely unsquickable meowse had read. (I told passionandsoul and perhaps a couple others the premise, though.) I only gave myself permission to put it down on paper because I'd seen passionandsoul write something just as scary. But I still didn't feel entirely settled about it. Proud of it personally, but not sure what anyone else would think.

I have been cringing internally, waiting for my other readers to hit that story and say something like, "That was... different. Not my kink, and I'm afraid it weakens the rest with its overdramatic gruesomeness. Aside from these two lines of dialogue that might be good somewhere else, it should really go. Also, EW AND YOU SHOULD BE LOCKED UP AND I WILL HAVE NIGHTMARES AND EW!"

Yesterday, I got a comment on it. And it did not say that. And I am happy.

I am going to the No Safewords Writers' Group tonight, armed with several manuscript-format copies of an 18-page short story. Which I will hand to people. People with pens, and opinions.

I decided to start with something from the middle of my writing, which stands alone, doesn't require excessive explanation, and is one of the stronger candidates for selling to a magazine if the novel doesn't survive or this scene is cut from it. It's a story that I am confident is sexy and solidly written, with no weird pronoun contortions or point-of-view shifts.

When I see how I react to people's critiques on this fairly safe territory, then we can start talking about The Goddamn Quest (which I continue to be convinced should Just Go, but I don't know how to get rid of it without shaking the foundation of the rest).

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee...

Since I last posted, just 15 days shy of a year ago today, I have taken a number of exciting and fulfilling classes, graduated from library school with a perfect attendance record, done an internship with a non-profit that promotes the humanities in everyday life, written most of a dirty novel, gotten a second boyfriend who is meeting a lot of my visceral needs, and become gainfully employed in my chosen profession. (No, I'm not working in a library, but I'm doing data cleaning in a company that provides support services for libraries.)

I feel awkwardly like everything I do is unfinished. I still haven't looked straight-on at my grade report for my last quarter of grad school, I left some very large loose ends at the non-profit internship, I gave test decks of cards for my math game to teachers but then haven't checked back in with them.

I'm managing to stay focused on the writing, but I'm getting to the point where I need to do much more aggressive editing, and I think I need to define a victory condition. "I can rest on my laurels if I..."

At the moment, I think the victory condition may be:
1) Learn enough about how things get published to find out if all or part of my work is commercially publishable.
1a) If it is, make at least three serious attempts to get all or part of it commercially published.
2) If it is not, or if I get tired of rejection slips, self-publish online in a respectable format on a server that I pay for or otherwise control.

For those of you who already have logins to my writing wiki, hey! Come say hi! And if you've been browsing without telling me, comment, you bastards! For those of you who don't yet have logins, if you're interested in giving substantive feedback on some 1780's very gay vampire smut, give a holler. (Edit: 1780's, not 1880's. Pre-Rev Europe, not Victoriana.)

Special thanks to maribou and memegarden, the first two winners of the "Actually leaving comments in the wiki" award, to capnexposition and hesperide for feeding me and talking about my work in person, and meowse for reading every single word of my work out loud to me and very patiently not reading ahead.

Regarding staying focused on my writing, it looks suspiciously like the pattern when I am obsessed with any other piece of media. It's just harder because I can't talk about it with very many people, because a lot of people know from Xander and Willow, but not a lot of people can appreciate a conversation about Aldo, because they haven't met him. But just so you know, I'm a little obsessed, and my postings may reflect that. Brace yourselves.

I may still be sporadic. I'm dealing with serious social anxiety and not checking email often. I could use some help staying in touch. Phone calls help.