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As I was wasted when we returned home last night, I thought I would wait until my head was on a bit straighter to write a better update than the reactive one in my personal journal. The news that we’ve just received from Bryon’s mom over the phone is even more optimistic than yesterday’s prognosis.

For those of you who don’t have access to the other journal, here’s what actually happened: Craig was having a stint put in (a fairly routine operation) when the instrument they were using to do it hit a calcium build-up in one of his arteries. It skidded off of that and cut his artery, and then he had a clot, a seizure, he stopped breathing, he was shocked, they put in another stint, he had another clot, yadda, yadda, yadda.

The doctors did the ultimate best they could and kept him from dying. He is in some pain now because of the life-saving CPR and electric shock. However, his heart is good to go. The docs aren’t going to let him go home until he can breath normally (he’s tender, so he’s breathing shallowly), and he can take care of himself (no one is going home scared or worried, they assure him and his wife). He has some good muscle relaxing dope, and he’s coming along.

Yesterday things were kind of tense, and today things are better with better news. Now, we can return you to your regular programming. That kind of excitement we don’t need, except maybe in fiction if it makes sense with the plot and isn’t overwrought.

It is, however, kind of cool that the story has a happy ending, in the face of what could have happened. I used to think it was just Bryon, but I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that the Stump brothers in general are lucky.

It should give you an idea how draining it was when I tell you Bryon and I slept for 11 hours today. Yay.

Catherine

This topic is going around, and because I wrote a monstrous response over in Jim Hines’ website, I reproduce it here.

What I want to do is publish, not self publish. My writing goals run more toward those that a publisher can satisfy.

I want a better shot at long term staying power. I want money to come to me, rather than having to invest in a start-up business. I want some modicum of promotional support.

I want a publisher’s distribution network. I want to network with a stable of writers that write under the same umbrella.

I would like to have my books in book stores. I want to walk into shops and take pictures of my books in the wild, without me having to finagle to get them onto the shelves. I would like readers I don’t have to wrangle with to get.

I would like a shot at writing a book again. I would like to sell a book on spec, rather than having to go through the uncertainty of writing an entire book and hoping it will sell every time.

I want the awesome power of an editor to make my book better. I know that a good editor can work wonders for any writer. I want that partnership, especially because editors are not easy on you. I am grateful for the editors who have worked with me on my published projects thus far, making me more aware that it takes a village–um–publishing company. I want to be pushed.

I am willing to work at it for a few years until I get these things. If it takes less time, groovy. If more, well, at least I like writing, and that’s a good reason to write.

I believe that if you work at it, you hone your craft, you keep submitting, and you listen to good editors and agents, you’ll get there. After all, I didn’t get to the point I am in academia without a few years of work either.

I do have friends who have decided to self-publish, and I think their goals are different than mine. I respect that. What makes you happy is what you should do.

The things I want to accomplish in my writing career are more likely if I follow the route to working with an established publisher.

So yeah, color me patient.

Catherine

Cross posted from my personal journal…

You know those release forms you sign before you go in for surgery? The ones with the horrible things on them that the medical staff will tell you are less risky than the surgery? Those forms are there for a reason.

Two weeks ago Bryon’s older brother Craig had a mild heart attack. He spent a day in ICU, they checked him over, and because of some of the drugs they used to treat him, they scheduled him for a stint in around two weeks. No one was worried. The procedure was supposed to be an easy operation, he would stay in the hospital overnight, and he would come the next day.

Except it didn’t go quite like that.

While the doctors were putting in the first stint, Craig developed a blood clot. The doctors resuscitated him on the operating table, and then they had to put in another stint. Which led to another blood clot.

Bryon’s parents called us last night after they’d spent the day at the hospital on this little emotional roller coaster. Craig is in ICU, they figure, for about a week under observation. They’re both in their 80s, and they’re pretty wrung out, so we’re going do to the old homestead to see to their needs, and of course Craig and Craig’s family. They must all be so worried.

Unlike my failed family, Bryon’s family is strong and close. Craig is the child Phyllis and Neal understand the most. He’s the most like them. He’s the one that lives closest. He has the same philosophy in life, and he’s the one that helps them. It’s not that Phyllis and Neal don’t love Mike and Bryon, but I strongly suspect Craig is their favorite son.

I’m glad he’s still alive. We almost lost him yesterday. He’s around 55, and he was a smoker until his first mild heart attack at 49. Please quit if you’re smoking. I’m just saying.

I’ll be away from the computer this weekend then. Stay safe and healthy, everyone. I’ll be back Monday.

Catherine

The Winter the Troll Danced with Old Nick is now solid at 4 chapters. That said, I just ditched about four scenes which, well, frankly, didn’t add much to the story.

And I’m going to be writing a great deal of new stuff very shortly. With things happening. Regrettably, I think what this means is that about half of what I wrote the first time around I can keep. I can also keep the godmother alliance stuff. And he Widow will still eat more kids. Yum-my!

Other cool new things will happen. Like:

Manuel will take a trip to the other Hulder camp, and we’ll learn more about Wort and Jensina. I hope for resolution there.

The same general plot thrust will be true with the troll witch plot.

David and Grant will fight a lot more. They should. David needs to feel that Grant has the emotion of a stone (get it? Trolls?). This will all come together nicely at the end in the climax, which I can still keep too..

Nick will frame Siegfried as the bad guy. Siegfried and Quartz will get all angsty. Quartz will be an active force for Feldspar. Intrigue runs amuck.

I’ve just got to get this all wrapped up in a nice active YA package.

I like writing. It’s *so* easy. (/sarcasm)

Catherine

On the writer accountability front:

75 pages of troll story rewritten. The cuts will soon be surgical.

Oliver Toddle back out. To Clarkesworld. I know, I know, but I need to get a rejection from them eventually, yes?

Point River back out to Pedestal Magazine.

And that’s where we are for the week so far…

Catherine

I actually like the whole process of getting rejected and shooting something back out there, right away. It really makes me feel like an active, real writer.

Well, that and the writing of course. Yeah. Writing. As much as I can. You betcha.

What makes you feel like a real writer? Dare I ask that question?

Catherine

Have you seen this yet? I’m betting you have, because I’ve been on vacation, but if you haven’t, here’s Dean Wesley Smith on rewriting.

Confession: While in Tempe, I took a real vacation. No writing, no working, no nothing but reading and Disc World convention. Not a bad idea all around, considering.

And now, back at it. Writing will be this afternoon, tomorrow evening, and Thursday before I meet with Cat at 8 about squids. That means maybe I can get some new snippet here this weekend.

I’ve been reading some interesting things that I wouldn’t normally read, mostly through the auspices of the SF book club, and trying to get a feel for what some of the people I know write. Here’s some surprising results because of that.

Lies of Locke Lamora: Expected to hate this. Not really a fan of high fantasy anymore. Reversal–loved it!

Continue reading “Reading Against Type”

Do you want to know about administrating Rosetta Stone? That’s where I’ve been.

Do you want to see me in Tempe, Az at North American Discworld? That’s where I’m going.

No? Let’s do this instead.

***

I want to link you to Greg Frost’s recent journal concerning the kidnapping of Jaycee Lee Dugard who recently returned home after being held for 19 years by her kidnapper, who raped her and fathered her two children. Greg’s thoughts about Jaycee and Shadowbridge are worth your time.

The situation makes me think. A lot. About my own childhood. Many of you have heard me allude to the abuse in my background, both parents, full guns a-blazin’. Unfortunately, when you grow up in the world of abuse, that is baseline normal. You make strange, strange assumptions that the rest of the world is like the one you know. As you begin to understand that this is not the case, your world stretches and dialates.

What helped me refocus myself during such a situation was that I developed a rapacious capacity for mythology and folklore at a very early age. I imagined an alternative life for myself. I was the one who didn’t fit in my environment, like the heroes of mythology, or the misplaced princesses in the woods. It is true that I came to see myself more as the misfit in the stories and tales as I was older, but my youngest expression of a fantasy life was to imagine that someone would find me and take me away from where I was because I was truly something else.

I can’t speak for Jaycee’s situation. I know that in mine, if there hadn’t been the old stories, and then the fiction written by minds that were rich and speculative, I probably wouldn’t have gained the ability to imagine myself anywhere else, and it wouldn’t have led me to eventually recreate myself as something else. It gave me something else to focus on besides depression and despair.

If I can wish Jaycee and her children anything, I can wish them the hope I drew from fantasy novels, the certainty I gained from them that, regardless of what happened around me, I was something more and better than horror and exploitation, and the ability, even though it took a lot of work, of truly becoming an entity apart from where I started.

Catherine

That would be today’s writing, then.

I revised the troll battle, and half of chapter 4. While I added 500 new words, I whacked two scenes.

Today’s writing question: when you are writing, do you find yourself with boring explanation? One of the reasons I’m reworking these chapters is because I realized they were like watching an old school Star Trek film. Blah, blah, blah, planet fall, blah, blah, plan of attack, blah!

I realize that readers would prefer action to explanation, especially the young crowd that this book will no doubt be marketed to. Of course, there are scenes that are not active, but keep the plot moving, but so much of the last draft seems to be me figuring out what’s going on, punctuated with some action. I’ll be cutting a substantial amount, and replacing it with things that happen whether someone’s sat around a table to suss it out or not.

Just curious about whether or not this happens to you.

Catherine