Archive for September, 2008
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A very good writing day
There are average writing days and there are good ones. And there are very good ones. Today was very good.
The first part was that it was a productive day. I cleaned up chapter 15, bringing me to page 449 of a manuscript I really liked, and began the clean up on Chapter 16. I’m enjoying these characters tremendously, while trying to keep a lid on the story. I said Dragon Keeper was going to be a single volume stand-alone book, and it will be.
It will just be a rather fat single-volume stand-alone book.
Then, by real mail, I received my copy of Soleil’s L’Assassin Royal. I’ve been excited about this happening, but I wasn’t prepared for the rush I got actually holding it in my hands. It is beautiful. Gaudin and Sieruac have outdone themselves. This is a glossy covered hardback graphic novel, with lovely endpapers. I looked at them for a few moments before I even began to turn the pages. There are so many good bits in here, so many captured moments that I can’t begin to list them off. Nosy. Fitz’s first encounter with the Fool. Molly. Chade as Lady Thyme. It is just amazing and wondrous.
There is a small fly in ointment. In this first edition, one of the pages is reversed. Pages 12 and 13 are transposed. It will, of course, be corrected. And having survived a book with an entire dropped chapter(!!!) I think I can weather this with equanimity.
As if that were not enough for a great day, I then received an email from Yanni at Subterranean Press. Attached was the cover art of A Fantasy Medley. It is both lovely and striking! With a bit of luck, I’ll figure out how to upload it to my pictures and others will be able to view it there.
So. Just one of those days when, despite sawdust everywhere from the kitchen remodel, kids underfoot, a psycho pigeon trying to move into my office and a cranky Siamese cat, I still feel like I really am a writer. And it’s all worth it.
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Win a copy of the Graphic Novel of Farseer!
Unfortunately, this promotion is only for residents of France, Belgium and Switzerland!
The graphic novel from Soleil will be released on September 23. In conjunction with that, I’ve received the following note from Pat of Pat’s Fantasy Blogspot.
Best of luck to all who enter!
Robin
Hi Robin,
Hope all is well! Just wanted to let you know that the giveaway for the graphic adaptation is now live on the blog. Here’s the link: http://fantasyhotlist.blogspot.com/2008/09/des-instructions-en-franais-suivront.html
It’s only open to residents of France, Belgium and Switzerland, though…
All the best,
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Blackberries and three point hitches
I went down to vist the old house today, to put it in order before winter comes. We meant to do so much down there this year, and actually accomplished very little of it. So it remains what it has been since the 1930’s, a very large chicken house that was turned into a people house when the original farm house burned down.
I tidied away some of the stuff that needed to be put away. Then I realized that there were the end of the year September blackberries still on the bushes. So I took an old green plastic juice pitcher and went out to pick some. These are a special kind of blackberries for me. The August ones are when the bushes are heavy with fruit, and the kids are still out of school and helping me pick. They are the ones we pick by the bucketful, to make jam and pies. The kids are there, eating as much as they pick, as is only right. They pick for a while and then play and then come back to picking. By the time we are finished, hands are purple and shirts and splotched and everyone is hot and sweaty and scratched. And we’ve had a wonderful day.
But the September berries are the end of the year berries, the last one on the bushes. There aren’t as many, and the kids are all back in school, so I’m alone with just the bushes and the dogs and the birds. I think the berries taste different. They’ve absorbed the last hot days of summer, and they are sweeter for that. There are enough for jam, only enough to fill half the green pitcher. These are top-of-the-oatmeal berries, eaten as they are, just tasting of blackberries and summer. It’s peaceful to be picking them and thinking deep thoughts about nothing.
And then Fred hollers at me to come give him a hand with the pry bar.
We have a small Kubota tractor. Not a lawn tractor, but a little farm tractor. It has a 3 point hitch on the back. The point of a three point hitch, the reason it exists, is that it makes it really easy to change implements. Fred was going to take the mower off today, so we could change the blades and lube all the fittings for winter.
But the three point hitch just wouldn’t let go.
Is there anything more frustrating than a labor-saving device that suddenly decides to suck up the whole afternoon by being stubborn?
It was an afternoon of pry bars, levers, three-in-one oil, cotter pins, and grease. It was an unseasonable 80-plus degrees out in the full sunlight. Bright light and heat, two of my most unfavorite things. But it had to be done. Of course, we didn’t have the size of socket wrench that would have made it easier. The manual for the tractor said to do one thing, the manual for the attachment said something else. They both made it sound so easy.
It wasn’t.
Finally, we got the mower unhooked from the tractor and went through the hitch, lubing all moving parts. And then we put it all back together and it worked.
And next time we go down, we’ll replace the blades.
The funny part of it is that I had a good time. Nothing makes me feel so competent as wrestling with something that is completely mechanical and winning.
So, tonight I have grease stained jeans, and my fingernails are even more broken than usual.
But I’m satisfied. And there are September blackberries to go on the breakfast oatmeal tomorrow.
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Setting new goals
Well, September is upon us, and the deadline for Dragon Keeper is December 1. Which means that actually the publishers want it by December 31st, so I set my personal deadline a month early. That allows me that final month to do all my ‘go backs’ and fixes after I let it cool for a week or so.
The pace I’ve been setting up to now is 1000 words a day. That’s every day, no exceptions. IF I were actually faithful to that, I’d have 365,000 words by the end of a year. But I’m human, and sometimes I’m sick or lazy or the computer goes to the shop or whatever. Nonetheless, I’ve actually done a pretty good job of keeping up with that this year.
One prompter I use is a pocket sized notebook on my desk. It has the date, the page numbers I wrote that day, and a word count for the day. It helps me on those nights when I really want to push back from the desk and go to bed.
But now it’s time to turn on the steam. As of tomorrow, when the grandkids are back in school for full days, I’m going to be going for 2000 words a day. I’m putting this out in public as a good way to make me grit my teeth and stay up until that is what I get each night.
1000 words works out to about 3 manucript pages a day. Now I’ll be going for 6. I think that 20 manuscript pages makea pretty good chapter, so this is going to also increase the pace at which I’m writing the book. Chapters will go by faster.
I’m doing something a bit different in the way I’m telling this story. Farseer and Tawny Man were very linear and chronological, with few gaps in time. Dragon Keeper will have leaps, some of days, a few of years. It lets me go, for example, from a courtship to the character as someone in an established relationship a few years later. But I already think that I’m going to be doing a number of ‘go backs’ to insert more bridges in those gaps.
I’m already looking forward to 2009. In my mind, it’s The Year of the Short Story. I’ve got so many ideas stacked up. I’m trying to decide how to undertake creating new works for the collection. Spend the first months just writing stories, and the next six months tweaking and improving them? Write, polish, and move on to the next one? It’s going to be a very different year, unlike anything I’ve ever done before.
So, wish me luck on wrapping up this book, and on plunging into shorter works next year.
Robin
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