*sigh*

It’s not really that bad. I think I just left it at the theater on Sunday. And I basically remember the schedule. But! The exciting part is that the schedule is all about finishing my manuscript and querying it by next Monday! Yup! I’m that close to finishing my third novel. Biiiiiig thanks to Jenna and the Pitts for helping me see what I need to do to whip it into shape. I’m really proud of it! Watch out NYC, here I come!

Though I must defend one of the names, Cash, as something that I have used for a character in a novel. But in my book, it’s the nickname of someone who’s real name is Cassius (a Latin name pronounced CASH-us (or CASS-ee-us in old, old Latin, but most people use the medieval Latin pronunciation now)), not a name in it’s own right. And if my name was Cassius, I might shorten it, too.

Otherwise… I’m finally at work on my epic fantasy of Heaven and Hell whose name I’m not telling the general public because I’m so dern excited about it. (I usually am lukewarm on my titles, but this one was so obvious and perfect… and I keep checking Amazon because I’m frankly shocked that it’s not already the title of a book.) Anywho, I was having a rough time because in the story there’s this initial brouhaha that happens… and then there’s a loooong time where stuff happens which is important, but the enormity of the stakes aren’t yet evident. And as any writer knows, stakes are key. But, thanks to my spate of fantasy reading, I’ve figured it out. Multiple plot threads. Der… I’ve been reading too many urban fantasies and romances where the plot necessarily centers on one or two people, and really, that’s not gonna work for this story. So now I have the plot line that’s going on in Heaven (the original one) and the plot line that’s going on in Hell (the new one that’s got very obvious stakes)… and eventually they are going to come together at the magical twisty moment in which the intensity of the stakes for all concerned get ratcheted up to epic.

I think I’d been worried that I wasn’t capable of balancing multiple plot lines (I almost wrote plot loins… I must be in RWA), but now that I’ve accepted the challenge, it’s really exciting and words are just flowing onto each new blank page. I’ve found that I need to work on one story and then open a new document and write another one, and then I’ll start putting them together. But I LOVE characters. I love their diversity and their strengths and weaknesses. I love bad guys with bits of good and good guys who fail. I love how viewpoint often determines who’s the hero and who’s the villain. And in a story about betrayal and forgiveness, having multiple viewpoints is exactly what I needed to add facets and shadings to questions of what is good and what is evil.

So… I’ve started on a blurb already, and here it is (and, OK, nobody reads my blog, so I’ll include the title):

The Judas Club is an epic fantasy of Heaven and Hell where angels, demons, the damned and the blessed struggle for identity and meaning after the worths of their souls have been judged – and the story of the Black Angels who straddle both worlds, braving Hell to offer the lost a second chance at salvation. (Here I need to figure out how to sum up in one or two sentences what the main characters’ GMCs (goal/motivation/conflicts) are (and there’re six of them – two Black Angels, a soul in Heaven, a soul in Hell, a demon and an angel). I’ll likely have to pick a couple and leave out the rest.) Until Jeshua of Bethlehem brings them all together to once again turn the establishment on its head – and dare the most dangerous rescue mission in the history of Heaven or Hell.

Wanna read it? I know I want to write it! It’s my fourth novel, and I’m drafting it now!!

The Way of Shadows by Brent Weeks

And I mean LOST. If you like urban fantasy or you’re willing to try fantasy but you’re not big on monsters or you just really want something to completely suck all of your time and existence for about a week, you really need to read Brent Weeks’ The Way of Shadows. It came out about a year and a half ago, and I just read it on the rec of one of my ex-students and wow. SO good. The only problem with it, is that it’s 688 pages.

And it’s the first book in a trilogy.

And you won’t want to stop after the first one.

So I’m almost done with book 2 Shadow’s Edge (which is also well over 600 pages and I started last night immediately after turning the last page of TWoS and will finish before I go to sleep tonight and, I’m sure, start book 3), and I’m shocked I got my nose out of the book long enough to write this. It has one of the COOLEST protagonists I’ve read in a looooong time. I am completely lusting over Kylar Stern, and this isn’t even vaguely a romance novel – it’s a fantasy about assassins in a fictional world called Midcyru and awar that is raged between a mafia run country and the invading barbarians from the north with their goddess of death. So wicked awesome (and does at times require a pretty strong stomach).

This book has also made me think about a lot of writing type things and what is Weeks doing so right.

This book is a great study in the power of secondary characters. If I had one issue with this book it’s that I wish I’d written down a list of characters as I encountered them because omg there’s like five million. And I should have crossed them off as they die (which would be most of the list, but you know, that’s apparently the way of fantasy now… Thank George!).

But from a writing perspective, he’s done a great job of giving them the work of making this gritty world real – so that even when our assassin hero does crappy things, he is still a hero compared to the rest of the world. And I can’t BELIEVE how much I let the main character get away with… and I still, as I’ve mentioned, love him. He’s a freaking assassin, for crying out loud. I have never in my life thought that was a profession I’d get behind, even fictionally.

But the secondary characters can do… anything. They can be depressingly hopeless… and teach the hero a lesson. They can make the completely wrong decision… and then when the hero goes with them out of love or loyalty, it’s no longer the protagonist’s fault for being too stupid to live, it’s his strength for being so connected. They are so useful to a writer. I need to think and concentrate on that. I guess in my writing world we’re so encouraged to have the hero and/or heroine on every page that it’s hard to give secondaries their glory.  But dang, Weeks does it. And I’m always excited to see the protagonist again… but I’m not sorry when I’m involved with somebody else, like I so often am in other books.

I’ve rarely read a book with so dern many well fleshed out, fascinating secondary characters. Like, I need a map with all of them sometimes, but once I remember which one this guy is again, it’s awesome.

So… if you have a reasonably strong stomach, read this book!

- from Randy Ingermanson’s article “Organizing: Does Multitasking Make You Stupid?”

I don’t know where he got his statistics from, so maybe this is full of it, but, personally, I’d buy it.  Now, for clarification, I have a dirty little secret. I’ve lived in Austin, TX for fifteen years now and never gotten high. Yes, I am a strange beast. So my opinion on the quote might be as suspect as the facts in it. Buy I have noticed that while 2 glasses of wine have suspect value for my editing ability, they can make drafting a heckuva lot easier. I can focus, I don’t care if I sound stupid, I just type and type and type and type. And the results are usually not as bad as one would expect, and regardless it’s down on paper, which is more than I can say for a lot of days.

Not that I usually write under the influence – I have no aspirations to be one of those drunken, maudlin writer types – but I gotta admit there’s a certain fun to the occasional tippled typing.

However, I cannot write – drafting or editing – while chatting, talking on the phone, listening to a song that I want to sing along with (when I’m really mentally deep into my writing, music helps. When I’m not that deep into my writing, music hurts), or even while worrying about my calendar or the query letter I will one day write or the brilliant marketing strategy I’ll only get to use if I ever get this thing published. And once I let myself get distracted, it’s gone. I have the hardest time getting back in.

I feel bad sometimes, because I’ll finally be rolling along, and Scott will poke his head in the room and say something. Scott has a habit of doing hit and run conversations – he says one thing, expects a response, and then walks off. Then he’ll come back five minutes later, say one thing, expect a response, and walk off. And I don’t want to be rude to my most wonderful of husbands, but I don’t want to lose this thought train that was so hard to get onto  (especially while drafting – I can hop on and off the editing thought train much easier). So I’ve got a choice. Ignore him with a “talk to the hand” (too rude, I can’t do it – besides, even registering a conversation has started the derail), grunt a suitable sounding response based on his tone of voice (but not actually the words he said – if Scott ever came by and said “my company folded today” in a happy tone of voice, I’d probably grunt “Great!” at him) and take 30 seconds or so to get back into the draft, or hop off the train completely, ask him to repeat what he just said so that I can really register it, give him my full attention and a thoughtful reply, watch him walk off, and then turn back to my screen with no idea what to type next. And about the time I’ve almost gotten my rhythm back, he’ll come by for another drive-by. Make me want to scream and throw things.

Multi-tasking. I just can’t do it. And I’m finding more and more studies (with more statistics than the above) backing that while multitasking may increase the amount accomplished (or it may decrease it), it significantly reduces the quality of everything done. Can we get a Twelve-Step Program for those who want to move away from chaotic, multi-tasking dependence and learn to free our minds for good old fashioned one thing at a time?

[ request from Ingermanson that this be included with quotes:

Award-winning novelist Randy Ingermanson, "the Snowflake Guy," publishes the Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine, with more than 19,000 readers, every month. If you want to learn the craft and marketing of fiction, AND make your writing more valuable to editors, AND have FUN doing it, visit  http://www.AdvancedFictionWriting.com.

Download your free Special Report on Tiger Marketing and get a free 5-Day Course in How To Publish a Novel.]

Three of them at least look interesting to me and my tastes.

You know, I like artsy plays. I can go and two hours later come out, maybe a little more somber, but feeling enlightened. Laramie Project, Doubt, Wit… I LOVE these. But books are such an investment of my time… if I’m going to “educate” myself, I guess I’d rather read Edith Wharton or Charles Dickens or D. H. Lawrence, or, heck, finally finish Ulysses (I’m like 2 chapters from the end… gonna… make it… one day….).

At least from what I’ve read (and, granted, I need to read more modern literary novels, so I will admit that this is an uneducated standpoint given from a small sample), to be literary the writing can have very little joy (’cause quality can’t be tainted by happy?) and has to be very much what I would call “masculine”: spare, emotionally distanced, grisly details that you see as if watching on camera, with these characters who are so flawed and/or twisted that I can’t figure out if I’m supposed to root for them or condemn them. And frequently it feels to me like the story takes second place to the prose itself, and I don’t understand why. I mean, pretty writing is nice, but I think substance is every bit as important as shell.  I’d rather have friends who are caring and joyful who help me be a better me than friends who know how to dress and get their makeup right every time. (Not that there’s anything wrong with well dressed and getting your makeup right every time. My sister is an absolutely fabulous example of substance meets style – on a budget, even. She amazes and shames me.)

I have this feeling that if I tried hard enough, I would change and understand what the literati have been trying to tell me for years. I also have this feeling that if I read more modern literature it would probably help my writing. So I should read more literature. Maybe I should grab those three books that sounded interesting and give ‘em a go. Maybe I will.

But I have 84 books on my Kindle that I haven’t read yet, ranging from Sun Tzu to Nalini Singh, and I can’t quite figure out when I became uneducated because I’d rather finish my Jane Austen collection than read a book about a “turbulent life — marred by alcoholism, financial turmoil and family discord” or prose that has “quiet restraint and calm precision” (quotes from NYT reviews on the link above).

Am I doomed? Anybody got a painless way to break into the world of modern literature for someone who prefers F. Scott Fitzgerald to Hemingway and spends her time bouncing back and forth between Victorian literature and Kresley Cole?

Right now, as I’m on The Great Agent Hunt, there is a part of my brain that’s always waiting… for an email, for a phone call, for some message, yes or no, that means I can put that transaction in a category and move forward or move on. But other than making sure I always have a query (or two. Or five) out there, there’s nothing I can do to hustle things. I just have to wait.

When I started this process, the best advice any writer gave me was to write something else. And so I’m working on my third novel, and after endless critiquing and reviewing of the first two, it has been a wonderful miracle to get back to the first stages of creation again. Those days when characters and plot are still being carved from the silence, and themes and motifs are appearing, frequently unbidden, in the words. So I’ve found my way of stalking a writing career, as maybe the minister would say.

So many faiths right now have a waiting – an advent – for the birth, for the light to go out, for the light to return, for the year to end and new resolutions to begin… this built in annual reminder that sometimes as humans we have to wait and hope, and yet continue to find meaning inside of that space. Blessed Advent to you, however you choose to celebrate it (or not to celebrate it). May you find peace, hope, and a reason for goodwill.

This was really interesting to me, because I had a sort of epiphany. We always talk about “killing our darlings” as in getting rid of scenes that don’t work or whatever, as if we have this feeling like each word from our brains is gold… but that’s not really true. Most writers I know don’t think that their words are all golden. Most writers I know seem to think most of their words are crap (even when they’re not), so why the trouble cutting?

Reminds me of my high schoolers, and sometimes with their writing it would be three pages long, but it would take two pages to get to a point, and I’d be like, “You need to cut the first two pages; they’re brainstorming. They have no meaning,” and I’d get these horrified looks like, “But I did that work! I should get credit for it! How will people know how much work I did if I only show them 1/3 of it??” I think a lot of our reluctance to let go is not that we’re so in love with everything we put down, but that we want ‘E’s for effort; a “what I lack in quality I make up for in quantity” sort of thing. And a lot of the world growing up seems to work that way – from the simple: show your work in math – to the more morally complicated: we don’t ask where the money comes from, we just know that more is better.

But that isn’t the case anymore. As artists, we need to so enjoy what we do that we create without the need for credit. Then every scene we excise, every doodle that ends up in the recycle bin, every camera shot that gets erased was a fun day that we had with our craft, and that is sufficient to satisfy. A little sacrifice to the muses, if you prefer to think of it that way. I realize that that must be damn hard when you’re on a deadline, but I think the principle is sound.

My second creative love after writing, the art of theater, is very frustrating and fascinating at the same time because by it’s very nature, the act of communicating your art is the act of deleting it. Once a performance is done, it will never again happen just that way. Once a show closes, that piece art is gone from the world, and no recording can ever bring it back with it’s true creative magic. (Food and wine are another one of these art forms, though I think mentally easier to deal with the “consumption” thereof). I think those of us that concretize  our work in its creation (by committing it to paper or clay or whatever your medium) have a harder time letting go because we don’t have to. But an actor would scoff at the idea of holding onto a rehearsal. How do you do that? And if you did, what would be the point? All the effort of actors, directors, scene designers, etc. produce a product that is an insane reduction of all the work that went into it. Two hours in the viewing from months of labor by tens to hundreds of people… and then the product is lost to oblivion. But theater artists revel in that ephemeral nature. That “if you weren’t there, you can’t have it.” And I think all of us can learn from that attitude.

Most of the shots Michael Jordan made in his lifetime were not during a game. But each one he made alone, outside of an audience, helped him be the man we loved to watch on the court. And so shall I learn from his example.

And now for something (funny) that demonstrates the importance of letting go of some of those ideas… How to create a weapon that is devastating and unstoppable, from Basic Instructions.

(And I somehow managed to get writing, teaching, theater, basketball, and Star Wars all into one post!!! Hmm… what is missing…. VAMPIRES, VAMPIRES, VAMPIRES!!!… OK, now I think I have all the topics my life revolves around. )

In other news, I didn’t mention that my recent run in with translating a sentence pushed me over the edge and made me decide to start learning Norse. (Yes, I know, in normal people thought processes, “I want to read the Eddas…. I’ll learn Norse!” does not make sense.) Anyway, I think I was afraid if I mentioned it too early, if I gave up having learned no more than “Heil! Ek heiti Jackie!” that I’d be a quitter. But, well, I’ve got down the present tense verb conjugations and masculine declinsions through the dative. I’m learning cool quirks like in the Eddas they would be more likely to say, “King Olaf offered the vikings to get on his ship” than “King Olaf commanded the vikings to get on his ship.” (Heehee… an offer they can’t refuse…) Not a ton, but a significant enough accomplishment that I feel justified in saying, “I’m learning Norse!” I do find it endlessly amusing that instead of “to love” being the first verb (other than “to be”) that I learn to conjugate (like my other language learning experiences), Oskar Gudlaugsson and Haukur Thorgeirsson (the online site I’m learning from) teaches you “to slay” first. Now that’s vikings for you.

I look up the words. “Dealing” implies “with” in Norse; no one will be confused that we’re handing out deceitful giants. Scratch one word from the list I have to look up. The rest is easy.

And then I remember that I have to conjugate the verb. OK. So I find the, like ONE source online that actually gives lessons in ON (which, after looking up this website the last 15 times I’ve used it, I finally bookmarked this time). Read the introduction (’cause… it’s not procrastinating if you’re learning?) and realize that this is Icelandic ON from the 13th century, and my character is from 9th century (what is currently called) Norway. But since nobody in 9th century Norway wrote anything, we have no idea how different 13th century Icelandic Norse and 9th century Norwegian Norse are, but at least they’re both Western ON, as opposed to if I’d made my character Swedish or Danish or something, at which point there would be distinct differences (we know this, because somebody wrote something in East ON during the 12th century (or something)).

You know what? My 9th century Norwegian is going to speak 13th century Icelandic. Anybody out there who actually knows 9th century Norwegian is welcome to contact me about corrections.

I read the note saying “are dealing” and “deal” are the same thing in ON. So I conjugate my verb. “moeta” (where the oe is one letter, but my only complaint with Chrome so far is that I can’t copy things into wordpress, so you don’t get the cool letter). I read the note that says I don’t need “You” since the “You” is implied in the conjugation. Erase the m and capitalize it. “Moeta” Four words down, and I only wrote one. I’m clearly a translator of epic worth for my efficiency.

Then I start thinking about sentence order, because there’s an adjective in there, and does that go in front of the noun or after? And really, some languages don’t do subject+verb+object like we do, so I start looking up word order. And learn that ON is declined.

And I thought I’d left those pesky nouns-altered-by-part-of-speech behind with my Latin days. No. Declinsions haunt you forever. It’s like a linguistic plague (that does, however, allow for much more flexibility in word order, which does have its merits, one of which is not ease of translation). However, I know that I should’ve already realized this because German is declined. Makes sense ON would be, too. OK. I can do this.

Here I get distracted by a discussion of definite vs. indefinite articles in ON (I’m fascinated by how different languages deal with them; I think the use or lack thereof says a lot about a culture; ON, btw, sticks -inn suffix onto a noun to give it the definite article “the,” otherwise you assume indefinite article “a”; this makes sense to me; clearly my viking heritage is showing through). And then I keep reading and then translate the first set of ON lesson exercises on the website. Olafr konungr a brand. (King Olaf owns a sword). Ulfrinn vegr hauk. (The wolf kills a hawk.) Again, clearly it’s not procrastinating if I’m learning this valuable stuff. I feel closer to my character already.

Back to translating. I know the word for giant – jotunn – and it’s the object of the verb, so I just gotta figure out how to decline in the accusative case. Apparently you drop the ‘r’. (Looking at jotunn again). There’s no ‘r’. Hm. Must think on that. I’ll let it percolate.

Usually adjectives decline with the noun the describe. I check to see if that’s true in ON. Yup. OK. “Deceitful” is “flara,” according to the ON dictionary I keep on my Windows desktop (yes… I do…). I learn to decline flara in the accusative. Well, crap, this other dictionary says the word is flaratha (where ‘th’ = that funktastic letter that looks kinda like a ‘d’ but you pronounce like ‘th’ in “there”; again, *sigh* Chrome). I go with flaratha ’cause I like the funky ‘d’. (And I check one more dictionary, and two out of three have “flaratha,” so I am justified in my funk-d love) (hey, maybe my desktop dictionary is in East OD…).

Oh, wait, before I can decline it, I have to know the gender of the noun so I can match the adjective to the noun. I look up gender in ON. They have three, masculine, feminine, and neuter. Jotunn is masculine (I think… I’m actually not totally sure on that still, but I did really try).  OK. So I find a chart.  ”Flaratha” in the masculine accusative declines to “flarath”. Really? I now have Moeta ______ flarath.

I look at ON sentences around the declining adjectives section. I have no idea why I treated ON more like Spanish than English, seeing as it’s a heckuva lot closer to English. Moeta flarath _______.

Oh, wait, I want giants, as in plural. I look up the masculine plural accusative. “Flaratha in the mpa is… “flaratha.” That was anti-climactic. OK. Moeta flaratha _______.

Time to battle “jotunn.” (And I’m sorta hoping it’s not jotunna, ’cause… yeah… (now I’m drinking pumpkin ale and singing “Oh Yo-Tuna!!!” Things are devolving quickly.)) Jotunn is an important word to the Norse peeps, so surely this series of lessons will teach it to me soon. I click on each lesson individually and scroll through the vocabulary list at the end. Seven lessons in I give up. Something else is nagging at me… something I’m afraid I got wrong in the work I’ve done so far, but I can’t… quite… nail down what it is…

This leads to reading of passages from various lessons at random for maybe half an hour.

Finally I go back to the list of lessons and read their synopses. One says it teaches “Bisyllabic stems.” Hmm… This would be Lesson 8, the one I stopped right before getting to. I click on it. Jotunn is there. Along with how to decline nouns like it. Jotuna is not correct, thank heavens. Jotin. Moeta flaratha Jotin.

Wait, ears perk for trouble. Masculine accusitive “jotunn” ends in “in” and “flaratha” in ‘a’? Plural! I need a plural! (Look it up again). Moeta flaratha Jotna.

Did I do it?? Am I a translating genius??? Maybe. But I decide the character wouldn’t say “You deal with deceitful giants,” but “Lars deals with deceitful giants.” I look up the 3rd singular conjugation. Lars moetr flaratha Jotna. That was startlingly easy. Clearly I have some other challenge at hand.

Oh yes, I do. That niggling sensation from earlier? Yeah. Hits. “Moetr” might imply “with”, but it probably still doesn’t take an accusative. Accusative means you did something to someone, not with them. It’s probably one of those verbs that take a dative. Or maybe a genitive. Latin was alway slinging genitives at me. How do I even look this up?

More random mess of lookups. By sheer luck I hit upon a sentence in one of the examples that uses moeta. Sure enough, it takes a dative (I pat myself on the back that (a) I thought of this and (b) I knew it was probably dative).

*Sigh big time* At least now I know where to look for everything. I re-re-re-decline “flaratha” to “flarathum” and “jotna” to “jotnum”. I now have this sentence:

Lars moetr flarathum Jotnum.

All because I wanted my character to say something in his native language. Take a moment to feel smarter with me.

…

…

…

OK. Now we’re done. Back to writing.