Category Archives: novel

Almost Normal, For Outlying Values of Normal

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New Desk

New Desk

After over four months working off of a folding card table, I finally have a new desk. Carol found it online, a discontinued model for a ridiculously low price, and I only had to argue with the instructions once while I was putting it together. While it’s not my normal style–I have a style? Sort of. I lean more toward Mission and Arts & Crafts–I’m frankly not that picky when push comes to pen. Give me a good working surface with a bit of storage and I’m happy. Plus I managed almost 2000 words on my first writing session on the new equipment. I score that both a good omen and a solid win. Just don’t expect the desk to continue looking this neat. When it comes to my work space and library, I don’t do neat.

Now all I have to do is get the rest of the boxes in my new library sorted, which is going to lead to more painful decisions, but you can’t fight physics. I know the shelf space I want doesn’t fit the shelf space I have. More books will have to go into the attic. Granted, these are mostly books I want to keep even though I know I won’t be reading them again anytime soon. I just have to decide which ones those are. I’ve already had to pack up most of my brag shelf, which stroked my ego a bit because there were so many, but stung it a bit in that I just can’t keep them all out and visible. But then, I was the only one looking at them and I already knew what they looked like. Priorities.

I can see most of my floor now. Once the remaining boxes are dealt with and the guitars on their wall hangers, I can put down a rug. Nothing says “you’re home” quite like your own area rug. That pretty much declares “space of your own.” Little things, but they do matter.

As for the book, it’s coming along, and for those who care, here’s a heads-up.  Yamada Monogatari: The Emperor in Shadow, is going to be a much more political book–Heian politics, I hasten to point out–than The War God’s Son. I sort of knew that before I even started writing it, but my previous writing session rather emphasized the fact. Just saying.

History Lesson

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Library

Library

Believe it or not, that mess on the left actually represents progress. There hasn’t been a lot of that, at least in the library. I can see about a third of the bare floor now. I also know that, judging the remaining books with the remaining shelf space, the numbers just don’t work, and I can’t add more shelves…well, maybe one.

That’s for later. Part of the point of at least attempting to get organized is that I have a book to finish, a book set in a specific historical period and at a very important historical crisis point. In short, my references—and one specifically—were packed up, and I needed them. Not to get into many details, but there was a particular point in the story where Imperial and clan politics interacted in a very specific way, and in order to understand how that all fit into the narrative, I needed a specific book. That is, I thought I did. Until I was able to unpack said book.

Funny thing about that—what one person considers important, another just skims past. In other words, the book I was depending on was no help at all. I shouldn’t have been too surprised. What I was looking for was a fairly obscure series of events that happened over nine hundred years ago. Unless you happen to have a large university reference library at your disposal, you’re probably not going to find what you’re looking for. I don’t happen to have that. Nor do I have the shelf space to stock every reference I might possibly need, even if they did exist in translation, and usually the ebook edition in any language simply doesn’t exist.

What I do have is Google. I’m almost embarrassed to admit it, but online it took me maybe twenty minutes, tops, to track down what I was looking for, thanks to a Japanese site pulling from primary sources, with English translation provided. The internet does make some things more difficult with its constant distractions. But it also makes a lot of things possible. The information I needed simply wouldn’t have been available to me without it. Fortunately, I am not without it, so no problem.

Also no excuses. Funny how that works.

Time to Own It

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Snow-Jan-2014

I think I’ve known this for a long time, and I just didn’t want to admit it. After having it pointed out to me yet one more time, there’s no longer any denying it—when it comes to writing, my subconscious is a lot smarter than I am.

Not that there weren’t enough incidents before now. One example, in a story called “Four Horsemen, at Their Leisure,” (Tor.com April 2010) I was proceeding with a single notion—what happens to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse after the Apocalypse? Death, War, Famine, Pestilence…aren’t they out of a job? Just one of those odd musings that often turn into a story. Only, of course, that was just the idea, and an idea isn’t a story. What was the story? No (pardon the pun) idea. Then Death finds a living pine tree, in a place where absolutely nothing should be living. That was the story. Everything important, everything in the story that mattered, it all came from Death finding that one living thing. And I had absolutely no clue when I wrote the scene why Death should find a pine tree. There are a ton of other examples, but I won’t bore you with them. They all pretty much proceed from the same premise–The subconscious knew. I didn’t.

The incident that clarified this issue for me was something a little more recent—my hero has to travel from eastern Japan back to Heian-kyo (Kyoto) on a matter of some urgency. Only he isn’t going directly to Kyoto. First he’s going to travel a good distance out of his way further south to visit the Grand Shrine at Ise. Now, the Grand Shrine has been an extremely important spiritual site in Japan for hundreds of years before my hero’s time. It was not unusual for people then to be making pilgrimages there. Only my hero is not exactly religious, to put it mildly. He feels no compulsion to make a visit to the shrine to ask the gods’ favor for his coming trials. While he does believe in gods (he’s met a few) he’s not so sure about the idea of their favor. And yet he’s going to Ise. Why?

At the moment, I haven’t the vaguest idea, but that’s all right. To the extent that I have faith, that’s where it’s placed–I know my subconscious knows, and in due course, so will I.

And it’s gonna be good.

SnowNuts

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SnowNuts

I’m learning about snow. In Mississippi, snow was a fleeting acquaintance at most. In all my childhood I can only remember two really significant snows, that is, accumulations great enough to scrape together a half-way decent snowman. One weird winter we had the local equivalent of a blizzard. Nine inches. Us kids had a ball, though I don’t remember the grownups being too keen on it.

So far this January it has snowed more here in NY than it did in the last five years in Mississippi. Yet snow is different here. In MS the snow was damper and tended to stick to itself. Easy to make snowballs and snowmen on the rare occasions when there was enough of it. Here in central NY there’s plenty, only it’s mostly what I think is referred to as “powder.” Very light and fluffy. Doesn’t stick together worth a darn, or at all, really. Good for shoveling. Good, apparently, for skiing, since there are several ski resorts in the area that were really bummed at the mild December. Not enough snow then. Mother Nature’s making up for it now. I am learning how to shovel snow. I can’t say it’s a skill I had ever aspired to, but it’s part of the deal. Fortunately, the snow is light and fluffy. It’s not that hard to move.

Another odd thing: when small animals make tracks, the snow is compressed in the middle and pushed up on the outside. When it partially melts, the pushed up area melts last, leaving these almost perfectly round “snownuts” along the animal’s path. They look like a trail of frosted doughnuts, just left there on the ground. Doubt they would taste as good, though.

The Emperor in Shadow proceeds. I have a long way to go, but I still think I can finish in time. I’m still in the section which I refer to usually as the “churning” section. Plot elements are being created, characters introduced, and the writing itself shows how they all fit together. Eventually. For the moment, it churns. Soon the pace will pick up when, well, I won’t say when I figure it all out, because that’s not quite how it works. Ray Bradbury is alleged to have said, “Plot is no more than footprints left in the snow after your characters have run by on their way to incredible destinations.” That makes sense to me, but as for the actual day to day writing part, I say rather that the story triggers some sort of self-organization principle which is one of the keynotes of life in general. Life wants to happen, and so does story. For a book to live, it has to do something similar. At those times I feel more like a photojournalist than a writer, just trying to record the life as it happens. In this case, it just happens to be a novel.

If it’s not alive, well, there’s nothing to record. Just words. Like empty holes in the snow where maybe a living thing should have been.

 

Flying South

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IMG_0377Up at 4AM to take Carol to the airport for an early flight. She’s attending a workshop down in Florida, so I’m on my own—save for Da Boyz—for the next few days. On the way back I could see several large V-formations of Canada Geese heading south as well. I won’t be. The first real snow of the season is on its way tonight. I have my studded snow tires, my snow shovels, my salt. I’m as ready, I guess, as I’m going to be.

I’m still astonished at the number of crows that call the Mohawk Valley home. On the return drive I passed a flock that I swear stretched out at least half a mile. I’ve never seen so many crows in one place before in my life.

One casualty of the dead hard drive and missing backup is that the completed manuscript for Power’s Shadow is gone. Poof. Fortunately I do have the ebook edition, but this will delay the print book for quite a while. I’m behind on The Emperor in Shadow for obvious reasons, so it has to take priority for the next few months. I still hope to see a print edition of PS, but don’t ask me when because I have no earthly idea.

On the plus side, I’ve shifted enough boxes to reach the other wall of my new office, so that’s something like progress. I have plans for wall to wall bookshelves. A man can dream.