In many songs Elton's recent performances have a maturity and depth that his youthful, vocally more "perfect" performances lack. "Skyline Pigeon" is one such song; this is another:




I finished my 4,000 words of story-in-progress two days ahead of the deadline for the Writers' Salon at Writercon. Huzzah! That was the biggest thing hanging over my head. Now to have a good re-read of Ned for the characterization workshop, and to get my Snapey notes in order for my presentation/discussion about understanding the character of Severus Snape. For the latter, I will post my introductory remarks here (and possibly elsewhere, as it will be a mini-essay) after Writercon is done.

I plan to give an overview, about 8 to 10 minutes, of my take on the character, in contrast with what I see as more extreme takes in both the "good" and "bad" directions, and offer a few topical points around which to build discussion. I figure that avoids the pitfall of just walking in with no plan whatsoever (I've heard it's been done) as well as the pitfall of spending 45 minutes reading a paper at the audience (which I've heard has also been done). Nothing wrong with "reading a paper," as long as it comes across as presenting the paper as a prepared speech with the manuscript for reference, rather than as staring at the page rattling off an endless ramble in a monotone. I did speech team in high school; I think I can pull this off. ;-)

Anyway, one week to go till Writercon, and I think I'm going to be ready, after all. Whew.

ETA: I finally remembered to make an Elton icon to go with Elton posts. ;-) Yeehaw!

In case anyone is wondering, I'm getting ready for Writercon, which is coming up at the end of July and beginning of August.

I have to get 2,000-4,000 words of a first draft of one of my Severus Snape Birthday fics into shape before July 24, for a writing-critique salon. Originally I planned to polish up the first three chapters of Ned (my novel) and give a boost to that happy project, since the first three chapters will probably be my sample chapters for marketing as well. Then I learned that the moderator of the workshop decided to focus exclusively on fanfic writing this year, so suddenly I find myself under an unexpected DEADLINE to generate fresh material; obviously there's no point in using a fic I've already finished and posted. It won't be the entire fic, but it looks like there will be enough there to work with and generate some good feedback.

Of course I will also be reading and critiquing the fics submitted by the other five participants in the salon, so that's also on the list.

For a workshop on character development, I think I'm going to work with Ned from (c'mon, guess it) Ned. Some time ago I realized that I had the POV character, Frederick, fairly well fleshed out, but that there seemed to be some blank spots in my understanding of Ned from Ned's own point of view--the internal perspective, not just whatever Frederick happened to talk about.

And... I am going to be giving a fan-led presentation on the character of Severus Snape! (I may have mentioned this before, here and there.) Of course I am not lacking for ideas about Severus Snape; the tricky part is gathering them, sorting through them, and putting them in order for a ten-minute presentation without leaving anything out. I want to give an overview of my take on the character, followed by a half-hour or so of (moderated) discussion. After two years of studying and discussing the character, I could probably do it without any real preparation, but I'd rather be prepared. ;-)

I am also going to be meeting-and-greeting arrivals from out of town at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, and guiding the group to the light rail station and to the hotel downtown. I also have plans to bring them out to a local eatery so we can all grab lunch. Alas, I am not wealthy enough to treat a big group--rent payment approacheth, so I'll be grateful to have enough to cover my own share of the tab--but I think people are expecting to pay for their own meals, anyway. My part is to take advantage of my knowledge of the Uptown/Wedge area, just south of downtown, and show the out-of-towners a few places to find food that might be good alternatives to what's available downtown.

About all I've gotten done online lately is keep up with posting my weekly drabbles for snape100, because I've got a "Summer Holiday" series going and I want to keep it going! For anyone who's been wondering why I'm not commenting much on other stories, and replying only sporadically to comments on my stories, please read the preceding paragraphs of this post. ;-) After Writercon, I will be doing some catching-up on replies and comments.

Finally, regarding the Fourth of July: My son, my youngest sister, her baby girl Spammy, and one other niece of mine did end up going to Powderhorn Park and had a very good time. And Spammy absolutely LOVED the fireworks! She's six months old, now, and I thought she might be scared of the noise, but no; she was staring up at the light show in the sky with the oooh...aaaahhhh... look on her face, and sometimes she even laughed in delight. She's a lot of fun to watch.

Now, for something novel, let's talk about my original fiction. ;-)

The recent (well, sorta kinda recent) California Supreme Court ruling in favor of the constitutionality of same-sex marriage, and the ensuing weddings, reminded me of the weddings in San Francisco in 2004 that ultimately led to that ruling. It reminded me of how MOVED I was, as I looked at all of the pictures of all of those couples, some of them rather old and some of them having been together for DECADES, and how many of them had a look of "Finally! At last!" about having the state and society recognize the reality that they had been living all along: that THEY WERE MARRIED.

Even a hermitly sort like myself can appreciate that.

And that, I think, was the genesis of my novel Ned: that deep, emotional stirring at the poignancy of how long so many had waited to see that day, when they would be married in the eyes of society as well as in the eyes of each other and the Divine. And I got to thinking of how many people never lived to see that day. And, eventually, I started musing about my hypothetical couple born at the end of the 19th century and living their lives with a deep bond of love and faith and friendship that they were not able to have acknowledged publicly.

There are other themes in the novel, as I've written about before: Frederick's struggle with shell shock, Ned's own quieter but evident struggle to come to terms with his own war memories, both Frederick's and Ned's journeys of faith over their lifetimes. But centrally, I simply wanted to portray a couple of ordinary men living ordinary lives in the pre-Stonewall days, and to convey the poignant contrast between the societal stigmatization of gay couples with how mundane and yet how deeply loving their life together was in the day-to-day living of it.

Very simple, very subtle, and, I hope, very moving.

Meanwhile, the State of the Manuscript is rather resembling a kitchen remodeling project. Oh, just tweak a finish here, change a few knobs there, and the next thing you know, the entire kitchen is torn to bits with old scraps and new scraps all tossed about every which way while I figure it out how it's all going to come together again, shinier and spiffier than ever.

It's not really that drastic. It just feels like it. ;-)

I decided I need to do some more reading on the 1930s, as I work to revise and polish Part Two of Ned. So when I was at the library, earlier today, I did a search in the library catalog and found something that looks like exactly what I had in mind: Daily Life in the United States, 1920-1940: How Americans Lived Through the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression, by David E. Kyvig. Timelines of Big Historical Events are easy enough to find, but when writing a story centered around the mundane daily lives of a couple over the years, I really want a history that focuses on mundane daily life during an era. Of course a few Big Historical Events punctuate the story--it'd be lame as all hell to ignore them altogether--but they're not the focus.

And yes, I know, Frederick and Ned are Englishmen, not Americans, but they live in America from the 1920s onwards, so, blee. To borrow a favorite expression of jemby. I'm still trying to figure out if they eventually became citizens or would have lived their whole lives as resident aliens. I don't know if it's really important to figure it out, so for now I won't.

By the way, is anyone out there enjoying the posts about Bing Crosby and his music? It's not like I'm an obsessive fan of Bing or anything, but he's one of those nostalgia figures, even if I prefer Tropicana or Florida's Natural orange juice rather than Minute Maid. I realize they aren't really the kind of posts that invite real discussion, or even inspire comments, but I'm curious whether my f-list is enjoying them or hating them or just thinks they're boring as all f**k.

Whatever the case, I'll still write whatever rambles across my mind on a given day. I'm just curious. ;-)

O.K. So, because in a winter txtmsg discussion of Der Bingle with jemby, I said, oh, hey, maybe Ned should be into Bing Crosby's music in the 1930s, I started reading about Bing and his influence on American popular music. Dude, I had no idea. I was born in 1963, so I remember him mainly as the Minute Maid Orange Juice man in the floppy hat. But it turns out Bing was hugely influential and hugely popular in the 1930s and 1940s, and on into the 1950s. So, yeah, even though my novel will NOT be a mere compendium of cute-ass "see how much I know!" cultural references, I do need to include some cultural references for the sake of establishing Authenticity of Setting and all that.

I found a book called Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams: The Early Years, 1903-1940, by Gary Giddins. It proved to be just the overview I needed. I didn't have time to read all of it before I had to return it to the library--maybe because I've got about ten different projects going at the same time, in addition to working and getting a little exercise now and then and making time to get online now and then--but I gleaned enough to realize that Ned would naturally gravitate towards a personality like Bing Crosby.

Then I checked to see what his big watershed hit was that put him on the road to stardom. It was his second solo released under his own name (earlier recordings had been under the name of the group he was with), "Just One More Chance." One look at the lyrics, and I was saying, OMFG, is this apropos, or WHAT?!

Just one more chance
To prove it's you alone I care for
Each night I say a little prayer for
Just one more chance

Just one more night
To taste the kisses that enchant me
I'd want no others if you'd grant me
Just one more chance

I've learned the meaning of repentance
Now you're the jury at my trial
I know that I should serve my sentence
Still, I'm hoping all the while
You'll give me

Just one more word
I said that I was glad to start out
But now I'm back to cry my heart out
For just one more chance

We spend our lives in
groping for happiness
I found it once and tossed it aside
I paid for it with hours of loneliness
I've nothing to hide
I'd bury my pride for

Just one more chance
Just one more chance

I've learned the meaning of repentance
Now you're the jury at my trial
I know that I should serve my sentence
Still, I'm hoping all the while
You'll give me

Just one more word
I said that I was glad to start out
But now I'm back to cry my heart out
For just one more chance

All right. I will grant you that it's a love song, and damned near any relationship would probably fit this template at some point or other. But, well, it really fits Ned, and his residual guilt over the rocky start to his Happily Ever After with his childhood friend Frederick. Anyway, the fact that such a lyrically perfect song HAPPENED to be THE song that Made Bing Big is just a perfect coincidence for this narrator of Ned and Frederick's story.

So. La. When you read the finished novel, you'll see what I mean.

Here. Why don't you go watch this AWESOME VIDEO of Der Bingle singing "Just One More Chance." It is utterly utterly charming--though I had to laugh (as usual) at some of the comments, especially the one where someone speculated that Bing kissed the woman because she was whistling better than he was and he didn't want to be upstaged. Hoot. Ummm... I think mebbe it was because her lips were puckered and he just couldn't resist...

What a randy fellow. Who knew the Minute Maid Orange Juice man had it in him, back in the day.

Reading a bio of Bing Crosby, it's plain that Bing HAS to feature in the 30s. He's too big to ignore. How to work him into the story?

Now that I am happily settled into my beautiful little studio apartment in Utterly Awesome Uptown Minneapolis, I have pulled out my draft of Ned: A Chronicle of a Marriage and resumed work on it in earnest. This week's project has been scene blocking: in particular, going through the manuscript and jotting down each scene or scene segment which tells some aspect of Frederick's backstory. One of the things that has been nagging at me is my ongoing dissatisfaction with Chapters Two and Three. They have some good moments in them, but they just don't "sing" the way some of the other more fully-fleshed and inspired chapters do. They feel kind of patchwork, cobbled together, like a few thin strands of string to connect Chapter One with Chapter Four. When I find myself thinking, gee, I hope the reader will bear with Two and Three so they can get to the good stuff starting in Four and Five, well, we have a problem, Houston. ;-)

In part inspired by Faith Sullivan's suggestion, made to me at the writing conference, that I try seeing what foreshadowing might be woven into the early chapters, I realized that Chapters Two and Three are sorely lacking in backstory. Not a good idea after introducing the characters and setting the stage in Chapter One. Obviously I'm not going to give the whole backstory in one giant data dump, but it does occur to me that the reader should not have to wait until the middle of Chapter Six to learn how Frederick and Ned first met. Ya think??? (Hoot, said the Owls.) Amazing the things that become obvious after I've had time away from the manuscript.

It's hard having patience with the process. I'm always preaching that, especially to My Son: Have patience with the process. The reason I'm always preaching it is because I need to keep hearing it myself. I wanted this novel to be done years ago. Like, after the first full draft was complete. Instant genius. All in a sparkly shiny package.

Well, hell.

Buddhism teaches lots of nice things like patience and equanimity and living in the present moment, which may be why a lot of my spiritual reading in recent times has leaned towards Buddhist and Buddhist-influenced writings: not because I exemplify Buddhist virtues, but because I don't. ;-) That path has things to teach me.

The other reason I've been mapping out the backstory on index cards has to do with the structure of the novel: The primary, present-day storyline begins in medias res, with the reunion of Frederick and Ned in September 1922, when Ned is 30 and Frederick is about to turn 33, and carries through into their old age. The other story arc is the backstory: the unfolding of how their friendship developed over the years, from first meeting in childhood until Frederick departed England for New York City a couple of years after the war ended and Ned followed after him a little over a year later, the reunion with which the primary story arc begins. So I'm trying to sort out what I've told, and what I haven't, and how best to organize the telling of that secondary arc.

I'm also trying to figure out how I might work a Bing Crosby fandom into Ned's life in Part Two. ;-) Stay tuned.

I went to that writing conference in Bloomington today. Took Friday off work so I could shift my sleep schedule for the weekend and be awake during the day for a change, and ended up having Thursday off as well, so I was well-rested. The best part was simply making contact with other writers; like many others who write, I tend to be a hermitly sort of person, making contact with the human race only when I really really have to. Let's face it, people who love to write, people who have to write, tend to be passionate about sitting alone with their asses glued to their chairs for hours on end. Here I sit, I can do no other. Someone else nail my 95 Theses to the door: I'm too busy working on my novel.

So I registered for the conference, at a community arts center in a suburb of Minneapolis, just because I knew I needed to be around other people who are likewise usually wrapped up in the hermitly pursuit of perfect prose. And though I've done a lot of reading about how to go about getting published, I really wanted to be able to ask real, live people my specific questions, and, more important, to hear their varied stories about how they went about getting published.

Self-publishing seems to be a more popular and respectable route than it was even a few years ago. I guess the publishing world has all but abandoned any substantial effort at marketing and publicity, except for the big-name big-push authors, so even when people are published by major houses they still have to do their own legwork and shameless self-pimpage of their books. Hence, some people are saying, hell, I might as well just pay a professional editor, et al, and do it all myself. I don't think that's the route for me--at least not what I would prefer--but if I were, say, writing children's picture books and wanted complete creative control in collaborating with an artist, then I'd probably give it serious consideration.

The keynote speaker was Minnesota author Faith Sullivan; I enjoyed her presentation on the writing life very much. Later in the day I stopped by her table to tell her how much I liked it, and some of the points she covered in it, and we got chatting about how characters grab hold of you and start babbling in your brain and won't shut up until you write down their stories. One of her points had been how serious writers are not defined by whether they make lots of money at their craft--most don't--but by the fact that they write, not because they like to write, but because they HAVE to write. Our focus and energy in our lives are directed primarily to writing.

Anyway, along those lines I told her how Ned came to me at the beginning of a week of vacation, when the narrator (Frederick) started narrating at me in the manner I just described above, and how I literally did nothing all that week but write and eat and sleep and go to the bathroom, and at the end of the week had about 16,000 words of a sketchy rough draft. At the end of the month, I had about 40,000 words--a fair first draft. She said wow, that's great, you're on the right track, keep going and DO it! And we talked a bit more, and I mentioned how the first five chapters will probably be my sample chapters for submission to agents, depending on page count, but I'm still not totally happy with the second and third chapters. She suggested that I look at whether I can work some foreshadowing into those chapters; perhaps that would help? And I don't know if that's a common problem, or if Faith Sullivan is just very intuitive, but immediately I recalled some feedback from one of my second-draft readers, about wanting to see more of Frederick's shell shock earlier in the book, and I said to Faith, ah-ha, that just might do it.

So I am incredibly grateful that she took the time to talk to me and listen to me and chat with me for a bit about writing, because I may finally get "unstuck" on those chapters, now. I found Faith Sullivan to be a very friendly, approachable, down-to-earth person--which does NOT mean you should accost her if you see her at a shopping mall near you. It does mean that if her novels are as full of personality as she is, then they are worth checking out. I shall be doing so myself, and, unless I forget, will let you know what I think.

In other news, I stopped by to visit jemby on my way home--that is why I am at a computer posting this; huzzah for Jemby and her internet access!--and passed Present Moment Herbs and Books. On the clearance cart outside of the store was a book called Business Without Bosses: How Self-Managing Teams Are Building High-Performing Companies, by Charles C. Manz and Henry P. Sims, Jr. Right up my alley on one of my pet themes, namely, that the Command-and-Control style of management is a DINOSAUR.



Like that. La la!

Heh. bluestocking79 posted this meme:

Leave a list of fictional characters in your journal that you would love to get a message from. It is your friend-list's mission, should they choose to accept it, to write you an in-character "letter" from a character on that list. Then they post their own list in their journal and the process continues!

And, conveniently, Severus Snape decided to start dictating a letter in my head in response to this meme.

( Read the letter from Severus to Bluestocking79 here... )

That was the fun part. The hard part, probably because I've been immersed in either Severus Snape or Frederick and Ned (original characters in my original novel... remember that?), was trying to think of literary characters that would be familiar to me, familiar to my friends list, AND be fun and interesting to write about. In the end, I came up with a rather random and motley list, and used TV and film as well as literature--and one nonfictional person who was too fascinating to leave off my list.

And no, I did not include Severus on this list. The man has been talking to me quite enough, lately. I need some fresh perspectives. ;-)

My characters:

Laura Ingalls Wilder (at any age, including post-Little House life) from the Little House books (NOT the TV version)
Jay Gatsby from The Great Gatsby
Pippin Took from The Lord of the Rings
Mr. Emerson (George's father) from A Room With a View
Albert Einstein (not a fictional character, but definitely a legend)
Sir Bedevere from Monty Python and the Holy Grail
The Constitutional Peasant from Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Any main character from Gilligan's Island
Any main character from M*A*S*H (the TV show, any season)

By the way, you don't have to write as long a letter as I did, so don't be put off by thinking it has to be a magnum opus.

Have fun!

P.S. - jemby, I figured you might like to try Mr. Emerson, but if Mr. Beebe speaks to you, by all means take good notes. I shall be very sad if you don't come up with something.

Yes, I AM still working on my novel. My life has not been completely devoured by the completion of the Harry Potter series. I am in the process of compiling my thoughts about Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and will be posting those reasonably soon. Among other things, I will be writing about the Harry-Snape arc throughout the series, and how it relates to Harry's story as a coming-of-age story; and I will be revisiting one of my favorite obsessions, the myth of redemptive sacrifice, and how that does or does not apply to Deathly Hallows.

Meanwhile, in case you were wondering, I am indeed still working on the third draft of Ned: A Chronicle of a Marriage. It's coming along swimmingly, in the sense of swimming upstream and bumping into a lot of old tires and tangles of milfoil. ;-)

O.K. Like I said: The path of true genius never did run smooth.

I made the following list for my own reference, to use in working on the third draft editing as well as for writing The Synopsis (or Synopses) when the time comes, but it also provides an overview for the interested reader who has been following my ramblings about my novel in progress.

Format of the Story

Fictional memoir, first-person narrative

Threads/Layers of the Story

1. Primary narrative: Frederick's life with Ned, childhood through old age

2. Frederick coming to terms with his love for Ned.

-- Sexual orientation as personal trait vs. sexual orientation as subculture

3. Frederick coming to terms with traumatic events in his life

3a. Deaths of his parents (and, to a lesser degree, his grandfather)

-- Myth of paradise, escapism

3b. The Great War

-- Questioning the mythologization and ennoblement of war
-- Escapism, myth of apotheosis as veneer covering traumatic realities

4. Frederick's spiritual journey: faith vis-a-vis war experiences and his love of Ned

-- Examing and challenging our images of God

Overall themes

-- Alienation and the search for acceptance (belonging)
-- Endurance and perseverance despite life's wounds
-- Healing and integration

Comments from all you lurking friends and passersby would be most welcome. Does it sound interesting to you? If so, why? If not, why not? What do you consider interesting in a story?

I am very sad that nobody commented on my poem about Tinky-Winky and Jerry Falwell. I am even sadder that nobody has come forth to proclaim it the Greatest Work of Literature Ever Scribed in the English Language.

Ah, well. There's always The Novel to fall back on.

I reworked a scene in Chapter 2 of Ned that never quite felt right. After pondering a while, I figured out that the dialogue was jarringly out of character for Ned. So I've been mulling over it, playing around with alternatives, and finally something clicked: similar dialogue, same conclusion to the scene, but radical shift in tone that is much truer to Ned's character -- including a new punch line that is TOTALLY Ned. :-D Trust me on this one.

One of the people who read the whole book had commented that she had trouble connecting with the characters in Chapters 2 and 3, but from Chapter 4 on everything "clicked." I think that I was still getting a handle on the characters in the early stages of writing. The changes I've made have tightened things considerably, and, I think, made the characterization much more consistent. I'm done for sure with Chapters 1 through 5, and I think I'm done with 6 and 7 as well. HOOT! It feels really good to see it all fall into place. I mean, I liked the book in the second draft, but I'm even more excited by what I see happening with the third draft. So far, one person has read both versions of the first few chapters, and she said the third draft is definitely an improvement: basically, I get out of my own way and let the important stuff emerge out of the second draft's verbal clutter.

Hoot. A couple of quick items of note:

1. One of my preview readers just finished reading Part Two. He knows I'm working on making revisions for the final draft to be submitted, and want feedback that will help me in the process of tweaking and trimming. His feedback on Part Two: "I wouldn't change one word." Hoot. I told him I'd probably find a few stray adverbs to weed-whack away, but it's still good to know that he liked Part Two that strongly. ;-) I do think Part Two is the most fully developed and least in need of "polishing" of the three sections; certainly in many ways it's my favorite section of the book, if it's possible to choose a favorite section.

2. Another of my readers apparently got the impression I was writing an Edwardian book -- probably due to all my earlier ramblings about needing background on the Edwardian era. Just to be clear: The characters grew up in Edwardian England, but the story is NOT an "Edwardian" story. It is very much "modern," in the sense of post-World War I. Frankly, I've never been much interested in the pre-WWI side of things, which is why I needed the background information in the first place. Hoot. ;-)

Gotta go, teh libe is about to close...

O.K. I know it's been a while since I posted when it takes me a minute to remember my password. ;-)

Been busy with working on the third draft of Ned: A Chronicle of a Marriage. As I posted a few months back, it doesn't need major surgery, just tweaks -- but the process of tweaking is amazingly brain-intensive and laborious. In some ways it's more work to polish an "almost there" manuscript than it is to spew out the miles and miles of rough draft. But going over this thing with a fine-tooth comb is paying off: I am quite pleased, so far, with what a big difference the little tweaks are making.

Mostly, it's just deleting a stray word here and there. (Die, adverb! DIIIIEEE!!!) Or discovering an extraneous phrase, or sentence, that can be trimmed away like dead branches to better reveal the thriving leaf-producing branches buried in the clutter of the dead wood. Occasionally I realize that an entire paragraph can be lopped off to good effect. I even cut off the last two scenes of Chapter Three, which was far less painful than one might imagine an amputation to be -- and made the end of Chapter Three segue much more neatly into the beginning of Chapter Four.

The only thing left on my wish list, thus far, is to get some really substantial discussion going of the THEMES and PHILOSOPHICAL IDEAS that I cover in the novel. I mean, call me a total INFP, but it's the IDEAS and the expression thereof that I really want people to engage with and get excited about -- that, and simple connection with the characters. ;-) The book gets into issues about war, and militarism, and disillusionment; about sexual orientation and society and subculture, and especially about making sexual orientation a subculture rather than a simple sexual orientation; and, above all, about religion and spirituality and personal growth and the inner journey. In fact, my latest sound-bite summary centers around the spiritual side of the book, because I think that's what all of the philosophical meanderings and musings boil down to: spirituality.

So try this on for size: Ned is the story of a gay man's journey of faith through the twentieth century.

Hoot. Indeed.

Eventually, by the way, I'll get around to writing more about the weird family crap that I had mentioned at the end of last summer. Meanwhile, I'm having too much fun finishing my book. HOOOOOOOOT!!!!

Hoot. Lately I have been haunted by a song on Loreena McKennitt's newest album, An Ancient Muse. I can't help but think about Frederick and Ned (from my novel. of course.) when I listen to this:


Penelope's Song
by Loreena McKennitt
(...who just knew it would be apropos for the characters in an as-yet-unpublished novel)


Now that the time has come
Soon gone is the day
There upon some distant shore
You'll hear me say

Long as the day in the summer time
Deep as the wine dark sea
I'll keep your heart with mine.
Till you come to me.

There like a bird I'd fly
High through the air
Reaching for the sun's full rays
Only to find you there

And in the night when our dreams are still
Or when the wind calls free
I'll keep your heart with mine
Till you come to me

Now that the time has come
Soon gone is the day
There upon some distant shore
You'll hear me say

Long as the day in the summer time
Deep as the wine dark sea
I'll keep your heart with mine.
Till you come to me

I spent the last week of 2006 doing something I have not done since April: read my novel, Ned: A Chronicle of a Marriage, straight through. It actually was better than I remembered. Oh, sure, I found a few tweaks here and there, and a couple of tiny points of clarification and research needed, but structurally the thing flows quite well. Yippee. No major surgery required. Which brings me to the scary realization that 2007 will be the year that I step out of my comfortable hermitly writer mode and into actually MARKETING my writing to The Whole World... or at least to a few agents, or maybe a lot of agents, until I find one who wants to represent me.

Yaaaaahhhh.

It's this business of stepping out of my Urban Hermitage and Engaging The Outside World that gets me quite nervous. I guess that makes me a typical writer; if we weren't most comfortable living inside of our heads, we wouldn't be so good at creating vivid stories that people like to read. ;-) But nobody's going to enjoy a story that stays in my little cocoon and never sees the light of day, soooo... time to figure out the Great Secret of Successful People Everywhere: How to effectively engage the Outside World. Doot-doot-da-doooooo!!!!

I'll figure it out.

Meanwhile, HUZZAH!!! Next step is to take care of my line editing and minor research-clarification tweaks and format the novel properly, because no agent or editor is going to want to read single-spaced paragraphs of plain text in 10-point Courier. Once I have something presentable to present, I shall then begin in earnest the study of how to go about presenting it, and to whom. I have some good reference material as a starting point, and I'll just take it a step at a time from there. Feedback thus far has been very encouraging, so I see no reason to give up -- as if I would, anyway.

New Year's Eve, we had a delightfully crappy winter storm blow through the Twin Cities, so I did what many sensible Twin Citians did that night: stayed home and watched movies. Well, in my case, I watched one movie, three times: Monty Python and the Holy Grail, a Christmas gift from My Son. ;-) The first time, I watched it in the usual way. The second time, I watched it with the subtitles on so I could focus my listening on the commentary by Michael Palin, Eric Idle, and John Cleese. The third time, I switched to the commentary by Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones. Then I started to watch it a fourth time, to play the Follow the Killer Rabbit feature, but my eyes were getting tired of staring at the TV screen, so I gave it a rest.

Later I watched a few of the special features on the second DVD. It was especially fun watching Michael Palin and Terry Jones re-visit the Scottish castle where most of the castle scenes were filmed. I also did terrifyingly well on the quizzes about the movie. I am such a geek, at least a Holy Grail geek. I must have watched Holy Grail at least two hundred times so far in my lifetime.

By the way, I was in a very goofy and sleep-deprived mood when I posted on Christmas Eve. But you knew that. ;-) HOOT!

Well. My 94 year old grandmother appears to be approaching the end of a long, slow decline--physical debilitation, senile dementia, and so forth. She got ill several weeks ago, and since then has lost interest in eating, and seems to have basically decided that she's ready to let go. When someone is visiting more with the ancestors than with the living, you know that the veil between the worlds is growing thin. So yesterday I went to visit my grandmother in the nursing home, while I still could. I got there as she was being turned over by attendants (to prevent bedsores, etc.) and waited through all that. Once they got her in a comfortable position, she slipped right into a deep sleep. ;-) So I didn't get a conversation with her, as I'd hoped I would, but I at least got to talk to her, stroke her hair, put my hands on her head and arm and tell her I love her and often think of her and to tell her "take care." Rather a sending-off kind of thing. Who knows how much longer she will linger, but I felt it was important to do my bit to "release" her instead of clinging.

That all sounds very calm and cool on the page, but I can tell you it was very emotionally wrenching. It was harder than I expected to have to leave her and then go to work at the store; I spent most of the shift feeling very "spacey" and keeping a lingering sadness at bay. All part of the normal grieving process, I know, but there's still the getting through it. Meanwhile, I got to have a nice visit, between the nursing home and work, with my aunt, my youngest sister, and one of my nieces.

In other news, my family is insane. But you knew that.

Been spending the summer on a reading binge, with an occasional indulgence in movies. Theoretically, it's recreation, taking a break from The Novel. In practice... hey, we all know better. I'm watching the movies, then watching scenes again to analyze the construction of the story, and THEN watching the deleted scenes to analyze how the story would have been better or worse if they had been included. And every novel I read is not just a Good Read: It's Broadening My Literary Education, and helping me to get a feel for how well my own novel stacks up against the Already Published.

In other words, even as I play, I'm still working. ;-) And even though I said I was going to put The Novel away for the whole summer, well, I cheated. I've been reading bits and pieces, occasionally, now and then. Not too much. Really.

Oh, hell. I'm hooked.

Keep my grandmother, and my whole looney clan, in your thoughts and prayers. We're going to need them.

There I was, working on Part Three of Ned, and suddenly I realized...

I AM ABOUT TO FINISH THIS THING!!!

Well. My son can be quite pleased, now. For Mother's Day last year, a few months before he left for California, he bought me some writing-related gifts, with the idea that "maybe these will help you actually finish a novel, Mom." Heh. I don't know if it was the kid, or the Muse, or what, but I've done it. Woo-hoo!

Of course I've written lots of stuff over the past decade, but this is the first completely fleshed-out draft of a novel that I have managed to finish, not counting the very first novel I wrote which, being a very first novel, wasn't all that awful good. ;-) For now, I will be setting the thing aside for the summer, allowing others to read it and offer feedback. Then, at the end of summer or beginning of fall, assuming no major problems requiring drastic rewriting manifest themselves, I'll sit down and give the story a good fresh read-through and begin the fine-tooth-comb spit-and-polish stage of revision.

Then I put it into proper format for submission and figure out how the hell my nerdly hermitly self is going to navigate the marketing end of things, whether to find an agent or a publisher.

As the Quakers say, Way Will Open.

Well, yesterday evening I finally wrote the last bit of Chapter 16 that needed to be done before I could truly say that Part Two of Ned is done. I just needed a transition for a scene, which, of course, ended up entailing revision of the surrounding scenes in order to make it all flow seamlessly. At least, that's the plan. I've set the thing aside for a few days, and then will do a re-read or two and make any last tweaks before declaring it fit for preview consumption.

Translation: Jenny, hurry and finish Part One, because Part Two is COMIN' AT YA!!! Hoot!

Most of my readers so far have been rather randomly selected. At some point, I would like to get at least one person who will read it with an eye towards checking it for historical accuracy, or lack thereof, someone with the knowledge of the period and cultures who can catch the little things a fakin'-it-as-I-go-along storyteller might miss. Yes, of course I've done research, but I'm not an expert. That's where an expert will come in handy.

Anyway, speaking of research, it's onward to Part Three, and the 1940s. Weeha! Got a bit of reading to do in order to put more flesh on the bones of Part Three, especially in the early chapters; the later chapters are, I think, pretty damned near done. Which is good. I tend to like to have my ending in place early on, making adjustments as needed over the writing of the rest of it, but at least having the general goal in mind.

In other news, I finally read The Da Vinci Code, and I have to say, historically accurate or not, I really don't give a damn. It was a good read, and I can't argue with the underlying message: the suppression of the Divine Feminine in church history, and the reawakening of the Goddess. Hoot, indeed.

I've started reading other books on the subject of various and sundry theories about Mary Magdalene. (Currently: The Woman with the Alabaster Jar, by Margaret Starbird.) The facts are probably beyond establishing with any real certainty, but a few bare-bones specifics seem highly likely: First and foremost, that Mary Magdalene was, if not first among the followers of Jesus of Nazareth (and a lot of scholars seem to think the evidence indicates she was), then certainly one of the prominent leaders within that circle. The royalty thing may be romantic speculation, but at the least, she was a leader in the group, and closely associated with Jesus, at least in friendship and/or discipleship, whether or not they were in fact married. And it's also highly plausible that she, along with other close friends of his, did indeed have to flee the region after Jesus' execution. Being best buds of a seditionist wasn't exactly the recipe for safety and security in first century Rome.

Symbolically, she clearly represented a respect for women that was sadly lacking in the versions of Christianity that ended up taking root and winning out. Ironic, I think, that a man whose life was lived in radical challenge to the social order ended up being "spiritualized" and "divinized" beyond human recognition--all in the name of solidifying Rome's political power and reinforcing the social order. Co-optation happens.

So whatever the historical facts, at the least, there's a lot of mythic and symbolic significance in all of the different stories people wove around Jesus and the people who associated with him back in the day. Makes a nice change of pace from all that Lost Generation reading I've been doing for the past year or two.