sunshine, blue sky

The Water Carriers, Henry Ryland

37,340, Loose Daddy. Had to recreate a paragraph somehow lost during yesterday morning’s work. Don’t know how that happened, but the recreation is probably better than the first writing anyway. Maybe. I hate when hard-won words disappear into the twilight zone. That happens when the brain has to wake up at OMG-thirty in the morning.

Judy’s picking me up today for the literary luncheon and then later this afternoon I’m meeting my paternal half-sister Alesia and her husband Michael who’re in town. Sunday they leave out of Long Beach port for their Mexican Riviera cruise. We’ll have dinner together this evening and walk about the Pike and Shoreline Village for a bit. It’s hot today, going to be a lovely warm evening.

My laundry’s done and I’m working on Loose Daddy until it’s time to get ready for the luncheon.

friday roundup

Cherries in Porcelain Bowl, Osias Beert 

Loose Daddy : 37,146; so the going is good, and I’ve written much more than I thought.

a burst of excitement

 At the Stream, Philip Hermogenes Calderon

I have been these past few weeks reconnecting with my literary novel, Loose Daddy, word by word. I finished the first draft in 2004 and it’s been in the files every since until I recently sent it off to a professional editor. His comments reinvigorated me for the book. I was at first uncertain about what I had to do and what could possibly come of it, but I’ve expanded the narrative by a couple thousand words so far, and the story is taking on the pleasant feel of a walk through a familiar forest.

I’m gradually slipping back into Tyrell’s state of mind. Tyrell’s challenge is to make a life for himself and his family. He’s young, already a father at 22, and it’s difficult; he doesn’t know if he can jump the fences laid out before him; he doesn’t know if he wants to. It is interesting how when a person is given a choice of doing something about a situation or doing nothing–the person often chooses to do nothing, and turns a deaf ear to the Call. While thinking about this, I felt a burst of excitement because I’m going to have to follow Tyrell through the forest, and even though it’s a familiar forest, there are places in it I didn’t go before.

yesterday’s silent light

 

Yesterday my sisters, nieces and I visited Mom’s grave. We took her roses, big fat cabbage roses in peach and scarlet and elegant American beauties in hearts-blood red swooning in fern. Riverside National Cemetery was sunny, breeze-swept, and full of other families paying respects and leaving behind bouquets of roses and lilies and tulips. We told Mom we loved her and missed her, and my four-year old niece asked if grandma was down there beneath the plaque, and we said yes. I was very glad to have given Mom roses every Mother’s Day. When going through a collection of old photos my sisters and I found the papery petals of aged rose blossoms.

snippity-snip

 The Pink House, William Degouve de Nuncques

Almost done with the minor edit fixes on Loose Daddy, getting ready to go through the manuscript again to do a major mark-up. There will be blood. Need to further develop my main character’s storyline and that means significant cutting and re-writing of the middle portion of the story, but I’ve got two strong motivations in place and a solid plot step that feeds well into his emotions and his state of mind. I’m looking at 55,000 to 60,000 words in the final. When I finish this rewrite, I’ll be sending the manuscript back to Steve.

No work on Sweet Taboo this week. Stuck at Chapter 7–don’t know what to do.

No work on the novella either.

A Lamentation of Swans is demanding attention, but I can’t find a free hour to give to it.

going for it

The London Bootblack, Jules Bastien-Lepage

Writer Cicily Janus has this great quote as an end-note to her e-mails, from Friedrich Nietzsche, “A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.”

So very true. Writing is a lonely endeavor and having the warm support of friends certainly brightens the path through the forest. I’m lucky to have such friends.

Thinking about what to do, how to best use my writing time, I realized I don’t really want to stop working on Sweet Taboo. I’m at a critical juncture with the story, writing the middle, and need to keep the momentum going, but also, I shouldn’t let Loose Daddy lie about any longer and lose its spark. Strike while the iron is hot. Since I’ve got to do some thinking and story planning for Loose Daddy anyway, I might as well continue rewriting Sweet Taboo until I reach the point where I must start rewriting Loose Daddy  too, then I’ll shift the bulk of my writing time to LD, applying a variation of your earlier suggestion, Devon.

I really, really want to be able to send both manuscripts out, although I’m not sure exactly when that’ll be. Steve’s comments made me realize that I must stop viewing my writing through a veil darkly.

need the sand shovel

Maternal Admiration, William Bouguereau

Got Loose Daddy back from the professional editor and it’s good news! I’m thrilled I took this step. It came via e-mail this morning, but I’ve not had a chance to print it out and review his comments–will do that tonight. The upshot–he thought it well written, good story, good quality work, and publishable–BUT it’s too short (yeah I knew that) so must expand the characters, develop more backstory, add more action–in short, give the story room to breathe, and Loose Daddy will be good to go.

This brings me to a new decision: set Sweet Taboo aside for a bit, say the month of May, and work on Loose Daddy. I need about 25,000 more words to grow the novel to maturity. One reason why the manuscript stayed in the file was ’cause I didn’t know what to do with it story-wise, but now I think I can dive in and get to work developing it some more. There is definitely room for growth in the narrative, and I’m thinking of a slew of material, story notes and scenes, in a box in the closet just waiting for me. That box has got the rest of Loose Daddy buried in half-written scenes and discarded sequences. Must find my sand shovel.

hot damn!

 

A Bacchante, Arthur Hacker

Hey Lisa and Devon! (jumping up and down and waving maniacally). Another gloriously hot, Santa Ana-breezy day. I know this kind of superheated weather does not sit well with a good many folk, but I’m an unrepentant sunbunny and I love it when it’s hot! Love it! Summers don’t last long enough for me. I really should live in a place where winter never comes. So where’s my tropical island and whose buying it for me?

Now, mind you, I don’t hate winter, but it makes my bones hurt. Winter is a beautiful season–best observed from behind glass in a toasty room, for me. What it is–I don’t want to go out in it! Snow’s gorgeous, but I don’t want to be out in it doing something like getting to the day job, especially doing something like getting to the day job. It’s fun to watch boreal breezes toss the trees about and listen to it grumble and roar about the eaves–but I don’t want to walk in it. Rain is lovely! But I melt. 

So today, this very afternoon, I completed Chapter Six of Sweet Taboo! Kenny’s chapter. 2,848 words, bringing the count to 24,059. Me and Neo beneath the palm trees at Valparaiso Park, overlooking the ocean. I was struggling with the first scene and I thought that I wouldn’t get far ’cause it was like pulling La Muse’s teeth. I wrote the whole chapter! The whole chapter–printed out to fifteen pages! I’ve not done that in a sitting in a l-o-n-g time. I’m thrilled ’cause once I got going, after chasing down my gibbering monkey mind and corralling it with the songs I lined up on my Ipod Shuffle, I got into Kenny and we had a good time.

Michelle loaned me her set of Season 1 of WEST WING to help ease my wait for SUPERNATURAL, Season 3. And tonight I get to watch it guilt-free!

Excuse me while I swan about the living room with my new Chapter Six.

the winds are rose-scented

L’Aurore, William Bouguereau

Santa Anas blowing from land to sea all day, warm, dry, rose-scented, picking up the fragrance from blossom-filled neighborhood yards. I read a little over 5 pages of Chapter Two from Silk River at writer’s meeting this morning (the rest of Chapter Two is too incoherent to read); it went well. My group are all experienced writers and their comments reflect a better perception of the novel than I have. It’s difficult for me to see when I’m on the right track with something, even if inside I know I am. That little voice of affirmation often gets drowned.

After getting home I took a walk up to the bluff and sat gazing at the ocean for a while, gathering my thoughts about the scene I’m about to write in Sweet Taboo. Some distance from the pier, a gaggle of white-winged sailboats bobbled on the flat, slow-running sea. Must’ve been a sailing class because they all gradually turned until their sails were phantasmal white lines and floated off. 

I really like what I’ve written of Sweet Taboo so far. I’m trying to be linear now in this draft, get the structure in place so that when I read through it, the story flows, and I can feel it attaining dimension.

Last night I finished Season Two of SUPERNATURAL, episodes “What Is and What Should Never Be”, “All Hell Breaks Loose, Part 1,” and “All Hell Breaks Loose, Part 2″ (and it’s a good thing these last two were on the same dvd ’cause a conniption was going to break loose if I had to wait until Season 3 comes available). All I can say about it is wow. The stakes have been upped significantly for Dean and I hope the writers have not written themselves into a corner with his character. This series continues to surprise and delight me. And I just discovered both seasons at Amazon–so guess what I did? You’re right! And I got to use my $40.00 gift certificate balance! SUPERNATURAL for free! Yay! Fangirl much? Umm, yeah.

poetical prose

A Sea Nymph, Sir Edward Burne-Jones

Well, having cut Sweet Taboo to shreds a couple weeks ago, I’m now rebuilding it page by page, and I feel like finally, after a long time of being lost in the woods, I’ve found the good witch’s cottage, meaning I’ve reached a good place in this particular novel’s path to completion. The path is still loopy, I’m not yet on eagle’s wings, but the story has smoothed out some and I’m feeling better about it.

Tomorrow is writer’s group, and I’m reading. Think I’ll read from Silk River. I’m not rewriting this one yet, but am giving it a rough reading among my peers as much to hear it myself as to get their opinions and criticisms.

I’ve taken another risky step, encouraged by Lisa and sent the novel I finished in 2004, Loose Daddy to a professional editor. I decided to do this because I don’t have the time to give to the book right now, nor the energy, and the frustration level ran high with this one. And every time I thought about it growing mold in the file cabinet, I got depressed. Somebody else’s level head and cooler eyes were needed ’cause I couldn’t see the forest for the trees.

So glad the weekend is nigh!