standstill
Sep. 12th, 2005 11:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greygirlbeastSo, if there was little to be said about Saturday, there's even less to be said about Sunday (and, so, I shall, of course, need twice as much space to relate it). Nothing was written. Nary a word. And here's the why. About a million or so years ago, back in college, I spent three long semesters with a "creative writing" instructor whom I loathed (don't worry, he loathed me, too). He had a lengthy list of things that one should never, ever write about under any circumstances. The list was 99% hogwash. I knew it at the time and told him as much, which is no doubt one reason that we got along so poorly. But there was this one thing on that list which I intuitively sensed he was right about (even morons sometimes stumble upon truths, despite themselves).
Never write stories set at Christmas, unless you want to write a Christmas story, as all stories set at Christmas become, de facto, Christmas stories.
It's been remarkably easy advice to follow, given my utter hatred for Christmas and all things relating to Christmas. And yet...Daughter of Hounds occurs the week before Christmas. To be precise: Saturday, December 19th — Thursday, December 24th, 2009. Which means I've gone and ignored that one useful tidbit of advice from Dread Writing Instructor X. I've set a story at Christmas. I thought that I could get away with it, and now I see that I was almost certainly wrong. Originally, the first half on the story was to have taken place in late December and the second half in the spring of the following year. But then I was told the book shouldn't exceed 150K words, and Part Two had to be absorbed into Part One (more or less), and, at the time, I didn't think much about the fact that this meant that the whole novel would be taking place in the week before Christmas. Until yesterday, when I realized that the novel will climax on Christmas Eve, which, on the one hand will, I fear, seem a little precious, and on the other hand will, I also fear, forever brand Daughter of Hounds a Christmas novel, even though it most emphatically isn't.
And, as if this isn't bad enough, I also realized yesterday that, in the Emmie half of the narrative, I simply have too much taking place on Sunday, December 20th. I somehow crammed too much into one short winter day. So, when the book is finished, I'm going to have to go back and split that day into two days, which is why the story will be concluding on December 24th instead of December 23rd. It's feels like having almost finished building a house, then realizing that you need to add a room right in the center — say a bathroom you somehow forgot to build when you should have. One of the less pleasant consequences of the way that I write is that dren like this happens from time to time. Usually, I look the other way. I mean, who needs that bathroom anyway, right? But this time I've realized I have to fix the problem. A correlation of sunrise and sunset for New England in December, opening and closing times for the American Museum of Natural History, and the Amtrak schedule for trains between Providence and New York City has left me with very little choice in the matter. Otherwise, I have an inexplicable 37-hour day (or something dumb like that).
It is at this point that I began to moan and wave my arms about like a lunatic octopus. It is at this point, caught between these twin realizations, that I knew nothing would be written yesterday. I'm going to speak with my agent this afternoon about the Christmas thing, and see if she thinks it's as problematic as I do. She probably won't, as she's been reading the book and loves it and has said not one word about the evils of Christmas. But I suspect it's still going to bug me too much to let stand. And it's not as hard to rectify as the need for an extra day. I simply push the narrative ahead so it occurs the week after Christmas. Thing is, what got me into this fix, Daughter of Hounds is, in part, a story about an eight-year-old girl, and I needed it to be winter, and I also needed her to be out of school. That's why I set the novel during the holidays. That's the only reason I did it.
I was also visited by one of my increasingly rare migraines yesterday afternoon, which helped not at all. It's still here, like twelve inches of writhing barbed wire packed tightly inside my right orbit.
And still, I have to try to write today.
If you haven't already, please check out the Wrong Things auction. All proceeds go to Poppy. The starting price has been met, but we can do much better than that, don't you think? Also, Spooky came back from the P.O. this morning with a bundle of letters and postcards for Poppy, which we'll probably be forwarding tomorrow. Thanks, everyone. And it's not too late to send a postcard or letter, if you wish. I'll keep forwarding them as long as they keep coming (Poppy Z. Brite, c/o Caitlín R. Kiernan, P.O. Box 5290, Atlanta, GA 31107).
A couple of days back, I stumbled across this photo online somewhere, Nar'eth from Dragon*Con '04 (behind the cut, unless you aren't reading this on LJ, in which case, click here). Spooky touching up my makeup in a restroom in the Hyatt. It made me smile. It also made me feel even lousier about missing D*C this year. I think it's quite possibly the only Nar'eth/Spooky photo in existence. I have no idea who took it.
Nar'eth and Spooky, September '04.
Never write stories set at Christmas, unless you want to write a Christmas story, as all stories set at Christmas become, de facto, Christmas stories.
It's been remarkably easy advice to follow, given my utter hatred for Christmas and all things relating to Christmas. And yet...Daughter of Hounds occurs the week before Christmas. To be precise: Saturday, December 19th — Thursday, December 24th, 2009. Which means I've gone and ignored that one useful tidbit of advice from Dread Writing Instructor X. I've set a story at Christmas. I thought that I could get away with it, and now I see that I was almost certainly wrong. Originally, the first half on the story was to have taken place in late December and the second half in the spring of the following year. But then I was told the book shouldn't exceed 150K words, and Part Two had to be absorbed into Part One (more or less), and, at the time, I didn't think much about the fact that this meant that the whole novel would be taking place in the week before Christmas. Until yesterday, when I realized that the novel will climax on Christmas Eve, which, on the one hand will, I fear, seem a little precious, and on the other hand will, I also fear, forever brand Daughter of Hounds a Christmas novel, even though it most emphatically isn't.
And, as if this isn't bad enough, I also realized yesterday that, in the Emmie half of the narrative, I simply have too much taking place on Sunday, December 20th. I somehow crammed too much into one short winter day. So, when the book is finished, I'm going to have to go back and split that day into two days, which is why the story will be concluding on December 24th instead of December 23rd. It's feels like having almost finished building a house, then realizing that you need to add a room right in the center — say a bathroom you somehow forgot to build when you should have. One of the less pleasant consequences of the way that I write is that dren like this happens from time to time. Usually, I look the other way. I mean, who needs that bathroom anyway, right? But this time I've realized I have to fix the problem. A correlation of sunrise and sunset for New England in December, opening and closing times for the American Museum of Natural History, and the Amtrak schedule for trains between Providence and New York City has left me with very little choice in the matter. Otherwise, I have an inexplicable 37-hour day (or something dumb like that).
It is at this point that I began to moan and wave my arms about like a lunatic octopus. It is at this point, caught between these twin realizations, that I knew nothing would be written yesterday. I'm going to speak with my agent this afternoon about the Christmas thing, and see if she thinks it's as problematic as I do. She probably won't, as she's been reading the book and loves it and has said not one word about the evils of Christmas. But I suspect it's still going to bug me too much to let stand. And it's not as hard to rectify as the need for an extra day. I simply push the narrative ahead so it occurs the week after Christmas. Thing is, what got me into this fix, Daughter of Hounds is, in part, a story about an eight-year-old girl, and I needed it to be winter, and I also needed her to be out of school. That's why I set the novel during the holidays. That's the only reason I did it.
I was also visited by one of my increasingly rare migraines yesterday afternoon, which helped not at all. It's still here, like twelve inches of writhing barbed wire packed tightly inside my right orbit.
And still, I have to try to write today.
If you haven't already, please check out the Wrong Things auction. All proceeds go to Poppy. The starting price has been met, but we can do much better than that, don't you think? Also, Spooky came back from the P.O. this morning with a bundle of letters and postcards for Poppy, which we'll probably be forwarding tomorrow. Thanks, everyone. And it's not too late to send a postcard or letter, if you wish. I'll keep forwarding them as long as they keep coming (Poppy Z. Brite, c/o Caitlín R. Kiernan, P.O. Box 5290, Atlanta, GA 31107).
A couple of days back, I stumbled across this photo online somewhere, Nar'eth from Dragon*Con '04 (behind the cut, unless you aren't reading this on LJ, in which case, click here). Spooky touching up my makeup in a restroom in the Hyatt. It made me smile. It also made me feel even lousier about missing D*C this year. I think it's quite possibly the only Nar'eth/Spooky photo in existence. I have no idea who took it.
Nar'eth and Spooky, September '04.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-09-12 04:41 pm (UTC)My card for Poppy went in the post today. 5-10 days via air mail.
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Date: 2005-09-12 04:46 pm (UTC)And yes, cool photo...
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Date: 2005-09-13 01:27 am (UTC)Oooooh. Me, too.
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Date: 2005-09-12 04:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-12 05:03 pm (UTC)I'm going to ask her about that very thing today, and I'll post her reply here tomorrow.
you are so spammed right here
Date: 2005-09-12 04:58 pm (UTC)Nice pic :)
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Date: 2005-09-12 05:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-13 01:28 am (UTC)Agreed. Still...
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Date: 2005-09-12 05:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-12 07:50 pm (UTC)Yeah. Having done that makeup and costume five times now, I have some idea of what the actors must go through. With me, it's a one day affair. But day in and day out, it could do you in. Which is one reason that Virginia Hey left Farscape — the demands of the makeup. The makeup in the photo required almost four hours of airbrushing, plus constant touch ups.
In the photo, I think I'm probably most hot and wishing I could sweat.
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Date: 2005-09-12 05:27 pm (UTC)i love the photograph! thanks for sharing.
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Date: 2005-09-12 05:29 pm (UTC)Actrually, there's a snowstorm already, which begins on the evening of Sunday, December 20th.
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Date: 2005-09-12 05:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-12 07:54 pm (UTC)If a 37-hour day belonged in the book at that particular point, I'd be happy with it, too. This, though, is just a sort of mess.
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Date: 2005-09-12 05:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-12 07:51 pm (UTC)I live for the squeak.
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Date: 2005-09-12 06:49 pm (UTC)And I know it must be stressful about having to re-set the book, but if it helps at all, I remember my grade-school winter breaks as being about 3 weeks long: either one before x-mas and 2 after or the other way around depending on the school. Even at City College I've got finals until the 20-somethingth and then don't go back until the middle of January.
You'll find a way to make it work!
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Date: 2005-09-12 07:52 pm (UTC)You'll find a way to make it work!
Thanks for the info. and the confidence. I wish I felt half that confident right now...
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Date: 2005-09-13 04:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-12 07:21 pm (UTC)I wrote an X-mass story a few years ago that featured Santa Claus getting anally raped by Jason Vorhees. A little kid wakes up to find Santa's head under his X-mass Tree and thinks it is the coolest thing EVER.
Needless to say, it was written as a very poor joke to illustrate everything I hate about fan-fic (which is, quite literally, EVERYTHING).
no subject
Date: 2005-09-12 08:06 pm (UTC)That said, I don't think I'd consider it a Christmas story unless Christmas is actively discussed or the trappings of Christmas are constantly referenced... otherwise, it's just a story that happens to end up on Dec 24th. It sounds like more of a winter story to me, because if I see snow at all it's likelier to be in Jan or Feb than at Christmastime.
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Date: 2005-09-12 08:39 pm (UTC)Yep. That's what my agent was just telling me.
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Date: 2005-09-12 08:26 pm (UTC)About the school vacation thing... with year-round school becoming more the norm and vacation times being staggered throughout the year, it wouldn't be inaccurate to have a school vacation not exactly at the holidays.
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Date: 2005-09-12 08:41 pm (UTC)I don't think so. I don't think she ever went into the rr with us last year.
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Date: 2005-09-12 08:59 pm (UTC)~M
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Date: 2005-09-13 01:32 am (UTC)I'm pretty sure that Nar'eth was convinced she was about to expire from a combination of heat prostration and oxygen deprivation.
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Date: 2005-09-12 09:04 pm (UTC)Nice photo. There's something vaguely mythical about it.
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Date: 2005-09-13 01:30 am (UTC)Hmmm. The Lay of Nar'eth and Spooky.
Then again, it sort of occurs to me that Christmas is something everyone has to deal with, so why not the people in your novel as well?
That's fine, if I want people to be thinking about Christmas while their reading it.
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Date: 2005-09-13 02:10 am (UTC)It could be an oil painting or something. I bet
That's fine, if I want people to be thinking about Christmas while their reading it.
Aw, c'mon, it'd be great! You could have a big Charlie Brown homage--"Can't someone tell me what Christmas is all about?!" said Emmie. Soldier looked at her, solemnly clutching his blanket and said, "Yes, Emmie Silvey. I can tell you what Christmas is all about . . . Lights, please?"
Or not. Anyway, this reminds me of what a delicate balancing act it can be to make the two ends of natural progression of events and artist's intentions meet in a seemingly unforced way.
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Date: 2005-09-12 10:13 pm (UTC)No, I don't suppose that at all.
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Date: 2005-09-12 11:02 pm (UTC)*snork*
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Date: 2005-09-12 11:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-13 02:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-13 03:32 pm (UTC)And hey, I'd be happy with a Daughter of Hounds Christmas:)