Better Than Dead

Inspired by matociquala and stillsostrange, here’s the first line meme.

The idea here is that we post the first lines of unfinished stories, on the theory that we might then be inspired to finish a few…

This is something of a Hall of Shame for me as I’ve been working on some of these a good long while, but there isn’t world enough and time these days. These are just the stories that I still consider “active,” in that the interest is still strong to finish them or return to them, and that my imagination, at least, is still working on them. Please note: these are all first draft stage.

ETA: Oops! I forgot this one, maybe because it’s so active in my mind these days that I just assumed it’s next in the queue. (But we’ll see when I get there.)

Carmina (in the same world as Blood Geek):
Carmina woke to the sound of a sword pulled from a scabbard. No, not that. Not this time. Only the wind blowing the loose tent flap up and along the long metal spike which should be staking it to the ground.

“The Bone Handler”:
Sea Eyes liked to take one last, long look at the shining bright ocean before turning away and descending into the earth.

“A Farewell to Dreams” (a brand new one):
Everyone knew, including Shennah, that a dream dreamed too long became a brittle thing, broken by even a passing breeze.

“Green Horse Bone” (unfinished a long time but still alive):
The long bone peeked out from a clump of ferns at the base of a pine as I hiked up Waterman Mountain in Angeles Crest.

“The Heart of the Western Tide” (this one calls strongly) (may be a stealth novel):
It was whispered in the bazaars of places more fortunate than Cromartine that long ago some importunate Cromartinian had angered the tide running along the shore of that sometimes cursed land.

“In the Black” (a spooky sequel to my novel Venus in Transit):
The absence of all light stepped through the door wearing the shape of a man.

“Jim Doesn’t Bring Me Flowers”:
My shadow moved along the wall although I stood still.

Beneath a Hollow Moon (book 3 in the Dos Lunas novel trilogy of which I have completed book two, Venus in Transit):
The body was heavier than they thought it would be.

Blood Boogie (sequel to Blood Geek):
It was their last night on the Mazatlan before heading north again, their very last night of lying on the beach under the stars and making love.

Sympathetic Magic (the novel version of my novella Sealed With a Curse:
As long as Molly kept to the open countryside modern day intrusions wouldn’t interrupt her walk through the past.

The Numberless Stars (book one of the Dos Lunas novel trilogy):
A blue-nosed garden gnome sits on the shoulder of JK, my grandson—one of those real ugly gnomes with a face like a baked apple left in the oven too long.

The Confessions of Thomasina (did for fun, posted a few chapters on the blog, always thought about getting back to it):
I believe that one should not set out to do a great deal of writing unless one has something to say.

I’ve taken the week off from writing due to bad attitude. My attitude has improved mightily. I’m still going to take the week off from writing. The Universe has reinforced this decision by sending me a rejection this week on a story that’s been out for months.

‘Course, the message could just as likely be, “Get back to work.” Good thing I don’t believe in Cosmic Messages.

Except, of course, when I do.

Blood Geek was supposed to be a quick and dirty edit because My-God-I’ve-Edited-This-So-Much-Already-What-Could-Be-Wrong? But there’s that old Samuel Johnson quote, “The prospect of hanging concentrates the mind wonderfully.” I’ve found the same to be true when I get close to actually releasing a piece of my writing to the world. I cannot see releasing something that I didn’t do my best job on.

So…I’m going to have to rewrite several chapters of Blood Geek because the voice is just wrong, wrong, wrong, and I’m going to have to rewrite a couple of other chapters from the ground up in order to make the heroine protag instead of thinking about protagging. I just can’t see any other way of getting around that. I’ve tried tinkering with the material that’s there countless times and it just doesn’t work.

I have examined my mind, my heart, my spirit to see if this is just a perfectionist delaying tactic, but I honestly don’t think it is. Whether anyone looks at this book or not, it’s still going to be out there. Why would I want it to be out there if it wasn’t the best book I could make it?

The rest of it reads pretty well to me. Decent escapist fare. So I’m going to take a week off, gird my loins, and get back to the dirty work next week.

Random quote of the day:

“Truth is stranger than Fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.”

—Mark Twain, “Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar,” Following the Equator

Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

ETA: Fixed broken link.

Random quote of the day:

“Only great minds can afford a simple style.”

—Stendhal, On Love
(tr. Vyvyan Beresford Holland* and C. K. Scott Moncrieff)

*Some of you may know that Vyvyan Holland is Oscar Wilde’s son. Here’s an interesting article on Wilde’s legacy through the generations of his family.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

“Experience is an author’s most valuable asset; experience is the thing that puts the muscle and the breath and warm blood into the book he writes.”

—Mark Twain, Is Shakespeare Dead?

Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

I’m dying to write something new, itching for it, and I know just what novel I want to work on next. It’s been plumping in my mind for weeks now while I work on other things.

All of which is a good thing, except I can’t work on anything new because I’ve got to finish revisions on Blood Geek first. Then there’s the question of when to finish the next round of revisions on Venus in Transit. I wasn’t entirely happy with it when I got through with that last hard slog. I’m not talking about perfectionism here. I’ve long since given that up. I’m talking about having a workable draft, something I can polish and start sending out.

Yet if I diddle around too long with old ideas, I’m afraid the new idea will die on the vine. It might anyway, because as I’ve said before, my writing time is extremely limited these days. I’m determined to chip out time every day, but weekends have become very difficult, and mostly the default has become my lunch hour at work. That’s always been somewhat sacrosanct, but last week, even that got eroded away. I had to run errands at lunch every day last week. It made me despair a little. Or more.

But this week I’m back on track with my revisions and feeling generally better about a lot of things. I think Venus will have to wait, though she’s notoriously impatient. I really do believe I need to balance the old with the new, the revisions with the creation. Carmina has been talking to me consistently lately: low whispers while I sleep, a sudden bright snatch of song as the sun dapples the leaves while I’m driving to work, shared shadowy confidences while I move down a hallway and turn a corner.

She’s there. She’s waiting for me to be ready for her. I really think I have to follow her lead.

At the risk of sounding like I’m disappearing up my own hindquarters, I wanted to refer ya’ll to a blog by Melinda Young. She mentions me by name and my post from yesterday, so it is a bit like log-rolling. However, I mostly wanted to refer interested parties there because of Melinda’s similar-but-different view of this subject, plus some remarks on traditional publishing by Lori Devoti.

I’ve been reading some good blog posts lately about self-publishing and quality control. First from Richard Parks:

“Evolve or Die”

Then, by way of his comment thread, Jim Van Pelt:

“Writing: Self Publishing and Quality”

“Evolution of a Writer”

“So How, Exactly, Does a Writer Grow”

“Evolution of a Writer (redux)”

They support the new publishing paradigm of “indies,” but they also talk about the vetting process that Big Time Publishing does to separate the wheat from the chaff for readers, to cut down on the high ratio of noise to signal when everybody who can starts slapping their writing against the walls of the internet. They also talk about the stages in a writer’s development, how rejection and writers’ groups and critiques, et al., help the conscientious writer improve her craft.

But I’m not going to paraphrase what they say. Read the articles yourself—they state their case better than I can restate it.

What I am going to say here is that, for the most part, I think they’re correct. Oh yes, I am considering adding to the white noise by self-pubbing one of my novels, but I don’t do it out of any sense that this is going to be a Brave New World for me: doors that have hitherto been closed to will suddenly fly open and I will become the next web millionaire. I think that if I sell one copy I’ll be lucky. I haven’t got a pre-sold audience, see, and making oneself heard through the sea of static is quite difficult to do without making oneself obnoxious on every writers’ and readers’ forum on the interdweebs.

So no, I’m not considering doing this with the expectation of Incredible! Breakthroughs! and Millions! I’m doing this purely to have something out there, something I can point people to if they happen to get curious.

I’ve done a hellacious amount of writing (almost certainly a lot of hellacious writing). I have done a heap and then some of critiques, and I have received a heap and then some of critiques. I have submitted and submitted and gotten feedback. All of that, the giving and the getting, have been invaluable to me, have made me grow as a writer, have improved my craft. Some very generous and talented writers and editors have given me priceless feedback. I have listened, I have learned, I have grown.

But I have little to show for that yet. Maybe I didn’t listen and learn enough, maybe I haven’t grown enough. Or maybe my subconscious and writerly changes proceed at ice floe speed. None of that advice has been wasted or ignored. I just process it in a different time zone. I haven’t given up on trying to grow and I haven’t given up on traditional publishing, perverse and dog-eared as that belief may sometimes be. I see no reason not to pursue both e-publishing and traditional publishing at the same time.

Because I do believe in that vetting process. It provides a valuable service. I do not believe there is a vast conspiracy to keep the little people down. Not everybody is as good as they think they are. Myself included. I want to put out the best product I can. I want to grow an audience. Writing isn’t just about screaming to be heard, it isn’t just about gushing out Your Message. It’s about honing your craft. For that, you need the input of other people, the ones existing outside your own head. Not the ones who love you and want to be your friend, or the ones who you’re related to by blood or marriage. No, I’m talking about objective others who have no vested interest in convincing you that you are a Special Puppy and a Very Good Dog. People who are generous enough to be honest with you about what works and what does not work in your Very Special Creation.

That is truly what separates the wheat from the chaff. That’s truly what turns white noise into a beautiful melody.

So I told my mother that I had written a remembrance of Dr. Raymond La Scola. We discussed in general what I’d said. Mom never reads my stuff. I think it embarrasses her in some obscure way, like she doesn’t know what to say to me about it, so I’ve long since stopped offering it to her. But she was pleased with what I’d said about Dr. Ray.

“He used to tell you stories,” she said.

And just like that, I remembered that he had, when he wanted to distract me from some part of the exam. I’d forgotten that he was another dedicated storyteller in my life, like my father. I was surrounded by storytellers back then. No wonder I knew so early in life that I wanted to be a writer. Second grade, in fact, when Mrs. Cooper played a moody bit of music and asked us to let our imaginations go. It was the first time in my life I experienced flow, and I was addicted to it from then on. Another pantser born to the universe of writing! God save us all.

I must have told Dr. La Scola about that. Mom says that I was his patient until I was about nine, so it is possible I told him. I don’t remember doing that, but so much is lost to the haze of years. The reason I think I must have mentioned something about being a writer is because soon after I told Mom about my reminiscence, she dug that old novel of his out of the obscurity of storage and presented it to me. Man, it is somewhat the worse for wear. Not dog-eared or anything, but the tip top of the pages where it’s been closed and gathering dust for decades are real dirty, and there’s a freckling of brown spots on the pages.

And there on the back, a picture of Ray La Scola, smiling, effervescent, like he’d just finished laughing from a joke, or was just about to start in. That’s the sweet, kind smile I remember, those are the sparkling eyes. Except, dear me, they are clearly not brown.

“I remember him with brown eyes,” I told Mom.

“I think they were gray,” she said.

Yes, clearly light eyes. Though I think he had a certain brown-eyed soul.

But back to the book. He autographed the fly leaf for me, and this is what it said:

For Pamela, my favorite red-head, whose future I look forward to writing with, Best Wishes, Ray La Scola.

When I read that again after so much time, I experienced such a moment of wonderment, such an upwelling of “Ah ha!” and “So that’s where I got it from.”

“I must have told him I wanted to be a writer,” I said.

“You must have,” agreed Mom.

And this is what the back jacket says:

Ray La Scola was born in New Orleans, in an old house on Bourbon Street. Early in life, he became interested in the piano and organ, later studying at the New Orleans Conservatory of Music. His interest in writing began his sophomore year at Louisiana State University when he studied under Robert Penn Warren.

After graduating from college, the author entered medical school and while there continued the professional music career he had started at the age of twelve. Advanced medical study took him to the Chicago Medical Center and Cook County Hospital. He now practices in Santa Monica, California.

It doesn’t say anything about him being a lawyer first, so perhaps Mom misremembered that, or perhaps in the creative form of Author Bio it just didn’t fit the current narrative. I’ll never know.

And what of the book itself? Dear Reader, I haven’t had the courage to read it yet. What if I don’t like it? Mom pronounced it a “cute story,” but I mean…what if I don’t like it? Dr. Ray is probably beyond caring, so I’ll probably read it some day, but…

It’s funny the parallels life hands you. I’m currently doing the final polish on my old novel, Blood Geek, which has a heroine (Susan) who spent most of her youth caring for a sick parent. She’s ready to burst free of her constricted life, to explore the larger world in a way she’s never been able to before.

When I wrote this story I was much younger myself and imagining what it would be like to have your life defined by the illness of another. I had no experience of it in my real life. But there is this haunting echo, now that I am helping to care for my own mother, that keeps bouncing through the chambers of my heart. It’s a little disturbing. I knew more than I thought I knew back then.

How could I have? Because those parallels were not just about one thing, not just about the illness of a parent. They were about living a constrained life and wanting to break free. Back when I wrote this book, I had spent a number of years living such a fenced-in life, dealing with my own illness. I also was yearning to break free, to explore the larger world—in a way I’d once done before getting sick. The book was great therapy in that, although I’m not Susan and her life is not mine. It encouraged me to break free and I did for many years.

And now I am in a different phase of my life. I have no vision for what comes next. I can’t see that far beyond the day-to-day. I do know that when I get back to writing something new again, I don’t want it to echo that day-to-day in the slightest. Which is not to say I might not use some of these characters again—in fact, I fully intend to. But they will be engaged in some other enterprise, something that blows the doors open to other worlds with no fences.

I also know this, and the last week or so has only crystallized this “revelation”: creative work is not a luxury for me, although I’ve been treating it that way lately. Creative work is absolutely necessary. It helps keep me as sane as I’m ever going to get. It helps me breathe. I need that room to breathe or I, the me that means something, will cease to exist. I will become nothing more than another middle-aged woman going through a life of duty and chores. That person will not be worth knowing, and will not be a balm of comfort to an aging and ill parent, or anyone else. Including myself.

Creativity sets me free, no matter how limited my life is at any given time, to be the best person I can be. I will cling to it, thank you very much, as my golden-glowing life preserver until I slip beneath the waters of oblivion.