Of This and Other Worlds

[Crossposted from Facebook, feel free to ignore if you've already seen it there...]

Well into the second week of working on a new short story, and enjoying the writing process more than I have for a long time.

It's taken me eighteen months on sabbatical to get over the deeply ingrained habit of checking every few minutes to see how many words I've written, of feeling anxious that it's taking so long to get through a particular scene, of worrying that my time and effort has been wasted if I end up having to cut some or all of what I've written and start over the next day. Not to mention the voice of my Inner Editor nagging, "That scene is boring! That description is sappy! That conversation doesn't advance the plot! Nobody's going to like this. Give up and write something else."

It's not that I don't care anymore about making progress, or writing the best story I can. I'm just not measuring my work by the same rigid, merciless standards that used to suck away all the pleasure of writing for me. I don't have an outline for this story, just a vague notion of where I want it to end up and a few scattered ideas about how to get there -- and that's fine. I don't know who the audience for this story will be, or where I'm going to publish it once it's finished -- and that's fine, too. I'm writing it because I want to, not for the money or the market or the fear of losing my career if I don't. And that's the best feeling of all.

But it's taken me all this time to get there, because I drove myself so hard for so long, running on fear and guilt and sheer bloodyminded determination, that I couldn't remember how to write any other way.

Creative burnout is a real thing, ladies and gentlemen. Don't let it happen to you.

It's hard sometimes to know what to write in a post like this. Add too much detail and it sounds like oversharing (or worse, whining); not enough and it may come off as maddeningly cryptic and frustrating to those who want answers about what I'm up to. So I'll try to find the middle ground.

Briefly, the situation here is tough and getting tougher. The muscle pain in my shoulder has been going on long enough to puzzle both my physiotherapist and the sports doctor that my GP sent me to last week, and though it changes and moves around it doesn't seem to be getting that much better. I've figured out a way to arrange several pillows around me so that I can sleep at least part of the night in bed, but I still end up migrating to the living room recliner most nights, and I still feel uneasy about going anywhere for more than a couple of hours without ready access to an ice pack.

So that's pretty distracting, as you might imagine, and makes sitting up and typing for a few hours every day not all that comfortable or fun. But even so, I could work around that if it weren't for everything else going on.

I've already mentioned (in a previous, f-locked post) that my father is 92 and increasingly frail, and that I'm having to arrange more in-home care for him. In the last couple of weeks I've managed to get most of his daily needs looked after, but my mom is also feeling the strain and her health is suffering in ways that need extra attention as well. So with trying to do my best by the two of them and also not short-change my own family in the process, I've been pretty busy.

A number of people I care about are also going through difficult times, not least of them the family of a good friend of mine who died last week at the age of 48. I was at her funeral last Friday and it was lovely, just what she would have wanted, but it's going to be a hard adjustment for her husband and four kids -- three of whom are friends with my sons -- and my heart goes out to them. That's just one of several tragic and complicated situations that are going on around me right now, all of which leave me wondering and praying about what more I can do.

Plus I've got a bunch of upcoming school visits and other appearances I signed up for weeks or months ago, before all of this other stuff came to a head. I don't feel I ought to cancel any of them and I don't even want to unless it's an emergency, but it does make it difficult to get back into a regular writing routine even if I had the energy to do so.

I'd hoped to end my planned sabbatical and start writing again in February, and have a viable first draft of a new book by no later than September. But so far everything I've started, no matter how eager or positive I felt to begin with, has fizzled out. Either it wasn't quite ready yet (as with my epic YA fantasy) or I was keen to write but kept getting derailed by circumstances (as with the third Ivy book, which is still very much on my heart, but I haven't touched it in weeks now).

Anyway, I've got enough to deal with at the moment without making more work for myself. So I've come to the conclusion that for the time being, however long it may be until life calms down, I'm not going to worry about writing. If on a good day I find myself with time and energy and desire to write, then I will. But I'm not going to angst over deadlines and word counts, or fret about the prospect of not having a new book in 2018 (or 2019, or even 2020).

Ultimately, what it comes down to for me is that people are more important than things. My parents and family and friends in need are people, and my writing is a thing. It would be different if my family was counting on my income to pay the bills, but we're not. So to me the choice is pretty clear and I feel at peace about it.

I'm still a writer. I always have been and I always will be, published or not. The stories and characters inside me aren't going anywhere, even if I can't put them into words right now. Before too long, I hope, I'll be able to get back to them again... but not at this time.

And that's okay.

First, thanks to all who weighed in on my earlier post about my cat possibly having arthritis. I did call the vet to make an appointment, but the receptionist recommended that I buy a package of TheraBites (a once-a-day cat treat which contains supplements for hips and joints) and try her out on those for a while to see if there was any improvement.

Well. Not only does Snickers LOVE the treats (so no need to trick or force her into eating them), we're not even halfway through the bag and she's already moving much more comfortably. In fact, the other day she was up on the bed chasing her tail, which I hadn't seen her do since she was a kitten. Phew! Problem solved... at least, as long as I keep giving her a treat every morning for the rest of her life. Which is doable. So I am much relieved.

Second, I was surprised and delighted to discover that A Pocket Full of Murder is one of the ten Canadian middle-grade novels nominated for the Silver Birch Award this year. That means a whole bunch of 9-12 year olds will be reading my book this winter, along with at least four more other nominated titles, so they can vote for their favorite in the spring. I've always longed to be nominated for this award, and it's a big boost for the book generally, so I'm very thankful.

I'll be reading from Pocket and talking a little about the sequel this weekend, at the Local Authors reading portion of the Stratford Writers' Festival. All the other events are ticketed and this one is free, but it's also up against the #CanLitPit session where aspiring writers get to pitch directly to editors, so I'm not holding my breath too much for a big audience... still, it was nice to be asked and I hope the Festival does well.

* * *

And thirdly, speaking of Stratford and festivals, I had the pleasure of attending a matinee performance of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe at the Avon Theatre with my youngest son's school group today. I'd really been hoping to see the play, especially after my fellow Narnia purist grav_ity  gave it her enthusiastic thumbs-up, but didn't think that I'd ever get the chance... except it turned out a few of the kids in P's class weren't able to attend, so the teacher entered all the interested parents in a draw for the remaining tickets and I was one of the winners. Which is a minor miracle, because I never win anything.

Anyway, I ended up sitting beside P and one of his friends, and we had excellent seats -- about five rows from the stage, bang in the centre. Where I proceeded to tear up halfway through Mr. Beaver's speech about Aslan in Act One and spent most of Act Two desperately wishing I'd brought tissues, because the production was fantastic. I'm so glad they stuck close to the original story, including a lot of the dialogue, instead of introducing a lot of flotsam for the sake of novelty or a false notion of drama (*side-eyes the movies of Prince Caspian and Voyage of the Dawn Treader*).

I'd read an early review that complained about the songs being intrusive, but I didn't find them overly long or distracting at all, and the one about coming to Aslan's table pretty much killed me (as I said on Twitter, "I was not prepared for the communion metaphors").

And tomorrow Adrienne Kress is coming for our annual tea-and-catch-up, which is always a treat, and will be an especially happy occasion this time with her new MG adventure novel The Explorers coming out in 2017. I really enjoy Adrienne's narrative voice and my boys are big fans of her writing as well, so we're looking forward to this one.

Monday 31 January: LONDON 12:30 p.m. -- Foyle's, 113-119 Charing Cross Road, London 1:30 p.m. -- Blackwell's, 100 Charing Cross Road, London Tuesday 1 February: LEEDS 4:30 p.m. -- Waterstone's, 93-97 Albion Street, Leeds Wednesday 2 February: NEWCASTLE 4:30 p.m. -- Waterstone's, Blackett Street, Newcastle

Getting excited now -- so close!

I was interested to see Betsy Bird's comments on her Fuse #8 blog today about a new graphic novel called Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword (warning: autoplay video at source). Among other things, the novel includes lots of information about Orthodox Judaism, which caused Betsy to comment:

Think about children’s fantasy novels and religion for a moment. Religion in fantasies for kids tends to skew one of three ways. You can incorporate it and make it the entire point of the novel (Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, the Narnia books of C.S. Lewis, or Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time series which is technically science fiction anyway). You can make up an entirely new religion of your own (as in the novels of Frances Hardinge, Tamora Pierce, Megan Whalen Turner, etc.). Or you just sorta forget about it...

And then she goes on to talk about Hereville as something different, where the religion is very much an integral part of the book's atmosphere and sensibility but it's not the whole focus of the plot, which is more of a hero's quest story.

Which had the desired effect of really making me want to read Hereville, but also made me wonder: for those of you who've read Wayfarer, do you think it falls into the first category (religion is the entire point), or the fourth (it's part of the worldbuilding, but not the main story)? Either one is fine, I'm just curious. Since it's definitely not the second or the third...

And can you think of any other books you've read where religion is handled in a way similar to Hereville, as an integral part of the MC's background and culture but not necessarily the obvious point of the story?

***

That being said, it may take me a while to respond to your (doubtless very interesting) comments on the subject of how religion does or can fit into children's books. After my two appearances in Guelph and Waterloo this weekend, I'm heading off to the Fortress of Solitude to overcome my SHERLOCK obsession work on Arrow revisions, and won't be back online until Friday.

Don't burn down the Internet while I'm away, kids!

The good news: Since I started work on Arrow in the second week of January, I have written over 41,000 words.

The bad news: I still have to write at least another 35K, if not more, before this book is finished. And then I need to revise it at least a bit before I can send it to my editor... and all that has to be done by the end of April.

So if you've been wondering why I'm not around much in any of my usual online haunts, that would be the reason, yes.

But I leave you with a teaser! Because I am either nice that way or mean that way, depending on what you think of such things:

He was even taller than she remembered, his skin more tanned, his eyes greener. There was a smear of blood high on his forehead where something had cut him, and he was wearing the fireplace poker like a sword stuck through his belt.

See you on the other side!

I had a great time over the weekend at the women's conference in Guelph (1 hour away) and the Writers' Festival in Ottawa (6 hours away), but I was horribly ill (as in aches, nausea, chills, fever, exhaustion, sore throat, coughing up chunks) the whole time. I'm just glad I was able to get through my 2 songs, 2 seminars, 1 reading, 6 bookstore visits (nothing fancy or scheduled, I just dropped by to sign stock) and 3 school presentations without losing my voice or fainting not-so-gently onto the floor.

Between Sunday afternoon and Tuesday evening, I drove 1400 km. I'm glad to be home -- but my launch and release party are on Saturday, and there's lots of cleaning and preparation to be done before then (like the groceries and the laundry. Oy, the towering piles of laundry.)

And I still have to get through 140 pages of revisions before May 15th... *collapses*

I have now received my second round of edits for Faery Rebels Book 2, and they are due in early May, so I have a lot of work to do between now and then! For which cause I fear that I must put my BEDA* ambitions aside and focus on making this manuscript as tight and clear and compelling a story as I can.

But as penance for abandoning my faithful readers for the next couple of weeks or so, I will share some tidbits about this second book, which goes by the working title of Faery Rebels: Wayfarer in the US (that may well change, though) and by Rebel in the UK:

The story takes place some years after the events of Spell Hunter a.k.a. Knife, and it's told from two perspectives. One is Paul's young cousin Timothy, and the other a girl named Linden whom you may remember from the first book. But even though Linden and Timothy are at the heart of this particular adventure, rest assured that the characters from Book One also play an important part (and get some of the best lines!). It's a much bigger adventure in some ways; it definitely expands our view of the world the Oakenfolk live in. Anyway, I am quite excited about it, as are my US and UK editors, and I hope that those who've read and loved the first book will enjoy this one too.

And now I must dash away and work on my book some more!

--
*Blog Every Day April, as mentioned in this post.

Image by Zemanta via CrunchBaseSo I've found this nifty little utility called Zemanta that auto-suggests content (links, creative commons photos, etc.) when you're writing a blog post. The only downside is that you then have to compose your posts using the Blogger (or WordPress) dashboard, but I'd been thinking about doing that anyway, since I fail at inserting images into LJ.

I wonder if this will make me blog more regularly?

In general update news, I'm still slogging away on Wayfarer to the tune of 1500-2000 new words a day, although today was in the negatives because I had to delete about 1200 words I'd just written when I could see the chapter was veering off in the wrong direction. Generally, though, I'm quite pleased with the way the draft is shaping up. The meat of the book will need revising for sure, but the bones are good.

I'm also reading Kenneth Oppel's new YA alt-historical fantasy Starclimber to my eight-year-old son (who was a massive fan of the first two books in the series, and nearly died of happiness when he discovered the third had just come out). Anyway, early in the book there is a scene taking place in a park in Paris, involving a particularly absurd bit of Parisian bureaucracy which I can only think Oppel must have thrown into the book on a dare. Anyway, it was definitely not meant to be read out loud to an eight-year-old while trying to do a French accent, and I would have sharp words for Mr. Oppel if I hadn't been falling all over the sofa laughing until I could hardly breathe.

For my own reading pleasure, I've just finished The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, which is every bit as brilliant and devastating as I'd been led to believe. I actually had to put the book down in the middle to sob and wipe my eyes, which almost never happens when I'm reading anything. And here I'd thought I wasn't that heavily invested in the story...

Next up is Graceling by Kristin Cashore, another book that's been getting rave reviews. I've only read half a chapter so far so I really can't tell how much I'm going to like it, but it looks promising.

I bought a laptop today from a computer liquidation outlet. I told the sales guy I basically just wanted a glorified typewriter -- no Internet capability, no bells and whistles, just a workhorse that could run MS Word and let me get my writing done.

So far, it seems to be working all right -- I only hope it continues to do so for a long, long time to come. I certainly don't plan to overtax its little brain, not when I have a perfectly good desktop in the office. But it will be nice to have the option to work on the laptop when the other computer isn't a practical option.

Of course, now that I have this lovely new tool meant to increase my writing efficiency, I am coming down with a cold and feel too cruddy to write. Meh.

On a happier note, my middle son got his cast off today. The bones have healed nicely, and to his very great relief it didn't hurt when they took out the pins in his elbow. (Poor little guy, he'd been worried about that for days beforehand, and it was all I could do to reassure him.) His arm's pretty weak right now after a month of disuse, but I'm sure that soon he'll be playing happily again -- thank the Lord.