There was glitter hair spray and fantastically monstrous costumes made by wickedly creative people. There was a lot of talking and thinking and re-evaluating the ideas and experiences we bring to the books we read. I bought bags of books, including all of Marie Brennan's Onyx Court books and Laini Taylor's shiny new Daughter of Smoke and Bone, which i am not starting until I know i can stay up all night reading it. I know the moment I open it I will be lost until I've finished it.
Each of the last two years, I have come away from this conference with a full and happy brain, ready to return to work and already looking forward to the next event. I think I'm not alone in that- read through #sirens11 on twitter to see what others had to say.
I promised those who attended my workshop on creating and writing critique groups that I would post my handouts online. (I made a writers' group guidelines mad lib. I hope they have as much fun filling it out as I did writing it.) It's going to take me a little while to get new pages formatted, but if you'd like to download an rtf file, you may do so here. (If you need a different file type, email me!) Thank you so much for being there!
Next year, Sirens will be October 11-14, just outside of Portland, OR. I am already tracking airfare and coordinating childcare...
]]>In other news, Harbinger is somewhere around halfway done. I've had so many false starts and partial drafts and tossed chapters that I am not sure I trust the word count, but it's ~55k words, and I think I can get to the end in another 45k, maybe 50k.
It's not the same book I thought I was writing, and I see a lot more room for a sequel than I did before, but I think I will write something completely different when it's done. I'm on track to finish before the holidays... but seeing as the last few years have been one endless lesson in rolling with unexpected changes to the grand plan, I'm focusing more on making progress than hitting the deadline.
But I think I know what's next in line, and that's never really happened before. Maybe I'll do a NaNo-type drafting in February or March next year...
]]>Still working on Harbinger, intending to finish by the end of summer. Still running a writers' group, which should get its own website, really, but hasn't yet because all of my attention has gone to Harbinger and the freelance editing and writing work that comes my way.
There's no veggie garden this year. Someday the story of that will be a long and funny rant, but right now it's just a bummer. (The roses are growing at a fantastic rate... I can't get basil or tomatoes to survive a week, but my roses are lovely! That's something, right?) Plans for next year include ripping out the entire backyard and starting over, this time adding a dog run and a patch of wild flowers for cutting. And an irrigation system the dog won't eat.
In the meantime, I'm enjoying the summer with family and friends and the goofball dog.
]]>I'm delighted with it so far, most especially the Squarespace app. Now let's just hope I can get the fiction files over to a word processor-- they're all in Scrivener, currently. Wish me luck.
]]>2. I went to Sirens and it was awesome and I am so far behind writing back to people from there but I promise I'm working on it. Also I would like to go back, right now, and maybe just stay there, even though I bet I'd hate Vail in the winter. The company would make it worth it.
3. We had a lovely Thanksgiving week at home with lots and lots of friends stopping in. (I stopped counting at 30ish, there were too many children moving fast to get a real headcount.) It was a wonderful reminder of the community we have here.
4. I did Nanowrimo! And won! The WIP formerly known as Auctioneer and now known as Harbinger now has a real live zero draft. There are some seriously holey bits in the plot, especially the late middle, but I think it's patchable. It just might hold together. It also just might be a series, which I had not really intended, but, well, you do what you can.
5. I'm researching and editing in preparation for a sprint through the next draft. This method is working for me, with this book at least. I just need to keep going.
6. M had her first ballet recital last weekend. She was beautiful and focused and my favorite part was the way she stuck her tongue out while on stage. That has been the "thinking hard" face since she was about six months old, and I will cry if she ever grows out of it.
7. I is in that super-helpful toddler stage, where all day we make messes so we can then clean them up. This means I only stop moving at nap time. Which he seems to be growing out of. Send coffee and chocolate, please.
8. This does not bode well for the yearly photo books or the holiday knitting. I am considering declaring defeat in advance on those fronts.
9. I hear a rumor that we will reach 60` and sunshine tomorrow. This is my kind of winter.
10. I realize that means we'll probably have a blizzard and deep freeze next week, but I like that part too.
]]>This post was supposed to be a series of before and after photos of the garden, but I haven't taken the afters yet. I have to finish the work first. I can't stall for long-- there's a deadline on the tea garden. I'm having a party in it during the first week of May. And the rest of the vegetables have to go in soon or I'll run out of growing season.
Soon, though. Piles of dirt and stone are turning green whether or not I get the soil mixed. The garden behind us keeps sending up volunteer violets and little blue flowers I don't recognize in the herb bed. Mads brings the flowers to me by the fistful and we watch them wilt in the tiny clay vase that sits on the kitchen sill.
I have asparagus and tomatoes and peppers and a dozen other things to plant. The peas sprouted and are reaching for the trellis. Once this storm clears I'm heading back out to sink some containers for mint and chammomile and lemon balm. Maybe I can convince the big kid to help me dig up rocks. And maybe I'll settle for a cup of violet tea and a chat, instead.
]]>I am trying out new mantras.
I am taking a little while to recognize and accept that last year was really hard, even the amazing parts, and this year might well be too, and that's going to be okay, one way or another.
In a little while, when the little one wakes up, I'm going for a walk in the warm afternoon sun and I will enjoy the light and the time I get with the baby and I won't be planning gardens or worrying about things I can't control or making lists of things to get done or even plotting stories.
]]>Fall is usually my favorite season. I love the leaf change. I love the anticipation leading up the holidays and I love winter squashes and baking and the chill in the air. I like hikes and long walks with a good stiff breeze at my back.
This year I'm resisting it. We hardly had a summer- only a handful of days above 90`F, and a lot of gray sky. (I should not complain, after all those years back East: we still had ten times the sunshine, and I like the gray days anyway). Two weeks ago I bought a handful of house plants at a nursery sale and split them into a dozen pots. Now I'm poking at them every day wishing they'd grow faster so I can split them again and cover every last window sill. I have no idea where my gloves and hats are, which is stupid of me. I've already needed them more than once. I'm already planning next year's gardens and household projects (including painting the downstairs green).
I'm planning more stories, too, which is another shift for me. I'm mostly a pantser when it comes to short stories, but it's not working at all for novels. During a writers group meeting a few weeks ago, I realized the problem I'm having with Solace is really two-fold: I'm stuck in short story mode (which is, for me, a completely different kind of mindset) and I don't get the kind of time I need to focus for novel mode. It's odd for me to be planning more shorts and pantsing the novels, but I needed to try something to get going again. (And no, not NaNoWriMo. We travel the last week of November, every year, and while I applaud the rest of you for doing it, I know better than to put myself through it. Much as I love the idea of it.)
Until the last year or so I was fine working with tiny pieces of time. I had more of them, for one, and managed to get the bigger ones sometimes, too. I'm still figuring out how to get them again, and figuring out how to manage this tendon that keeps pretending to heal and gets worse again, and re-orienting myself after spending a year preparing for and adjusting to another baby. I'm resisting the seasons change because I am tired of changes and adjustments and shifts, and am ready for things to just stay quiet for a while. Maybe winter won't be so bad after all.
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