Continuing Education

When started my first story (I cringe a little at the pretentiousness of saying 'book,' 'novel,' or even 'manuscript' when right now it's more like the equivalent of 'doodle') sometime during the year of 2008, I didn't have a clue what I was doing.  My fiction writing knowledge looked like this:

That was it for a really long time.  In fact, that was it until the past month or so, when I started paying attention to blogs and articles by real writers giving advice to posers like me.  There is a lot to learn, but for once, my brain is working.  I haven't felt like this since I was in college.  At long last, after reading dozens upon dozens of articles, blogs, and books and writing for hundreds of hours , my knowledge looks like this:

I have come a long way; I still have far to go.

Chaela Speaks

Woo hoo!  Look at me, two blogs in less than a week!

Anyway.

For those of you who don't have the opportunity to be around Chaela on a regular basis, let me just say, she is verbose.  The child never stops talking, not from the time she wakes up in the morning to the time we force her into her bed at night.

Lately, Chaela has picked up some new words.  Some she's heard from us, some from TV, and others, I assume, from being out and about in the world.  When I was growing up, there were two kinds of words: "bad words," and "all the other words."  Now that Chaela is meandering through the labyrinth of language, however, I find myself making up categories.

It all started with "Stupid is a mean word."  Because it is, and Chaela will tell you so, because it's the only context in which she can use the word 'stupid' without getting in trouble.  I didn't want to tell her it's a bad word, because it's not.  'Stupid' can be applied to situations without a problem.  It's when it's applied to people that we don't use it, but for now, Chaela is too young to understand the difference.

She's sworn before ("That's my medicine, it goes on my a**!") but she was too young for explanations.  A few weeks ago, however, we were presented with a parental teaching moment.  Will and I were watching a comedian one night after she was supposed to be in bed, except she wasn't.  The comedian swore, and Chaela said, with a question in her voice said, "Sh-?" only to be cut off by Will's hand clapping over her mouth (and me leaving the room because I was laughing so hard).  That's when she learned about 'bad' words, which are words we never say.

The next category is "serious" words.  These are words we never use unless we mean them.  Mostly it was brought on by Chaela screaming "HELP, HELP!" every time we go out in public, but it's also been applied to the word die/dead, which she's begun using in an unintentionally morbid fashion ("I'll just go be DEAD in my room, MOM.")

Lastly, we come to "words only grown-ups can say," or "words Mommy uses frequently and doesn't think she can stop saying."  In this category: the word 'crap.'  I know, it's a gross word, and I really should drop it from my vocabulary, but seriously, I NEVER swear.  I feel like I should have something to say when I'm mad!

In our house we now have mean words, bad words, serious words, and grown-up words.  I don't know if it's her personality, my paranoia, or a combination of both, but I am a much less laid-back mother than I thought I would be.

Of Blog Neglect and Novel Writing.

I know I've been neglecting my blog for a long time now, but it's mostly because I don't feel like I have anything to blog about.  I hang out with my girls all day, my husband at night, and for the past little bit, work on my story, which I know isn't exciting to pretty much anyone but me.  However, it's what I'm doing, and I know there are about three people out there who care, so here's an update.


I've been doing a read-through.  Well, I was trying to.  It works in fits and starts.  When I got to the second half, I had to stop and edit a bunch of it because it didn't match the beginning or the end and I was too bothered to carry on.  I fixed the content, but what really needs work is the pacing.  It's basically this: three days where you see everything, skip two weeks in a lengthy summary, EXAMINE EVERY SINGLE DETAIL of the next few days, during which time the storylines separate and more time seems to pass for one character than all the others, exciting climax.


Storytelling is hard.  For reals.  However, a good thing to come of this is that the closer I get to the end, the better (IMO) the writing gets.


For a long time I've felt like, "Why bother doing this?  It's not very good, it will never see the light of day."  While that may still be true, it's not as bad as I thought it was, and I will definitely finish it.  Because you know why?  Writing is FUN.  You know that thrilled feeling you get after doing something AWESOME, like riding a wave runner or a roller coaster, or arriving in that place that means more to than anywhere else in the world (MOheckyes!), or after a really deep, satisfying conversation with your best friends?  That is how I felt last night after working on my book.  I <3 making crap up!  I wish to do it for a living.


Anyway, this is all I have to blog about, and I must needs feed mine chilluns.  BUT I think since I've spent all this blogspace talking about my book, I want to post a sample for ya'll.  Hold on.  Ok, kids are fed.  I will now try to find something excerpty.  Warning: I am a nerd, and this is a fantasy.


Oh man, now I'm nervous.  Don't judge me.  Do, however, shoot my a sympathetic, private email if it sucks.  Here we go:


A grinding, shrieking roar wrenched Kai out of sleep.  She jumped, flailed for half a second in open air, then grunted as she hit the ground.  Spitting earth from her mouth, she grimaced.  A dirt floor?  Where was she?

The blood-freezing scream rent the night, and instinctively she pressed her face into the soil, digging her fingers into the hard-packed earth. Her heart pulsed faster than a strobe light.  

The most primitive, visceral part of her brain reared up.  You are prey, it squealed in a piercing whine.

Outside, there were shouts, a series of barked commands, then silence.  The haze of confusion lifted, and through her fear, she remembered; the girl with the broken leg, the camp, the strange meeting…

That didn’t explain that ear-splitting, demonic noise.  She turned her face to the side and gasped a breath, scrabbling to reassert higher brain function.

She pushed her shaky way onto hands and knees and crawled to the shuttered window.  She pressed her forehead to the cool stone, inhaled, and raised her eye to the small opening between the slats.

The campsite was abandoned.  Nothing remained of the fire but a few embers casting a weak, red glow on the rocks ringed around them.  Weird, she swore she’d heard the others.  

The roar shattered the night again, and she slammed herself backwards, accidentally shoving open the shutters in her haste to get away from them.  Terror cracked through her like lighting, every hair on her body stood on end. 

She was about to die.  

Another of the horrible cries echoed off the mountain and Kai clamped a hand over her mouth to keep from screaming. 

Suddenly, in the patch of sky framed in the open window, a column of white fire blossomed, searing itself into her retinas.  The afterimage smoldered behind her eyelids, a negative of two vast, impossible shapes.

She dug the heels of her hands hard into her eyes.  When the glare faded, she crept to the window and peered out once again.  

She had to look. 

The white-hot fire blazed and died like the flashbulb of a camera.  To her exhilaration and horror, they appeared.

Dragons, one red, one black, battled in the coal-dark sky.