Corgi going up stairs

That's my new model for writing.

Write a scene. Stop. Face the cliff of not knowing how to make the next scene work. Make a few tentative pawing motions at it. Stop and stare, unable to proceed. Turn around in place, take a break, whine. Then go after it again...and suddenly you are over and on the next stair.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

So I'm stuck on the scene I'm calling "love and rockets." One of the last major characters needs to get introduced, and there's a bit of romance in the air, and it happens as I am pulling her slowly into a Blitz Experience of her own...and I want to do it under the V1 and V2 at the Imperial War Museum.

I just can't figure out how to time the meet-up with the museum conservators, the explanation of why they aren't digging that day, the explanation of what Steve is up to, and the word from Whiskers that I want to have as a teaser ending.

Probably means it is time for a walk. I feel so logy anyhow. What with it looking like there's another four weeks of this, I need to get into an exercise routine to make up for not being at work. Pity I'm feeling too unfocused to get any violin in.

(Would probably help if I wasn't facing yet another day of nothing but practicing long bows and silent bowing).

***

On a sort of plus side, I found the folder where I kept all the maps and brochures from my trip to London. Which according to the entrance ticket to HMS Belfast, was in November of 2002.

Looks like I did the Imperial War Museum -- which at the time had the Trench Experience and the Blitz Experience and a previous version of the Holocaust exhibition -- the Belfast of course, the Cris Wren Monument (all 311 steps), the Tower, The Globe (near Southwark Bridge), and Westminster Abbey. Plus my hotel was Novotel London Tower Bridge, Pepys Street, right smack middle of the Square Mile.

***

Best part about doing a second novel is that I'm not concerned. I mean, sure I'm stuck at the moment, but I know I'll get over it.

And I'm still excited about this project. I still don't really like Penny. She isn't the character I wanted or the character I'd have made if all the choices were within the book and not extraneous to it.

But she works. There's lots of good hooks on her and the kinds of stories I could tell with her. That could be a problem. I hope I don't get so excited about the Ghost Town book or the Paris book or the Kyoto book so much I have trouble staying on this one.

And her progression is a lot slower than I planned. Eventually she is going to be the adventurer-archeologist. In this book, though, she seems almost further behind. Still feeling lost and confused and overwhelmed in a foreign land, still essentially monolingual, still not ready to accept the mantle of hero.

If I do have a qualm on this book, though, it is that the way I outlined it there's still too much front-loading going on. There's a lot I want to set up so the story can get rolling, and I've chosen to do it within archaeological/historical settings. I'm working, more and more, on her not sharing with the reader, so the focus can be on the tensions and conflicts that are going to move the story forward.

But on the other hand, name-dropping Lady Jane and Lord Nelson got me to 6,500 words and that means I only have to do that ten more times...

***
A nice walk, a bit of (really boring) violin practice, and more scrabbling at the stair. And it finally came. So late I only had enough left of the evening to put down 229 words -- but they are words that put the scene on track.

"Four legs in the air means the sculptor was very, very clever."

Terry Pratchett on equestrian statues. As far Wikipedia is concerned (I'm pretty sure I first read it elsewhere) Hoof-position symbolism is an urban legend.

Not that it matters for the book. I've made it a point to have my protagonist wrong in many places. Often she catches herself. In the last scene I did, she thinks about how tourists go looking for "Big Ben." When asked where she is headed, she replies with a straight face, "Big Ben."

Yeah, the Trafalgar Square scene is done. 800 words and it only took me all morning.

She managed to get through the scene without "brightly" anything. I've decided that's her big "tell." When Penny says or smiles "brightly," it means she's angry, and if things don't improve there will be consequences.

***

Well, some of that time was in planning. As of this moment she's staying in Westminster, and will move to Kennington. With a side joke of Milton Keynes but I have to be careful about those, too. It's fine that she's a fish out of water, but so is the reader and after all I'm telling the joke, so I can be presumed to be in on it.

Had one bit of luck. The obvious way out of Trafalgar Square is the entrance to the Charing Cross underground station that's right there. Except there's no direct service to Lambeth North and it is quicker to walk down to Embankment. But if she does go into the station without knowing this in advance, she'll find notices -- and possibly a doorway, I'm having trouble telling -- for Jubilee platform, the discontinued platform now used to give tours when they aren't shooting films there.

And then if she does go down to Embankment she'll realize she can walk across one of the Golden Jubilee pedestrian bridges built in 2002 (locally and more normally known as the "Hungerford Footbridges") So I can show off the Thames briefly.

But I missed at the Imperial War Museum (London). I was sure I'd seen a cramped hanger-like space full of warbirds undergoing restoration, with wings on hoists and engines on stands and all that. But the more I research the more I think this might have been in Berlin.

Just as well. As much fun as warbird talk might be, I am better off keeping the conservation stuff in the background and not bending the reader's ear...eye...something...about all that.

Next book.

Keep Calm and Carry a Lawyer

"Keep Calm and Carry On" is trademarked. (But only in the EU -- you can still use it in the US and Canada). I found this out while confirming the Roundel of the London Underground is indeed trademarked; and has been so since 1905.

Well, it was a random thought I had while putting in a  ***  to mark temporary scene divisions as I cleaned up the draft of the first chapter.

I moved all my dialect notes to the research file and the working notes are still over 5,000 words. The actual chapter is 3,700. So I just need to do the last two weeks 18 more times and I'll have a novel.

***

Just to keep it straight in my own head:

Everybody is speaking a light Estuary accent unless otherwise noted. Leslie shades more Estuary, Jean shades more RP, perhaps with a light lilt of Irish or South African.

George is technically speaking Midlands, but it isn't being marked in text in any way. Doesn't matter so much since George won't be back after this chapter.

Tim is Geordie, with a bit of Geordie in there all the time. Tony is a Liverpudlian and always has a bit of the sound but he can be understated...or he can put on the dog by going full-bore Scouser.

The un-named Cardiff didn't talk yet; there's a "Call me Jonesy, everybody does eventually" person with a Welsh background, probably, and the name Duncan might appear. Susan also didn't get any indication of accent. Steve is probably American -- I haven't made up my mind yet as I also cut him from the opening chapter.

***

Walked down to the shop, got a little trombone in because I had no concentration for balancing the violin on my shoulder. You get so TIRED when you aren't working!

I've largely solved the double-lipping, but some of the slots are still weird for me. I have the trumpet back in the apartment which means all my practice now is through the Yamaha Silent Mute. And the flute is getting more solid but my tone is still too breathy for my taste. Sigh. I really need to record something soon.

Well, I've sorted out a lot of what I mean to do with the core cast, and introduced basic concepts and conflicts to the reader, and found how I'm probably handling dialects. So does that mean the next chapters will go quicker?

The next one is at the Imperial War Museum in South London. And a bit at "Trafalgar" -- it may be almost anywhere, I just need a brief run-in with a bracelet salesman. And I need to re-read my chapter on museum restoration although I am pretty sure I am not doing any of this on camera. Just a "We were introduced to some of their people in the back rooms and got to watch what they were doing."

Whiskers and Tall Girl will be there. They might get names. Actually, I should give them names. It is a bad habit. In the real world, you can go to the same bar for years and only know the barman as, well, Barman, but in a book it really helps to have a single consistent handle. A name if at all possible.

One of the (many) reasons I'm dragging my feet is there is going to be a running gag through the middle of the book where my protagonist is being dragged around by her local contact Graham as he tries to track down a Roman coin. And every time she tries to introduce herself as "Penny Bright" the other person will go, "It's the other one as has the bells on it" or sommat. So I'm trying to hold down the introductions during these chapters.

And oh yeah the Blitz. Well, as far as this chapter goes, I can look at Vengeance Weapons and it will be enough.


I tracked down the fantastic W.W.I trench exhibit I remembered from my own trip. It's not there anymore. The museum went through a big revamp in 2014 and according to various visitors, it is total shite now compared to what it used to be.

There was also a "Blitz Experience." That would have been fun, too.

Now is the winter of our discontent

Well, technically we're past the equinox and in Spring. But it is cold out there, blustery and/or wet. The kind of weather that brings on Seasonal Adjustment Disorder as people are stuck inside and away from friends.

Except oops, we have other reasons for that as well. I've been too cold and lethargic to walk to work (which would help me shake the cold and lethargy...) Still managed to drive down to the shop and put in some practice on the violin.

Walking outside feels like playing one of those stealth games, when you are keeping track of everyone walking near you and moving or pausing or ducking into alleys to keep that safe distance.

I am almost done with the first chapter of the novel. The last scene was when I really ran headlong into some of the challenges of this particular story.

I really miss walking down to work and then being there cutting wood and having lots of time to think on a creative project. It is, paradoxically, harder when you are sitting there at the computer.

Well, anyhow, I hit a place where I needed to make some decisions on dialect.

No, this isn't entirely exaggeration. It does get that deep in casual conversation.

And once again I'm glad I didn't outline. Because I had to juggle names and regional backgrounds and character attributes in order to be rounded characters and yet recognizable to their cultural affiliations and able to do the dialog I needed in order to advance the scene.

And that turned out to be a problem. I've a pair that are the comedy duo of the story; they are constantly bantering with each other. Except one is a Geordie and the other a Scouser and although they can chose to slide Estuary in order that others can appreciate their wit, when they are talking privately to each other it becomes impenetrable. Not to mention time consuming to write.

Here's their first two lines, extremely backed down from what they should be even though they aren't intended to be overheard by others:

“Ee, take a butcher at Widow Twankey,” one of the students murmured to the other.
“We’ve nowt left but the panto horse,” his friend rejoined.

Here's a line that's the pure distilled stuff:

“Boss webs, la,” one of the Wonder Twins sneered at me.

I had to re-arrange parts so that almost never happens. Basically, the first examples are really the furthest I can afford to go with anything but...well, Mick of the Mustaches demonstrating RAF slang at the Imperial. But that's...oh. That's next chapter.

Sigh.

So I re-arranged and re-assigned and chased lots of Steve Limit problems, and also condensed my cast; Stewart/Stu lost his name and all his lines and I don't think "Widow Twankey" has said anything since she gave her real name. It was just too many to keep track of.

I may rethink this all again. The lads are fun, I like having a comic duo, but they would work just as well if they both spoke flawless RP. The confrontation I want Penny to have as she learns exactly what Churchill meant by "...separated by a common language" can happen later and in other contexts.

But I'll wait until I've a couple more chapters completed.

Forgot the mortar and pestle

I braved the grocery store and re-stocked on coffee. But in the rush of things, what had felt through two pairs of gloves like ground coffee turned out to be whole beans.

So. Beans into a tough plastic freezer bag. Then an improvised rolling pin from a three inch diameter cylinder of solid aluminium left over from a lathe project. Took way too long but at least I have coffee.

I need it. I'm studying the materials I have on the excavation of Bradgate House, and the books I have on standard archaeological practice, trying to build a scene in which my protagonist is given a brief tour of an excavation in progress.

As usual is a tough balance. Being selective about what is really important (aka, that this is Real Archaeology and it is what my protagonist desperately hopes to get into) so I don't end up losing the reader in detail. It is one of those weird conundrums I've spoken of before; too much and the reader gets lost, too little and the reader thinks you are abandoning them.

There really needs to be a good way of saying, "background detail, pay no attention."

And at every step, shaping the conversation to be appropriate to the characters and, when possible, to illuminate them. Made even more interesting because this is still the first chapter and I'm basically building them as I go.

I mean, sure, I have the basic idea on all these people. But then you hit text and stuff happens. I had a Davvy, and I had a Welshman who insisted he be called "Jonesy" because, "you will anyway." But it wasn't until I started writing text that "Davvy Jonesy" started appearing across adjacent lines.

(I toyed with "Geordie" but that was too on-the-nose. So at the moment he is "Brendan.")

So I write a paragraph from Jean on the history of Bradgate House, and I don't want to go Victorian Novel with the paragraphs so someone else has to make a comment to break up the wall of text. And it isn't in character for Jonesy, so who gets to say something? Is it Stu? But is that starting to make Stu look like the one who is always interrupting? Because this is still early and what these people do now is going to engrave their personalities for the reader.

And there needs to be B-plot stuff happening. Character interaction. Underlying tension. Small victories and small failure. I already did the first big one, and that took six drafts of shifting events around until I could have the moment where George warns her it will piss off Brendan but Penny says something to Leslie anyhow.

And, yes, it is a triple-purpose moment; setting up relationships between several characters, putting the seeds in a third-act insight, having some tension for the first chapter, and foreshadowing the Big Choice at the heart of this particular story.

But back to Bradgate. There's a later scene that closes out the chapter set in a Home Guard training area. For that, I know nearly nothing and I'm happy enough with that. Research is both a blessing and a curse. Something it might be better to know less.

Alchemy +2

In my Skyrim mod stack is one that gives you Alchemy skill for cooking. It seemed only right, especially as I was using another mod that made food actually worth the trouble. (I am absolutely living off Nord Carrot Juice which -- well, Skyrim is a fantasy world after all -- gives you ninety seconds of Night Vision.)

Out here in pandemic land, the barley flour pancakes worked. Turns out I had a little rice starch tucked away, and that and olive oil and water is enough. They didn't fluff out much. But they were good with a bit of marmalade. As of this morning the line for groceries is still down the block all the way to the next street and it is too cold and wet to brave it just yet.

***

I'm 2,000 words in and I'm starting to learn what I can do, can't do, and shouldn't do in the book. Like accents. Fortunately for all concerned, writing accents phonetically is strongly deprecated these days. Apparently Dracula was written with a phonetic Yorkshire accent and there's a audio version out there that sounds like, "Arnold Schwarzenegger impersonating Sean Connery impersonating a drunken pirate."

My big get-out-of-Sheffield-free card, though, is that essentially people in England speak two dialects (like Italians). There's the local -- sometimes so strong as to be mutually impenetrable, and sometimes so identifiable a Yorky can tell which village you belong to -- and then there's the speaking-to-the-public one, a sort of softer RP. Well, these days, a full on RP is too "Tip of the hat old chum" for even Auntie Beeb, and has been largely replaced in Greater London by Estuary.

On the plus side, people can and do slide between accents, using whatever is socially appropriate. On the negative side, when they are with their own the dialect and usage is a truck load of shibboleths. The British are so finely tuned, the slightest trace of the wrong rhotic "r" will have them crying foul.

And it isn't just phonetics, which I don't have to put in text. It is word choices and grammar. And the former, naturally enough, changes over time -- within any one grouping, a word might be as perennial as "cool" or as over with as "Daddy-O."

The plan as of this moment is to print -- either by hand or to use the Author's Copies feature on Amazon to print without making the book available to the general public -- and enlist the help of the Geordies down at the pub. Assuming we're all still breathing when doors open again (and that includes the pub; businesses are hit hard.)

That's been another thing that's made it very difficult to keep writing. I can't help thinking how trivial this is, compared with the disaster unfolding outside. And I'm writing contemporary fiction which is rapidly turning historical. The world is changing. Possibly radically. The topical concerns of the book are going to look a lot different after this year is over.

Maybe I should be looking at what I can do to earn a bit of money during this enforced down time. There are people wanting entertainment and some of them still have money for digital content. But, hey, isn't writing that? 3D models might be more profitable, but in the last analysis this hasn't changed; I can at this time still afford to do the art I want to do.

So, yeah. Struggling on. I've reworked and revised those first scenes over and over again. Putting stuff in then deciding it doesn't work or might work but needs to be held back until later. Figuring out what I have to put in to establish the contract with the reader and the premise and the background that lets them ground themselves in what is happening and the conflict and personalities that lets them care.

Writing is discovery. That's why I don't believe in over-outlining. I had a cute idea for how to create a set of character types for the core cast of archaeology students, I needed a mouthpiece to say one line to make that concept an easter egg for the reader, and now I've discovered a way in which a character I thought was going to remain a beté noire can actually be won over in a late chapter.

I really am meeting these people as my protagonist meets them. So it is fun. Slow as hell, but fun.

***

And now I'm having leftovers and watching Good Omens and, yes, it's research! So technically still working on the novel,,,

We'd like to know a little bit about you for our files

I'm trying to find out if I can make a buckwheat flatbread without any binder -- just olive oil and water, no eggs, no starch. Because the line for the grocery store is still down the block and the pantry is getting bare.

So I've got Simon & Garfunkel on long play and the lights low and I'm slogging my way through writing.

***

I finally managed to get the novel started and, no, it isn't going swiftly yet. First scenes are a huge pain. There's so much you want to get in front of the reader -- yet you also don't want to frighten them off.

It is a real balancing act giving them just enough so they feel just grounded enough to want to keep reading. So they have a sense of a personality and a situation and a conflict.

That's why flash-forwards and fake beginnings and pre-titles scenes are so common. You start with Dirk fighting for his life against enemy frogmen in the hulk of a sunken nuclear submarine. Then the next three chapters are him doing paperwork in Washington as you work your way up towards the real plot.

One of the classic ways of starting badly is to open on your character doing nothing in particular on some unmemorable day, as if even she knows the adventure hasn't started yet.

An almost as bad way of starting, though, is in the middle of a firefight, when you don't know who anyone is and don't give a rats ass who wins.

Both are especially annoying because both can be fixed in a sentence. Have her on her way to an important job interview. Now she has a goal and the reader can't help but be emotionally invested. Show one of the random soldiers committing an act of chivalry. Or one of unnecessary savagery. Now the reader has stakes. They have an opinion on who they hope will win and who will fall.

Of course these are stopgap. What the writer really wants to do is to get the reader involved in the main story. In the character they will be spending time with and the conflict inherent to them. I've read a few too many thrillers-with-history in which the opening chapter is all about de Saville the reluctant Conquistador and his struggle to escape the massacre. You get invested in this character and his story but his only purpose is to get his head knocked off by a war club so the Scepter of Montezuma can get lost in the cave. Next chapter we're in the office of Richard the really boring and we sort of wish we could have stuck with de Saville.

***

My sister finished the book and she had fabulous notes. She really clicked with the character, even liking the way she could be "kind of annoying sometimes." Cool. Plus she thought my protag was a badass.

Best yet, she really groked on the uneasy balance between an Indiana Jones adventure and a respect for real history...going so far as saying my protag has a "shameful fascination with Atlantis." I like. That's a way of looking at it that is new and fresh and gives me ideas.

So I have some confidence in getting through the next one.

It is just going to be several days more as I do draft after draft, trying to find which things I need to have in the first chapter and which can be left for later. To find which things work and which things turn out not to be right for the book.

Baaaaaalzac

This would be a perfect opportunity to write a novel. Social distancing for three weeks; stuck in the house with food and a computer and time.

And I feel pretty healthy. Weevils got into my grain supply and I had to throw some out. Something in a sealed bag seems to have gone a bit off, though. Painful, sweaty cramps until it worked its way through and out. But the next day I walked down to the shop, practiced trombone, picked up my trumpet to carry home, and purchased a battery charger to try to get my car running again.

Anyhow.

Writing a book in which the central theme is being under siege, a conflation of memories of huddling in underground shelters during the Blitz, personality conflicts and my protagonist's inner struggles, and the rising tide of the same North Sea that swallowed Doggerland. It seems a perfect match.

As of this moment I have 36,000 words of notes -- 140 pages if you want to count it that way (page count is a very poor way of estimation because the value of "page" is application-dependent).

And another 7,000 words of collated research, mostly on the first couple of settings.

For all of all that, I have 800 words of first draft of the prologue scene -- a draft which doesn't work and will need to be re-written practically from scratch.

***

While we're on the numbers game, it turns out I red-lined almost 2,000 words in the current version of The Fox Knows Many Things. The Fox will know a great many fewer things by the times I'm done editing. The cuts are relatively easy. I'd actually like to expand a little on Ancient Greek myth and literature, though. At least explain better the references I'm still using so the reader who hasn't been soaking in the subject will be able to understand.

***

I have this impression that if I could just start, this one might go fast. I suspect that's a dream. I know I will be mostly doing research-as-I-go. Like, I have a couple of cute things I want to do at the Imperial War Museum. One of them I dreamed up last night will take, err, a bit of research to do right.

Sigh. By the end of this, it is going to look like I am a total World War II buff and couldn't keep myself from showing off everything I knew by cramming it in the story. No, I really don't. I'm going to have to research the hell out of most of this. And after I do, I'll leave most of what I learn...out.

Blog of the Plague...oh, I did that one already

When Daniel Defoe wrote his book, he had letters and diaries from the period to draw upon -- most certainly Pepys, possibly Johnson, and apparently largely from the journal of his own uncle, Henry Defoe. London was indeed suffering under a recurrence of the bubonic plague as he wrote, but the Great Plague had struck when he was but five years old.

It occurs to me that this will be one of the best documented pandemics of history. At least in the Western World. Because Shelter-in-Place has arrived on top of a mature Internet. In a weird acting-out of the scenario described in E.M. Forster's The Machine Stops we are all huddled alone with only our computers for company.

The Blitz hit London at a sort of height of diary-making and letter-writing. So the street experience of that was exceptionally well documented, and unusually, letters and diaries had been through the previous decades (and no doubt the previous war) been filtering down from the elite -- the "lettered" classes -- to all walks of life. It was not unusual for the lightly-educated to be prolific writers.

We are no longer exactly a letter culture. Texting and Twitter and the like have moved us to a fast, pseudo-conversational intercourse far from the long empathic reads of books and diaries and multi-page letters. That culture still exists, but it is circled back to being a minority; authors, reviewers, scientific papers, stalwarts like the Times -- I am thinking in particularly of the New York Times Review of Books, many of which seem longer than the books themselves.

And, yes, the novelists. Who are going uneasily through a changed landscape themselves, as the digital world is both wider and more fragmented, more open yet less lucrative.

But I digress.

***

My company is closed for at least the next two weeks. The future looks rough for it; we build high-end audio equipment and a big part of our client base is the musicians and shows who are currently suffering badly. So there's no assurance we'll get back to normal after this is over.

I have savings to last out the month and probably more. I have salable skills for the on-line economy, if that turns out to be the best thing going. So many of us were living close to the margin already, and the arts are always like that.

I spend decades doing gig work. The conundrum there is that you either have time, or money. Either you are working and have no free time, or you aren't working and have no money. Well, this one is different. I'm not working, I have a little money, but nothing is open. My town's been shut down since Monday night.

The line is still out the door at the local grocery store. I have food in the house for at least a week, but past, well, today that is with more and more creative improvising. As I look at the odds-and-ends I'll be increasingly faced with -- a bag of walnuts, some buckwheat flour, three small jars of saké -- I am oddly reminded of cooking in Skyrim, where after you are down to mostly cabbages you find out you can combine green apple, cabbage, and salt pile to make "Cabbage-Apple Stew."

Yeah. I was a bit zonked anyhow, so I cocooned in place -- turned out the lights and played Skyrim all day. I needed the vacation anyhow.  Played the Special Edition because that one has the three official DLC included, even though the mods available through the in-game handler are not as good as the ones I have loaded on regular Skyrim.

And oddly enough, Skyrim gave me a bit of an insight to the next novel. I'm still not liking it. I'm not liking the first. I'm not liking the choices I finally made, although I do not know if there was another set of choices I might have discovered.

Really, when you get right down to it, a story is a complicated and subtle enough beast that you can't sit back and logically work out all the pieces before starting. The only way to learn what is going to work, much of the time, is by trying it.

Well, there are choices I can still un-make. Despite there being print copies out there now (a surprisingly number of my friends and family don't read digitally). I'll see where plotting takes me in Book Three, assuming I am still on for it after the London book.

Journal of the Plague Year

Yeah, I've read Dafoe. But I haven't read Johnson or Pepys.

Research. It is so much fun.

So one of the sub-plots in my London novel is the diary of a shopgirl discovered in the collapsed part of the Tube Station shelter my protagonist is helping excavate. This is there to advance a lot of themes, but prominent among them the idea of archaeology bringing the individual story back to the broad sweep of history. And uncovering the lives of the ordinary (where history generally records the lives of kings).

And, yeah, I should have realized it: Londoners are a diary-writing, journal keeping, letter-sending breed. I've been reading up on The Blitz, particularly man-in-the-street impressions. And I've found there are so many personal accounts by people who either were or proudly called themselves ordinary, that there has grown up a whole field of critical rethinking on the genre.

The ideas that the mythology of The Blitz needs to be questioned is already out there, and has already gone full-circle at least once. Wartime censorship and government propaganda were very much interested in keeping up the idea of all of England rallying as one, class distinctions forgotten, crime put aside for the duration, chin up and a song in their hearts standing shoulder to shoulder against invasion and bearing the deprivations stoically.

Except the private diaries and un-sent letters reveal...yeah, the people really did feel that way. Although they were much more aware of a very real crime problem and class conflicts and there were some racial conflicts as well. And so the circle goes around; researchers are questioning the questioning of wartime letters.

Well, okay. So the diary isn't a big thing, not on the surface of it. No revelations to the general audience. But plenty of insights for my audience. And my protagonist. And that is sufficient.

Wonderful things

Started watching The Detectorists (BBC Television). A wonderful, gentle show. And like a lot of things English, expects an audience that is paying attention.

Right in the first episodes, there's a bit of flirting going on, during a conversation in which Lord Carnarvon and Howard Carter are name-dropped. A peek-a-boo moment occurs and there's this exchange; "What do you see there?" "Wonderful things."

Well, that said, my week has included turning against my first novel. I turned off sales at Amazon because I just can't bear it being out there without I fix a few things. I also cloned the work file then went through with a red pencil -- well, a macro that turns the text color red -- and marked all the stuff I want to delete.

Surprisingly, it isn't that much. The first few chapters get hit bad. After that it gets better. Total looks to be under a thousand words total and that's great. I could lose 10,000 words and be fine with it. (I might even like it better).

Other than that, though. Nothing written on the next novel yet. The main progress I've been making is to find more and more things that don't have to be front-loaded but can happen later (if at all).

Plus the oyster method is continuing to work. I can't even remember why I added the idea of a visit to the Imperial War Museum to the chapter plan. I've now got two characters, a more elegant way to make a connection to a local theatre, a way to set up BRO and their special radios, and another wrinkle in the stuff I'm doing about accents. The Battersea Power Station scene has also accreted more material; a life-saving act, a setting for some cat-and-mouse, and two more side characters.

Other than that, I've been mildly sickly but still walking to work every single day -- which means working every day as well -- and getting in practice on my violin most days as well. Which means my evenings have mostly been collapsing on the coach, having a snack for dinner than an early bed.

Not writing.

Down an octave

Got a practice mute for the trombone and it helps a lot. It still isn't a great trombone; the slide scrapes and there's no tuning slide. But it is enough to learn on. I'm trying to get out of the brass and get back to violin. Oh, I got a new practice mute for that, too, and it works very nice; I actually got in fifteen minutes on the violin today as well.

When you aren't buying an instrument, you are buying stuff for the instrument. See if you can guess what instrument the following go with; Aquila Nyguts, felt pick, capo; ka-bass metal wound strings, under-bridge pickup, amp, practice amp, case; jazz strings (seeing a theme here), alphayues, octave strings, three shoulder rests, chin rest, carbon-fibre bow, re-hair kit, blank bridge, chin rest tool, bridge mute, metal mute; Rico 2.0 soprano reeds, mouthpiece pads; lip plate patches; 5C mouthpiece, harmon mute, pixie mute, practice mute, Yamaha silent brass, cleaning kit, spitballs; more spitballs, another cleaning kit, another practice mute; tipper, and black electrical tape.

Anyhow. The practice mute allowed me to chase up through the second octave and that helped me figure out why some of the lower notes (especially on the second partial) were horrible, and that helped me see some errors I'd been making in embouchure on the trumpet, and that's led me to some exercises to clean up the slotting there, too.

So I'm getting a lot of hours in at work. And a bit of good practice time. And I'm walking every day. And I'm so tired I'm going to bed early and I still haven't made any headway on the book.

No title yet

Of course I want to write faster. But I’m even starting to think my current writing speed is bad...for my writing.

So there’s two bits in the last novel I want to contrast. In one, Penny “sees movement” and reacts in time to dodge a rock. In another, she’s thrown off the ferry from Venice and is dog-paddling in the middle of the night until rescued...then talks her rescuers into beating the ferry to Greece.

So that second bit, I got out the maps and the time tables. I was looking at how traveling at top speed cuts into your fuel supply, and calculating where the Moon would be given the phase, and using Google Maps tools to measure distances and plot courses and all that in lots of big messy calculations.

And here’s the note I get from Dad; that rock is falling at 16 feet per second per second and I don’t believe anyone could dodge that. Not a word on the boat.

So I could protest he read the scene wrong. She didn’t see the rock the moment it started falling. But why would I take notes if I wasn’t going to use them? So I re-phrased to make it clear she’s reacting to the rock-thrower instead.

What I'm trying to illuminate is that, too often, the things the writer gets hung up on and works to try to explain are not the things the reader gets hung up on and wishes the writer had explained.

A different illustration; final episode of Doctor Who Season 12, there’s a whole bit in which the Master goes out of his way to explain he was worried the Tissue Compactor would have caused the Death Particle the Lone Cyberman was carrying to get loose and kill everyone. (No. Don’t even ask.) So there’s this whole bit in which he brings it up, shrugs, then says he got lucky but it hardly matters because apparently he’s suicidal -- something that has never come up in any portrayal of the Master before -- so it didn't matter anyhow.

This is all taking place on Gallifrey, heavily-defended seat of power of the Time Lords, the Master’s own people, which he just conquered and destroyed. Off screen. Because while explaining why something that hadn’t even occurred to the viewer might be a problem wasn’t actually a problem, how the Master conquered Gallifrey wasn’t considered a problem.

(Just to underline...in a previous season climax it took ALL of the Doctors, every canonical regeneration all working together, to save Gallifrey and make it safe-but-isolated. And this was a big, big event that had been in one way or another led up to over the last ten years of the show.)

Well, I could write many long essays on how the last couple of seasons have been a let-down. There are many such out there already. I pride myself in that most of them lead with their upset about the politics or similar choices. I lead with story, and the failure to communicate it efficiently or interestingly.

I just watched a random clip from late in the Stargate canon. A briefing room discussion in which, in five minutes or so, the crazy plan of the week is explained and the need to include the prickly genius Doctor McKay is brought up with various people's reactions to that.

A dozen people in the scene. At least six of them have dialog. And almost all of them get something that is interesting and funny and in character and illustrates their relationships; enough that if you had started watching at this moment you would still be getting the first bit of a grasp of the personalities of these people.

And I wanted to grab the whole production team of current Doctor Who and sit them down and tell them, "See! This is what you should be able to do!"

Right. So today's main work on my own much less accomplished novel is to start thinking about character arcs. Because I sort of forgot. I mean, the characters do have a part to play in the plot and they are changed by it. But I hadn't thought in the specific terms of character arcs and that alerts me to something I probably need.

And that is for those arcs to be visible. To specifically plan in places where the reader can observe the critical characters and learn new things about them...and to see them learning new things about themselves.

Well, I also was thinking about how to work the financial pressures I want to put on Penny and that led to a more satisfying and in-character way to handle some of the shifts in her relationship with Graham. So that was good.

But that also -- heck, all of the various belated realizations I've had this week -- are a good counter to the idea that I should write faster. Because apparently it takes time for me to come up with stuff that, when added to the book, makes it stronger.

At least I hope it does. Because beyond and aside the idea that researching is a double-edged sword you can cut yourself on twice, I also think taking time gives your inner censor longer to react.

Right, so doing a lot of research tempts you to put it all in. Also, research is a bit like filling a jar from a tap; you can only hold so much before it starts spilling. I'm already losing notes and links I had for things that would have been very useful if I was writing those scenes right now.

But the censor thing. I actually can't tell if I'm backing away from the fun but implausible and slowly editing it into the plausible but boring. Or if I'm getting used to the ideas and by the time I write them I've accepted them, as unlikely as they might be. Heck, I don't even know if the idea of specifically over-the-top action; of set-piece action that is intended to ride that line between cool and ridiculous, is necessary or even helpful for whatever kind of story I'm actually writing.

I just feel like there was a point where the plot was wilder and now that I've started writing scenes, it feels domesticated. And maybe it wouldn't feel that way if I didn't spend so long planning things.

What is a Chiefdom?

Just added another piece of music I'd love to cover one day. Discovered it listening to an archaeology podcast; this student in a cultural anthropology class made a video on just that subject...in song, set to the tune of "What Does the Fox Say?"

Awkward, meandering lyrics. Here's a sample; "State is big, bands are small, tribes are weak and states are strong. Bands go hunt, some tribes farm, and the State will take your food. Priests show up, and currency, and sometimes slavery. But there's one form that no-one knows; what is a Chiefdom?"

And then I was reading an answer on Quora and they referenced the author Kit Whitfield who was a sometimes-contributor to the Slacktivist blog. And referenced another writer that Fred and PZ both mentioned and that's getting down a small degree of separation.

And the Season 12 finale of Doctor Who showed up on the Amazon stream and it was, um, weak.

So I'm thinking hard about story now. I'm still trying to load up specific details for the opening chapter in the new book; read enough of my Archaeology texts and read up on metal detectors and at some point I need to unearth the research I did on that. At least I managed to compile stuff on the Treasure Law into a place in my notes where I could find it again fast.

I've had a bit of time to think. To think in more general terms, take a longer view. Walked to work all last week and looks like I'll manage this week as well. With that and extra hours at work I haven't been able to get any actual writing done, though. The merest sketch of a draft of the first scene.

And a new realization yesterday. I have been working at winnowing the "facts" that are going to be in there. I'm rejecting the advice of my two beta readers, though. There are dense books, and there are people who like dense books (I'm one of them). This isn't something that is going to chance. I can focus in, but I can't arbitrarily strip out detail without losing whatever it is that I do as a writer.

But I can dramatize. And that's something I almost missed. I was thinking about what really needed to be touched on in the first chapter and what could be off-loaded to a later chapter. But that's not really the question. What I need to be looking at is how to make what is there be interesting.

To show whenever possible. And to show in the most showy way I can manage. Dropping dry narration is the worst. Dialog helps, but there can be better than dialog -- at worst case, you are just putting in a mouthpiece to read the text aloud instead of having it in the narration. Having it demonstrated by action is superior, when that can be done.

I knew this, of course. But that's the thing about writing. You know much more than you can remember. Much less actually employ.