I’m always surprised to relearn that the process of writing a novel’s first draft, for me, is more like channeling than anything else. I can’t describe it save in supernatural terms—it’s like speaking in tongues, or acting as medium for a seance. I sit down for a couple of hours at a time and begin typing, slowly and painfully at first. Gradually my conscious mind recedes, and I fall into a trance-like state in which I’m typing away. Then I realize my self-appointed time has elapsed, and that the manuscript has somehow accumulated another five or ten pages.
The Buccaneer’s Apprentice is my fifteenth published book. You’d think by now I’d know my own process.
But no. Yesterday I was reviewing in my head one of the last few scenes left to write. I paused a moment to consider how well one of the plot’s conceits turned out—that its hero assumes the identity and mannerisms of a minor character who disappears early in the book. Oh yes, agreed part of my brain. The editorial part, perhaps. That was my contribution. It seemed a shame to have that character vanish and be disconnected from the rest of the story, so I suggested he return in this way. Didn’t it work out well? Oh, and you know what also really worked, that I contributed? said my brain. That thing with the origami boats. You know the bit.
I did know the bit. It did fit nicely, and it hadn’t been part of the book’s original conception. I settled down, quite happy to realize I’d contributed two little things to what I am thinking is a very good novel.
Then I realized, hey, wait a minute. I wrote the two hundred and eighty-odd pages. I made a lot more contributions to it than just those two elements!
It’s amazing how big the disconnect is between the editor-writer in me and the mystical oracle who drafts the pages. The former is alert and conscious and sees the book’s structure from a more clinical aspect. The latter communes with the ether and produces page after page of automatic writing of which my consciousness has no memory.
Apparently the oracle’s tendency to ban the editor from the room when he’s communing with the muses has created quite the schism between them. Maybe when I give the editor free reign next week and send the oracle back to whatever hippie commune he lives in, they’ll gain a little parity.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Friday, February 20, 2009
Body count
Last night, for the first time in three months, I didn’t fall asleep while reviewing in my head the chapter I was going to write the next day. That’s because yesterday afternoon I finished my big, sprawling draft of The Buccaneer’s Apprentice. Well. Everything except for a tiny little epilogue that I’ll write after I’ve completed the revisions.
I think this novel has the highest body count of any book I’ve written. I killed off:
And the last two items are during the first two chapters alone.
So yes, it’s somewhat less than the average one-hour episode of 24, and yet more than The Glass Maker’s Daughter, which I think had a single death in it. No! Two! I’d forgotten one of them.
In both novels there are probably civilian casualties while the city is under siege, but they’re not discussed, really. It might be interesting to address the issue in the third book in the series, A Traveler to Nascenza.
I think this novel has the highest body count of any book I’ve written. I killed off:
- Sixteen Frenchified warships carrying approximately 200 sailors apiece;
- Around twelve of the hero’s former masters;
- One ambassador;
- One French assassin;
- One small merchant ship’s captain and his ten or so crew; and
- Four mean pirates who really deserved it.
And the last two items are during the first two chapters alone.
So yes, it’s somewhat less than the average one-hour episode of 24, and yet more than The Glass Maker’s Daughter, which I think had a single death in it. No! Two! I’d forgotten one of them.
In both novels there are probably civilian casualties while the city is under siege, but they’re not discussed, really. It might be interesting to address the issue in the third book in the series, A Traveler to Nascenza.
Into the Breach
I’ve been a bad journal-keeper lately. I’m trying to finish the manuscript for the sequel to The Glass Maker’s Daughter, which currently is titled The Buccaneer’s Apprentice. The book’s reached that point where everything is avalanching into completion. But yesterday a curious thing happened.
The Glass Maker’s Daughter takes place entirely within an imaginary city very much like pseudo-Renaissance Venice. Its main character is part of that culture’s aristocracy; the story takes place very much the city’s largest estates and in its palace. Then there are a few detours to a couple of seedy spots, giving the heroine an awareness for the first time that there are indeed a number of indigents within her city’s walls who are as vital to its future as she. The Buccaneer’s Apprentice focuses on those people. Its protagonist is a poor kid who, thanks to Cassaforte’s draconian system of work-debt, has spent all his life as an indentured servant of one sort or another. He’s only just managed to escape the worst of them and to obtain a spot as servant to a really poor (in every sense of the word) troupe of traveling actors, when the ship on which they’re sailing is attacked by pirates—who are part of a political intrigue that threatens Cassaforte itself. By the end of chapter two, the actors are taken for slaves, the ship is sunk, and poor Nic is left to fend for himself on a deserted island.
The book’s story is how, after so many years of being owned and directed, Nic manages to come into his own independence. It’s about how he manages to bluff and scrape his way home, collecting allies as he does, and how he defends a country that admittedly hasn’t given him any of the advantages boasted by the heroine of The Glass Maker’s Daughter. It’s also about how living on society’s margins have given him an insight and flexibility that the more aristocratic classes might not have.
Anyway. Yesterday I had a fairly straight-forward scene to finish in which Nic and his allies, having made their way to a seedy shipping port before sailing for Cassaforte, had to find a used-boat salesman. They’d been given the address of a tavern where the guy was hanging out, and they’d made their way through the city’s dirty streets while avoiding drunkards, beggars, and buckets of muck being slopped from upper story windows, when suddenly they all balked, en masse. “He’s not in there,” they told me, nodding at the tavern I’d picked out for the scene. It was a nice, smelly tavern, too. “He’s in that place.” They pointed to the doorway across the street.
“But that’s a whorehouse,” I told them. “See? I just wrote a little sentence about the buxom woman sticking her head out of the window and flirting with them. Did you see how she jiggled her breasts? That's because she’s kind of a hooker.”
“He’s in there,” said Nic and company. They crossed their arms.
“You heard me say it’s a whorehouse, didn’t you?” They all nodded at my question. “Are you sure? Tavern? Drinks? I could put in a bawdy tavern wench.”
“You already had a tavern scene,” Nic said. “Chapter four. Remember? When I get traded in a card game? Do you really want to repeat yourself?”
“Yeah,” said the blue-face pirate who had accompanied him throughout most of the book. “I’d like the whorehouse, too. I'm adult. It's been a while.”
“Is a whorehouse even appropriate for a young adult book?” I asked.
They were already stomping ahead of me. “Your editor will love it,” they called back.
So before I really knew what was happening, my characters barged through the whorehouse, looking around with wide-eyed wonderment, giving each other advice on how to behave (and not to kiss the women with sores on their lips), sniffing with disapproval, and generally having the time of their lives as they hunted down the used-boat salesman for ten pages.
They do that sometimes, one’s characters. Sometimes their rationales for running amok aren’t very well justified. At other times, though, they have the right instincts. I think they did, here. Any town can have a seedy tavern. In a port town catering to adventurers and freebooters, however, a nice, grimy whorehouse really can set the mood, plus it gives one’s cast a chance to sound off and show themselves for what they really are—prudes, libertines, or something in between.
The Glass Maker’s Daughter takes place entirely within an imaginary city very much like pseudo-Renaissance Venice. Its main character is part of that culture’s aristocracy; the story takes place very much the city’s largest estates and in its palace. Then there are a few detours to a couple of seedy spots, giving the heroine an awareness for the first time that there are indeed a number of indigents within her city’s walls who are as vital to its future as she. The Buccaneer’s Apprentice focuses on those people. Its protagonist is a poor kid who, thanks to Cassaforte’s draconian system of work-debt, has spent all his life as an indentured servant of one sort or another. He’s only just managed to escape the worst of them and to obtain a spot as servant to a really poor (in every sense of the word) troupe of traveling actors, when the ship on which they’re sailing is attacked by pirates—who are part of a political intrigue that threatens Cassaforte itself. By the end of chapter two, the actors are taken for slaves, the ship is sunk, and poor Nic is left to fend for himself on a deserted island.
The book’s story is how, after so many years of being owned and directed, Nic manages to come into his own independence. It’s about how he manages to bluff and scrape his way home, collecting allies as he does, and how he defends a country that admittedly hasn’t given him any of the advantages boasted by the heroine of The Glass Maker’s Daughter. It’s also about how living on society’s margins have given him an insight and flexibility that the more aristocratic classes might not have.
Anyway. Yesterday I had a fairly straight-forward scene to finish in which Nic and his allies, having made their way to a seedy shipping port before sailing for Cassaforte, had to find a used-boat salesman. They’d been given the address of a tavern where the guy was hanging out, and they’d made their way through the city’s dirty streets while avoiding drunkards, beggars, and buckets of muck being slopped from upper story windows, when suddenly they all balked, en masse. “He’s not in there,” they told me, nodding at the tavern I’d picked out for the scene. It was a nice, smelly tavern, too. “He’s in that place.” They pointed to the doorway across the street.
“But that’s a whorehouse,” I told them. “See? I just wrote a little sentence about the buxom woman sticking her head out of the window and flirting with them. Did you see how she jiggled her breasts? That's because she’s kind of a hooker.”
“He’s in there,” said Nic and company. They crossed their arms.
“You heard me say it’s a whorehouse, didn’t you?” They all nodded at my question. “Are you sure? Tavern? Drinks? I could put in a bawdy tavern wench.”
“You already had a tavern scene,” Nic said. “Chapter four. Remember? When I get traded in a card game? Do you really want to repeat yourself?”
“Yeah,” said the blue-face pirate who had accompanied him throughout most of the book. “I’d like the whorehouse, too. I'm adult. It's been a while.”
“Is a whorehouse even appropriate for a young adult book?” I asked.
They were already stomping ahead of me. “Your editor will love it,” they called back.
So before I really knew what was happening, my characters barged through the whorehouse, looking around with wide-eyed wonderment, giving each other advice on how to behave (and not to kiss the women with sores on their lips), sniffing with disapproval, and generally having the time of their lives as they hunted down the used-boat salesman for ten pages.
They do that sometimes, one’s characters. Sometimes their rationales for running amok aren’t very well justified. At other times, though, they have the right instincts. I think they did, here. Any town can have a seedy tavern. In a port town catering to adventurers and freebooters, however, a nice, grimy whorehouse really can set the mood, plus it gives one’s cast a chance to sound off and show themselves for what they really are—prudes, libertines, or something in between.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
The Show that I No Longer Understand
Whenever I watch Lost these days, the experience is a little something like this:
Then, as it cuts to a commercial, I’ll sigh and say, “I don’t understand this show.”
“Me neither,” the Mont will reply. Then we’re into the plot again.
Another commercial. “I don’t understand this show,” I’ll murmur.
And I really haven’t understood Lost at all for the last three seasons. Week after week I watch it, through shocking revelation after shocking revelation, and though I have a vague grasp of the plot—I think it has something to do with them needing to go back to the island—I honestly couldn’t summarize in a succinct way where the show has been or where it might be going.
There are frustrations. I get a little bit baffled at how characters who weren’t introduced until last season are allowed to carry so much of the story now, while good characters like Juliet get to tromp around in the background with an air of “What the hell. I don’t know what’s going on, either.” A lot of the show’s mythology has gotten so complicated that it takes a flow chart or a real Lost-o-phile to get any of the nuances. Flaming arrows, nuclear weapons, time travel, hidden relationships, mysterious figures . . . Lost is so chock-a-block with them that I feel a little bit desensitized when the Next Really Important Thing happens. Explosions? Groovy, but I’ve seen them before. Strangers with guns? Oh, that’s so Season Two. Secret Dharma Initiative installations? Well duh!
I no longer understand the show. But I let it all wash over me and don’t worry about making sense of it all. It’s an enjoyable enough ride, so long as I don’t examine too closely what makes it go.
KATE: They can’t take my son!
HUGO: Where are the Fritos, dude?
BEN: We have to go back to the island.
CHARLOTTE: I have a headache.
DANIEL: How is your headache?
CHARLOTTE: I still have a headache. Why are you looking at me like that? Do you know what’s happening to me?
DANIEL: Yes. I mean, nuh-uh.
SAWYER: Watch out for the flaming arrows!
Then, as it cuts to a commercial, I’ll sigh and say, “I don’t understand this show.”
“Me neither,” the Mont will reply. Then we’re into the plot again.
BEN: We have to go back to the island.
RANDOM WOMAN FROM TWO SEASONS AGO: They have to go back to the island.
LOCKE: They have to come back to the island.
DESMOND: This has something to do with the island.
SOME CHICK ON A BOAT: I don’t want you to go back to the island.
HUGO: Dude, where are the Hot Pockets?
DANIEL: How is your headache?
CHARLOTTE: Wow, my head hurts. Why . . . why are you looking at me like that? Do you know something?
DANIEL: I am doing my best to convince you that the nosebleed you get every time the island transports itself through time and space has absolutely nothing to do with anything and is probably just a case of the sniffles, while I wrinkle my eyebrows in obvious worry, and this is how you repay me? With questions, woman?
CHARLOTTE: I can see in your eyes you know something.
DANIEL: Oh, that. It’s probably just a sty.
SAWYER: Duck! It’s a nuclear bomb!
Another commercial. “I don’t understand this show,” I’ll murmur.
And I really haven’t understood Lost at all for the last three seasons. Week after week I watch it, through shocking revelation after shocking revelation, and though I have a vague grasp of the plot—I think it has something to do with them needing to go back to the island—I honestly couldn’t summarize in a succinct way where the show has been or where it might be going.
There are frustrations. I get a little bit baffled at how characters who weren’t introduced until last season are allowed to carry so much of the story now, while good characters like Juliet get to tromp around in the background with an air of “What the hell. I don’t know what’s going on, either.” A lot of the show’s mythology has gotten so complicated that it takes a flow chart or a real Lost-o-phile to get any of the nuances. Flaming arrows, nuclear weapons, time travel, hidden relationships, mysterious figures . . . Lost is so chock-a-block with them that I feel a little bit desensitized when the Next Really Important Thing happens. Explosions? Groovy, but I’ve seen them before. Strangers with guns? Oh, that’s so Season Two. Secret Dharma Initiative installations? Well duh!
I no longer understand the show. But I let it all wash over me and don’t worry about making sense of it all. It’s an enjoyable enough ride, so long as I don’t examine too closely what makes it go.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
The Maps of Cassaforte
Back in November, I had to spend a couple of painful days coming up with a map of the invented city that is the setting of my April book, The Glass Maker's Daughter. It was painful because although I knew in my head the basic shape of the city, and how it was supposed to look, the process of having to draw it out, with proportions and distances, just sounded like torture.
I also had an editor whose sharp eyes could spot every inconsistency possible. There's a gondola chase late in the book, for example, that had our heroes paddling to freedom in directions that were inconsistent with the preliminary map I'd drawn, so the text had to be fixed. And then there was some weirdness about bridges and their directions that had to be adjusted. A scene early in the book that had taken place on a side street, suddenly got moved to a main thoroughfare. Eventually, however, my abysmal-looking map and the book were in sync, and I pitied whatever artist had been handed the job of trying to translate my utter lack of artistic ability into something decent looking.
Here's my terrible attempt.
And here's the artist's final, glorious rendering.
I actually got teary when I saw it. It's so beautiful. Look at my little flags for the seven cazas of Cassaforte, all with their little logos, just like I'd suggested! Look at the river gates, done so well! It's just so perfect. I want to live there. Plus I want to take the artist out for dinner.
And no, Cassaforte doesn't have a giant white gulf running down its middle. The map is split so it can fit on two pages.
I also had an editor whose sharp eyes could spot every inconsistency possible. There's a gondola chase late in the book, for example, that had our heroes paddling to freedom in directions that were inconsistent with the preliminary map I'd drawn, so the text had to be fixed. And then there was some weirdness about bridges and their directions that had to be adjusted. A scene early in the book that had taken place on a side street, suddenly got moved to a main thoroughfare. Eventually, however, my abysmal-looking map and the book were in sync, and I pitied whatever artist had been handed the job of trying to translate my utter lack of artistic ability into something decent looking.
Here's my terrible attempt.
And here's the artist's final, glorious rendering.
I actually got teary when I saw it. It's so beautiful. Look at my little flags for the seven cazas of Cassaforte, all with their little logos, just like I'd suggested! Look at the river gates, done so well! It's just so perfect. I want to live there. Plus I want to take the artist out for dinner.
And no, Cassaforte doesn't have a giant white gulf running down its middle. The map is split so it can fit on two pages.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Fred: Then and Now
A year ago, when she was all of three pounds, it was kind of cute.
Now that she's twelve pounds, and we thought she'd be calmer and we could put ornaments on the tree without worry? Not so much.
Now that she's twelve pounds, and we thought she'd be calmer and we could put ornaments on the tree without worry? Not so much.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
The Glass Maker's Daughter
I finally saw the back cover copy for The Glass Maker’s Daughter yesterday for the first time.From enchanted champagne flutes to rituals that hold the city together, magic lies at heart of Cassaforte. Bearing a striking resemblance to Venice, this medieval city of canals is the home of Risa Divetri, whose future is about to be decided.
Risa has led the sheltered life of a nobleman's daughter, but now she's on the brink of adulthood. Soon she will leave home to study the family craft—creating and enchanting glass objects. The gods will choose which school is best for her. But then the impossible happens: Risa remains unchosen. The gods don't need her? The rejection sends Risa into a spiral of shame, anger, and confusion. If she's not meant to be a glass maker, what will she do?
An answer is found when Cassaforte's age-old magic begins to unravel and corruption threatens their kingdom. As she battles against dark forces, Risa's fiery spirit and untapped powers rise to the surface—leading her toward her true fate.
I would totally buy this book!
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