Excerpt

This week has been up and down writing-wise. Packing and finishing up my last year of college apparently tends to make me less motivated to work on the things I really want to get done. Like finishing up the rework of Savior so I can start querying again. Oh, well. Life is silly like that.

To make up for the fact that I don't have much to say today, I present you with a bit of a story that may or may not go anywhere. I began this tale for my senior project and re-imagined it a bit to fit into the "Tarot Stories" series. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this snippet of a dragon story.

Scales hissed across the stone floor. Initaveske strode slowly, deliberately, toward the mouth of her cave, her long, white tail dragging on the ground behind her. Her milky eyes fixed on the oval of sunlight that was the entrance to her little home, despite the fact that she had not seen in hundreds of years. Even by dracenian standards, she was old. Ancient, even.

And this would be her last day.

She reached the tepid warmth of the mountain sunlight and turned instinctively to the right. Just outside the cave entrance perched a small ledge, only large enough for a clutch of three dracenian eggs. All three were as snow-white as the old dracen beside them, each one shuddering at its own pace as the hatchling inside struggled to free itself.

Initaveske pressed her warm, scaly nose to the nearest of the eggs, feeling her offspring’s heartbeat through her nostrils. This one would be strong. Good. Her last clutch would not fail her. She puffed a breath of hot air onto the egg and moved onto the next one, gently rolling it over to feel the heartbeat of this second hatchling. A quick, hard thrumming. Another leader.

She had to crane her neck over the makeshift nest to reach the last of the eggs. Her nose gently turned it over and over, searching for a sign of life. Finally, she felt it: a soft, fluttering heartbeat, irregular and gentle. She snorted in surprise, jerking her head back. The great wings on her back twitched, shedding a few snowy feathers down into the canyon. In all her fifty broods, she had never encountered a hatchling with a heartbeat like that. Irregular hatchlings existed, of course, but her bloodline had never produced anything except the strongest. Those with weaker hearts in the egg generally became a traitor, an exile, a disgrace. Very few managed to remain within the clan.

She could end it now, before it hatched, and save her line the humiliation. Push the egg out of the nest; let it plummet to the canyon floor as so many others had done. It would be the honorable thing to do. But the rhythm had been so fragile, so delicate. In her heart, she knew fragility was not a thing any dracen could possess if he wished to live, but she had grown sentimental in her own age. Delicacy was so rare that it was beautiful. 

Metamorphosing Queries

Ever have one of those days when you just have to wonder where your life is going? I'm there. In a good way, though. I'm graduating in a month; I have a full manuscript that really only needs some minor editing to be finished again; I have several short stories I can fix up and try to submit to various magazines and anthologies; I'm heading back to Colorado soon. And, yet, I still have no idea if/where/when I can get a job. Oh, well. I shan't mope about that here.

This space is for writing and arts and creative things. Like Metamorphoses. I don't think I mentioned it here previously, but I'm currently in the play, as "Eurydice and others." For those unfamiliar with it, Metamorphoses is a one-act play written by Mary Zimmerman, based on the writings of Ovid. In other words, it's all about Greek myths. The big brouhaha of the show is that it was originally produced with a pool of water on stage, so our director decided he wanted to do the same thing. It turned out all right, but it's been a bit of a hassle and I won't say I'm not happy to see the last of it. Overall, though, it was a wonderful experience. If you get the chance to see a version of it and are at all interested in mythology or different types of theatre, please do so.

And now onto the writerly update of the week: WriteOnCon is my new favorite website ever. Q&A sessions with agents, query letter critiques, an online conference in the fall; what more could you want? This month, there are three literary agents going through query letters and saying whether they would request pages or not, and their reasoning. Not only is it absolutely wonderful of them to give their time like that, but it is also much more useful for us, the authors, than a form rejection. At least, I think so. The thing that bothers me about form rejection letters is not knowing why the agent didn't want my work. I understand completely that they're very busy people and they don't have time to personally comment on everything, but it's also a bit confusing not to know whether it was a poorly constructed query letter, an unappealing premise, or simply the wrong time to query. So having someone comment on my letter will at least confirm whether or not I need to rework my pitch, in addition to fixing up bits of the manuscript. I'm looking forward to it.

Onward! To the senior project presentation and graduation!

Oljiru kovy.

Names, Critique Groups and Kells

This week I discovered that I'm a lot more detail-oriented that I realized. I wanted to write a short set after Savior, but realized that the names I had originally chosen for my twin characters did not fit at all. For one thing, they both started with the letter K, and I already had one person with a K name in the family, so having three was a bit overwhelming. And, secondly, neither of the names fit in with the other Elvish names I used. Keenai and Kalin just don't really fit with Araeli, Kelaen, Caera and Lekotae. So I spent much longer than I should have creating a family tree that will never see the light of day, just to see if these kids could be named after their great-grandparents or anything. I finally settled on naming only one of them with an Elvish name, since only one of their adoptive parents is an elf. The names I wound up with, thanks to discussion with a friend and a tweaked name generator result: Arillae and Enden. I'm much, much more satisfied with these. Yay names! Yay crazy ways to find them!

In related news, I've reworked the majority of the first chapter of Savior. All that's left there is to figure out a form of transportation that melds technology and majyk. I've got a vague idea of what I want to do, but I'm waiting to see what my critique group says before making anything solid. What I've got so far could be read as a bit...silly. And silly isn't really what I'm going for.

On the note of critique groups: I'm thinking about joining another one when I get back to Colorado. One that meets in person, as opposed to the online one I participate in at the moment. I just think I'd like the face-to-face interaction, in addition to email. And goodness knows that my manuscript still needs a lot of work. It's getting there, though. I just want as much input as I can get.

For the "not-writing-but-still-artsy" update of the week, I finally got around to watching The Secret of Kells. It's an absolutely stunning film, if you haven't seen it and are at all interesting in Irish mythology. The artwork is gorgeous, the characters well-developed for such a short span of time (it's only a little over an hour long), and the dialogue perfectly parsed. For me, though, it was even more wonderful, because I've spent months studying Irish history just before the time period this film was set, and to see most of my research represented in this film, in addition to the Irish mythology (which I've also been studying), is just amazing to me. I love it when things interconnect like that, don't you?

Oljiru kovy.

Whoops

A little late this week. Sorry! I got distracted by all sorts of craziness for the last few days--building a set for the show I'm currently rehearsing, finishing up the creative part of my senior project, and possibly starting a new co-authored project with one of the other ladies in my critique group. On top of the typical, life things that always get in the way, like sleeping and eating.

And, yes, you read that right. I've finished the story writing piece of my project. Which leaves me with a semi-academic paper explaining my process, my inspirations and what I gained from writing these shorts (yuck), and my big presentation at the end of the year. I'm tempted to polish up these stories, throw a few old ones in with them, print them out a few times, bind them together into some sort of book and sell them for five bucks a pop. I'm pretty sure no one's going to buy it at a senior project presentation, though. Oh, well. Guess that just means I need to polish them up and send them out to magazines an anthologies instead. That was part of the project goal, after all: a final product that I could potentially look into publishing. Don't worry, the first news of that endeavor will be posted here.

In other news: I didn't win one of the query critiques from Write On Con, but I spent a good hour and a half at Barnes and Noble on Friday, reading through The Writer's Digest Guide to Query Letters, and I have a few more ideas on how to fix up my query before I send it off again. Of course, I need to finish reworking the beginning of Savior before I do so. Motivation! I choose you!

Off to the grindstone! Oljiru kovy.

Good Morning World!

It's bright, early and quite possibly going to be sunny here in Anchorage this morning. A brief rundown of the last week for any and all of my (what, two?) readers: spring break is not quite a productive as one might think. I wound up getting a single three-page short done, a few pages on my personal "never going to see the light of day" project, and a few beginning paragraphs on a coauthoring experiment. I had hoped to get two or three shorts out of the way for my senior project, but that's the way life goes. Better to relax a bit and regain some sanity once in a while, am I right?

Although, I'm not entirely sure how relaxing it is working on four or five projects at the same time. The good news is that I'm writing again, at least. For a while there, I was having troubles pounding out a solid paragraph a day, and now I just have to decide which piece deserves that paragraph (plus, say, a page or two). Much, much better than writing basically nothing at all.

Righto. In other news: I won't be going to the Iowa Writer's Workshop in the fall; I'm waiting to see if I've won a query letter critique from the lovely agents who volunteered their services for WriteOnCon (see the previous post for more information), and will be sending out a query or two after I find out. Actually, I need to finish reworking the beginning of Savior before doing that. So, new plan! Write, write, write, edit, write, write. Six years on this book and I'm still editing. Maybe I'll have a manuscript I'm happy with by the time I graduate.

Probably not.

WOC 2011

Wondering what WOC stands for? WriteOnCon. Started last year, WriteOnCon is a free online writer's conference held over the summer, geared toward YA and children's literature. I haven't attended yet, but I have every plan to do so this year. At this point in my life, writing conferences are probably the best invention ever, and having the ability to attend one online, from wherever I'll be at the end of next summer, is absolutely wonderful. To spread the word, there are several literary agents offering query critiques to the winners of various contests. It's a great opportunity!

For more information, check out the WriteOnCon website.

Description

I am a very dialogue-heavy writer. Always have been. I prefer my stories to be character-driven instead of plot-driven (though I can make an exception for some epic fantasies), and, as such, I write that way. Of course, this occasionally means that I skimp on the description. It's something I've been working on for a while now. I always feel that a few sentences of description is enough and anything more will fall into the realm of "info dumping," which drastically slows the flow of the story. Once or twice is fine, especially at when creating a fantastical world, but any more than that makes me want to skip ahead a few pages and get back to the characters' problem.

In light of this rather unfortunate quirk of mine, one of my professors has challenged me to write a series of vignettes that are purely descriptive. This is much harder than it sounds. Initially, she asked that I simply set a scene, create an atmosphere, and leave it at that. No characters, no conflict. I had absolutely no idea what to do. When I went to ask for clarification, she suggested writing a type of riddle, where something occurred just before the scene I'm setting, or something will happen right afterwards. This makes a lot more sense, doesn't it? I still get to put characters in, I just don't have the time to develop personalities or conflict. But at least I have something to focus the story on, instead of purely writing setting. I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who have no problem churning out page after page of description (I've read a few, haven't you?), but I'm certainly not one of them. So far, I have two and a half pieces, at about a hundred words, and I'm pleased with. This, after almost a week of working on them!

So to wrap this little ramble up, here's the first successful flash fiction-y, descriptive piece. Any thoughts from whoever happens to be reading this?

Golden light filtered through the large, half-circle window, gilding the planes of his face with a warm, beatific glow. Tiny specs of dust floated lazily through the sunbeams, dancing gently back and forth. The remainder of last night’s rain clung to the windowpane; the water very slowly evaporating in the morning’s warmth.

His stomach gently rose and fell with his soft breaths. The purring cat on his chest carefully kneaded at the thin blanket between them, her claws catching on the coarse cloth. Serenity painted the apartment a soft shade of sunglow yellow.

A soft, sleepy sigh escaped his lips and he stirred.