It's the night before NaNoWriMo, and I figure now is a good time for a little update on what's going on in my writing and reading world.
My Debut Short Story is Out!!
Yes indeed, my story, "To Crave an Empty Chest," is available in Night Terror Novels anthology, Ceci n'est pas une histoire d'horreur. Now I can say in my cover letters not that I have a short story upcoming, but that it appears in this anthology! Plus, people are gonna lay eyes on it, which is ??????!?!??!??!?!? Plus, a lot of the authors and stories in it look really good (I haven't started a proper read yet), and I feel so flattered to be included alongside them.
I guess I hadn't realized how weird it is to have a this psychedelic horror story set not on Earth, with an elemental magic system and flying motorcycles etc. I just wrote what was in my head? So I'm grateful Night Terror Novels took a chance on me. Now I have a Goodreads Author page! Holy crap!
Here's the list of various links:
Ceci n'est pas une histoire d'horreur Launch Page
Other Exploits in Short Fiction
I've been persistently submitting short fiction to places since "To Crave an Empty Chest" got accepted. At the moment I have three flash fiction pieces out for submission (one is horror, two are ????), and a fantasy short story out for submission.
The process has been nerve-wracking, as there's been some places that have been slower than expected in getting back to me. Not that it's a problem of course--they should be able to take their time. It's just hard to know what to think, or more accurately, to not think anything of it. I had a week or so there where my heart was racing constantly and painfully for most of the day, every day. I have seasonal anxiety, which doesn't help. I've calmed down a little, but sometimes the jags of anxiety still hit me. What with the seasonal anxiety, which often fills me with an inchoate, animal fear after sunset, I've been having some rough spots.
It had been my goal to brush up another short fiction piece before NaNoWriMo started, but I didn't get around to it. I instead did some heavy edits on the one I already had (with the help of my husband and a Twitter friend!) and sent it to somewhere that will probably keep it for about a month, meaning I don't have to worry about it for a while.
NaNoWriMo
Last year, I didn't prepare specifically for NaNoWriMo. That didn't stop me from producing my 50k words, and more, but I did forget my plot points a lot (because I forgot my plot outline existed, then stopped caring about it), and I had no clear direction for a good half of the characters.
Without any real conscious thought, I've opted to take a different approach this time, namely I wound up doing 3+ months of prep without really planning for it. I decided as early as midsummer that I would just use NaNoWriMo to see what happens if I try a dry run of book 2, since I obviously have a lot to still work at.
This started with me flipping through the resulting manuscript from last years effort and noting down what I need to improve, think about, and remember to do next time I try to write it. I started making notes on my printed out plot outline, and got like 3/4ths of the way through before I was like "I don't fucking know what I'm getting at with any of these characters? I should write in my notebook about it."
Then, like 2 1/2 months and many colorful gel pen pages later, I had 11 character arcs laid out. Then I made a big chart to help me keep everyone's arcs and lessons straight. By big, I mean it's longer than my torso.
Then I took the plot outline I had before I did all this work, and turned it into some elaborate index cards that help indicate what each plot point means for each character's arc. And the picture below is the sum total of what I've been working so hard at for three months.
I probably seem wacky for all this--it seems excessive even for a plotter, maybe? I used to be more of a pantser when I was younger, but the brain drain of fibromyalgia has changed me, I think. I'm wondering if this is going to be one of those paper-and-colorful-pen-based work-arounds for my pain-addled brain.
Well, come December, I'll post about how this experiment went!
Books I've Been Reading
I'm still working my way through the His Dark Materials trilogy. It's mostly been my bedtime reading, since it's a bit easier than all the heavy stuff I've taken on. I'm on The Amber Spyglass, which has been mixed so far. Some parts aren't as good as I remember, but then the mulefa sections are even better than I remember. I always loved them, contrary to popular opinion on that arc, but the part where gets Mary introduced to the mulefa just made me like...I so badly want to hug some mulefa. We'll see how it all goes as I read further. Afterwards, I plan on starting on the Belle Epoque books, which I've never read!
I'm still working on the African Kingdoms book. It's dry reading, a lot of broad strokes crammed into small spaces. Even so, I've found it valuable reading. I enjoy going to Google Earth whenever I start a new entry and looking around the area I'm reading about. Other than that, though, I've seen so many interesting and diverse types of governments presented. It reminds me that feudalism isn't the only option, but also that feudalism isn't necessarily tied only to whiteness. I've been getting a lot more out of it, but I'll wait to say more until after I've finished it (probably forever from now).
I finished The Lord of the Rings, and am trying to get myself into The Silmarillion. Sometimes it's surprisingly enthralling, sometimes it's tiresome. There's something about it that feels like it's even more revealing of who Tolkien was, like what he idealized and vilified. I'm not sure. We'll see as I progress through it.
The big reason I've been slow in reading this two books is I've been entranced with Medieval Military Technology. A friend lent it to me, along with another book, a big one with pictures titled Medieval Warfare, before going to Edinburgh for a year. Right before he left, we had a conversation about our favorite historical battles, and were like "why didn't we realize we both liked this??" So he kindly left me with this books and the instruction to read them over the next year.
Non-fiction goes down so easy when it's about something you're obsessed with. Last night I read about trebuchets while having my nighttime tea and got so excited about how cool they are. Like the Crusaders capturing Lisbon with the help of two traction trebuchets, which, with continuous operation, launched about 5,000 stones in 10 hours. And the discovery of probable counterweight trebuchet balls weighing 230 kilograms. Holy heck! I could read about trebuchets all day.
Well, that's about it for now. I'm not going to edit this because I was supposed to have the time off from writing today, and I shan't have the time tomorrow. So don't judge me too hard! Though, tbf, I imagine my NaNo draft will be a similar sort of mess!
