ieva melgalve » Writing

editing as a board game

ieva — Sun, 16 Jan 2011 19:37:38 +0000

I spent, well, most of last 27 hours playing board games (I lost miserably, but that’s not the point here, ok?).
During a light six hour sleep this morning, I suddenly realized that while it is next to impossible to create a good novel out of a board game (at least the occasions when I’ve seen this happen are, well, of dubious value–except Carroll’s Alice, I guess), it could be possible to create a board game out of a novel. A board game of dubious value, of course. But this could take care of the basic flaws I have in Vega right now–ie lack of inner structure, balance and realization of what is important in situations, locations and characters, and what isn’t. It would force me to get magic in line, not through the “OK, how could this happen, according to the laws of physics?” method that fails every time, but through “here are the special skills and moves, and you have to make sure that they are consistent within the game while individually shaped for each character”. Also, the game-for-edits would have clear conditions of “winning” for each side, something that I, surprisingly, lost somewhere down the line.

So, well, NO, there won’t be a “Vega: the board game”, I’ll spare you that. However, I think there will be a board and a rulebook, and characters, locations and moves. Let’s see what this approach will give to me.

notes, longhand or computer

ieva — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 15:42:07 +0000

There’s this funny difference between notes I write on computer and notes I write by hand.
The ones that are on the computer is something that will, at some point, evolve to a text intended for others (I’ve never been able to keep a private diary on a computer, I just can’t see the point). I delete a lot. I rephrase a lot. I am always dissatisfied with the result (ie I’m certain this is NOT coherent by any means). And I work on them till I make them into a kind of “end product”, or dismiss them entirely. For me, computer is a tool for work, or communication. I think that this is why I’ve never used a plotting software more than for a month or so (and I’ve always abandoned those half-plotted things in favor of a notebook).
And there are notes I write in notebooks, or just about anywhere. They are barely legible, disjointed, disorganized (more than once, I’ve spent ten minutes trying to figure out What The Heck Is This, then realizing that it is, for example, a sacred language idea I developed for Newil and never used), and very creative (since it is easier to keep writing than to backtrack and scratch out all the inconsistencies). Writing longhand is a record of a thought process, not an end result. (I must admit that I very rarely use the notes I make.)
Editing is mostly longhand, while writing is mostly on computer, which very much complies with this trend.
I wonder, does it work similarly for others? Or are there other differences between writing longand vs. computer? (I refuse to believe that, for anybody, it could be the same.)

the middle game

ieva — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 07:20:04 +0000

I just hit a slow few days in my NaNo novel (normally, I would have stopped writing altogether at this point, but not with NaNo). So at first I tried some tricks and then realized what it was really about.
So the tips part.
1. Figure out whether everything is too easy, then change it (backtrack a scene if you want).
2. Focus on what’s important for you to tell in the story (let the theme drag you out).
3. If something must happen by the rules of the story and not by your plans, follow the story, not the plan.
4. Sometimes, you want to hold back. Sometimes, you want to spill the beans. See whether revealing that dark secret now could help.
5. What’s the thing your characters would be most uncomfortable about? Dump it on them.
And the conclusion part:
it seems that I write this novel (and probably all novels) like chess game, with the opening, middle and endgame. In the opening, there are lots of bold moves and lots of seemingly less important moves, but what happens is that all the characters must be developed to the point where they can act on their own in unexpected situations, and in the right places (“looking at” something, either friend or foe). Revealing the game plan in the opening is not necessary, and sometimes you don’t have the plan. But you must develop the main pieces anyway, and the more potential they have, the better.
Now I’d reached middle game, where there is no more stalling. Every piece moves steadily to its goal, and if I have to reveal its secret on the way, so be it. If I have to sacrifice a figure, that’s fine as well. But the necessity to put something new on the table means, mostly, that I’ve developed the game too poorly.

So I hope that this will help me in the next few days, unless a hit another snag.

benefits of nanowrimo

ieva — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 21:42:39 +0000

The benefits of NaNoWriMo

Not surprisingly, every November somebody (a lot of somebodies, actually) starts sniggering and/or demeaning the whole event. Sometimes, it’s fun and to the point (I just set this as my desktop background), sometimes it’s plain mean and condescending. So that got me thinking, not really about stopping writing but about the benefits of NaNo for me personally.

My first NaNo novel, two years ago, was largely unreadable. A really good idea, completely wasted by, well, horrible plotting, overabundance of meaningless characters and figuring out what this was really about around the end of the thing.
What I got from this:
- after finishing the thing I started looking around to figure out what does it need to be published. I realized it lacked virtually everything. And I started learning to write (instead of thinking “I can write a novel easy-peasy”),
- since it was the first novel I wrote in English, I got enormous kicks from being able to do it,
- and I learned that I do need some better plotting, and try to write simpler to learn stuff.

The next year, I wrote stuff, and learned a lot of stuff as well. I think that I wrote Vega then, at least most of it.

Then, next NaNoWriMo. Far better plotted, far better paced (amounted to something you could actually read without killing yourself in the first two chapters). Fell apart in the middle though.
What I learned:
- that writing a novel takes more than “writing that you know” and “writing what you’re suited to write” (I started with a high-school-in-Latvia plot with multicultural twist and switched to “stranded on an alien planet with no way of knowing their language and no meds to cure a terminal illness” plot. Take a wild guess which one I thought was more familiar, and more useful in the grand scheme of things. Take a wild guess which one was more fun to write),
- that I *still* need to learn. A lot. Especially about endings. And self-discipline,
- that I can’t go on forever. I burned out horribly after that and spent two months in frustration, basically because I didn’t understand I need a down-time too.

Then, I wrote some more. And participated in Script Frenzy (which went too well for me to say it didn’t go well, even if nobody really needs a 180-page comic that is virtually un-drawable. Damn, I still love the thing).

This year, well, it’s too early to judge. But right now, I feel that writing 3K non-crap words a day is a manageable thing for me. And I’ve learned some things that I should anticipate about my plotting (mainly that it never turns out the way I imagined it, but that it still helps, even if it’s only to eliminate the first, painfully obvious ideas). I’ve learned some things about the discipline of writing. And (yawns) about my necessity to sleep sometimes.

All in all, I’d say it is a good experience for me.

Newil excerpt

ieva — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 08:19:55 +0000

I have been doing well, this far, on Newil. It took a lucky combination of my night owl nature and lil one’s kindergarten that started on November 1st, so now she goes to sleep at a more predictable time, and I have an hour to write after both kids are asleep. It doesn’t sit well with the “8 hours of sleep per day” math, but I guess I’ll have to catch up on weekend.
My personal wordcount goal is 2500 words per day, something I think I’m able to do unless something goes terribly wrong.

I also posted Newil excerpt on NaNoWriMo site, but for those of you for whom the site is lagging, here it goes (and forgive my mangled English, this is a first draft). Also, if you, for some unfathomable reason, want to pass this around, please don’t (the first draft excuse again).

I am giving a wave and a nod to a lot of people and influences in here. It seems that when I’m typing fast, I’m just grabbing a handful of images from the nearby basket of memories and impressions without much consideration about whether it really fits.

Il breathed deeply, and the air wheezed down his throat and into his lungs. He then waved a hand, and Gabriel stood back, immersing himself in the darkness of the house, watching Newil still, watching Il as a puppy watches a big, grown pitbull growling down on him. He was afraid, and loving, and devoted still.
Il beckoned Newil closer, so that he had to sit by his father’s bead and lean down to hear what he was about to say. Il was speaking not through his mouth, but through a small hole in his neck, just above the larynx. The sound was quiet; a shadow of a whisper.
“Newil. My son.” Il’s voice lacked all expression due to the surgery that had been done on him. “I didn’t know you were coming.”
“I’m sure you did,” Newil said, quietly, involuntarily tuning his own voice down to suit Il’s whisper.
“No.”
Newil drew back and looked at his father. He could read little into his wrinkled old face, his watery blue eyes. But he knew that this was wrong.
“I heard a voice,” he whispered. “A voice at the back of my head, just like mine. It told me to come.”
“Oh.” Il closed his eyes. He breathed slowly, but somehow this didn’t feel like breathing of a tired old man. He wasn’t asleep and he wasn’t even tired now. “I see,” he finally said, and opened his eyes. They looked very calm and clear now. “Killed your sister, didn’t you.”
“The voice said so,” Newil said. “But I don’t know how…”
“This is what I tried to protect you from,” Il said, and managed to smile, not only with his mouth, but even, a little, with his eyes. “The knowledge.”
“What knowledge?”
“See, I wanted your brothers to carry the load,” Il said. “Gabriel and Mike, they’re born for this. You… you’re a boy.”
“It said that Gabriel and Mike…” Newil stopped.
“What?”
“I’m sorry. It said they… effed things up.” Newil blushed. He never swore. Never in his life. He wondered why was his voice, at the back of his head, swearing so easily.
“Ahh.” Il considered Newil for a while again. “You are a funny boy. But you did kill your sister. That should count for something.”
“I never even knew my sisters,” Newil said, more forcefully than he’d wished to.
“That was a thing I hoped to change,” Il said. Then he sighed. It was a long sound that amounted to whistling. “And I can’t tell what happens when I’m dead,” he said.
“You don’t have to die, father,” Newil said. He took Il’s hand in his, just like he did when he was just a boy. “You are immortal. By all parameters, you shouldn’t die.”
“You’re thinking with your heart again,” Il said, and Newil, as always, couldn’t figure out whether it was a kind or a rebuking remark.
“I know,” Newil said, and sunk back in his chair. “I’m sorry.”
“Now, boy,” Il said. “I am sorry. I had forgotten how frail and weak the flesh is.” He smiled again, and this time, the smile didn’t reach his eyes. “I should backtrack, but I’ve run out of sacrifices, I guess, and out of time. So kiss me.”
Newil looked at him, and for a brief moment—a moment that made him feel like a vain jerk that he really was, wasn’t he—he felt repulsed by this old man, and by his face and his skin and his bed that smelled—Newil was suddenly very aware of this—of piss and of damp, stale clothes, and of flesh that’s churned in its own juices, and it didn’t smell of death at all, it just smelled of age.
“Kiss me, kid,” Il said. Newil couldn’t determine whether it was said kindly or angrily, and it didn’t matter anyway. It was Il’s wish, and Newil would obey. “Kiss your dying father.” And Il reached out suddenly, grabbed Newil by the back of his skull—Newil could feel some of his hair being pulled out of the loose, complex braid he’d woven that morning—and pulled his son to his lips.
And Newil kissed Il. He kissed him on the lips that weren’t breathing any more, and hadn’t been breathing for a long, long time. And still he felt something more than the dry, crackled skin, something more than the smell of skin that’s turning to dust by a second. He felt something he would describe only as a breath, moving from Il’s mouth to his, between his slightly parted lips. It’s my first kiss, he thought frantically and with horror.
It’s my last breath, Il thought, Il thought inside of Newil’s skull as he died. And then Il did what passed for him as laughter; a ragged breath that tore out of his throat and touched Newil’s chest, touched, and passed away, and was gone.
I’m kissing a dead man, Newil thought, and then the world snapped out of its hinges.

drowning in work

ieva — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 15:35:32 +0000

I have quite a bit to do at work (of various kinds) and am spending more quality time with my friends and family than usually. My writing suffers a lot from it – I haven’t done anything for almost a week. This has the most curious effect: I feel depressed, sad and lonely more often, even though I actually communicate with people more. I would think that writing is a drug for me but… is it really something I am “addicted” to, a sort of psychological flaw? Or is it that we all tend to feel worse when deprived of something that is important to us in the deepest sense? Or probably it’s both; the long habit of writing something every day (and feeling bad about not doing it), and the lack of fulfillment that only writing can deliver?

November is coming though, and even though I feel tempted to chicken out of NaNoWriMo, I know very well that this is the way I normally feel during the last two weeks of October. Of course I’ll be there, and I’ll be writing. Perhaps even more hungrily than I normally do.

Vega; a revelation

ieva — Sat, 09 Oct 2010 18:48:56 +0000

This morning, I woke up remembering something I’d thought of while half-asleep (but when? For the past few days, I’ve been sleeping in odd times and places): Vega needs a different, more horrible ending, more to the point: a profoundly different ending, so much so that it has to be rewritten for all the characters to earn it. (I’m not saying “deserve”, but “earn”: to touch deeper, to revolt, to create questions instead of shrugs). I have just a vague idea of what this ending would be and how would they arrive to that, but my guess is that the answer is already hidden within the story, it needs to be excavated carefully.

And instead of light fantasy (“lots of stuff happen but everything ends well because people are decent beings”) it should be dark fantasy, possibly even horror (“given the nature of people, the only miracle I know of is that we are able to get by without eating each others’ brains for breakfast”). Probably adding more POVs, more sex (wouldn’t be that hard, considering there was no sex in the original version), more death, more betrayal and sorrow.
The dream has ended, babes, and the fun will now commence.

the philosophy of flowers

ieva — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 05:01:11 +0000

Yesterday (well into the bittersweet celebration of finishing “all flowers must live”), I muttered (or at least loudly thought), “It is really about the fact that every time something dies inside you, you start killing things around you; and no amount of illusions is going to heal that”.

Of course, I had no idea about that when I started writing the story. Also, this simple summary doesn’t fit the story precisely; and you would probably have to be either immersed in the story or slightly drunk, or both, to draw this conclusion. But it’s a simple semi-philosophical idea that is, very literally, expressed in the story, and seems true to me as well: true, just like “flowers” feel true.

So here’s what I think about a story and it’s philosophy (word “philosophy” being rather loose here):
1. You don’t have to have this philosophical morale in the beginning to have it in a finished piece (and, probably, for some writers it is better not to have it).
2. Any story that feels true, most likely, has this philosophical thing in the background. (You do know that feeling of a “true” story–the one that makes you think that this actually happened, even if it clearly hasn’t.)
3. Genre, style and plot, the presence or absence of it, doesn’t matter at all. You can have an action-packed thriller that clearly has deeper roots even if you don’t dig for them (I’m thinking of Jeff Abbott’s “Fear” here, but could be many other authors), and you can have highbrow literary fiction so shallow that a mouse wouldn’t drown in it.

a day with Australian flavor

ieva — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 17:15:21 +0000

I just had a perfect afternoon (even if slightly un-scheduled) with an Australian poet Emma Jones. Nothing beats meeting somebody and hitting it off right away. I think if I’d read any of her poems beforehand, I would have been so shy (I gather she’s a really, really good poet), so, in a way, it’s good that I haven’t. I’m glad that I met her on an even ground—her, a poet in a foreign land, me, a Latvian on a foreign land of her mind. I will have her over on Saturday, to show her the suburbs of Riga (and I really hope this will work!).
It’s amazing how the writers have this common ground. Just like, I think, mothers do. It isn’t about the personality as such, or about the way of talking, or even thinking. It’s more about having stepped on the land of creativity, and having maps to share, vague as they are.
Wouldn’t it be weird, and wonderful, having the maps of creativity superimposed on our everyday geographical maps? Would it be beautiful (I’ll just take you to this place, and know you will love it) or scary (isn’t there any blank space left?)?
Would or wouldn’t it be scary, to have a world just for ourselves?

perception changes

ieva — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 06:52:03 +0000

There is this point in planning, and writing, when your perception shifts, picking up more and more clues for the book you are writing. I sit in my kitchen, reading Oliver Sacks (who seems to be giving me really good pointers about the mystical part of Newil), and somebody out there, in the darkness, listens to R.E.M. “Losing my religion” loud enough for me to hear, quietly enough for me to wonder whether I really hear or just imagine it, and I think, yes, this is the song.
The hardest part is to remember to write these impulses down, and figure out a way how to do it without ruining the magic and still keeping the idea, without restricting it and still being concrete enough to work with those scribbles later.

But it’s necessary, because these vague things very rarely make it to paper while you’re writing–the “real”, planned stuff takes precedence. Also, their vagueness isn’t a feature (even though it’s what makes those ideas interesting); the vagueness is a sign that this should be explored, broadened, understood.
It’s like standing on the edge of the forest and thinking “it will lose it’s magic if I go in”. Sure, your eyes will adapt to the darkness, and you will find out that the mysterious shadow was really a tree stump, but for every mystery revealed there will be five more waiting for you in the answer you find.