writing

this is kyle cassidy’s fault

I don’t actually know Kyle Cassidy but I admire his photography and I read his blog and I covet his coffin coffee table.

A few weeks back he held a contest on his blog giving away some of his fountain pens to penless writers, and to participate you had to take photos of your journals or whatnot & post a sample of your writing.

I thought, Hey, I’m a fountain penless writer! When I write by hand I write in Sharpie!

And then I thought, I am way too shy for this.

Then I said to myself, Erin, why don’t you find an alternative method of procuring a fountain pen if you really want one? Because sometimes I can be quite logical.

But of course I wanted a vintage one, because old things have more story in them and vintage pens seem inherently cooler and more writerly than shiny new ones.

So not really knowing where else to look, I did an Etsy vintage search and happened upon a very cheap, condition unknown green Esterbrook J series fountain pen that had been found at an estate sale. I went ahead and ordered it, thinking it would probably need massive overhaul and wondering what kind of seedy world of vintage pen afficionados I was getting myself into.

Pen arrived with a fair amount of dried blue ink but once it was cleaned and re-inked (in grey, because I became instantly enamored with the idea of writing in grey ink rather than blue or black or sienna or whatnot) it was in perfect working order.

I am now wondering why I had never thought to get a fountain pen before because it is brilliant and magical. I don’t know the history of this particular pen prior to its ending up on Etsy, but I know it’s older than me by a fair amount and it likely had its fair share of adventures before it ended up here in Salem, writing down revision notes about nocturnal circuses.

Within days of writing with it I reworked the entire ending of the revised version of the novel and untangled several troublesome plot points. If this thing ever gets published, remind me to thank Kyle Cassidy in the acknowledgments.

fountain pen 1

fountain pen 2

By erin, ago

on not writing

I have been trying to write all day and failing.

First I was trying to write in the ever-ongoing Revisionland Scrivener Document of Doom, but I have been looking at the same gap between paragraphs that needs to be sewn together somehow periodically all day and nothing is coming to me.

So then I said to myself, well, I’ll write something else. I haven’t blogged this week, I should come up with something to blog about.

And I sat and tried to think of something to blog about while listening to the rain and giving Bucket tummy rubs.

I got nothing.

Nada. Zip. It is just not a good word-brain day for me, apparently.

I have done other things. I adjusted the settings on my e-mail accounts. I deleted lots of old e-mails. I decoupaged the top of what will likely end up being a jewelry box. I listened to the rain & thought about revisions, even though I didn’t actually write.

I don’t believe in writer’s block, not really. At least not for me. But I do have days when the words don’t want to transmit properly from my brain to my keyboard, and apparently today is just one of those days, so far. Sometimes I write better at night, so we’ll see.

I did spend part of yesterday figuring out the plot of a long-languishing work-in-progress, completely unintentionally. So I might have tricked my brain out of revisionland and now it has to slowly meander its way back. Poor confused brain.

It’s hard to feel productive without wordcount as a measurement. It’s so easy, to say “yay, I wrote 2k today!” and feel accomplished. I know I can write 2k or more in a day when I’m just drafting, but revising is a different game and I’m still getting used to it. It’s about working in pages and paragraphs instead of thousands of words. Writing one really good sentence instead of lots and lots of sentences.

So I have to keep telling myself that even though I feel like I’m not making enough progress, not revising fast enough, I’m probably wrong. I’m being methodical and thoughtful about it. I am getting something done even when I’m just listening to the rain.

By erin, ago

life after nano

Things accomplished since the end of NaNo, an unnumbered list:

  • Read Tanith Lee’s The Silver Metal Lover in its entirety. Have been meaning to read this book for years. Lovely and heartbreaking. Totally made me cry.
  • Saw Sleep No More again. Definitely more magical the first time around but still amazing and wonderful and I found so many things that I missed the first time around. Also, witches gave me presents.
  • Started the epic rewatching of all 5 seasons of LOST. Season 1 seems like such a long time ago.
  • Brought out my notes for circus revisions and started poking at them, no actual writing yet. In my defense, my horoscope claimed today’s full moon was going to render me inarticulate or some such. I did, however, figure out how to possibly resurrect a very old section that I’d loved but had no use for in a different context, so that should be fun.

I am still somewhat in denial that it is December already.

By erin, ago

50k!

Well, 51,132. And I have at least 20, possibly 30 more before the end will roll around. Going to try to get it done before December.

Bucket remains unimpressed.

unimpressed bucket

By erin, ago

it’s that time again

nano_09_red_participant_120x240.pngI think this is the first year that NaNoWriMo has pretty much snuck up on me. It’s October 28th, you say? Seriously?

It likely doesn’t help that we’ve had a lousy rainy sort of October around here, so it hasn’t felt as festive as usual. I have had my Pumpkinfest beer at the Salem Beer Works several times, though, so that’s something.

But anyway, October has flown in rainy (occasionally snowy) quickness and now it is very nearly November, and November is National Novel Writing Month.

For those of you unfamiliar with the phenomenon, the goal of NaNoWriMo is to write 50,000 words in 30 days. You can read all about the wonderment that is NaNo on their website.

This is my seventh NaNoWriMo. I’m really not sure how that happened. I’ve won every year except my first try, and I blame that on not really knowing what I was getting in to and being overly invested. I went in with a story I’d been trying to write for almost a year, I got annoyed when it wasn’t as good as I wanted it to be, and I gave up around 15k. The second try I went in with no expectations and reached the mythical 50k mark fairly easily.

The novel that was just revised and sent back to agents started life as a NaNovel in ’06. The current version bares a very slim resemblance to that 50k, it’s been revised many, many times since then. (I actually cheated a bit and continued in ’07, so I had 100k to work from. Bad me.) One of my major characters doesn’t even appear in the NaNo drafts.

Which is why I find it kind of baffling that people think NaNoWriMo is about starting & finishing a novel that is “done” on November 30th. It’s not, in my opinion. It’s about writing a draft of a novel. Writing it in a condensed period of time with a deadline that makes it easier to shut up the inner editor and just write write write.

And then you can see what you have and start revising it into something resembling a novel.

For me, NaNoWriMo is about exploring and discovering. I’ve never started a NaNovel with more than a handful of characters and a vague plot concept. And that’s the way I like it, because it allows for possibilities. Anything can happen! It’s an adventure! You don’t even have to leave your house, all you have to do is type. A lot. But you have to type a lot to find things. There are things that you find at the 30k level that you won’t find at 10k. It’s like creative excavation. The deeper you go, the more interesting artifacts you find.

I still haven’t dusted off NaNovel ’08. I love it, but it needs a lot of work. It didn’t really find its plot until the 40k mark, so there’s a lot to polish. But I have a lot of story there to work with that only took me 30 days to get down on the page. And it’ll get there.

For NaNovel ’09 I haven’t had much time to plan. Not that I ever do a whole lot of planning. But I have a handful of characters and a vague concept, so once I stock up on red wine and chocolate I should be all good.

By erin, ago

the end is in sight

I’m in revisionland again, in case the radio silence hadn’t made that terrible obvious.

I would like to take a moment to say that I have fabulous beta readers. They found the elusive things that were missing instantly, because they are brilliant. Everyone needs extra pairs of eyes to look at things from different angles, and I have three pairs of great ones.

And even better, I knew as soon as they pointed out the weak spots what I needed to do to fix them.

So I’ve been fixing. Added two new sections which I finished writing today, and now I have to tackle a few changes through the rest of it and then it will be shiny and polished and novel-shaped again.

And of course, there will be another round of index card ordering on the studio floor. I’m sure Bucket will enjoy that.

But the end is in sight. And beyond that, November is looming in a NaNoWriMo shaped cloud of loomy thing. I should have at least a few days to get armed & ready. Hopefully.

By erin, ago