Today being the first day of my holiday vacation, I just finished editing the third draft of my vampire story, “The Organville Vampire”. It’s a lot better now, nearly a real story!
When I type in the changes I’ll call it the fourth draft, and I’ll know how long it is. And then I’ll print it out for my beta readers! Should be ready by the new year…
(Now I need to go buy Christmas presents… at least my priorities are in order? :-/ )
I’m not conceding defeat, exactly, because that would imply that I’m a failure, and I don’t believe that. But… I took on a task, and real life came along and bit me.
I set out to write 50,000 new words on THE LAST FAIRY GODMOTHER this month, and I haven’t broken 15,000†. Being the second-to-last day of the month, I’m not going to try to pretend that I could manage all that before the end of tomorrow.
I’ve concluded several things from this experiment:
Other wins for the month:
So, I think my plan is to finish polishing my vampire story, and then decide whether I want to start back in on LFG or write the four scenes for my transporter story. Or maybe even try to figure out what the later scenes of the transporter story might be… Hmm.
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†Which brings me to 35,000 total!
* And of course I haven’t remembered to take any pictures of it, so no, you cannot see it. Sorry.
** I can’t remember if it had a title. It was wonderful and funny. I still have the novel somewhere, but it is not worth resurrecting in any way shape or form, with the possible exception of the first scene, which was full of fabulous. I seem to have only documented it on the internet on Nov. 1 of that year, here: http://booklizard.livejournal.com/2006/11/01/
I’m a little behind on NaNo. This week is kicking my butt, with too many things to do. But I’m not worried, I still have plenty of time to catch up. Meanwhile, here’s a wordle of the story:
(It’s a bit grainy, because it’s night-time. And I won’t remember to take a new picture in the morning.)
I know that I’m in the writing spirit because I have many important bits of the writing craft lying around my living room.
From top to bottom:
(The picture does not include my laptop, because I am using it and didn’t think to include it as one of my writing-things, even though it is. I have selective blindness, sometimes, often without explanation.)
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* I swear I don’t usually have so many^ things with the odd^^ “dt” sound pairing just lying around near each other.
^ i.e. greater than none
^^ odd for English, obviously. I assume “dt” is German in Staedtler and Hofstadter?
I want writing to be about starting at the beginning and writing through until I find the end. When it goes like that I think, “See, I was right, that’s what writing is like!” When it doesn’t go like that I think, “Aaahh, I’m failling*!”
I’ve been writing my fairy story since the beginning of this year. I’ve written somewhere between 15 and 20k words in this story. (It is destined to be a novel, unless I suddenly discover that Lo, there isn’t really a plot where I expected there would be a plot**.) And partway through the summer I realized I couldn’t keep writing the scene that I was trying to write, so I skipped ahead a little. I mean a little, like I skipped over a boring bit that you wouldn’t have wanted to read anyway. And then I was stuck. So I backed up and tried again, this time trying not to skip ahead at all. I have learned, in my years of writing stories, that when I’m stuck it’s usually because there’s something wrong with the story as I’ve written it so far, not because I’m inherently lazy, nor even because the story is inherently flawed. And so if I can find the right question to ask, I can figure out what went wrong and fix it, and then the story will go merrily along on its way. So I backed up a little, and rewrote. And the newer version read better than the older version. And then I got stuck, again. I could’ve pushed on, but I know that pushing is a good way to get a bad story that’ll have to be rewritten. So in July or August, I ripped back*** to a scene I’d written in May (oh, how that hurt), and noticed several plot holes. Whew, that’s been the problem all along! thought I, and happily got back to writing.
In September I went on a (non-writing) vacation for two weeks, and when I came back I couldn’t remember why this story was supposed to be interesting, and ugh who wrote this rat’s nest, and why am I supposed to care about these characters? What crystallized for me was that there were too many complications. Yes, I need to have complications to keep the story going forward. But if I can’t keep track of all of them, then my reader will have no hope. So I simplified. I pulled out an event that happened in the third scene and I made sure I knew, in each scene, what each person should primarily be reacting too. If they’re not, then it’s a problem. These things gave me a lot of clarity, and I am not rewriting. I wrote down what I want to change, and I can see how those changes move forward into the “now” of my story so that I can pick up from “now” and keep writing. I won’t waste time on rewriting that I could spend on writing new words. The first draft will not be coherent from beginning to end, but coherence can wait until the second draft.
In order to make these decisions, to see what needs changing, I needed two things. First was distance away from the story. Second was the recognition that writing is a process of figuring out what the story is—and also what the story isn’t. Just because I don’t always know what the story is doesn’t mean I’m failing. Or falling.
It means I’m writing.
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* Not merely a typo, but also “failing” and “falling” smooshed together into one word that should already exist. I’m shocked I didn’t think of it sooner.
** It feels a lot like Columbus sailing and sailing and sailing, and then falling off the end of the Earth because, Lo, there really isn’t more Earth in that direction. Luckily for all of us, there really was more Earth and he didn’t fall off. But there are no guarantees for my story. Mathy philosopher types like Euripedes^ have been positing for centuries that there is more story, but they could be wrong.
^ Was it Euripedes? Who’s the guy from Egypt who calculated the circumference of the Earth to within 5% accuracy based on the fact that a pole in the ground had more shadow at noon than a similar pole 200 miles south? That’s the guy I’m thinking of. Except really I’m thinking of the metaphorical guy, who’s actually just one of the voices in my head, telling me that it has mathematically computed that there must be more story, and its circumference is about the size of a novel. And other voices are pointing out that this mathy guy hasn’t really proven he’s not just pulling numbers out of his hat, so don’t trust him too much. I’m trying to be neutral in this debate until I have evidence one way or another.
*** That’s a knitting metaphor, right there. I’ve ripped back rows in knitting often enough, too. I hate doing it more than once on a project—and again I think I must be failing—but sometimes it’s just part of figuring out what works and what doesn’t. But in knitting there is no second draft. (And if your second sleeve looks better than the first? Then your sweater will look funny. :-/)
I have this desire to write more. I want to tell the world funny rambly stories about my life and whatever catches my attention, because—ooh, shiny!—I’m entertained by totally random things, and I firmly believe there exist people who will find my entertainment entertaining. (Yeah, I can’t decide if I created that sentence on purpose or not.)
I don’t want to write about my day job. It’s not relevant, and I have a tendency to drift into snarky rather than funny, which is inappropriate if I want to remain a respected employee. I don’t want to be inappropriate, and I don’t actually want to be snarky more often than is necessary to entertain the people who find me entertaining.
I’ve noticed that I can tell tragic stories about my own mental processes in a funny way, and I can tell boring stories in a funny way (though they may still be boring). And I can tell perfectly straight* stories in a perfectly straight way, though I usually bore myself halfway through and have to stop and write something random.
I have a desire to learn how to NOTICE good blog-post subjects, so that I can write about them. I also have a desire to learn how to WRITE those posts, quickly enough that I’ll click “post” before losing the energy behind them such that I suddenly decide they’re actually dumb and no one cares. I know no one ought to care, but I’m hoping that the people out there who find me entertaining will care even when the subjects are dumb.
So, what steps should I take to make those two DESIRES become MOTION**? (Feedback encouraged…)
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* Straight=non-funny, straight!=hetero, in this context.
** And when will I stop with the random YELLING for emphasis?
*** Does this sound as gross to anyone else as to me? :-/ I can’t think of a better word, though, so I’m not changing it. And yeah, I totally added this FIRST^ footnote last.
^ And I’m still yelling. Sorry, I’ll try to get over it for next time.
I said that I wanted to customize the fit of this sweater, and my theory is that it’ll be better to fix before I get started, rather than after I’ve made it and am disappointed. To that end—being the seamstress that I also am—I decided to make a cloth mock-up, so I could see what it’ll look like on me. I decided to use muslin, for the simple reasons that it’s super-cheap (~ $1/yd.) and that thin cotton is easy to work with.
Fortunately, this pattern comes with expected dimensions, and I have sharpies, a ruler, and a basic sense of geometry. So I drew the pattern directly onto the fabric, adding a 5/8 in. seam allowance to each edge that was meant to be sewn together. Unfortunately, I forgot that the pattern already included a 1-stitch selvage. The gauge is 16 stitches per 4 inches, or about 1/4 inch per stitch. So, if I wanted 5/8 in. seam allowance, I could’ve just added 3/8 in. I noticed this before I sewed anything together, and sewed 7/8 in. seams to get a proper sense of how it will fit.
The other thing was that despite its cheapness, I didn’t want to use up as much fabric as it would take to make the whole sweater. Since this was just a mock-up to get a sense of how it would fit, I created the whole back, one front, and one sleeve. Three seams later (I didn’t bother setting the sleeve into the sweater… I hate putting in sleeves), I had a pseudo-sweater and a sleeve. At first I tried to just put the pseudo-sweater on myself, but I realized I wasn’t getting a good sense of where it would hang on me, so I safety-pinned the critical points (shoulders, center back, side seams) to a tank-top.
This sweater is meant to be baggy. I’m ok with that. But here’s the thing. Yarn is forgiving. You can make it much smaller than you’d ever make something woven, and it’ll still fit just fine, because (in general, and obviously this varies depending on the yarn and the stitch) it’ll stretch. Also, with a bottom hem that just hangs down and isn’t tight to the body, no ribbing around the hips or anything, it’s likely to stretch out and become even baggier, one direction or another. So starting out with a too-baggy sweater, it’ll only become an even more too-baggy* sweater.
The pseudo-sweater seemed to fit just fine around the hips, but around the waist it looked huge on me. Turns out I’m not square-shaped. So, I measured the difference between my hips and the narrowest point of my waist, and divided that by 4 to pick a starting point for how much to leave out of each quarter of the sweater (front left, front right, back left, back right). Then I tucked in and pinned the side-seam by approximately that much (I totally eyeballed it, not having my measuring tape handy), and was impressed by the improvement. It would still be loose, but not crazy-baggy.
The next questions are: where do I make that dart**, do I make the dart in both front and back or only the back, and after I’ve decreased that much do I want to increase again back to the hip-width, or do I want the shoulders to be a little narrower, too? Everything I can find about making vertical darts in sweaters indicates I should decrease at the side-seam, not in the back like I would if I were sewing a shirt, but no one seems to explain why. While I will go with that theory, I’m still waiting for the why. Since I took in the proper amount from both the front and the back in my pseudo-sweater, and it looked just fine, I think the darts should be symmetrical about the side-seams. Double-decreases, and double-increases. The third question, I’m going to play by ear. I could see increasing to get the shoulders to nearly the width of the hips, without affecting how the sleeves will fit. From there, I’ll also have to play the sleeves by ear. From the fabric mock-up, they seemed about the right length or a little short, so it’ll just be a matter of how the yarn actually behaves.
So, I think I’ve identified all of the sizing changes. Decrease several inches, with the decrease vertically centered at my waist (careful measurement and attention will be required for that…), then increase probably 2/3s as much as I decreased. And then pay attention to sleeve length as I go.
No problem! o_O
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* Check me out, rockin’ the descriptive adjectives. Oh yeah.
** In knitting, they use the term dart just like in sewing. But in sewing, a dart is where you cut out and sew together fabric, to make a 3D shape out of flat fabric. In knitting, you just don’t knit those stitches, so they never exist. Trippy.
There’s this theory that if you do a little of something every day, eventually you’ll have accomplished a whole lot of it. For example, BIC—Butt In Chair—stands for sitting your butt in the chair every day, regardless of whether you “feel like it”, and just writing. The corollary is, if you do a little every day you’ll get in the habit of doing a little (or possibly more) every day, and so it’ll be less of a struggle to do every day. Twenty-one days to create a habit, or whatever that number is supposed to be.
But then there’s also this theory, which is mine, that there aren’t enough hours in the day, and there isn’t enough energy in my body, to do a little of all of the things I want to do every day. Writing, house-keeping, paying attention to my people, WORKING for money, gardening, brushing my teeth (ok, I manage this one every day pretty well), sleeping (if I could only do without…), knitting, listening to interesting & educational podcasts. Etc. Oh yeah, and READING. I do a whole lot of that already.
So instead, I tend to binge on those things. I’ll spend a weekend vegging because I’ve been pushing too hard for too long. I’ll spend another weekend away Doing Something. I’ll spend the next weekend catching up on housework* and maybe knitting and watching TV. I’ll spend another weekend on a knitting or sewing project. Another weekend caring for my garden. In most cases I’m not devoting the whole weekend to that activity, but rather a significant portion of my energy. Same goes for weekday evenings. This past week, I spent a lot of evenings between work and paying attention to my significant other. Other weeks I manage to write in the evenings. Other weeks I manage to at least compose a few blog posts.
I feel guilty when I haven’t written several days in a week. I feel guilty when Ben’s hat is sitting half-made for several months. It was his Christmas present. With any luck it’ll be finished by next Christmas. I have a sweater I want to start making some day**. I have tomatoes that need my attention, and kefir & yogurt to make at least weekly, and …
But maybe it’s not so bad to accomplish things in fits and starts. I do make progress on those things. I keep them all going, one way or another. Not always “on time”***. The thing is, it’s not that I’m slacking off. OK, I’m not consistently productive on any one thing. But that’s not my style. Maybe it’s time for me to accept my style as the one that works for me, and stop trying to be the person who does the same things every day, or even every week.
And by the way, I’ve read 27 books so far this year. So I’m clearly not slacking off on my reading. :)
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* Apparently it’s been four weeks since I last did laundry. :-/ That’s long even for me.
** I have to buy yarn first.
*** See: laundry, hat.
And I’ve decided which one. :-D
See how purty?
My mom bought me this fabulous book, POWER CABLES by Lily M. Chin, which is all about knitting different kinds of cables. And this sweater is one of its patterns. See how pretty? I haven’t made anything from the book yet, and I want to start with this one.
Honestly, though, I have trouble following directions. Recipes, assignments at work, patterns, I always notice when they’re just not quite right, and adjust them. Not right for me, of course, I couldn’t say if they’re right for everyone else. (Some people like celery, can you imagine?) This pattern only offers one size, and I’m concerned it’ll be too big for me. So I’ve decided I’m going to alter the pattern. That means a lot more work upfront, but I hope it’ll look better on me in the end.
Now, it’s meant to be an oversized sweater, and I’m ok with that. It’s just that I want it to look like it’s oversized on *me*, not like a hand-me-down oversized sweater. Furthermore, knitted things have a tendency to stretch, so if it starts out too big, it runs the risk of getting only longer and baggier. I think it’ll be the right size around my hips, but I want it to be a little more shapely, and I think I’d like to make it a little narrower in the shoulders. So, I’m thinking of putting in darts on the side-seams, to decrease through the waist and then increase again in the chest.
I’ve never made a sweater before. I’ve been knitting for over half my life, and I’ve wanted to make something like a sweater for years. But sweaters are a lot of work. It’s daunting. And worse, I have just two options. Design my own so it will fit right, which is a lot of work for a first-time sweater-knitter. Or follow someone else’s pattern, which wasn’t designed for me and won’t fit me properly. Or option 3: follow someone else’s pattern, but modify it to fit me better. I’m hoping option three will turn out best.
Being exhausted, achy, and miserable yesterday, I spent nearly all day lying in bed, reading (and finishing) NORTH & SOUTH by Elizabeth Gaskell.
I just couldn’t convince myself to get out of bed for longer than a meal. Part of that was because I was miserable and achy, and part of that was because I’d totally fallen into the mid-19th century England that Gaskell described. Fancy clothing, proper manners, class distinctions, people dying right and left. Cotton mills, and strikes, and a passionate, scowly man who, despite being part of the upper-crust of his city, wasn’t quite a gentleman—not by London standards. I was sucked into it, I had trouble imagining what in my real world could possibly be more important or more interesting than Margaret moving to a strange new town, than Thornton and his mill, or—I’ll be honest—whether Margaret & Thornton could manage to both like each other at the same time.
I felt lazy. I felt like I was stealing time from the things I need to do–chores, keeping up with people, contributing to feeding my significant other and myself, watering my poor plants—and from the things I want to do—continuing projects I don’t have time for during the week, working on that story I’m in love with writing, writing blog posts because I like telling the world what it’s like to be me. Etc.
But I LOVE to read. I get absorbed into other worlds, other people’s lives. I love it so much that I’ve taken up writing my own stories, because they don’t exist for me to read yet and I want to know what happens. I love watching movies and TV, but I love books in this whole other way. It’s immersive, not just visual and aural, but a truly engaging book will give me a whole-body experience. I feel emotions and believe opinions that aren’t my own, because the characters feel and believe those things. When I read for an hour at a time, it’s a nice pastime. But reading a book all day—that feels like living the story.
That has its risks, too, of course. When a story becomes more important than real life, is something out of balance*? Is it escapism? Or is it just truly enjoying an activity that isn’t bad for my health?
I don’t know. But aside from the guilt, I liked spending all day reading. And I felt less exhausted, achy, and miserable. So it must be OK, right?
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* Don’t they write creepy stories about books taking over a person’s life, a character sucking out the reader’s soul and living in her body? Hmm…
