Archive for February, 2007
Saturday, February 24th, 2007
Crazy pantser math. Also, Star Wars.
‘m at the dizzying point in my novel where I have about 20,000 words left to write. As I judge it, there’s about 10,000 words more that need to connect the two sections of my manuscript (and I know most of what goes on in there) and about 5000 words of wind-down at the […]
3 Comments » - Posted in Ornithology by CM
Friday, February 23rd, 2007
Why I write
kay. Backstory here and here.
It’s an old trope. Many aspire. Few are published. Why do we persist?
In my case, it’s not because I have to write. I don’t. I could give it up. I didn’t start writing fiction until Avon FanLit, and I’d been perfectly happy without it. It’s not because I love writing more […]
2 Comments » - Posted in Writing by CM
Wednesday, February 21st, 2007
Progress! or not
ore procrastination is afoot! I’ve added a progress-meter. It’s deceptive. It gives you the impression that between now and February 11th, I have written 7,000 words. This, of course, is an illusion. It must be, because I’ve apparently written 7,000 words, and yet I still have the same darned scenes […]
3 Comments » - Posted in Random by CM
Tuesday, February 20th, 2007
Business Cards
hat I should be doing is Actual Work. Either for work or on my book. But what I spent far too long on instead is designing business cards for nationals.
Now, I have a very specific reason for going to Nationals this year, even though I’m in an extremely odd position (even if I […]
11 Comments » - Posted in Random by CM
Monday, February 19th, 2007
The Dog Biscuit Gods
ome people have muses. Some people have girls in the basement. I don’t have any of those. I have dog biscuit gods.
See, you wouldn’t know it to look at — well, to look at my resume, for instance, but I’m actually not very smart. It’s all an illusion. Since, I’m, […]
5 Comments » - Posted in Reading, Writing by CM
Saturday, February 17th, 2007
Puzzle Pieces
think I write books the way I do puzzles. First, you get a big box with lots of pieces in it. Then you cover up the front of the box so that you can’t cheat. You bang your head against the wall a few times, invoke the Dog Biscuit Gods (that’s […]
4 Comments » - Posted in Writing by CM
Thursday, February 15th, 2007
The Mind-Projection Fallacy (or why I’m glad I don’t speak Turkish)
ne of the things I’ve been, well, not really struggling with, but at least wary of, has to do with my hero.
Yes, he’s a beta. And yes, he’s smart, and one of the reasons my heroine eventually falls in love with him is that, having observed one small link in a chain of interactions, he […]
9 Comments » - Posted in Ornithology, Writing by CM
Sunday, February 11th, 2007
Word Count
have about 66,000 words of non-contiguous text. This is the two-thirds mark.
I’ve learned a huge amount writing these 66,000 words. One of the things I have learned is that the important thing is to write whenever I have the chance (note that this is not the same thing as writing every day–unfortunately, I really […]
8 Comments » - Posted in Ornithology, Writing by CM
Saturday, February 10th, 2007
Something I’ve never seen (at least in a historical)
‘ve been thinking about the various ways that people can be internally fucked up. I’ve seen quite a few of these in romance novels, although they’re relatively rare.
One of the more common fucked-up tropes is the man or the woman who was physically (or sometimes verbally) abused by a husband, a father, a mother. […]
8 Comments » - Posted in Romancery by CM
Saturday, February 3rd, 2007
Another book
heck this out: Sexual Science, from the 1870s.
Some of this won’t be a surprise to anyone. But the part I found most amazing was the discussion of “self-pollution”–ie masturbation, a subject surprisingly absent in romance novels. (The number of men who are unwilling to obtain release by any method except sex in romance […]
