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Nova Terra

~ Just another way of stalling on my other writing

Nova Terra

Tag Archives: literature

A Confession

05 Friday Aug 2016

Posted by lionsofmercy in Blog

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bad writing, editing, faith, fun, literature, New Age, nonsense, self-help, spirituality, surgery, Tarot, writing

I read self-help books. A lot of them; I think my average is about one a week. But here’s the thing: I am not the typical reader Looking for Answers. Instead, I’m looking for bad grammar, faulty spelling, and an inability to stay on topic–i.e., I style-edit them. (How’s that for a What’s My Line? job?)

Most of them say the same things: Stop negative self-talk. Get in touch with your spirituality. You can be happier–here’s how. (Many of the suggestions are solid, but then, some Harvard professor did a lecture course and wrote a book about it, so we already know this stuff.) In fact, I’m waiting for the book entitled We Already Know This Stuff. (But maybe that’s the subtitle of this blog entry.)

Every once in a while I run into one that borders on the toxic, like the followers of gurus who are considered really sketchy, or who tout pish coming from organizations under the disapproving eye of people like QuackWatch. Sometimes it’s really hard to smush down my opinions on the material, but we’re professionals here at Nova Terra, and even the unintentionally hilarious bits go no further than my kids. But none so far have been written by haters, although there’s some unconscious naivete now and again that I squash like a bug. (It’s the 21st century–for the love of Mike, don’t have your bad guys dressed in black and your good guys in white! *facepalm*)

But most of it is a cheerful treacle of love, joy, and unconditional good stuff, and you know what? It kinda works, in that I am more conscious of the good things in my own life. I’m not so sure it’s because of the soundness of the philosophies in the texts; rather I think it’s because I’m spending time with upbeat people. You know, sorta like how you get on a bus full of Jesus freaks headed cross-country and somewhere around Idaho you get drawn into a surly chorus of Kumbaya. And then they let you play with the tambourine, and you teach them a little bit about Neo-paganism or secular humanism, and you all get off the bus giggling and hugging.

Somewhere around here I have a couple of crystals and two Tarot decks, and I think my daughter has some essential oil. Maybe I should get it all together and play and then journal, especially since I’m at T-3 days for the surgery, and I have some sort of staph which already requires this purification ritual of putting stuff up my nose and showering with surgical scrub. Some silk scarves and candles and chanting with the Buddhist rosary might make it all more . . . fun. And fun, mah brethren and sistren, is what this vale of tears is all about.

Stupid Writing

19 Sunday Jun 2016

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cats, literature, pain, science fiction, total knee replacement, work, writing

OK, got Long Leggedy Beasties launched as my first experiment in self-publishing, finished fine-combing Max AGAIN and am now waiting for my typographer son to finish the cover. Meanwhile, I’ve dived back into Dark Crimson Corners, which is now almost ten years old, and . . . yeesh!

It’s not that I was a bad writer back then. I was a somewhat weaker writer back then; but the yeesh! part is the intensity. This was my first novel, folks, and of course I threw everything but the kitchen sink into it–autobiography to just weird wild hares up my bum. Going through it is exhausting and I need breaks. I’ve been editing out unneeded plot threads and random asides (and changing “Pharaoh” to “Max” because Max’s book is coming first.) I’ll then put together Damascus the serial Slayer’s story (said unneeded plot thread) and run it as a sort of prequel to the rest.

After that? I dunno. By then it’ll possibly be November, and time for NaNoWriMo while battling the pain of a post-surgical knee. (Am going in for the other one on August 8th.) Seeing as I already have a stub done for Things That Go Bump in the Night (sequel to Da Kitttehs), I’m not sure what my WriMo will be. I might stick with the cat theme seeing as it seems to be working.

Oh–an aside for anybody who actually ends up *reading* the stuff: Eureka (published here) is non-canon, meaning it’ll stay here and not mess up the reality my fingers are trying so hard to make coherent.

In other news, back at work and trying desperately to do everything that needs to be done in the seven weeks remaining before my surgery, including putting together a training on the autism spectrum for my co-workers.

My allergies have been killing me, to the point where I have succumbed to using Flonase (ewww), and the new knee is still stiff with painful muscles. (The surgery has healed solid as a rock–no more bone pain!) My sleep is disrupted in that I now wake up too early. (It’s 07:30 now; been up writing since 5, and am yawning to nigh-decapitation.) Despite having tea and morning meds, I will now try to go back to bed for an hour.

And That’s a Wrap!

29 Friday Nov 2013

Posted by lionsofmercy in Blog

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editing, literature, moving, NaNoWriMo, work, writing

I hope you’ve enjoyed Eureka as much as I have. I didn’t want it to be over! Thanks for each like and follow–every one has made me go “Oh goody!” (Comments, though. Those would also make me happy. Just a hint, if you have the time.)

I am a NaNoWriMo 2013 WINNER!!! 51,743 is their count. I wasn’t at all sure I could do it, but I took a writing weekend in New Hampshire, where there was a hot tub (no, we didn’t bathe in it) and lots of quiet and a writing friend to nag. This made up for a work week during which I did next to nothing. I know it’s probably silly, but I have a real sense of accomplishment.

This taught me a lot about the writing process: First, of course, is that I could have theoretically written Max‘s 100K first draft in two months, instead of oh, a year and a halfish! Ouch! And Dark Crimson Corners could have been pounded out in six months instead of five years–and I really had a sense that I was writing hard for that one. (That said, both of those were almost entirely first-drafted in longhand, instead of Eureka, which was almost entirely composed at the keyboard.) Second, that I write a bit over a thousand words an hour. Thus, if I make myself actually sit down and write for a measly hour in the morning, instead of, say, just faffing around playing World of Warcraft, I can get an amazing amount of stuff done. I guess the trick is remembering that I’m a writer first.

But I’m a lot of things second and one of them is being the webmaster! I am being paid this week to revamp the site and do a brochure. And a lot of things have gotten in the way of that. Ouch! again. I’m way behind.

The biggest thing getting in the way is that we are moving this week, God help us. Still haven’t signed up the actual muscle, so wish me well.

After move and work are caught up, I’ll go through and give a lightning second draft to Eureka, with the goal of having her put up as an .epub on Amazon by Christmas. Just to see what happens. Thoughts?

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity Jig

21 Tuesday May 2013

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literature, writing

No fat pigs purchased, though.

It’s been 16 months. I am embarrassed; I feel I owe the two or three of you who were reading me an explanation. But I have none. Somewhere in the beginning of last year I became unplugged from Nova Terra. I’ve missed it; I’ve missed the tiny piece of my identity that said blogger, which snuggled up to writer. Where did it go?

Every time it would slink through my brain that I had this blog thing to do, I would wring my mental hands in panic, exclaiming that I had nothing to say! No, nothing! I knew that I could well enough foam out of the corners of my mouth about the on-going clusterfuck that was the Earth-grazing meteorite named Mitt Romney–but I was doing enough stress about all that. (So much stress that I spent Election Day in bed trying not to vomit. I didn’t realize until a recurrence several days later that I’d merely been reacting to an new medicine I was trying–I used to get sick over excitement all the time as a kid.) This election threatened to make dramatic changes to my life–I’m on disability–and I don’t even want to feel that powerless, that terrified ever again. So writing about that would have salted the wound–and I am sure sooner or later I would have moaned over its pretentiousness and redacted it.

(Think about it: Isn’t a good thing that Facebook keeps scrolling our momentary faux pas into the past where we don’t have to see them with more dispassionate eyes?)

But on looking into my documents folder, I see that the big thing sucking down my writing energy was trying–and failing–to make something real, something an agent would like to see, out of Monsters. I’d started writing this book back in 2005 and then when my life fell apart in various dramatic ways, I’d just kept writing the damn thing. And writing, and writing, and then when the story was finally finished in all its badness, I had 300,000 words. I was shocked. So I split it into a trilogy. All I could do, really, not being an established writer who can get away with that sort of overkill.

The problem with the first book of a trilogy–well, mine at least–is that unless you have Peter Jackson and New Zealand to distract today’s audience, you only have a third of a plot. And the first third, yet. I sat down and said, “So much for that.” At some point I’m going to take it apart–there’s a lot to take apart, as one of its flaws was that the structure was too complex–and see what just one of them looks like. I majored in watercolor, and every so often my professor would mosey behind me and tell me I had too many paintings going on in my painting. It was sort of like that.

I just had all this STUFF exploding out of me! Characters and backstories and biology and history and culture and . . . it was fun, but it wasn’t a novel, and that was the job I decided I wanted to do. So I iced it, and went on to Book #2. That one also started being too many books at once, so I took the advice of my ever-patient editor (he’s a beta tester software engineer, proving that skills transfer) and knocked it back to a single one. It’s a decent length right now, and we’ll see where we are by the end of the summer. As I get better at writing, and he gets better at editing, we ask more of what I pull out of my head and fingers. (And yeah, sometimes other body parts too. It’s science fiction. Give me a break.)

But it occurs that the more one writes, the better one gets, at least a little bit, so I’ll start trying to keep Nova Terra up to date. I might tuck in a longish story here and there; might have some painful recollections. It might devolve to crappy journaling and whinging upon occasion, but whacks to the head with the dead fish are acceptable, and I suppose practicing my writing is better for me than doing the 3 am squirrel o’ obsession thing.

At least from my point of view. Welcome back!

 

 

Nova Terra

just another way of stalling on my other writing

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