Nose to the Wheel

I work a day job in cubeville, which sometimes demands all hours of the night as well.

My wife, as a full time homeschooling housewife and mom, has it even worse.

The 11yo daughter is sick and napping in front of the TV. The wife has been ill, and just got up from her nap.  The 2yo boy was up a while before her, in a foul mood. I think something bit him. He finally settled a little, when I bribed him with fortune cookie and wonton chips, which he insisted we dump out onto the table.

I've had no opportunity to unload the dishwasher for the wife, or to throw some hay to the horses, or clean the latest deposits of goose and chicken shit out of the garage, or to bring in the grazing goat in and put out the next one.  I need to clean up the pile of hay and bird droppings I swept out a couple days ago, but may not manage before dark.

Well, tomorrow's Saturday.  Maybe then.

But I do want to sit and play World of Warcraft with my wife and daughter at some point. I'd like to spend a little time with the insufficiently snuggled Great Pyr pup, who's the size of a truck but still goofy-clumsy.

Then there's this writing thing.  We try to crank out a couple thousand words each, every day. We constantly edit. She's sending me links for new agents to query. I try (I do try) to post to this blog once a day. I'm trying to read and critique the work of friends, and of strangers as well on http://critters.org.

 Let's think about this.  Generally, people need eight hours of sleep each night. I need more; being ill lately, we need even more, but lets stick with eight for the sake of argument.  I work at least eight hours a day.

(The wife is currently "playing" with the 2yo, technically 21 months, and he's calling off shapes and numbers correctly more often than not.)

So, sixteen hours of my day are gone off the top, and usually it's more like eighteen or nineteen.  Then we add in the time for basic maintenance of living. An hour for a morning shower and dress, breakfast, hay for the horses; an hour for lunch, during which I sometimes handle some emergency shopping; an hour for supper, including some time to sit and chat as a family.  There's usually a couple of hours in the evening dedicated to maybe a movie as a family, or some Warcraft, or some other activity we can do together.

Keeping track? At the very least, we've spent 23 hours of our day.  It doesn't look good for the book.

We all know those minutes and hours never fit so neatly into the given timeslots, though.  I shave out time for trips to the bathroom, and coffee breaks, and posts to this blog.  I frequently steal hours here and there by eating at my computer, or using the wife's smartphone to check Twitter in the grocery store.  

But often enough, I push the chore off and grind through a delightful hour of pulling my hair and shuffling words, knowing that tomorrow is Saturday. I'll sleep an extra hour; I'll get those chores done, unless I manage to get completely absorbed in NOT having to spend my time at my day job, and write chapters in a new book.

Tonight, I'll stay up late and write then as well.  It's the one hobby that I don't feel is a waste of time. It's the one thing I love that feels productive, and creative, and satisfying.

So maybe one of the chickens runs in the back door every time we come in. She's a tiny bantam, smaller than a fat pigeon. We give her corn in the house, which just encourages her.

And I write a few lines of blog as she clucks around my feet beneath the table, and look forward to working on editing for HUSH, and smile as I finally get up to throw hay to the horses and finish unloading the dishwasher.

See you in the bookstore.

The Rest of the Story

(And many thanks to Paul Harvey for the phrase. If you haven't heard any of his commentary, I recommend it.)

Yesterday I poo-poohed happy endings. Give me grief and misery! But sometimes a lighter tale can be delightful, as Paul Harvey so often proved.  c.f. here.

It's a tale of a very mundane event with a quiet happy ending, and quite worthy of a short story if someone were so inclined. But why? A little boy's memory of getting stuck in the snow on a mother and son drive doesn't sound so great, but there are special circumstances. Therein lies the crux of the matter.

For him, it was likely the only time it would ever happen.

Don't get me wrong. I do like feel-good movies. I like happy endings, and I love inspirational movies as long as they aren't too saccharine.  I am not inspired by mundane events, however, unless there is something about them that makes them special.

It doesn't take much. Good writing can turn any moment into an epiphany, or an iconic memory, or a symbol for something grander.  If you'll forgive the hubris, I reference a poem I wrote for my daughters about blowing a bubble. The rhythm is perhaps too complex and easily misread, the phrasing might be too contrived for your taste, but it does illustrate my point. Blowing a bubble is something simple and cheap and easy enough we do it to entertain the children, but there is plenty of symbolism to be had.

Happy is good. I love it when the hero wins the girl. I just want him to prove to me he deserves it first. That's usually easiest done by showing me he can respond nobly to a bad situation.

Happily Ever After

...and they ate ice cream, and had babies and lived happily ever after.

The End

Hm. I'm not inspired to go out and buy the book. Heck, I don't even want to watch the movie. I'd rather subject myself to 2am infomercials pimping potato peelers that let you pull your own teeth, or at least make you want to.

On the other hand, if they're sharing a small pot of greens because that's all they have, we tend to watch to see how fairly they share it. 

If they must hide their only child because the soldiers are coming to kill the children, we wonder if this one might survive.

If they sacrifice themselves, both dying in futile gestures to save the other, we rail at the injustice -- but now we're involved.

Happy is nice, but it doesn't sell the print, and it doesn't make us remember the story or buy a copy for friends. Don't get me wrong, there are exceptions, but in general, even Disney movies have villains and injustice. 

If my heroes can make it through a book and walk away at the end healthy and happy and sane, I am relieved, but I wonder what went wrong. When they stagger away broken in body but not in spirit, supporting each other in their grief for those they lost, I admire them. I honor them. I remember them. I want to be them, though I thank my stars I don't have to go through the hell they've endured.

That's the point. A good story is always about character and conflict, and nobody walks away unscathed. If the character is untouched, we do not love them. At best, we can pity them, but they have not earned our devotion.

And again, of course, there are exceptions, but those just demonstrate the rule.  People who survive lightning strikes and falling out of airplanes without parachutes do not convince the rest of us that it's safe. They amaze us, because they beat the odds.

Break your heroes. Even if they are angry, your readers will feel something.  If you do it well, they'll curse you with their tears, but praise you with their wallets.

TANSTAAFL

"There ain't no such thing as a free lunch." -- Robert Heinlein

Even if you don't have to cough up cash, someone has to pay for it; and if you don't honor the debt you incur, it costs you face and reputation. You may not care, but there's still a cost, always.  Even if you just pull up wild onion by the road, it costs time and effort and sunlight and water.

You have to pay your dues.

I see people, even friends of mine, giving advice all the time. It's usually pretty good advice. I just read Denise Tompkins' blog post about synopses, and it was great.  I spoke with her the other night about the professionalism of her blog voice, how much I enjoy it, how right she usually is, and we laughed about the way a great bit of writing sometimes seems like the swan from the line of ducklings. We sweat and grieve and waffle, then finally put it out there and wait for people to point and laugh, but often the result is actually good.

I'm no expert. This blog is about our efforts to learn, to sink or swim in the world of modern publishing, but I like to think there are useful, pithy bits now and then.  I have no qualifications worth including in a query; my degrees are computers and ancient language, my job is telecom, and I've not had so much as a short story actually published and paid (technically not true, but I assure you the technicality doesn't buy gum.)

Yet I write. I offer my apparently baseless opinions. I query our book with confidence, knowing that it still has so much improvement to be made.

I'm paying my dues, and learning what I need. I'm patient, and I don't give up. In the meantime, I'm writing, polishing the book we've finished, working on the next, tossing in a few lines to others now and then, planning for the day when my backlist is long enough to earn a living.

I'm enjoying the ride. In the meantime, I borrow experience and contacts from dear friends like Denise who's plowing ahead with her Nitecliff Evolutions, and with Raising Cain, which sounds utterly engrossing.

Good luck, Denise, and thanks for the visit. It recharges my batteries to know that talent and perseverance can and do, in fact, make it in today's market.