Hi everyone, long time no see. Like I said, January is a brutal month, made even more difficult by the pesky and persistent microbes that have run rampant at work and at home.
Anyway, I did have time to write the short piece below. I know I've talked about Rose & Jade a lot on this blog, but of course not many people here have had a chance to read the story. To help it be less of an abstraction, I decided to write a few stories set in that world as bonus material, just so you could get to know the characters and setting a bit. This one is about Rose herself.
By the by, the working title of the book has changed to Return of the Dragon.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Short Story: "The Dragons She Has Known"
Rose knew the names of many dragons before she met the one that would utterly change her life. There was Smaug and his golden hoard, five-headed Tiamat, little white Ruth and his brethren on Pern, and many others. But her first, as for so many of us, was Puff.
She first met Puff when she was three years old, as the dragon frolicked forth from the speakers of her mother's venerable record player. They had CDs and cassettes in the house, but her mother's old favorites were all on pressed vinyl, with their distinctive pops and scratches still intact. The care with which these large black discs needed to be handled told the young Rose that they contained the most special music. The one she requested more than all the others was the Peter, Paul, and Mary record with the bright red label that told of Puff's adventures with the young Jackie Paper.
From this song, Rose formed two mistaken impressions that persisted for some time.
The first was that there existed a substance called "ceiling wax." She grouped it in her mind with the floor wax that her mother used in the kitchen and the car wax that her father applied every month to her mother's sporty little Volkswagen. And since it was "fancy stuff," she reasoned that only rich people used it. To this day, Rose carries around an unexamined belief somewhere in one of the lower recesses of her subconscious that there is a special substance used to polish the ceilings in wealthy estates.
The second mistaken impression was that Jackie Paper stopped coming to see Puff because of an illness.
This idea formed because she misunderstood her mother's explanation about the end of the song, which puzzled Rose when she first heard it. Why did Jackie stop coming to see Puff? "Because he grew up," her mother had answered. But the answer didn't quite make it intact through the noise of the running dishwasher, and what little Rose heard was: "Because he threw up."
This made perfect sense. Rose had plenty of experience with throwing up in her three years of life. And so she understood that Jackie Paper ate something that made him sick, which caused him to stop visiting his magical friend. She also assumed quite naturally that, once Jackie felt better, he must have resumed his visits to the land of Honalee, and that Puff was assuredly happy to see him back healthy. With this happy explanation, the song's inherent melancholy rolled off her like water off a waxed ceiling, and she cheerfully drew pictures of Puff's further adventures with Jackie Paper (and often with a little dark-haired girl alongside them).
It was Clay who explained what really happened a year after she first met Puff.
She often played with Clay when her family visited the Ostroms. Clay's sisters were too old to care about Rose, but Clay was her age, and for the most part he made an excellent playmate. He didn't share Rose's passion for horses, which she found mystifying, but he did love dragons. He even had a stuffed dragon that he had won (or, more likely, that his father had won for him) in one of the carnival games down the Excalibur, and together they decided he should be named Puff. They even tried painting his wings, though watercolors on plush felt do not yield very inspiring results. Stuffed Puff was the centerpiece of many of their play sessions, but early on, Clay made his feelings very clear on the subject of Jackie Paper.
Jackie had left Puff. He had grown up, he had moved on to other things, more grown-up games like baseball or basketball, and he had stopped caring about Puff. The word "traitor" was not in four-year old Clay's vocabulary, but had it been, that would have been the epithet that described the execrable Jackie Paper. The only circumstance under which Clay could bear to mention the name of Jackie Paper was when they cast the fictional boy as the villain in their playtime or in their crayon-illuminated storybooks. Rose did not care for these games and stories. While she agreed that it was a rotten thing to abandon one's friends, she could not muster the equal of Clay's bitter, bitter hatred for the boy who had been Puff's friend, nor did she share his need to envision act of vengeance.
Rose stopped listening to "Puff the Magic Dragon" when she was five years old. It was not because she had outgrown the song, though that time would assuredly have come soon enough in the normal course of events. It was because the record player and all the old vinyl were her mother's, and they were all packed away when her mother died.
"We don't want them to get broken," her father said as her gently lowered the old turntable into a trunk, one that he would fill with old effects that once belonged to Rose's mother. The trunk was rarely unlocked, yet Rose felt its presence in the attic the same way that a compass needle feels the location of the North Pole.
She only heard "Puff the Magic Dragon" three times after that day.
The first time, it came on the radio on one of her father's oldie stations as they were driving down into Vegas. She saw his right hand lurch, as if it wished to dart out and change the station, but he snatched it back before it could touch the radio. Rose watched him as the song played, watched how he kept his eyes fixed on the road. She could see his jaw muscles taut under his cheek, and saw every swallow that forced its way down his clenched throat. He did not weep, as he had the day that her mother had died. Rose found her own cheeks were wet when the song was over, but did not remember crying.
The second time was at summer camp when she was eight years old, and one of the counselors played it on her guitar. They sat around their little fire under the glittering night sky, the smell of creosote and Joshua Trees mingled with the remaining scent of roasted marshmallows, and Rose sang along until her throat would not let her sing. Then she just whispered and wiped her eyes, and that night she dreamed about her mother.
The third time was when she was thirteen, and it was very different.
When "Puff the Magic Dragon" floated in over the speakers of at the tack store, Rose froze where she was, her fingers still inches away from the snaffle bit she was about to pick up. This time, the old song did not make her think of her mother. This time, she was powerfully reminded of the dragon itself who had lived so vividly in her young imagination. She thought of the dragon's shattering roar that could strike fear into the hearts of the most savage pirates, and of the creature's majesty that drove kings and princes to their knees in homage. Rose's eyes shifted to the window of the store, looking out into the desert beyond the parking lot, and for a moment she thought she could see the dragon there, rising from the heat shimmer in all of its glory, spreading painted wings into the sunlight.
The song ended, and Rose snapped out of her reverie. Then she thought of her mother, as she always did when she heard the old songs—Greensleeves or Red River Valley or Country Roads. That familiar sense of loneliness filled her mind like an autumn mist that obscured the momentary vision of the dragon, and she thought no more about Puff.
Not until three days later, when she met a dragon in the desert.
--------------
Rose Gallagher is the protagonist of my first novel (working title: Return of the Dragon).
She first met Puff when she was three years old, as the dragon frolicked forth from the speakers of her mother's venerable record player. They had CDs and cassettes in the house, but her mother's old favorites were all on pressed vinyl, with their distinctive pops and scratches still intact. The care with which these large black discs needed to be handled told the young Rose that they contained the most special music. The one she requested more than all the others was the Peter, Paul, and Mary record with the bright red label that told of Puff's adventures with the young Jackie Paper.
From this song, Rose formed two mistaken impressions that persisted for some time.
The first was that there existed a substance called "ceiling wax." She grouped it in her mind with the floor wax that her mother used in the kitchen and the car wax that her father applied every month to her mother's sporty little Volkswagen. And since it was "fancy stuff," she reasoned that only rich people used it. To this day, Rose carries around an unexamined belief somewhere in one of the lower recesses of her subconscious that there is a special substance used to polish the ceilings in wealthy estates.
The second mistaken impression was that Jackie Paper stopped coming to see Puff because of an illness.
This idea formed because she misunderstood her mother's explanation about the end of the song, which puzzled Rose when she first heard it. Why did Jackie stop coming to see Puff? "Because he grew up," her mother had answered. But the answer didn't quite make it intact through the noise of the running dishwasher, and what little Rose heard was: "Because he threw up."
This made perfect sense. Rose had plenty of experience with throwing up in her three years of life. And so she understood that Jackie Paper ate something that made him sick, which caused him to stop visiting his magical friend. She also assumed quite naturally that, once Jackie felt better, he must have resumed his visits to the land of Honalee, and that Puff was assuredly happy to see him back healthy. With this happy explanation, the song's inherent melancholy rolled off her like water off a waxed ceiling, and she cheerfully drew pictures of Puff's further adventures with Jackie Paper (and often with a little dark-haired girl alongside them).
It was Clay who explained what really happened a year after she first met Puff.
She often played with Clay when her family visited the Ostroms. Clay's sisters were too old to care about Rose, but Clay was her age, and for the most part he made an excellent playmate. He didn't share Rose's passion for horses, which she found mystifying, but he did love dragons. He even had a stuffed dragon that he had won (or, more likely, that his father had won for him) in one of the carnival games down the Excalibur, and together they decided he should be named Puff. They even tried painting his wings, though watercolors on plush felt do not yield very inspiring results. Stuffed Puff was the centerpiece of many of their play sessions, but early on, Clay made his feelings very clear on the subject of Jackie Paper.
Jackie had left Puff. He had grown up, he had moved on to other things, more grown-up games like baseball or basketball, and he had stopped caring about Puff. The word "traitor" was not in four-year old Clay's vocabulary, but had it been, that would have been the epithet that described the execrable Jackie Paper. The only circumstance under which Clay could bear to mention the name of Jackie Paper was when they cast the fictional boy as the villain in their playtime or in their crayon-illuminated storybooks. Rose did not care for these games and stories. While she agreed that it was a rotten thing to abandon one's friends, she could not muster the equal of Clay's bitter, bitter hatred for the boy who had been Puff's friend, nor did she share his need to envision act of vengeance.
Rose stopped listening to "Puff the Magic Dragon" when she was five years old. It was not because she had outgrown the song, though that time would assuredly have come soon enough in the normal course of events. It was because the record player and all the old vinyl were her mother's, and they were all packed away when her mother died.
"We don't want them to get broken," her father said as her gently lowered the old turntable into a trunk, one that he would fill with old effects that once belonged to Rose's mother. The trunk was rarely unlocked, yet Rose felt its presence in the attic the same way that a compass needle feels the location of the North Pole.
She only heard "Puff the Magic Dragon" three times after that day.
The first time, it came on the radio on one of her father's oldie stations as they were driving down into Vegas. She saw his right hand lurch, as if it wished to dart out and change the station, but he snatched it back before it could touch the radio. Rose watched him as the song played, watched how he kept his eyes fixed on the road. She could see his jaw muscles taut under his cheek, and saw every swallow that forced its way down his clenched throat. He did not weep, as he had the day that her mother had died. Rose found her own cheeks were wet when the song was over, but did not remember crying.
The second time was at summer camp when she was eight years old, and one of the counselors played it on her guitar. They sat around their little fire under the glittering night sky, the smell of creosote and Joshua Trees mingled with the remaining scent of roasted marshmallows, and Rose sang along until her throat would not let her sing. Then she just whispered and wiped her eyes, and that night she dreamed about her mother.
The third time was when she was thirteen, and it was very different.
When "Puff the Magic Dragon" floated in over the speakers of at the tack store, Rose froze where she was, her fingers still inches away from the snaffle bit she was about to pick up. This time, the old song did not make her think of her mother. This time, she was powerfully reminded of the dragon itself who had lived so vividly in her young imagination. She thought of the dragon's shattering roar that could strike fear into the hearts of the most savage pirates, and of the creature's majesty that drove kings and princes to their knees in homage. Rose's eyes shifted to the window of the store, looking out into the desert beyond the parking lot, and for a moment she thought she could see the dragon there, rising from the heat shimmer in all of its glory, spreading painted wings into the sunlight.
The song ended, and Rose snapped out of her reverie. Then she thought of her mother, as she always did when she heard the old songs—Greensleeves or Red River Valley or Country Roads. That familiar sense of loneliness filled her mind like an autumn mist that obscured the momentary vision of the dragon, and she thought no more about Puff.
Not until three days later, when she met a dragon in the desert.
--------------
Rose Gallagher is the protagonist of my first novel (working title: Return of the Dragon).
Labels:
return of the dragon,
rose and jade,
short story
Monday, January 3, 2011
Progress Report: 1/3/2011
I'm back.
I did manage to get a fair amount of good writing work done over vacation, though it's really not the best time. I was laid up quite a bit with a nasty stomach virus (lovely), so I had plenty of time to stew in my fevered delirium and think about story ideas.
Which is good, because I realized I needed to get a lot more clarity about Book 3 before I could make any more progress on Book 2.
Anyway, January is a viciously busy month to start with, but by the last week and into February it tends to settle out. Shouldn't be long before serious writing gets underway.
Happy new year, everyone...
I did manage to get a fair amount of good writing work done over vacation, though it's really not the best time. I was laid up quite a bit with a nasty stomach virus (lovely), so I had plenty of time to stew in my fevered delirium and think about story ideas.
Which is good, because I realized I needed to get a lot more clarity about Book 3 before I could make any more progress on Book 2.
Anyway, January is a viciously busy month to start with, but by the last week and into February it tends to settle out. Shouldn't be long before serious writing gets underway.
Happy new year, everyone...
Monday, December 13, 2010
Progress Report: 12/13/2010
Last post of the year. Next week we're going on vacation, and I make it a point to disconnect as much as humanly possible when I'm on vacation.
This is always the busiest time of year. At work, there's a desperate rush to get a whole lot of things done before things shut down, and of course at home there's Christmas shopping, prepping for vacation, general mental insanity, etc. Which is why I don't carry around a lot of expectations for getting writing done in December.
That being said, the story for the second book is coming together beautifully, and the outline is taking shape. Which is fantastic. Also a little bit intimidating, because the end of the series itself is still hiding in the fog, with only its barest shape visible to me right now. For me, writing is often an act of faith that the story will come when I need it to.
I have gotten emails and seen blog postings from Thunderstruck fans wondering when I'll get back to working on it. The story is never far from my thoughts, but currently the iron is hot for my dragon stories, and that's where I've got to strike. I will return to Sharon & Gail when I can. Rose & Jade are the ones who need my attention now.
It's been an extraordinary year. I have a sense of things coming together now, paths opening up and opportunities getting closer. I hope you all have good holidays, and I'll see you in 2011.
This is always the busiest time of year. At work, there's a desperate rush to get a whole lot of things done before things shut down, and of course at home there's Christmas shopping, prepping for vacation, general mental insanity, etc. Which is why I don't carry around a lot of expectations for getting writing done in December.
That being said, the story for the second book is coming together beautifully, and the outline is taking shape. Which is fantastic. Also a little bit intimidating, because the end of the series itself is still hiding in the fog, with only its barest shape visible to me right now. For me, writing is often an act of faith that the story will come when I need it to.
I have gotten emails and seen blog postings from Thunderstruck fans wondering when I'll get back to working on it. The story is never far from my thoughts, but currently the iron is hot for my dragon stories, and that's where I've got to strike. I will return to Sharon & Gail when I can. Rose & Jade are the ones who need my attention now.
It's been an extraordinary year. I have a sense of things coming together now, paths opening up and opportunities getting closer. I hope you all have good holidays, and I'll see you in 2011.
Labels:
progress report,
rose and jade,
Thunderstruck
Monday, November 29, 2010
Progress Report: 11/29/2010
Champagne! I have an agent.
I spoke with Ms. Devra Jacobs of Dancing Word Group this weekend, and it looks like she's a go to represent Rose & Jade. She's breaking into the Young Adult market, and she's very enthusiastic about the book and its potential. Not so hot on the title, so we'll be coming up with something else that telegraphs the content a little more clearly. Y'know, something to do with dragons.
I'm very psyched, folks.
Oh, so in terms of contacting an agent who's been holding onto your manuscript, I think it's worth it. The other agent that was in the running was taking quite a while to get back to me, though she eventually did. And she decided not to take the book on, which made my own decision much easier.
The thing is, it seems that agents will gnaw on a book for a long time if they're interested, and will send it out to other people in their inner circle to read and evaluate. This is why it takes so long. My experience is that they don't provide a stream of updates about this, so if the waiting is driving you mad (as it was for me), then you're probably best off dropping your potential agent a polite email to ask for an update. Might take a while to get a response to that, too.
Patience. This business requires patience.
Next up for me: book proposal. And, I'm told, creating a website for your book with an ambiguous "coming soon" is not a bad notion, if you can find a website designer and illustrator to help you out. Fortunately, I have both those skills myself, so there's a head start. Time to get to work!
I spoke with Ms. Devra Jacobs of Dancing Word Group this weekend, and it looks like she's a go to represent Rose & Jade. She's breaking into the Young Adult market, and she's very enthusiastic about the book and its potential. Not so hot on the title, so we'll be coming up with something else that telegraphs the content a little more clearly. Y'know, something to do with dragons.
I'm very psyched, folks.
Oh, so in terms of contacting an agent who's been holding onto your manuscript, I think it's worth it. The other agent that was in the running was taking quite a while to get back to me, though she eventually did. And she decided not to take the book on, which made my own decision much easier.
The thing is, it seems that agents will gnaw on a book for a long time if they're interested, and will send it out to other people in their inner circle to read and evaluate. This is why it takes so long. My experience is that they don't provide a stream of updates about this, so if the waiting is driving you mad (as it was for me), then you're probably best off dropping your potential agent a polite email to ask for an update. Might take a while to get a response to that, too.
Patience. This business requires patience.
Next up for me: book proposal. And, I'm told, creating a website for your book with an ambiguous "coming soon" is not a bad notion, if you can find a website designer and illustrator to help you out. Fortunately, I have both those skills myself, so there's a head start. Time to get to work!
Monday, November 8, 2010
Progress Report: 11/8/2010
The plot is thickening up on the agent front.
This week's news has a different agent asking to represent my novel. Which is... yay! With complications.
The first thing is, I did agree to inform the first agent if there was any other offer on the book, and to give her the a chance to say whether she's interested or not. So I'm waiting to hear back from the first (potential) agent, and I'm not sure how long that takes. I have horrifying visions of my emails somehow being netted in a spam filter, but I'm going to take it on faith that that's paranoia in action.
The second thing is that the new agent doesn't normally represent Young Adult books, which is somewhat of a concern. The first (potential) agent does. So... yeah. You can see how this is qualified good news. Still, I think it is important to remember that it is very good news indeed!
Champagne still pending.
So on other fronts, yesterday we went and saw Hereafter. First off, Clint Eastwood is a treasure, no amount of appreciation can do him justice. I felt the film spoke profoundly to my own life. It's not because I relate personally to the near-death experience--I haven't had one. Much of the film's focus is not about the experience itself, but how people relate to you when you've start talking about something that they aren't willing to accept. Your life has changed course, and all of a sudden you find yourself out on "the fringe." The people who you once respected and identified with now look at you as "woo-woo" and irrational, if not actually insane.
As someone who works at Sounds True, and as someone who was once, philosophically, a materialist atheist, this story speaks to me very strongly. It is something I want to capture in Sharon's story, since it is the journey that she undergoes when she is blindsided by something miraculous, and it forces her to change her point of view.
In my life, I haven't experienced anything that is obviously miraculous. I'm in the more difficult position of having to decide who to believe when they tell their stories of things that don't fit into the reductionist universe. Oh, to be sure, I've gotten little tastes myself. Yet if I wanted to go back to materialist thinking, I could (unlike Sharon, whose miraculous healing and ongoing immersion into the world of magic give her pretty much no choice but to swallow that she's going to have to change her worldview).
It is a subject that occupies much of my thinking, and I thought Eastwood's handling of the material was superb. If I get the chance, I'll write more about this.
This week's news has a different agent asking to represent my novel. Which is... yay! With complications.
The first thing is, I did agree to inform the first agent if there was any other offer on the book, and to give her the a chance to say whether she's interested or not. So I'm waiting to hear back from the first (potential) agent, and I'm not sure how long that takes. I have horrifying visions of my emails somehow being netted in a spam filter, but I'm going to take it on faith that that's paranoia in action.
The second thing is that the new agent doesn't normally represent Young Adult books, which is somewhat of a concern. The first (potential) agent does. So... yeah. You can see how this is qualified good news. Still, I think it is important to remember that it is very good news indeed!
Champagne still pending.
So on other fronts, yesterday we went and saw Hereafter. First off, Clint Eastwood is a treasure, no amount of appreciation can do him justice. I felt the film spoke profoundly to my own life. It's not because I relate personally to the near-death experience--I haven't had one. Much of the film's focus is not about the experience itself, but how people relate to you when you've start talking about something that they aren't willing to accept. Your life has changed course, and all of a sudden you find yourself out on "the fringe." The people who you once respected and identified with now look at you as "woo-woo" and irrational, if not actually insane.
As someone who works at Sounds True, and as someone who was once, philosophically, a materialist atheist, this story speaks to me very strongly. It is something I want to capture in Sharon's story, since it is the journey that she undergoes when she is blindsided by something miraculous, and it forces her to change her point of view.
In my life, I haven't experienced anything that is obviously miraculous. I'm in the more difficult position of having to decide who to believe when they tell their stories of things that don't fit into the reductionist universe. Oh, to be sure, I've gotten little tastes myself. Yet if I wanted to go back to materialist thinking, I could (unlike Sharon, whose miraculous healing and ongoing immersion into the world of magic give her pretty much no choice but to swallow that she's going to have to change her worldview).
It is a subject that occupies much of my thinking, and I thought Eastwood's handling of the material was superb. If I get the chance, I'll write more about this.
Monday, November 1, 2010
Progress Report: 11/1/2010
One of the things that I hope this blog will be useful for is to help other writers gain helpful insights for their own careers. Right now, we have the issue of Etiquette with Agents. Specifically, how long does it take for an agent to review your manuscript before getting back to you, and should you contact them before they contact you?
For me, it has been almost two months. For me, personally, being in this kind of limbo is a particular sort of agony that wears away at my nerves. I've now frayed to the point that I am going to take the leap of etiquette and buzz my prospective agent to see how things are going. I shall let you know what results this produces, good or bad.
Meanwhile... tap, tap, tap.
For me, it has been almost two months. For me, personally, being in this kind of limbo is a particular sort of agony that wears away at my nerves. I've now frayed to the point that I am going to take the leap of etiquette and buzz my prospective agent to see how things are going. I shall let you know what results this produces, good or bad.
Meanwhile... tap, tap, tap.
Monday, October 11, 2010
Progress Report: 10/11/2010
Tap. Tap. Tap.
No, I'm absolutely not sitting here drumming my fingers and compulsively checking my Inbox and messages to see if there is a message from my prospective agent.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Those dents in my desk were there when I got it. The fact that they fit my fingers is one of those great mysteries of life.
Tap. Tap.
I did have this dream that I got an email from the agent that went as follows. Subject Line: "That was fun." Email Body: "Pass." I thought it was rather cold behavior, but then again dream agents aren't as polite as real ones. Fortunately, I have not had any successful history of predicting the future with my dreams, so I can simply brush that off as a whimsical offering of my subconscious.
Tap.
Okay, so apart from all that, the big thing this week was my wife Candi's 42nd birthday. Because she's a lifelong horse lover, it was very appropriate that it turned out to be an extremely horsey week. The highlights were:
No, I'm absolutely not sitting here drumming my fingers and compulsively checking my Inbox and messages to see if there is a message from my prospective agent.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Those dents in my desk were there when I got it. The fact that they fit my fingers is one of those great mysteries of life.
Tap. Tap.
I did have this dream that I got an email from the agent that went as follows. Subject Line: "That was fun." Email Body: "Pass." I thought it was rather cold behavior, but then again dream agents aren't as polite as real ones. Fortunately, I have not had any successful history of predicting the future with my dreams, so I can simply brush that off as a whimsical offering of my subconscious.
Tap.
Okay, so apart from all that, the big thing this week was my wife Candi's 42nd birthday. Because she's a lifelong horse lover, it was very appropriate that it turned out to be an extremely horsey week. The highlights were:
- Watched a lot of the World Equestrian Games. These are kind of like an Olympics devoted entirely to horse competitions. To a true horse lover like Candi, pretty much any competition is fascinating. To a lesser horse lover like myself, I find some of the events riveting (like Eventing, jumping competitions, etc.) and some less so (Reining is what I'm thinking of here. This is an event where everyone has to do the exact same routine, which involves a great deal of charging around in circles. It's entertaining the first couple of times, and then it gets somewhat repetitive).
- Went and saw Secretariat, which I enjoyed immensely. I'm in accord with Roger Ebert's assessment of the film.
- Went to Cavalia, which was beautiful beyond description. This is the horse/circus show created by one of the founders of Cirque du Soleil. Seeing it simply made me happy to be alive and in the world at this moment, which I think is one of the best things that great art can do. I've never seen anyone train horses quite this way. I've seen horses trained to perform incredible tricks, but in Cavalia, the trainers appear to be working with the horses as partners far more than normal. There are lots of portions of the show where the horses are let loose and trusted to do their own thing in an entertaining way, and as a result they look like they are spontaneously playing with their human co-performers, not enacting scripted tricks.
Monday, September 27, 2010
Progress Report: 9/27/2010
Short report this week, and I almost don't want to mention the most interesting development, because it's not anything solid yet. But at the risk of jinxing myself, there is an agent who asked to see the whole manuscript of Rose & Jade after reviewing my submission and the first three chapters. After the steady Chinese water torture of "Thanks, but no thanks" responses, even to this much interest is very encouraging indeed.
I'll let you guys know what she thinks. Fingers crossed...
I'll let you guys know what she thinks. Fingers crossed...
Monday, September 13, 2010
Progress Report: 9/13/2010
Sometimes, a couple of weeks go by in a blur, and you look up to say, "What happened?"
Ever have that experience? Yeah, me too.
In terms of progress, more queries are out to more agents. No nibbles yet, and the search continues. Don't let anybody tell you this isn't a grueling process.
What's also grueling is the novel intro to Thunderstruck, and I'll tell you why. It's Sharon's situation as she's paralyzed. If you go back to the beginning of the strip, you notice that I don't spend a lot of time on Sharon's wheelchair days. That's mostly an evasion on my part, trying to get on with the lightning bolt and the magic and stuff. It's also a bit of a cheat.
So on this go-round I wanted to give Sharon's wheelchair life a fair shake. That means doing the research on what it's actually like paraplegics in day-to-day life, which is exactly the sort of legwork I was lazily attempting to avoid when I set out on the comic. And I find myself writing about a group of people from an outsider's perspective, and wanting to make sure I don't drop the ball.
Sharon is depressed. Now, the stats suggest that people with paraplegia are more likely to be depressed than the general populace... except it's fiendishly hard to get a read on how depressed the general populace is. And one aspect of a severe spinal injury is that you by necessity end up seeing the doctor more often than the average joe, and therefore you've got professional eyes looking for depression. So one could suggest there isn't as big a disparity as the study I linked to above suggest.
But even more so, as I research and read what more paraplegic's have to say about their condition, I want to do right by them. It's natural for someone with all working limbs to look at someone in a wheelchair and think, "Boy, I would be depressed as hell if that happened to me." That's a pity reflex. It's understandable, but it's also kind of condescending. There are a lot of paraplegics who justifiably get pissed off at that, and say, "You may think there's something wrong with me, but I don't. I love my life."
When you're writing a character, it is that one individual. Sharon is supposed to be representative of Sharon, not an entire group of people. As things stand now, though, I don't have any other wheelchair-bound characters in Thunderstruck, so in a way, she does stand for a whole group of people. Which is both fair and unfair. For instance, if you see a story where you have one woman who is an absolute beast, it's always nice for there to be at least one other woman character who is more sympathetic, so you don't come away thinking, "Man, that author has some screwed-up ideas about women."
So that's the balancing act with the early Sharon chapters of Thunderstruck here. It's going along.
Ever have that experience? Yeah, me too.
In terms of progress, more queries are out to more agents. No nibbles yet, and the search continues. Don't let anybody tell you this isn't a grueling process.
What's also grueling is the novel intro to Thunderstruck, and I'll tell you why. It's Sharon's situation as she's paralyzed. If you go back to the beginning of the strip, you notice that I don't spend a lot of time on Sharon's wheelchair days. That's mostly an evasion on my part, trying to get on with the lightning bolt and the magic and stuff. It's also a bit of a cheat.
So on this go-round I wanted to give Sharon's wheelchair life a fair shake. That means doing the research on what it's actually like paraplegics in day-to-day life, which is exactly the sort of legwork I was lazily attempting to avoid when I set out on the comic. And I find myself writing about a group of people from an outsider's perspective, and wanting to make sure I don't drop the ball.
Sharon is depressed. Now, the stats suggest that people with paraplegia are more likely to be depressed than the general populace... except it's fiendishly hard to get a read on how depressed the general populace is. And one aspect of a severe spinal injury is that you by necessity end up seeing the doctor more often than the average joe, and therefore you've got professional eyes looking for depression. So one could suggest there isn't as big a disparity as the study I linked to above suggest.
But even more so, as I research and read what more paraplegic's have to say about their condition, I want to do right by them. It's natural for someone with all working limbs to look at someone in a wheelchair and think, "Boy, I would be depressed as hell if that happened to me." That's a pity reflex. It's understandable, but it's also kind of condescending. There are a lot of paraplegics who justifiably get pissed off at that, and say, "You may think there's something wrong with me, but I don't. I love my life."
When you're writing a character, it is that one individual. Sharon is supposed to be representative of Sharon, not an entire group of people. As things stand now, though, I don't have any other wheelchair-bound characters in Thunderstruck, so in a way, she does stand for a whole group of people. Which is both fair and unfair. For instance, if you see a story where you have one woman who is an absolute beast, it's always nice for there to be at least one other woman character who is more sympathetic, so you don't come away thinking, "Man, that author has some screwed-up ideas about women."
So that's the balancing act with the early Sharon chapters of Thunderstruck here. It's going along.
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