Progress Report: 5/21/12

Here I am looking at my previous post, and realizing that it pretty much describes exactly describes what's going on with me right now. So... yeah. If there's progress being made, it's slow and not too interesting.

So okay, what am I reading? That should at least be different.

Does anybody else make a list of books that you want to get around to someday, but then new stuff comes out and you keep reading that instead? That's what I tend to do. But I hit a lull in the new book schedule, so it gave me a chance to go back and read Hyperion by Dan Simmons. I'd heard good things about this book for a long time, but somehow it got by me for the last 23 years or so.

Glad I finally caught up. The dude writes a gripping story.

Hyperion has a Canterbury Tales structure, which is a great device if you can pull it off. Simmons makes each character's story add to the setting and mythos, and of course gives you insight into the person who's telling it. He also manages to spin your head on its axis every time. And when we reach the final story, just when you think you've got the hang of this world and the kind of revelations it tends to throw at you, he manages to ratchet up the stakes again... in a way that is unexpected, but suddenly makes perfect sense of much of what came before.

Damn good writing. I immediately plunged into the next book, The Fall of Hyperion, which does not disappoint. Simmons doesn't try to repeat the Canterbury Tales motif, which is a good call... the story no longer called for it. The story carries you along like a bullet train.

So it's good when there's nothing new coming out that you want to read. There's treasure in those backlog lists.

Progress Report: 4/16/12

It's been a very busy time recently. We are in the process of looking for a new house, which means packing up all the stuff in our old home and getting it ready to move. And... stuff, man. It's freakin' everywhere. It accumulates seemingly on its own, as if in accord with the old theories about spontaneous generation.

Writing-wise, I've decided that if I don't get a new agent and some progress by end of 2012, I'm going the small-press route with Dragon Waking and trying my luck that way. Publishing is a changing field, so the options for reaching an audience on your own are better today than they've ever been. Meanwhile, I'm still querying along.

And writing, of course.

Arya

We had to say goodbye to a beloved friend this week. This is Arya.


She was about 14 years old, and this Saturday she finished her time here as a cat.

We got Arya when she was somewhere around 6-8 months old. Candi was actually checking on the status of another cat that we'd found abandoned. We had two cats and a dog at the time already and it seemed like enough, so we turned the stray into the humane society--with the caveat that if the stray didn't find a home quickly, we'd adopt him. Well, the stray was adopted, but when Candi went in to check, there was this one pastel kitten with little white paws who simply demanded to be adopted. She meowed insistently, reached through the bars, purring for all she was worth... basically shouting "Take me home! Please!"

Candi came back with me and said that there was this one kitten she couldn't leave behind, and if I could tell which one it was, we should probably adopt her. It was a safe bet. There was nobody else like her there.

Arya was, in many ways, the most un-catlike of any cat I've ever met. She was certainly clumsier than any cat I've known, which is endearing in a species known for its grace. She also lacked that self-conscious, regal pride that is so ubiquitous in cats, and showed none of the typical cat's casual sense of arrogance or aloofness.

Instead, Arya was sweet. She was the sweetest, most adoring cat I have ever known. In her younger days she was also a cannonball of fun and would play until she collapsed panting (she's the only cat I've ever seen pant), though of course she slowed down as the years crept up on her. What never changed was her affectionate, loving character. She had no fear of visitors and would introduce herself to anyone with a barrage of purrs. She even purred when you took her to the vet and held her while they gave her a shot.

She had some difficulties toward the end, as is the nature of getting old. Now she is at rest, and we will always remember the sweet, loving soul who shared so many years with us.

Progress Report: 2/13/12

Announcement: I've got a new website. Go check it out at...

graysontowler.com

Lots of art and writing on the site for you to peruse, if you are so inclined. It's all part of my master plan to become an all-powerful fiction author!

(That's pretty much an oxymoron. Oh well.)

Speaking of that master plan, I'm back in the saddle again for the agent search. Fortunately, I've got a lot of the groundwork in place and have been to this rodeo a few times, so it's not as intimidating as it once was. I don't think anything can make rejection less disheartening, but at least I'm more used to it now.

I also have a Facebook page out there somewhere, though I think I am going to change it soon. I signed up as an "entity," which turns out to be a pretty stripped-down version of what Facebook offers. So I should probably look into getting on board as a "person" instead. I guess people have more options than entities. Who knew?

Progress Report: 1/17/12

Well, it's been a tumultuous new year.

The most important news is that my father-in-law passed away over the holidays. His name was Warren Tom Cooper, and he went by Tom. It was funny... in the hospital and hospice, he would let the nurses and doctors call him Warren until he decided that he actually liked them, and then they would get to call him Tom. It was kind of a code. He enjoyed stuff like that.

I've known Tom for over 20 years, and he's been a huge part of my life. Candi's relationship to him was always very close, and when I started seeing her he was immediately supporting and accepting. This was good... standing at 6'4" and built very solidly, he could be a pretty intimidating guy when he didn't approve of something. But when you were family, as I was privileged to be, he would do anything to help you along. That was the way his mother was as well. Both of them taught me so many important lessons in my life.

Right now, the impact of his passing is still setting in. We live in a different world now, Candi and me, and we're still getting used to that new reality. Life has a way of keeping you so busy that it's tricky to just sit with your feelings sometimes, and that has its upside and downside. I will say that this is the first time I've had to be a part of dealing with all the logistics and details of someone dying -- it's quite startling how much there is to do.

Tom was very supportive of my writing, and really helped me out with some of the details about the setting of my first book. So I feel like I can honor him by continuing to write and work towards getting my work published. Which I'm doing.

Just taking it a bit slow. This new world takes some adjustment.

Progress Report: 12/5/2011

Uh... yeah. I've been out of touch a bit.

So the main news is that I'm shopping for a new agent. The best advice seems to be at this point to wait until January because, as it is for most of us, December is kind of a crazy month for agents.

It's sort of a bummer to have to go through this again. My agent was never a specialist in my genre, though. She was trying to break into new areas. A first time author with an agent out of her normal depth... that's a bit of a steep hill to climb. We tried it out, it didn't work, so we decided to part ways.

Page-a-day writing continues to be a good solution for keeping the momentum going. I suspect some significant editing is going to be needed before what I'm writing becomes good finished material. That's not the important part right now. The important part is to keep writing.

Father-in-law is still hanging in there. He's beaten the doctors' predictions by a fair amount, and we're looking forward to our traditional Christmas visit.

And work is unbelievably frantic. I don't think anyone comes here to read about my work life, so I don't really bother with much detail on this blog, but... damn. The things you gotta do to survive in this economy. Sheesh.

I don't know how much more blogging I'll be able to do before the end of the year, so if I don't check in for a while... happy holidays, everyone! And the much ballyhooed 2012 is almost here. Let's see if there's anything to the hype this time...

Progress Report: 10/10/2011

It's been an emotional roller-coaster ride this month.

The big event, which has exerted its gravitational influence on everything else, is that my father-in-law is quite ill. We made an emergency trip out to Nevada to see him in the hospital, because at the time we thought we were going to lose him. After a few weeks of touch and go, he's still hanging on and has even rallied. He's in home hospice now, and... well, we're not sure how things are going to go from here.

That's the very short version.

The long version is more than I want to write about at the moment. It's been a strange and overwhelming time. For the moment, we're back home and getting back to normal life, and he's stable and cruising along. We're told we could get "the call" at any moment.

Through all this, I've been writing, page-a-day style, making progress. Is the writing good? Can't worry about that now. The only days I've missed have been the ones when we were driving 14 hours, so I think it's going well.

Anyway, that's it for the moment. I'll sign off with a quote from that fountain of wisdom, Marvin the Paranoid Android: "Life. Don't talk to me about life."

Progress Report: 9/5/2011

I have a new strategy.

My old strategy for writing, which it must be said has served me fairly well for many years, was to carve out a chunk of time when I could, write my buns off when I had the chance, and then stop either when I was out of time or out of steam. I have had many a productive session that way.

But for whatever reason, that isn't working now. It has a lot to do with how frantic my work life has been for a sustained period of time. I've fooled myself a number of times with a "Oh, next month looks like things will get back to normal!" At this point, I have to basically admit that what is "normal" has changed, and I'd better get used to the idea.

So here it is, the new strategy: one page per day.

Not an average of one page per day. Not, in other words, seven pages a week. Not "I'll get four pages done today so I don't have to worry about it for the next few days." Not "I missed my page yesterday, but I can do two today and make up for it." And, at least for now, not "I'm on a roll, I'll keep going and do some more pages tonight!"

One per day.

And after about two weeks of this, I must say I am extremely pleased with the results. I look forward to writing every day now, because in many it takes the stress out of it. When I was trying to carve large blocks of time in an increasingly busy schedule, I was putting pressure on myself to get a lot done at once... because who knows when I'd have time next? But one page is easy to find time to do.

What about my old friend, that muse known as momentum? This method provides a different sort of momentum. Granted, I have to put the brakes on a scene when I'm getting revved up, and once I get the hang of this maybe I will go back to taking advantage of larger blocks of time to write more. If I do, any extra pages I write will not "roll over" and get me off the hook for the next day's work.

But meanwhile, I'm sticking to the one a day thing. And I'm very much enjoying myself. Sure it means the book is creeping forward like a tortoise instead of taking great rabbit-like bounds, but we all know who wins that race, right?

Anyway, one per day for now. And in a month or so, if this is feeling good, maybe two per day? I think it's worth a try. Let's see what kind of pace we can this tortoise can sustain.

Progress Report: 8/22/2011

Have you ever been writing a scene that kind of gets away from you? It happens to me sometimes, and generally it's a good thing. It means the characters are taking on a life of their own, and that's always a fine moment. But recently I was writing what I thought was a conversation, and suddenly there was seduction imagery popping up all over the place. It kind of weirded me out.

I mean, in thinking about it, it's a perfectly appropriate subtext for the scene, but if I want to keep the novel in the Young Adult category, then I need to go easy on that sort of thing. Yikes.

Anyway...

What have I been reading lately?

Well, I burned through Jim Butcher's latest Harry Dresden novel, Ghost Story, devouring it as I might a particularly tasty sandwich after a tiring hike through the mountains. What's going on in the series is kind of cool... for about a dozen books, Butcher established a certain kind of status quo. Oh, it wasn't static, like a series where you can read it all out of order and not even notice, but there were certain foundational pillars to the setting, characters, and situations that you started to take for granted. Now he's knocked most of those pillars down. It's a bold move, and I'm keen to see how far he takes it. In any case, I enjoyed this last book a lot, which is pretty much par for the course with the Dresden series.

Now I'm in the middle of George R. R. Martin's A Dance with Dragons. And... well, I'm not burning through this one.

One might hypothesize that this is a case of me savoring the experience and making it last, since if the pattern holds it seems like it will be a long wait for the next book. But that's not really the case. Fact is, I can only take so much at a time.

It's grim stuff.

Terrible things happen, terrible people abound, and by this time we've got the idea with Martin that even when a good thing happens, it's going to eventually rebound and become a terrible thing. It's kind of the horror funhouse experience where you expect something to burst out of the dark at you at any time, but he's too good at making you care for the characters (most of the time), so it's not a funhouse at all.

I'm trying to talk about the book in the abstract, since it's just out recently and I don't want to throw out any spoilers. I'm also only halfway through it. One of the things about this book is that we know it's #5 of 7, so it's not like I'm expecting anything like the relief of resolution by the end, just another series of heart-rending cliffhangers and a character or two that I love getting the axe. This is what I have to look forward to.

Am I enjoying myself? Well, with Martin it is always top-notch writing, and I am certainly invested enough to keep going. Nothing has happened to keep me from wanting to see it through to the end yet. But we are in the middle territory of the hard slog, and it ain't easy going in here.

I think it is very interesting that right now, my wife Candi is tearing through a number of Stephen Ambrose books about World War II, reading at the blistering pace that only she can manage (seriously... she's a phenom). So here we have a historical story of a real-life dangerous, dark, and uncertain time... and it's nowhere near as grim as A Dance with Dragons. That's because in the midst of the expected turmoil and bloodshed of war, what shines out are these moments of completely unexpected humanity and decency. Unexpected, yet far more numerous than the cynic would ever guess. These moments occur, as expected, between comrades and arms... but also between those who are enemies.

Tolkien got it. The darkest part of the Lord of the Rings books is Sam and Frodo's last agonizing trek across Mordor. Yet even in the bleakest of all places, in the heart of evil, we see these moments. It's in the deep bond between Sam and Frodo, or the way Sam's tiny prayers are answered in unexpected ways, the little synchronicities that allow them to keep going, or a glimpse of the stars in the sky that remain untouched by the turmoil below.

This is what I feel is needed where we are in A Dance with Dragons, and what we aren't getting.

But hey, I'm only halfway through. I'll let you know how it went when I get to the end.

Progress Report: 8/1/2011

Back from vacation!

And no, as generally happens on summer vacation, it was not a time for much writing. It was, however, time for a lot of reading, which is the primary fuel for writing, and something I haven't had anywhere near as much time to do as I'd like.

I returned home to find our local Borders is shutting down, which in turn led to the knowledge that they are all shutting down. Borders has thrown in the towel.

It is somewhat sad, though it was the predictable end game of their extended struggle with the changing economy; it was not a well-managed organization. Hadn't been for a long time. Still, for me it means that the nearest bookstore (apart from the used bookstores) is now about a 30-40 minute drive away. Not something I ever expected to see.

From a writer's perspective, this isn't all that big a deal in the big picture. Fact is that while Borders is going away, and many other bookstores with it, people still read as much as ever. It's only the delivery system that is changing. A good story is still a good story.

And I am not willing to say that the bookstore -- and, more significantly, the physical book -- are yet on the cusp of extinction. The landscape is shifting, and the age of the bookstore's primacy has certainly reached its end, but they still have a place and (I believe) will for some time to come.

As for the paper book itself... well, I don't own an e-reader yet, though it is assuredly inevitable that I will. My biggest barrier is the way the screen strobes every time you turn a page. I find it annoying -- for my wife, it's a sure road to a headache, and probably to having the thing chucked across the room in a fit of irritation. So for our own corner of the world, we are still purely paper-readers.

The world is moving on.