author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

This scene. This story. Ye Gods. Did I say I was generally good at writing dialog? Did I say it's usually easy and enjoyable? Bwa-ha. The universe is laughing at me and my dialog hubris. Because the dialog I'm writing for this scene, or at least this part of the scene, sounds like it belongs in a cheesy porno. You know what I'm talking about? When the only point of the contrived "plot" and stilted conversation is to get the leading actors to the bit with the sex in it? This is kind of like that, only without the sex.

I mean, yes, it's a seduction scene, but no, sex isn't going to actually happen. At least, not like the characters expect it to. Or maybe not at all. I haven't decided. That makes it so, so much worse. It's like someone took the actual sex out of a bad porno and left in the cheesy seduction talk. I think I'm going to go hide in a hole now.

The problem is, I have a checklist of Things That Must Happen, and I simply haven't figured out a natural way to get those Things to Happen. So every piece of blocking and every line of dialog pushes the characters around like a cattle prod and makes a dull, heavy thud when it lands.

Progress has been made this week, don't get me wrong. The problem of the scene feeling rushed came unstuck when Demi decided she had time to whip up a quick bearnaise sauce to go with the seared venison. And the idiot plot problem got a plausible solution when Andy broke his glass tumbler and sent shards all over the carpet. So maybe I can hope the problem of the seduction scene being all bad-porno-awkward will fix itself tomorrow.

It really is amazing what fixes itself when I just sit down and start typing--just trust the things that I already know to lead me to the solutions I need. I already knew that Andy was being morose and pissed off by turns, "pity me" with one sentence and "dammit" with the next; I also knew he needed to be the reason that Demi would lose track of a thing she really ought not to lose track of. So I let him unload. And in the course of his unloading, he rage-smashed his glass. Picking up after that mess--"No, no, it's OK, you sit tight and I'll clean this up"--turns out to be a really effective distraction.

I have this theory about short stories: Most logical problems in them come from needlessly multiplying entities. Short stories work best when they're tightly constructed, every element in them doing two or three jobs at once. It's amazing how many problems I end up solving by collapsing two characters into one, condensing two scenes into a single scene, or drawing extra connections between seemingly unrelated details. It's a good theory. The evidence seems to support it. The problem is, I usually don't remember it until after it's happened.

But, see, I remember it now. So maybe I can use it. Ask myself, "What details wound up in this scene arbitrarily, purely because I had to think something up and that's what I thought up? Can I make those details work harder at justifying their existence?"

Nothing comes to mind immediately. It may have to wait until I next sit down to write.

I don't like how long it's taking me to finish this story.

Well, I don't like how long it takes me to finish any story, but--one thing at a time.

I'm poking at this story at a rate of a half hour here, an hour there, measuring my progress by the clock rather than by completion, checking off the ticky-box for "Yes, I beat my head against a brick wall for the prescribed amount of time today" and getting very little for my pain. Something has got to change.

By the way, if this dissatisfaction in the face of my slow pace now sounds contradictory to my stoic resignation to said slow pace then, well, then, I contradict myself. I am vast; I contain multitudes. It is a human being's 100% prerogative to change one's mind, and I am changing mine about this.

Here's the thing that occurred to me: Practice makes permanent. You've heard that before, right? It's a thing my guitar teacher used to say back when I took lessons during my high school years. "Practice makes permanent. Not perfect. Permanent." Meaning, the outcome of your practice depends on what you practice, and how. You can erase your mistakes or you can entrench them. I fear that right now I am entrenching the frustrating and entirely unhelpful mistake of not finishing the damn story. I would very much like to practice finishing stories, please and thank you.

I'm going to lay it on the line here: This draft will be done, and ready to email to friends offering critiques, by the weekend. That's my goal, that's my intention, and that's my solemn promise that I'm making to myself. It's a scary promise to make, because what if I fail? But I don't think I will fail. It seems like an eminently reasonable goal. Hell, if I can't finish a draft in a week, what am I doing with my time? Seriously.

I'm not sure what that means on a day-to-day basis other than a lot of stress on Friday. But it'll come to me. Something'll come to me, anyway.

I hope it will be a useful and encouraging something.

One of the earliest pieces of advice a new writer often gets is, "Finish it first. Then edit." There's a good reason for that. It's a corrective for the writer who can't seem to finish anything. If you keep revising Chapter 1 and never get to Chapter 3, or if you've never actually reached THE END on anything longer than a 500-word flash story, then that advice is probably what you need to hear. Alternately: "Don't worry about getting it right, just get it written."

I have benefited from that advice. When I was just starting out with short stories, and then later when I was getting over my twenty-year delusion that "I just don't have novel-length ideas," it was exactly the right advice for me.

Today it was absolutely worthless.

Well. Not exactly. But today I finally admitted it wasn't the right strategy for where I'm at in "Caroline's Wake." I've been trying to use that strategy to get to the end of the current draft, but it's only getting me to the next potential answer to the question "Why is it crappy and can I make it stop?" This is not a bad place to get to! But I can't keep going forward from there. Instead, I have to stop and apply the newly discovered answer to the place where it goes. Then I have to micro-revise everything forward from the place where it went to the place where I left off. And then I can go forward, at least until I stumble upon the next anti-crappiness antidote I need to apply to some other bit I thought I was done with.

That probably didn't make sense. Trying again.

Here is how I would much rather create the current draft: "Thing [A] happens, which leads to thing [B], then embarrassingly terrible dialog [C] that no one will ever read if I can help it, and then other thing [D] happening, also more awful words spoken by two-dimensional characters [X] and [Y], and then the big thing happens." If I could do it that way, why then I would reach THE END. Also drafting and revision would be easily separable tasks, discrete items on a checklist I can check off. I like checking items off checklists.

But here instead is what's happening: "Thing [A] happens, which leads to thing [B], then embarrassingly terrible dia-- Hey! This dialog wouldn't be nearly as embarrassingly terrible if it could take into account that thing [A] happened in a slightly different way from how I've got it. Awesome! OK. So. Thing [A] happens in a slightly different way, which leads to thing [B] happening in a somewhat improved way, and the there's some less embarrassingly terrible dialog [C] that might someday be worth putting in front of an audience, and then other thing [D] happens but wait a moment, if I can also incorporate improvement [xyz] into thing [B]..."

That probably didn't make sense either, but I'm going to leave it there. In any case, I know what I mean. And what I mean is, it's a slow damn way to work--too bad right now it seems to be the only way to work.

Two inches forward, one inch back.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

On the plus side, what with all that lathering and rinsing, I can at least look forward to a clean draft. Get it? Ha-ha? Ha.

I have no critters to report on today. Oh, well, there was a bee in the house--clearly, the bees are still getting in; they have not been replaced with bats in the style of traditional cumulative narratives, e.g. "I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly." Alas, for bats are way cooler to encounter up close, and, rabies notwithstanding, far less scary. They don't have stingers. Barbed stingers that keep actively pumping venom into you after being detached from the dying bee. And randomly finding dead bees around the house? Not much better! I suffer from a low-grade constant background-noise-level fear that I will step barefoot on a bee that got into the house and died. I seriously got stung that way once. This was back when we lived in Oregon, more than a decade ago. The memory remains fresh.

That said, it's probably the bat (and attendant rabies concerns) that will get our homeowners' association management to take seriously my complaints that the roof isn't critter-tight. Bats are a Big Deal, while bees are seen as just a fact of life--despite the fact that more people die or require emergency care from bee stings in a year (thanks to allergies which John and I fortunately do not have) than have been known to contract rabies in the past twenty.

I have this to report: The story persists in not being easy. Remember how I said I was just going to have to slap some awful dialog on the page and see where it takes me? It is horrible dialog. It's cringingly bad. It makes me not want to look at it ever again. It makes me question myself: if I'm having such a hard time having a character believably say certain things and want to do other certain things, is it possible that maybe the plot I've come up with is just stupid? Generally I get good results when I trust my dreams and turn them into stories, but maybe I'm being too faithful in this case?

There's nothing for it but to keep splatting words on the page. As an act of faith, if need be. And to resist the temptation to go haring off after the latest story idea that showed up, accompanied by electricity! and excitement! and NRE!, in my daily freewriting exercises.

I always knew it was hard, this writing gig. But why does it have to be painful?

Argh.

"So I didn't go work at the farm today," I told my friend. "I'm going easy on my right ankle. Rolled the dang thing during practice yesterday."

"Oh, that sucks."

We were at First Monday Spin-in at Shuttles Spindles and Skeins, which is one of Boulder's two main yarn and fiber shops. I had formed great intentions this weekend to actually get some spinning done. But what with the ankle quasi-injury, I didn't want to pedal a spinning wheel. So I brought my current sock project to knit on.

I removed the ice so my friend could see how puffy and swollen it was. She agreed that, yes, it was definitely visible, especially when compared to my uninjured left ankle.

"Yeah, and what sucks worse? It was not the result of epic roller derby violence. It did not even involve skates. It was just... me, getting tired and klutzy toward the end of a set of sideways tire-jumps. As part of our off-skates fitness/endurance work-out. I just landed, and the ankle rolled over, and so did I."

"Well," my friend mused, "no one has to know. You could tell them you were saving a drowning puppy or a burning kitten."

"Right. I twisted my ankle jumping through tractor tires to save a burning kitten. Which our coach set on fire. To motivate us. Because that's how bad-ass roller derby really is."

...not that anyone would buy it. I mean, there is no chance that WFTDA insurance would cover that kind of exercise. Also, I'm pretty sure our coach's membership in the anti-kitten-burning coalition is up-to-date. Still, it sounds a lot more exciting and heroic than "I landed funny and fell down because I get clumsy when I'm tired," doesn't it? Watch. I'll demonstrate:

"What happened to you?"

"KITTENS. ON FIRE."

*awed silence*

There you go.

I'm finally beginning to peck away at the third scene of "Caroline's Wake." It is an entirely different order of difficult than the previous scene was. I believe that in a previous blog post I might have optimistically suggested that it would be easy? Ha! Ha-ha-ha. Ha-ha-ha-HA. It is not easy. It is not even within shouting distance of easy.

The problem is pacing and revelation. Also character development that feels natural but happens over a frightingly short space of text. This is the scene where We Find Out Important Things. The problem is, these Important Things are not things that the character revealing them is likely to reveal ever. So I have to make it believable that he'd blurt this shit out and expect the POV character to find it acceptable.

I do not consider "Well, he's really, really drunk" to be sufficient reason for him to spill the beans. They are very important beans. They are beans of devastation. They are the sort of beans you don't ever, ever cook for company.

On the other hand, one only has to page back through some Captain Awkward posts (with particular attention to this one) to realize that, out in the wide and very real world, there are men who will say absolutely ridiculous things, things that are multiple levels of wrong and bad and ew, and somehow expect these things to evoke appreciation and attraction or at the very least acceptance from the women they're trying to seduce. I can't count the number of times a man (or a woman!) has told me an appallingly sexist joke, and has then been flabbergasted and offended that, far from finding the joke funny, I experienced it as a rhetorically vicious attack upon my own self and person. Or men who unconsciously assume that the women they're trying to seduce have no wants or needs that fail to intersect conveniently with their (the men's) own desires. So I guess "He's really drunk, and he's also That Guy" can be enough of a reason, if executed correctly.

Except, if I didn't know better, there's plenty Captain Awkward examples I wouldn't find believable either.

Argh.

So this will be the week I pick at it here, and pick at it there, and freewrite on it, and make lists about it, and experiment with pacing, and just up and splat some truly awful dialog onto the page. And then chip away at the "marble" thus created until what's left is a believable and emotionally satisfying scene that climaxes the story.

Hello, this week. You are daunting. Nevertheless, you and I must come to terms. So let's get on with it.

And then there are the days when you do everything right and you still can't do anything right. You get up on time and off to a good start but you can't seem to take advantage of it because you just feel incurably tired and grumpy and incapable, and everything looks more worthwhile than the work at hand. And even roller derby scrimmage leaves you feeling dispirited and unhappy with yourself for all the things you could have done right but didn't.

I swear, I think that good days only galvanize that little saboteur in my head. "Oh, you think you're a worthwhile human being who can actually get things done? CHALLENGE ACCEPTED."

Well, little saboteur, you may have won round two, but this game will go to best out of three, and I'm on to you. You and me, pistols at dawn.

Or at least at 8:00 AM.

For the second time I've missed a Sword and Sorceress submissions deadline. It's already 11:30 as I begin writing this blog post. There is no way I'm finishing the story and preparing it for submission in under half an hour.

I just left it too late, is all.

For one thing, I left almost the entirety of the second scene and the rest of the story after for today. That was pretty dubious from the start. Then I woke up with a headache, and that headache refused to shift itself all day. I didn't really feel able to work on it until the headache finally faded around 7:30 or 8:00 tonight. That was what sealed my defeat.

Nevertheless, I sat down to work on it, thinking, "Hey, it's still possible! And even if it isn't, it'll be time well spent." And it was time well spent. I just wish I'd spent the time last Tuesday.

I can get really pathological about deadlines. The closer they get, the less time I have to finish, the more resistance builds up around the project, making it even harder to use what time remains. It's not that illogical, really--it's just that the project gets scarier the closer the deadline gets, so I panic, and in my panic I avoid the project really hard.

The good news is, I've finished the second scene, the one with all the moving pieces and bit-part characters. I probably need to go over it again and smear a light glaze of "other people in the room" over the top of it, just to more convincingly texture it as a crowded party setting. And I probably need to massage the pacing a little, give more of an impression of the hours passing until the scene culminates at drunk-o-clock. (These are more reasons why a story shouldn't still be in incomplete rough draft form on deadline day.) But the basic building blocks of the scene are all there, and it reads fairly smoothly.

Getting it even this far is an accomplishment that did not at all look feasible last night or this morning. It's amazing how suddenly the writing looks possible when you just sit down and make yourself start writing, isn't it? *shakes head, sighs, feels stupid*

The next scene is easy. There are only two people in it, and despite it representing the emotional climax of the piece, the actual action is minimal. The real challenge is in making the dialogue natural and not clunky, given the job it's going to have to do, the things that have to get said and reacted to. But since dialogue is typically something I find easy and fun, it'll probably be OK.

I should not find myself avoiding it, is what I'm saying.

So I can't submit it to Sword and Sorceress 29. But I can think of several places it might be a good fit for, and I'm looking forward to sending it to one of them.

Meanwhile, I get a weekend.

Argh, damn and blast. I temporarily delayed work on other things in order to enter Shock Totem's flash fiction contest for May. They released the photo prompt on May 2 and we had until midnight the night of May 7 to submit an entry. Well, I procrastinated all week, and I procrastinated all day, and I finally finished it at 10:15 or so here in Mountain time--

--and the dang contest closed at midnight Eastern time. Argh.

So here I have this creepy horror story, about 1,000 words in length, which very, very obviously stars this creepy wasp nest statue thing as its featured creature... what the crud am I supposed to do with it?

Argh.

I supposed I'd be asking this same question if I'd managed to enter on time but didn't end up winning.

Usually when I write to a specific prompt--say, for an open anthology call or a themed magazine issue--I wait a few months after it's rejected to try to send it elsewhere. And I usually massage it a bit to disguise its origins and/or make it more accessible to the world outside of the original market's theme.

But this one, this one here, the contest said that the prompt had to be so integral to the story that it would simply fall apart without it. And so it is. And it's such a recognizable prompt, what with the photo going viral and all.

Arrrrrrgh.

Here's to better luck and more productive work tomorrow. On stories viable in more than one market.

Today I rediscovered Ku Cha as a place to get writing done. Ku Cha bills itself as a traditional Chinese tea house. While I have never set foot in a tea house in China and cannot therefore verify this claim, I'm reasonably convinced. They have oodles of teas in all the colors teas can be. Then they flavor some of them with stuff, and there are even more colors. And scents. And flavors.

Generally I go there for the greens, oolongs and pu-erhs. I go there to buy them by the ounce, or I go there to enjoy multiple steepings of them in Ku Cha's elegant, quiet, and entirely wi-fi-less tea room where I can write the afternoon away without interruption or distraction.

As y'all know, I've been a member of Fuse Coworking for some time now, and a full-time all-hours-access member since late October. I love the community, and I'm excited about what they are doing with the historic Riverside building. But I find I don't actually work there more than once or twice a week, so it's not really economical for me to carry a full-time membership--especially considering that, if all goes well, we'll be looking at paying double our current mortgage payment each month. Thus, as of May first I've demoted myself from full-time member to pay-as-you-go drop-in.

There are several reasons I haven't been working there more often. Some days I'm bouncing between writing work and household tasks all day, so I need to stay home. Some days I'm not able to get my work started on time, whether because certain drop-dead tasks claimed my attention or because I just slept late; on those days I don't want to delay things even further with transit, parking, and "settling in." If I go by car, parking is expensive. If I go by bike or bus, I'd better count on good weather--and extra time in transit. And then there's Wednesday and Thursday, when I have roller derby in the evenings and volunteer reading in the mornings. Sometimes going to the coworking office means less time actually working.

And then there's the painful reason I don't really know how to talk about with anyone, or even whether I should: I can't always get work done there at all.

It's sad! I feel like a traitor even admitting it. But coworking communities each have their own "flavor," their own styles of interactions, their own particular atmospheres... and the Fuse atmosphere is too often too noisy for me. Not always! Not every minute of the day. But any minute of the day could be a problem. Sure, there are specific times designated as "social hours," and I don't expect peace and quiet during those. I join in on the beer and chit-chat happily. But I'd have thought that, this being a co-working office, the default would be quiet time. Turns out, it just ain't so. There is no protected quiet time or quiet space. Rather, the atmosphere is one of jocular camaraderie, where everyone's encouraged to give voice to whatever's on their mind, at any time, in any corner of the Commons or the cafe, at any volume that feels natural. Or, at least, so it has seemed to me.

It is an exceedingly extroverted atmosphere. And I am a vehement introvert with the occasional capacity for out-and-out misanthropy. Basically, we're talking about a personality clash. Nobody's fault! No one's to blame! It's just an unfortunate thing that happens.

For some people, the way Fuse works is probably ideal for them. Most people I see there seem to enjoy it. They seem to thrive where there's always someone nearby to bounce an idea off of or just to strike up small chat with, and where their impulses aren't constrained by "quiet time" rules. But me, though--oh, how I fervently, desperately wish for more formal constraint! Something along the lines of "People are working hard all around you, so please take your phone calls and conversations outside where you won't disrupt them." But for the kind of co-worker for whom Fuse is absolutely perfect, that would no doubt be stifling.

I respect that. And that's why I haven't really said much about it--I recognize that Fuse's atmosphere has evolved out of deliberate choices in its community. And if at any moment I might be rendered absolutely incapable of writing, all my verbal circuits completely overwhelmed by a loud conversation less than ten feet away, it's not because anyone's doing anything wrong. It's just that my needs are a mismatch for the nature of the space.

So I'm now a drop-in member, paying by the day instead of by the month. That means I can reserve Fuse for those days when my workload isn't incompatible with an unpredictably raucous atmosphere, or for when they have special community events I wouldn't mind interrupting my work for. And that means I'll be a much happier person to be around when I am there, so I won't be a drag on the community. Hooray for not being a drag on the community!

Today was the kind of day when I knew I'd need quiet. But at the same time, I wanted to get out of the house. For the first time in several months, I had no disincentive against going somewhere other than Fuse to work.

The reasoning behind the disincentive goes like this: "Well, I could go to the tea house, I could go to a cafe. But then I'd be spending extra money there only to waste the money I already paid for a full membership at Fuse."

Today's reasoning went instead like this: "I need to work on three different short stories, one of which is in heavy revision mode. If I go to Fuse, and a spontaneous karaoke party breaks out in the Commons, I will not get anything done and that will make me unhappy. Instead, I could go to Ku Cha, where there's an aggressive 'no cell phones or loud conversations' policy in the tea room. Also a peaceful fountain, like I used to enjoy when Tea Spot was open. (Ah, Tea Spot.) Ooh! And I won't need to bring my own tea ware to keep myself in quality tea all day long. And I'm biking; carrying my tea ware around on my bike is awkward. That settles it! Ku Cha today, Fuse on Friday. And I'll make sure I have things to do Friday that can get done during spontaneous karaoke parties. Win-win!"

My reasoning is wordy like that.

The tea was Bi Luo Chun. Ku Cha was featuring it at the free tasting station. I had some and liked it well enough to want more. I spent about two hours there. I spent a little time freewriting on "Caroline's Wake" and on the prompt for Shock Totem's flash fiction contest. Then I threw myself against the mud wall that is the "Impact of Snowflakes" rewrite. Mud walls, unlike brick walls, do move, but it takes a ridiculous amount of effort to budge them even an inch. But that's all right; I was able to make that effort, sipping my tea and listening to the fountain.

And by the time the noisy pair of college dudes came in, laughing, bouncing on the cushions, and striking sudden poses, well, I was mostly done by then anyway.

Turns out, no place that has other people in it is perfect. Who'd have thought?