author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

So John's all GenConning right now, which means it's just me and the cats in the house. Boring. Quiet. A little lonely. But, you know, keeping busy. For instance, right after I got home from bringing him to the airport, I went back to the spinning wheel.

I got the wheel a few years ago when I finally succumbed to the temptation of Shuttles's store-wide 10% while-in-class discount. I was taking the Beginning Wheel-Spinning class at the time, which was super cool in that every student got to actually borrow a wheel for the whole week between classes. This gave me a chance to fall head over heels in love with the Schact double treadle. (My Gods, I'd forgotten how expensive it was. Damn good thing we were a two-income household at the time.) So I succumbed, and the wheel came home with me for good, along with a bottle of oil, a threading hook, and a Lazy Kate.

What also came home with me was a whole big mess of white wool, which it had been my homework to wash and card, and a smaller mess of variegated blue wool, which we'd all dyed together on the last day of class. And I am here to tell you that I still haven't spun it all. I started, and I also started in on some two-ply fingering weight yarn made from "The Beast" (that gray-brown-white wool of no particular lineage which Shuttles sells for something like $.49/lb) which I am proud to say has made it into two thirds of a lacy sock. But after a few months I kinda slacked off.

So now I'm trying to finish off these unfinished projects. Today I carded and spun a whole bunch of the blue stuff, and once it's all spun up I'll ply it together with the white stuff, which will look super goofy and'll probably make a nice pom-pom hat someday. After that, I'll have to figure out how to deal with the whole heel/toe reinforcement thread issue so I can finish the sock. Maybe I'll just skip it. Anyway, I have to finish knitting the darn thing so I can finally get The Beast off my fourth bobbin.

Right. So, lots of time spinning. And spinning is a mindless activity. Keep the treadles moving in a nice, even rhythm; keep the fiber coming in nice, consistent draws. Stop now and again to move the thread onto the next hook of the flyer. Mindless. You would think, with all that mind freed up, a writer could totally use that time to brainstorm her novel.

You'd think so, wouldn't you?

I don't know, maybe it's like meditation. You have to practice that kind of thing. As it is, when I knit or crochet I think math, and when I spin, I think not at all. Well, maybe I think, "Ugh, this blue dye is getting all over my fingers," or, "Yuck, all this lanolin is starting to gross me out." Or, "Damn, this yarn is over-spun. Good thing I'm going to ply it."

But that's all. I try to start myself thinking things like, "OK, here it is--Amy and Todd having a bit of a heart-to-heart, and Russ comes in and starts being an ass. How's that dialogue going to go?" And then I stop thinking. It's like I'm trying to turn the ignition and get the car to go, but all I'm hearing is whirr-whirr-whirr and no vroom. I'm gonna have to push this sucker uphill, 'cause that engine just ain't starting.

And yet, I put off writing and hit the spinning wheel, or the knitting needles, telling myself I'll think about the story while I'm fibercrafting. I'm priming the engine, I'm brainstorming, I'm getting ready to write.

Really!

Maybe it just has to be learned.

At Conor's again. The Indulgers are playing tonight. John just arrived. Wednesday I had a date with my writing; tonight I have a date with my husband. Woot! More later...

OK, it's later. The band have finally started. We probably won't stay for the full set, having been here for at least an hour already, but it's been fun thus far. They're sounding good, but unfortunately the balance isn't quite surviving the transition to the back room. We're mostly getting the bass and the fiddle.

Not much to say about the novel today, beyond that the current scene advanced some 400 words, technically, and by leaps and bounds, conceptually. Sometimes you just need to spend a few minutes with the cats, a lint brush, and an itty bitty spindle to spin the cats' nondescript tabby fur on, to make the next few pages of dialogue come clear in your mind.

Hey look! They just dimmed the lights. I'm bliiiiiind!

(Half the drunken forum posting on the Internet, I'm convinced, comes of installing wiFi in Irish pubs. I mean, what were they thinking? Oh, don't look at me--I've barely half-drunk my own pint. I'm just doing my best impression of drunken posting. I live to amuse.)

There is a stained glass window in the door behind the bar at Conor O'Neill's in Boulder. It has writing on it, and that writing says,

"Drink is the curse of the land. It makes you fight with your neighber, it makes you shoot at your landlord, and it makes you miss him."

There's a band playing at Conor's, too. Big Paddy. They've been mainly playing rocked up old traditionals--"Star of the County Down", "The Drunken Sailor", and, what the hell, the odd U2 cover. Me and my laptop are tucked away in a walled-in nook around the corner from the bar, but it's still pretty darn loud in here. And it's only 11:00 PM yet. They could keep going until 1:00 with fairly little effort.

Today, I've taken my writing out on a date.

It's something Holly Lisle recommends doing when the fun of writing has disappeared and one doesn't know where to find it. Except of course she doesn't mean it literally, taking your writing out to dinner and a movie. What the hell. I felt like I had to get out of the house, so I took my writing out for a beer and some rockin' music.

Haven't done a lot. Mostly just reread Chapter 7, did some line-editing, and fixed the beginning to better match where the chapter has gone since then. Frankly, I'm getting worried about the time frame. At this rate, I'm not going to have this novel or Sara Peltierdone any time soon, much less by October 1.

But tonight? Not worrying much. The duo on the stage have started in on "Nancy Whisky" and the Smithwick Ale is pretty darn good, and I'm in a private little booth with just me and my writing having a romantic evening out. Tomorrow I don't have to worry, either, because tomorrow is a full day at home in which I can devote a lot of time to both novels if I so choose, and where's the need to worry when the worry's solution is in progress?

Tonight has been lots of fun, Writing. I think we should spend the whole day together, tomorrow. In our pajamas, painting each other's toenails. C'mon! It'll be fun.

(I think the metaphor ship has drifted.)

Hit the first big need for a scene restructure tonight. Apparently, back in November 2002, three ideas hit me all at once, and I tried to make them all happen almost simultaneously. I'm thinking they need to be put in sequence. That'll draw out the main story arc a little longer, giving me more time to show gradual character change.

In less abstract terms: This book is about the price of getting what you wish for. It's about a high school freshman named Sasha--unattractive, un-admired, unaccepted--who wants to be pretty and brave and loved. It's about what happens when she gets her hands on a magic notebook, one that makes everything she writes come true.

She writes three changes in the chapters I marked up tonight. She writes herself a meeting with the boy she has a crush on; she writes herself a minor victory over her most feared bullies; and she writes herself a kiss. I'd managed to smoosh the first two up into one cycle of write-and-come-true, and the third sort of clumsily evolved from there. They'll turn into three separate cycles, each showing her confidence growing and the pace of change accelerating, magic spells having effects more and more blatant as the story progresses.

I also found a minor story arc hiding in a conversation between Sasha and her older sister. Not quite sure how to pull it off, but I can sort of see the shape of it from here. See, this is why the re-type doesn't happen until after one complete read-through.

Incidentally, I highly recommend doing the markup in the bath. Carolyn See recommends a glass of wine, to combat the writer's natural tendency to tense up when confronted with her own writing; I recommend a long hot soak. It may be time to invest in a bathtub desk.

It's such a nice surprise when you say, "I'm tired, I'm excrutiatingly tired, but fine, fifteen minutes of writing before I go to sleep," and then you start writing, and when you stop it's been, in fact, forty-five minutes.

Now if only this kind of multiplication worked on a larger scale. Say, nine hours when I meant to do three.

I have managed to take an inadvertent couple of days off. I am not sure at all of the feasiblity of getting 25 more hours in by the Greeley meetup Jan 5, or even - stopping to think about all that's wrong with this draft of the novel - finishing a full cycle of revision by that date.

Gonna keep trying, of course, which will make the next four days rather demanding. Part of my problem is how easy it is to just procrastinate starting. Starting at all. Stopping whatever else I'm doing and just putting in one more hour...

Oh, just one more game of Atomica. Just one more try at Katamari Damacy "Make Star 6." Oh, just another few pages of this forum thread that's making my eyes glaze over.

There are even productive procrastination tasks, like working on the FAQ for the Neverending Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Story Engine, which has reopened for general use this morning. Or putting in a few more hours' work on my latest Little Bull Creations assignment, which is much easier to push myself on given that the deadline has teeth and the pay is guaranteed (neither of which can be said about writing one's first saleable novel).

Anything other than writing!

So, I've got a new strategy in my constant war against apathy. The thing causing me the most angst - in this case writing - will be the thing I do last thing at night and first thing in the morning. And I shall be ruthless. "Last thing" means no reading myself to sleep, however the omission pains me. "First thing" means not even getting out of bed. Just roll over, grab the laptop and open the document.

I've been rereading Zilpha Keatley Snyder's Black And Blue Magic, which I'd been threatening to do ever since NaNoWriMo 2004 began, and it's been really a useful reminder that my YA unicorn novel really isn't as much like Snyder's lovely book as I'd thought. For one thing, Harry Houdini Marcos is twelve, and my main character is sixteen, and that difference isn't just a number. It explains a lot about why my plot got a bit more sexual than I realized it was going to, for one thing. But. I am not allowed to finish rereading it until I've finished rewriting the mermaid novel. Sorry, me. Consider the resulting discomfort mere withdrawel pangs. Take the lumps and move on.

At times like this, I sometimes find this thought helpful: "What will you regret more in 10 years - not having slept more/reread that book one more time/caught up on reading newsgroups, or not having finished writing your novel?" And then sometimes I find it as useful as a clinically depressed patient finds the advice, "Just think happy thoughts!"

At those times, I find it's best to pretend that it's actually one of the other times.

Spent an hour running down my list of accuracy/consistency concerns and looking up stuff. I have a whole bunch of Firefox tabs open now. Did you know...

• ...that it's the "Sea-Tac" International Airport but it's the town of SeaTac? Check the hyphens. *sigh* Consistency is all I ask!
• ...That the bar "Flowers" in the Seattle U. District has the same street number as the house in which I lived during my college years (and in which I'm locating my main characters)?
• ...that it's bloody impossible to find a straight transcript of a commercial airline's flight attendants' "safety features" speech? I'm reduced to looking up as many different versions of the "airplane humor" email forward as I can find, and inferring the original from the overlap.
• ...that a typical United Airlines flight from Seattle to Denver utilizes a Boeing 757-200? I have no idea what Frontier use, because Frontier won't tell you until, presumably, after you've entered credit card information.
• ...that a Boeing 757-200's Vne (never exceed) speed is expressed, not in knots, but in a maximum percentage of the speed of sound?
• ...that 2001 was a truly, truly sad year for pop hits?
• ...that, because I know you just can't get enough of this stuff, the tooth of extinct Carcharocles megalodon (freakin' huge prehistoric shark dino thing) was three to four inches long?

Spent another hour doodling out a timeline. Some of the best novel-plotting advice I have ever run across can be found here. Yes, that's a link to Teresa Neilsen Hayden's Making Light blog; specifically, to commentary posted by Jo Walton to an open thread. Some of the best literary conversations you've ever read go on there. Anyway, the point is, go there, read what Jo has to say about finding plot, and then page down for more goodness about writing novels and avoiding scammy publish-on-demand outfits.

If you do, you eventually get to my real point, which is, timelines. Scott Lynch says, "Don't forget that the characters off-stage should be taking action simultaneously with the characters currently on the page." Damn good advice, that. Secondary characters are not just loafing around backstage waiting for their cues. They're pursuing engineering degrees and helping mom to raise a passel of younger siblings and teaching this year's youngsters the laws of the sea and terrorizing the Puget Sound.

Not all at once, of course. Timelines! Time is what keeps events from happening simultaneously and getting all muddled up thereby.

Revelation of the evening: I have no idea what the main character's mother is doing in this timeline. She exists mainly as a menacing motivation factor in the main character's flashback allowance. I guess maybe she is waiting for her cue.

Damn. I have a lot less novel written than I thought I had.

The original seed of this novel came from wanting to turn The Little Mermaid around. I wanted to write a story in which after the mermaid rescues the prince, instead of the mermaid following him onto the land, the prince goes into the water after her. (I tried the idea out on my husband, who promptly said, "He'd drown," forgetting, I suppose, that we're talking about fairy tale fantasy where magic isn't against the rules.)

Of course, what made this idea take over NaNoWriMo 2003, shoving the unicorn girl story aside to wait another year, was giving in to the prurient adolescent impulse (and, really, are we ever too old for prurient adolescent impulses?) to sexualize the first encounter of the two main characters, resulting in a whole bunch of implications that wouldn't get out of my head. But that's not the point.

The point is, I did want to incorporate the key elements of Hans Christian Anderson's fairy tale into this story. Somewhere during the painful rush for fifty thousand words I lost sight of that goal, and now, coming back to the manuscript, I find myself wondering whether attempting it now would result in too much artificiality.

But there are some places where I can see that I tried to inject the fairy tale into the story. The meeting with the Great White is reminiscent of the Little Mermaid's interview with the sea witch, certainly. And the Inanna/Ereskegal motif isn't completely out of place - Inanna's casting aside of her many acoutrements at the gates of the underworld can be seen in Anderson's mermaid's sacrifice of her tail, her voice, and the ability to move without pain.

And there's a point at which, in my story, the mermaids refer to the main character as "silent stalker" - they cannot hear his movements the way they can hear each other's.

Obviously I wanted to oblige my main character, like the fairy tale mermaid, to give up his voice. But I guess I forgot about that along the way. Or maybe I decided it was too much trouble to deal with in 30 days. In any case, there are pages and pages of long conversations between the MC and his seagoing lover. Long, pointless conversations. Word-padding conversations.

It occurs to me that if I make him mute, that magically removes a whooooole bunch of awful purple dialogue from the manuscript. And that would be a very good thing.

Plus it's a lot more plausible to call him "silent" because he can't speak (no air vibrating against his vocal chords, duh) than it would be to somehow posit that his swimming makes no sound. He pushes the water about just as much as any mermaid does, so it would be silly to say they couldn't hear him moving.

And - oh boy, bonus! - the MC's inability to comminicate with the very person who could give him all the answers he needs would give me a brand new sub-conflict to play with. I don't know if it'll be as integral to the final outcome as the Little Mermaid's silence was in Anderson's fairy tale (because she couldn't speak, she couldn't win the prince's love, and so she lost her life), but it's certainly got legs.

Fins, I mean. It's got fins.

My character is avoiding a phone call right now. Accordingly, I am avoiding writing about it.

My word count is depressing me. 3,130 is not quite the total recommended for the end of Day Two - and here it is November 7th! I hope to catch up this weekend. Heck, I hope to catch up on a lot of things this weekend: studying for my pilot license exam, inputting data for Little Bull Creations's current client, balancing up the household accounts about a week late...

See what I mean? A butt-load of crap to do!

But last night I went to my Magic Secret Hideyhole to write... and it worked. Granted, I only got about 200 words written, and a mere 50 or so of them were actually after the end of the previous session's output - but that was only because I was tired. It felt good. Writing in the dark, in a place only I can go - it felt good.

I've always loved attic spaces. It's something I'll probably never outgrow: the otherworld privacy, the dark place that brings Let's Pretend just one step closer to reality, the place that is not a place in a time outside of time... And the attic was always forbidden to me as a child, for fear I'd impale myself on a roof nail or clumsily crush a family treasure. That sense of taboo has not lessened as I have gotten older. At 27 I still feel like I'm tresspassing, and it adds to the attraction.

Maybe my love of early mornings is related. Both attics and the pre-dawn hours feel intensely private - places and times that belong to only me. And in those space/times I can get a lot of gloriously selfish work done.

So if I don't get around to writing that phone call beforehand, I'm sure I can get it written tonight in my Magic Secret Hideyhole. As Stephen King says, we all need a place on which we can close the door, in which we can go privately insane.

(Well, maybe he didn't put it exactly that way.)