author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

Woke up this morning on a train. The earbuds from my husband's broken iPod were piping music into my ears. Breakfast was out of a lunch sack rather than my kitchen. My writing studio was a table at the back of the snack/lounge car. Otherwise, the routine was about the same: Wake up at 6:00 AM when the computer starts playing the Blue Man Group: Audio CD; snooze through until the playlist switches into Exchange: More Than Words; dawdle over breakfast; acquire caffeine; and finally, once I get around to it, write.

This morning we finish up in the approximate location mentioned in this blog entry's title. We have our first transformation scene. Hurrah! Diane has discovered the magical properties of Babba's talisman by way of getting turned into a unicorn. Yay! Mystical wondrous magic girl scene!

That means it's time for Purple Prose Avoidance 101.

Not, you understand, that I'm qualified to give a lesson in Purple Prose Avoidance. But since the hope is that the second draft will be less maudlin than the first, I can at least list some of the worst offenders that got nixed this time around. And here they are, in no particular order:

• Single-sentence paragraphs.
• Single-sentence paragraphs that aren't complete sentences.
• Single-sentence paragraphs that start with "And then."
• Overuse of words such as "forth," "very," and "wonder."
• Overuse of parallel structures.
• Overuse of, well, words.

*shudder*

All better now? Maybe. Some better now, for sure. Meanwhile, it's now 3:30 PM CST and I'm at a deli in Chicago around the corner from Union Station. Angelo's, at the corner of Jefferson and Adams. They gots the wi-fi. My train out of Chicago leaves at 8:00, so I may be here awhile.

Because I slack off on weekends. You know, like the rest of that portion of the human race that lives in this country. And given that I'm going out clubbin' tonight, it's quite likely that 6:00 AM and I will not be seeing each other tomorrow, either.

And I can go out clubbing. I did my homework. I met my deadline. Whoo-chaaaaa.

(Dear [any friends who have emailed me lately and are waiting for a reply]: Thank you for your patience. Now that I am All Done, a response will be forthcoming. Tomorrow, most likely.)

My husband and I had this conversation about work for hire assignments. On the one hand, they come with deadlines. Deadlines are good; they make writing actually happen. If the writing doesn't actually happen at a rate of 1,000 words per day over 15 days, it happens in dribs and drabs until one painful 8,000 word all-nighter at the eleventh hour. But it gets done.

(For the record, this project--which will be on sale here sometime soon--was somewhere in between the two scheduling styles mentioned above.)

On the other hand, they interfere with my Raisin Due Otter, which is to say, writing fiction. I haven't finished a new short story in, like, ages. And that's despite requests. And I really, really, really ought to be getting my VP application together, and revising a couple battle-scarred short stories so they can return to the front ranks of the slush wars, and, y'know, stuff. But no, I have instead been working on non-fiction/journalism stuff to which I don't even get to keep the copyright.

On the third hand (yes, I'm a mutant today), two of these projects right at the beginning of the year means that my business account has seen a profit. Writing paid for my cell phone coverage. That's cool, right?

In any case, I have marked myself as Unavailable To New Projects Of This Nature until March 3rd, the date on which--train schedules permitting--I return from a trip home. (For Mardi Gras. Quite possibly the most important, historical Mardi Gras since they brought in the megafloats and moved out of the Quarter. Maybe even since the first one. I don't think y'all need me to tell y'all why.) Until then, I am not only on Mardi Gras vacation; I'm on a writing vacation.

'Cause that's another good thing about WFH stuff. Yesterday, I was revising The Golden Bridle as a break from working on the WFH project. I was working on a novel for fun. Wow. Nothing like blowing a little perspective into my life, huh? So, yeah. Fiction is fun, and now I get like three weeks to do nothing but fiction. Whoot!

And then, when I get back to Denver, I'll probably pick up another "not so fun but it pays the bills" project. If not of the same type, then of another. Because all those good reasons above really do outweigh the bad, and really, with 24 hours in a day, exactly how much fiction not getting done can I really blame on two hours spent filling in the blanks on an editor-provided outline? I mean, really. Most people work eight hours a day five days a week. Surely I can work a bit more than two or three.

'Cause I'll tell you one thing. SkillJam.com ain't paying the bills or giving me much job fulfillment, and that's the truth.

I'm all clever. I have turned my laptop into an alarm clock. In fact, it is a writing alarm clock (an actually writing alarm clock) because in addition to "Time to wake up!", it says, "Time to write! Show up at the page, you lazy bum!"

Premise The First: Once I associate a given handful of environmental elements with writing--a lit candle, the Blue Man Group: Audio CD--those elements will cause me to get into a writing mood.

My computer does this every morning at 6:00 AM so long as I have left the computer in "Standby" mode.

Premise The Second: If I write at the same time every day, the practice will form a habit. Also, designating that hour as writing time protects a place for writing in my day.

So here's how this works: First, create a playlist in Windows Media Player. Next, create a scheduled task in Windows. The Scheduled Tasks Wizard will prompt you for program to run (Windows Media Player) and a time (Daily, 6:00 AM). When you finish with the Wizard, check the box that says something like "take me to this task's advanced properties" and tweak it. Under the "Task" tab, append the name of your playlist to the end of the command in the "Run" field. (Mine looks like this: C:\PROGRA~1\WINDOW~2\wmplayer.exe /prefetch:1 "c:\documents and settings\niki\my documents\my music\Instrumentals To Write By.wpl".) Check "Enabled" and uncheck "Run only if logged on." Under the "Settings" tab, check "wake computer to run this task." There you go. Put the computer on Standby last thing before bed, make sure the volume is up, and rest easy. If you're using a desktop, you might even be able to leave the computer on Hibernate, and it'll magically wake up anyway. Something to do with the BIOS. Most laptops don't have this capability, unfortunately.

(Note that in Windows XP, scheduled tasks only run if you provide a username and password. If you don't want a password on your login, then create a new profile, give it a password, and run the scheduled tasks under its aegis. If you don't want to do that, I mean if you really want only one profile on the computer which logs itself on automatically, here's what you do. Create a password for that proile. Then, Start->Run->"control userpasswords2". Uncheck "Users must enter a name and password to use this computer." Select your profile from the list. Hit "OK". You will be prompted to enter your new password. From this point on, your computer will log on automatically even though there's a password on the profile.)

This is how I got an hour done on the novel even before leaving the house for my 8:00 AM volunteer reading session. Ta-da!

Premise the Third: If I do some writing first thing in the morning, I won't resent all the rest of the things I have to do with my day. You know, for taking up time I could of used writing. 'Cause, see, I already wrote some for the day.

You have no idea how good that felt. Best damn sunrise I'd seen all winter.

Note to self: Really, let's make a habit of this.

All right.

It took me the full hour to get there, but the read-through is now done.

The end is pretty complete. It's got themes and the ends of plot arcs and characters having changed for the better and everything. It has bits that make my eyes prickle up and my pen right "Yes!!!"

Now, all I have to do is provide the rest of the story that leads up to it.

Yeesh.

Tomorrow's session will have to begin with taking notes on my notes, so I can figure out what to do first. Daunting task. Maybe it'll be easiest to start with writing whole new scenes from scratch that my notes indicate I need to write. Or maybe just take the notes one item at a time, taking each item through the whole novel as needed. One thing I know: I can't just turn back to page one and start a type in. I need to turn the novel into its component building blocks and shuffle the reshaped blocks around.

Yes, I know this entry sounds a lot like yesterday's. That's because I'm still terrified.

*Sigh*

Meanwhile, I'm boring people to death over at Metroblogging Denver. Come look! It's fun!

As you may or may not know, I like to get my Tarot deck involved in my writing. Sometimes I'm determined to create new material, but I have no idea what to write about. Sometimes I'm just stuck on a story. In any case, I shuffle a few times, draw, and start babbling onto a blank page about what I see.

Typically I use the Vertigo Tarot. At times I'll cross-reference the Rider-Waite deck, which I keep in numeric order specifically for that reason, but it's Dave McKean's imagery that speaks to me much more than Pamela Colman-Smiths; and even if I get a little impatient with Rachel Pollack's interpretations from time to time, I find them more comfortably Jungian and modern than Waite's.

Which is all to explain why I got the impression that my Tarot deck was being singularly uncooperative the other day.

In the "Trilobite" story, Selby Oldham is a psychometrist. That's someone who gets psychic impressions from touching objects. You've probably seen a TV drama or read a book concerning a psychic working for the police, right? He or she touches the murder weapon and objects at the scene of the crime and gets flashes of how the killing occurred? Right. Well, Selby's like that, only less of the crime forensics and more stuff like paleontology and anthropology. Fossils and ancient artefacts.

She has, by the time of the story, lost hope in her dreams. She's living an eventless, unfulfilling life, working as a curator's assistant in a natural science museum. By the end of the story, she will have found inspiration to pursue her ambitions again. Only trouble was, I had no idea what her ambitions actually were.

So, hello Tarot! Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle, "What are Selby's dreams?" shuffleshuffle, shuffle. And I drew...

The Heirophant. Reversed.

Again, recall, Vertigo Tarot. Which DC/Vertigo character did they choose for that particular Major Arcana card? That's right. Dream of the Endless. The Sandman. Morpheus His-Own-Self. And I drew him reversed.

That's right. In answer to "What dreams did Selby give up on?" I got, "She gave up on her dreams."

Imagine you asked your friend, "What plans do you have for Friday?" and your friend said, "Yeah, Friday..." and wandered off. That's about the impression I got.

And this ain't the first time it's said that kind of thing to me, either.

Of course, consulting the Rider-Waite's more traditional Heirophant (not to mention consulting a friend who actually supplements her paycheck by reading Tarot during the summertime) helped put things in perspective. "Oh, yes, tradition and passed-down wisdom and heirarchy and such. Maybe Selby was trying to climb a corporate ladder, or pursue a traditional education at a university, and it wasn't right for her for some reason." But still.

There was once a time when I stopped doing my freewriting exercises for a long time. When I started up again months later, and I used the Tarot deck as a prompt, shuffling just as thoroughly as ever, it gave me the same darn card it had given me all that time ago. Ten of Pentacles, it was: it shows a face with ten pentacle-coins stacked neatly atop his head; the tenth coin completely blocks his mouth. (I suppose one could read that the face is actually speaking the pentacle, but I see it stopping up his mouth and silencing him. Especially considering I drew it reversed.) It's a card I personally associate with the kind of writer's block that comes of too much intellectualizing and perfection-seeking.

"You know, that thing you were working on last year? Right. Well, you never quite finished dealing with that."

Yeah. I know. Smart-ass cards.

Hey-checkitout-lookover-here. Someone else made some resolutions for the coming year. And they're pretty good. A goodly helping of writerly resolutionnessage, right over there, along with a lovely dollop of total anal-retentive "We Love Outlines" structural organization. Man after my own heart, that.

Not that I can totally adopt any particular one of those resolutions, of course. Everyone's got different goals. But the important thing is to make one's own goals concrete, solid enough to throw numbers into it and wrap it up in an outline. I'd do the same at the moment, only it's late at night and I'm totally chicken. Were I well-rested and more gutsy at the moment, I'd probably say something like "1,000 words of fresh new prose or 2 hours of revision every day, 5 days a week, just like Carolyn See says to do; also, toss three old stories back in the slush this month and at least one new one next month. And then there's the two novels I'm editing...."

The problem with me when I'm gutsy is, I'm stupid. Who the hell can do all that crap on top of 15,000 contracted words of researched and interviewed nonfiction?

It's something to try for, sure. Just not something to beat myself over the head with.

I do know I can't do 3 critiques a week. More like one and a half, to take care of both Critters and my local writing class. But I can at least resolve to do that much. The nice thing about manuscript critiquing is, every manuscript I read puts me in mind of manuscripts of my own. Usually the sort that are languishing at the back of a drawer, or maybe a third of the way down the directory file listing when sorted by date in descending order. I should probably add "Putting Down Roots" to my list of stories that ought to go back into the slush, for instance. And "Somewhere Else Red And Green."

(Caution: Short story titles subject to change without notice.)

A new New Year's resolution for me: I shall be prolific. Primarily in my finishing of work and submitting of work, and secondarily in my beginning of new work, I shall be prolific. I shall totally be able to apply that adjective, "prolific," unto myself.

With a straight face, even.

No, really!

Nearly got to sleep on time last night, for a change. Took the Ancient Decrepit Laptop to bed with me and fell asleep around 9:45 rereading the first Amy's POV chapter. Woke up again not much later, though. Tried to really get to sleep but no go. Started working on the novel again around 2:30 AM instead.

I think I'm turning nocturnal.

I'm not sure how useful it was that, as a result of reading too many reviews of the Narnia movie and critiques of the books, as I fought to stay asleep between 10 and Midnight last night, I drifted in and out of dreams that conflated Amy and Todd from The Drowning Boy with Peter and Susan from The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe.

In any case. I'm skipping Chapter Thirteen for now because I'm not entirely sure what the Amy-and-Todd-in-Gasworks-Park interlude should consist of, and I've gotten as far into Chapter Fourteen as a description of the Depths of Ereshkegal. We haven't actually met the Shark Goddess Herself yet. I'm still deciding how that will go down. Again, trying very, very hard not to end up sounding like I'm ripping off Diane Duane (who, by the way, has a most excellent blog over here; if you are at all interested in ever seeing a sequel to To Visit The Queen, you should read this particular post). It'll be hard, if only because in Deep Wizardry she really nailed the description of a larger-than-life Great White, so that every time I reach for the right words I end up grabbing a handful of hers.

I suppose the key to this is characterization. I mean, duh. The two characters might share the same species, but they're two different characters nevertheless. I don't know that I'm looking forward to meeting mine.

I like to say that I symbolically fill my Midwinter's Night with those things that I want filling the coming year. If that is the case, then apparently I want a year full of cooking, cleaning, rum & bourbon, too much to eat, and not a heck of a lot of productivity. But Oh Well.

Every year, on the night before Solstice Day, I stay up all night burning a Yule log and keeping the door unlocked so that friends can drop by. I bake a fruitcake and start it marinating in time to offer some to Midwinter guests. I try to follow Bridget's egg nog recipe despite my not really knowing what it means to whip egg whites and heavy cream "until fluffy"; the results tend to be scrumptious despite my ignorance. I put holly over the door and encourage Pagan friends, fellow NaNoWriMo participants, John's gaming groups, and random neighbors to drop by. And then at about 5:30 or 5:45 I take off with a car full of whoever stayed all through and we go to Red Rocks for Drumming Up The Sun.

This year is a little different, mainly because I didn't do a good job of making sure people knew what was going on and when, but also because it's a weekday. And it's mid-December, just like it is every year. Bridget helped me pick out the Yule log (heck, she totally spotted it, and then helped me lug it home), but preparations for an out-of-town stint are keeping her too busy to come over. John brought Dave over for chess, but he's gone home now. Sarah (co_butterfly) dropped by, what with already being in Boulder, but she had to get home for, y'know, sleep, what with having a full day tomorrow. Thus it's looking like there won't be a DUtS carpool, and I really don't want to drive all that way all by myself after a night of no sleep. I may just tend the fire until sunrise and then hit the sack.

It's a huge damn Yule log, by the way. I'll be surprised if it takes less than a week to burn that sucker. I've been propping up grocery store firewood against it and burning them in hopes that it will catch on and follow suit.

As for what I want to fill the year with... Well, I didn't see as much of my husband as I'd like, but it's a Tuesday, and Tuesdays are notoriously busy. We sat about five minutes in front of the fire together to show the new year willing. I also don't have a working laptop yet. My Averatec 5100 series laptop turned out to need a new motherboard, so now I'm waiting on Warranty America Corp. or whatever they're called to decide whether they'll buy me one or buy back my machine. (The latter would not be so bad. I am currently drooling over the Averatec 3225 on display today at Computer Renaissance.)

But as always I have my Ancient Decrepit Compaq. Also pens and paper. Writing is a low tech activity. Working motherboards come and go, but writing never forsakes. And I hear that WOTC's calls for full manuscripts won't go out until the first week of the new year, giving me a little more time to get out of chapter 11 and through the rest of the book. So it's off again to the races for me.

More after sunrise (and possibly some coffee). Stay tuned.

So, life quite suddenly sucks. My computer has died.

Well, that's putting it a little overly strong. Life doesn't exactly suck, per se. I mean, John and I are in Bloomington, Indiana; we're staying with Cate; we're comfy and well-fed and in loving company. True, the Saints did not win last night, but you can't expect too much from your weekend. Life is actually pretty good.

But somewhere between hibernating my laptop yesterday morning and attempting to wake it back up again yesterday afternoon, Something Went Horribly Wrong. After I halted its unsuccesful Resume From Hibernate prrocess, it entered a cycle of disk checks during which it deleted many purportedly corrupted sectors, and then after gnawing on itself in this fashion for several minutes it utterly failed to recognize a bootable drive. I get the Averatec splash screen and then nothing but a blinking cursor.

Curses!

So today I pulled out my spiral notebook, wrote down the previous novel-editing session's final sentence from memory, and then tried mightly to keep going. Boy, what a comedown. I've used computers for so long that my handwriting is illegible, and my longhand writing mentality is all, like, "This is just freewriting and Morning Pages and stuff, why should I care about quality?"

Clearly I need to compose manuscript copy in longhand more often. It's no good to rely so completely on electricity and microprocessors.

So today I mostly spent trying to convince myself to write as though it mattered. Then I got a little into Sasha's seemingly unplanned meeting with her classmate crush in the Wilcox Plaza bookstore. And when I get back to Boulder I need to dig up my Windows XP Home Edition install disk, which I am assured exists and ought to be in my possession. I am skeptical of this, having no memory of bringing one home at the time of my laptop's purchase....

As for other things: In my opinion, The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe was very, very, very, very good. Faithful fans of the Narnia books, whether their interest is in the fantasy story or in the Christian allegory, all ought to be well pleased. I am, however, a little troubled by an acquaintance's concern over the "appropriateness" of Lucy's friendship with the faun Tumnus. "I mean, he's, like, ten years older than her and he goes around shirtless! Is it right that they're going around holding hands all the time?" Is this an issue that ought even to occur? For heaven's sake, it's like watching Finding Neverland and begin convinced, despite James Barrie's protestations otherwise (which, by the way, the audience is supposed to believe), that the adult author is sexually involved with his children playmates. My goodness, we live in a corrupt age.

Other than that--other than having my mind now forever tainted by the previously unheard-of concept of little Lucy being preyed on by her best friend in Narnia--I have no complaints. Well, I was unimpressed by Liam Neeson's voicing of Aslan. But maybe that's unfair. Probably for me to be satisfied you'd have to get freakin' God in on that role. Well, God or James Earl Jones. Either one will do.

And in yet other news, the NaNoWriMo article in dirt has come out. Whee! Go read it right now!

Once again, I have overestimated my relative productivity while travelling.

Number of socks returned to functionality from the darning sack: One. The blue Encore DK Colorspun cable knits only had one hole to darn. I did that at the IHOP Wednesday evening while waiting for my computer to deal with the wi-fi situation. The dusty-rose Encore DK Colorspun lace socks both had holes, one of which I darned Thursday morning in the C Terminal of the Denver International Airport; the other is still waiting. (Encore DK is not a sock yarn. Guess which of my socks are frequent visitors to the darning sack? Go on. Guess.) I also knitted two inches last night on the mate to the double-knit gray Kroy sock with the white diamonds on top, but did not finish it. Damn. It's all cold here and I want to wear double-knit socks.

Number of hours spent working on the novel: Zero point Five. Result: One conversation in flashback rewritten. The hour count doesn't include all the staring at the work so far, all the cups of tea, and all the "just one more" games of Alchemy played after a few more minutes of staring.

Not a heck of a lot of progress in either court, I'm afraid.

But! Number of yarn-cutter pendants confiscated by DIA security: Zero. Not even a comment from the guard or a beep out of the metal-detector arch. So that's OK.

And. Number of Narnia-related movies to be watched by the end of today: One. I'll probably have a few words to say about that later. But only if I also get a bit more work done on the novel. Stay tuned.