Kill your darlings, and maim your friends
“Kill your darlings” is a great piece of writing advice from various people (including William Faulkner and Stephen King) recommending that you edit out all your most precious turns of phrase, and leave your work stronger.
“Maim your friends” is my personal advice on causing the maximum pain (and, just as importantly, danger of more pain) for your characters. (Sidebar: A couple of writers, like Robin Hobb, take it too far for me to ever re-read them. Most don’t take it far enough.) It hurts to do horrible things to characters you love – but it’s necessary. Plus, it pretty much comes along with the “godlike powers” thing that us writers like so much.
Here‘s one of Chuck Wendig’s delightfully rude and abrasive articles – this time on hurting your precious characters.
And here’s someone who’s an expert at killing and maiming:
Pick your own present
CJ and I just received an electricity bill which is $380 more than usual due to my pregnancy (not being able to eat meant I was extremely cold, and of course I barely left the house). That’s depressing – and I’ve also lost around a grand in income, and another two grand in medicine.
This is one expensive baby.
Which is why it means a lot when I get AWESOME FREE STUFF. This dress was particularly special, because I picked it out myself (but didn’t pay for it) and deliberately chose something ridiculously female (since we now know she’s a girl) and wildly impractical (because I can).
To give a better sense of the teeny tininess, here is the dress again, draped over my friend’s one-year old:
Our pile of free stuff is growing by the week, and I’m loving it.
Steal your neighbour’s rubbish
Our bathroom didn’t come with a mirror. Peculiar but true. So when I spotted a large mirror in our neighbour’s recycling bin (which is wrong, incidentally – ordinary glass is actually not recyclable), I stole it at once, and duct-taped it to our bathroom window (which happens to be over the sink – hence, no built-in mirror).
For the first time, I could merely glance upwards as I washed my hands and know instantly if I had a cat on my head.
The duct tape added a certain thrill, because it meant the mirror could fall down anytime from today to three months from now. And so it was that CJ and I discussed with his Dad (aka Macgyver with better hair) what we should do to improve things.
Also, the mirror is really old and streaked with brown lines.
Also, it was blocking the tiny amount of sunshine that gets into the bathroom.
The logical thing to do was buy a darn mirror. My fundamental budgeting strategy is, “Don’t pay for anything except rent, bills, petrol, food, and non-negotiable social obligations” but even I saw the sense of it.
Then the mirror was mentioned again – this time to CJ’s aunt. She happened to have a mirror that she’d been given as a gift, and had hated for decades. I liked it at once, and found it peculiarly well-suited to our existing bathroom decor.
Also, it’s as good as new.
Also, it can go on a hook beside the window.
Ta da!
The moral of this story is: never buy stuff. It will come to you.
Eventually.
Break up a fight
The other night, CJ and I were woken at 3:00am by a chorus of animalistic screams. CJ leapt from the bed, thinking our two cats had finally decided to fight for real. Would there be blood between the ancient enemies at long last?
Nah. In actual fact Ana (above) was screaming and hissing through the cat door at an impertinent neighbourhood cat. Or, to put it another way, she was being a good girl and defending us from a home invasion (the kind that is likely to involve cat pee on the carpet). CJ chased off the other cat while I watched Indah in our room, hoping she wouldn’t go and fight Ana due to all the excitement.
Indah is thirteen years old and grumpy – and there was honour at stake. She walked to the bedroom door, ready to join the fight. She stopped, and walked back towards the cupboard (her safe place). She walked to the door. She walked back. She walked to the door.
She jumped up into the cupboard and didn’t come down for twelve hours.
When the going gets tough, the tough. . . hide.
Miscellaneous Monday
I got nothing today, so here’s someone else’s brilliant blog entries:
http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/06/texas.html
http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/03/how-fish-almost-destroyed-my-childhood.html
The steam powered man
One of the things steampunk fans love is a slightly insane invention (ideally powered by steam). One of the most wonderful aspects of Victorian times is that utterly serious inventors came up with literally thousands of bizarre and wonderful ideas.
This is one that genuinely worked, as written about in 1868 here: http://www.davidbuckley.net/DB/HistoryMakers/1868DederickSteamMan.htm
Mr. Zadock Deddrick1, a Newark machinist, has invented a man; one that, moved by steam, will perform some of the most important functions of humanity; that will, standing upright, walk or run as he is bid, in any direction, and at almost any rate of speed, drawing after him a load whose weight would tax the strength of three draught horses. . .
The man stands seven feet and nine inches high, the other dimensions of the body being correctly proportioned. . . He weighs five hundred pounds. Steam is generated in the body or trunk, which is nothing but a three-horse power engine, like those used in our steam fire engines. The legs which support it are complicated and wonderful.
What could possibly go wrong?
Sadly, it was too expensive for general use.
Why your novel won’t get published (PG+)
My notes to this article read “LOL, fairly rude/graphic, and all true”. I’m a huge believer in a dose of realism every so often, so here it is: http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2011/01/10/why-your-novel-wont-get-published/
Here’s a bit:
Brutal honesty time:
That novel of yours isn’t likely to get published. The numbers just aren’t in your favor. Last I did a sweep of the Internet, it was home to 500,000,000 writers. Once you remove the wanna-be dilettantes, you still end up with 1,000,000 left. And they’re all fighting to have their manuscripts published.
And one more picture of Ana in a basket:
Philip Pullman Review #4 of 4
“Ruby in the Smoke” (book 1 of the Sally Lockhart quartet).
What do you get when a brilliant modern writer sets out to create a series of penny dreadfuls?
The rest of this review is at Comfy Chair, where I get paid for it.
Professionalism
I’m well enough now to appreciate what I have in life and to take advantage. As a pregnant woman, I have a natural deadline to sort out my life – or in my case, my various manuscripts. Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been sorting out who should be in the first group of people to see my steampunk novel, what I can improve in books I haven’t looked at for a while, and where I should send each of my manuscripts next.
Publishers, editors and agents all love their work in much the same passionate, not-financially-secure way that writers do (the idea of the wealthy publisher gleefully throwing brilliant books in the rubbish is simply not true). For the most part, I’ve had positive experiences with all of them. On the other hand, passion, courage, and hope are traits that often don’t go hand in hand with reliablility, efficiency, and realism. Which means that sometimes, publishers take far longer to make a decision than they should.
It’s flattering that so many publishers spend so much time with my books, but right now one of Austalia’s largest publishers has had a book of mine for almost THREE YEARS – and another of the top five Australian publishers has had just the first three chapters of another book for eleven months. I’ll be contacting both of them towards the end of this month, but honestly I’m not expecting much. (If anything, this is a cautionary tale about making contacts in the biz – both of these are publishers at which I’ve made personal face to face contact. In my experience, the slushpile is much, much faster – and with just as high a rate of full-manuscript requests.)
Which is why I’m so delighted with Publisher A. Publisher A has always been my first choice of publisher (another of the top five Australian companies), and they’ve read about eight of my books in full (usually when closed to submissions), and given me extremely useful feedback every time. Whenever I email my contact (who I’ve never physically met, although I’ve introduced myself to someone who works with her) she responds enthusiastically within 24 hours, and asks me to send the latest full manuscript. (This happened again yesterday, inspiring this blog entry. Then she replied again – within 24 hours once more – to say it had arrived safely and to thank me for giving them the chance to look at it.) They almost always reply within six months, which I consider a pefectly reasonable amount of time for several people to read a book and make a decision. When one of my books was passed on to the acquisitions meeting, my contact was so excited she emailed to tell me. (It didn’t pass that final hurdle, but oh well. I agree with their reason for refusing, and have since fixed it. That’s the same book I’ve been waiting on elsewhere for three years.)
I’m also delighted with America. So far, every single person I’ve spoken to (via email) about my steampunk novel has responded promptly and positively. The positively doesn’t surprise me – the “promptly” certainly does. To be fair, it’s not Australia’s fault that it has slower response times – the American system is simply different (for one thing, agents in America almost always have assistants, whereas Australian agents don’t earn enough and need to deal with all their myriad tasks alone). But from where I’m standing, it’s a beautiful thing.
And now I’m off to have a different kind of professional take a good long look inside my belly. See you!
PS Today is the first day of Spring! Yeeeeeeeehah!
PPS I am forming plans for a small but awesome zombie walk within the next two months. Details soon! (And of course there will be MANY pictures for those who can’t join in.)
Felicity Banks 