Skills to focus on

Writing skills I need to work on:

Well, all of them.  LOL. But if I had to pick the top, say, four:

• Dialogue.
• Description. 
• Non-avatar persepective; giving the reader a character's vivid, sense-filled experience.
• Effective, efficient revision.

That's a big chunk, right there. So that's my plan for the next four months: take turns with those four skills, every week.

Reading as a writer, an attempt.

A few (non-comprehensive) thoughts about what I've read this year, so far: Novels/novellas edition.

I haven't finished many books that didn't work for me this year. Just two; Every Heart and Black Tides. 

Every Heart had some older-man-love by teen girls as part of their paradise and that creeped me out despite being realistic. It may have suffered because I read it right after Perdido, so the setting, which was probably perfectly adequate, felt flat and bland and undeveloped by contrast. The evocation of being an outsider, rumor mill and instant distrust worked, as did the evocation of hunger for a paradise glimpsed and lost, the fragility of trust and of children's futures.

Black Tides I had the most trouble with, partly because it succeeded in making me care a great deal about its characters and denied me massive chunks of their lives. Too much was implied and unspoken, and the time leaps were too large for me. I would have preferred this filled out as a novel, apparently.  I'm told if I'll read the sequel that might fill in some of the gaps, so I'll have to do that. Mom as villain is a trope I'm tired of and she was kind of a cardboard asshole at that. This is a culture I'm not as familiar with, (even though it's fantasy, it's a fantasy Asian culture) and as a writer I should think about assuming my readers have cultural familiarity with every aspect of my character's lives, and as a reader, I should not  expect Ts to be crossed and Is dotted that I would NOT expect (or need, or want) from a more Euro-centric story.  

I did not have that problem with Raven Strategem or Food for the Gods, but the story narrative in those two novels did not require massive time passage (and any areas that did lent themselves to tightly written flashback). 

Lee's Raven worked for me because the bizarre, math-based war-eclipsed universe peopled with such powerful, outsized characters and relentless stakes; I cared about Charis and her "is he insane or not" general; and the larger mysterious manuevering. I'm so wrapped up in all that I don't even notice the words half the time, so I don't know how Lee worked that magic.

Khaw's chef in Food is the epitome of "protag between the devil and the sea," or in this case Hell and his ghoulish bosses. He's totally screwed and knows it, and deeply, deeply in love and shows it. She makes me care about the future of a guy who cooks humans for a living, and that's tall damn bar. It's much more a mind-candy read with its Urban Fantasy, commercial fiction feel and almost cheerful gore. Moments of normalcy are a relief. Flaws: war between the gods didn't always make sense, but I was reading it really quickly.

Hoffman's books (Chapel Hollow series) delighted me. I know Nina, but had read very little of her work, and I'm going to need to fix that. I'd probably avoided them because they're classified as horror, but they're what I would call cozy horror, with a pagan underpinning; horror I can handle. Young-adult feel, very believable characters, escalating, magic-peril situations. They're also set in the PNW, so they feel very much like home to me. Flaws: Villains felt a tad cardboard in Silent Strength of Stones.

Riverwalking worked for me due to the evocative nature of places I've been and want to visit; the way Moore blended the considerations of river rafting, hiking and camping with her family and professional academic responsibilities, her vulnerability and her very clear words. Much sensory detail about something I long to experience viscerally.  

Beasts of Tabat delighted me in pretty much every way (it's the most recent read, and I tend to gush over the last thing I finish). I cared about the two main characters, winced over the poor choices they made... and understood them. I think that's what made this stand out, is that those two characters made bad choice after bad choice, making their situations increasingly perilous, and those choices fit their personalities and made perfect sense. (This is true of Khaw's protagonist as well, although situations force his hand repeatedly). I wanted to beat Rambo's characters about the head and shoulders for their stupidity, which meant they were well drawn. Now, the story isn't over and I'm still mad, because I had expected resolution at the end, although the sequel is supposedly downloading onto my kindle any day now.

Perdido Street Station is a character itself, the city as character in this immersive, bizarre world with its sticky mysteries. The in-depth, character-filtered descriptions are vivid and awesome. A rich palate of place and people. And just fucking weird, with a grinding, terrifying plot. Mieville breathes description, and does not hold back the words. Reading his work changed how I approach describing my aliens.

Digger is just delightful in every way and everyone should read it, along with everything Ursula Vernon writes. 

Whoops. Unfiltered praise! I might be getting tired; time to shift to something else.

Catching a Full Breath

I both love and hate that quiet clear space between one project and the next. There's a sense of aimless scrabble and "but but but but I should be BUSY" and a "shut up and say 'ahhhhhh,'" from my hindbrain, who really wants to enjoy this already.

*inhales*

Last weekend our choir had our Spring concert, and one of my primary foci was breath. Taking deep enough breaths, only breathing at the right times. It sounds clunky and amateurish if you breath mid-phrase. You can't hold a note if you don't have enough air in the first place, if you use it all up too soon.

Creative energy feels like breath. This clear space between big writing ideas feels like the inhale, and I want to fill it with fascinating ideas, clarity of purpose, new ways of thinking about writing, clarity in my surroundings and just... rest. Less sleep and more getting out into the woods, which we did two weekends ago, hiking to a magnificent waterfall. Reading Riverwalking had reminded me how much I need Forest in my life. Hoping to do more of that this season.

 I'm not *quite* done with the tinkering on the novel (Purpose/Moriakt's Apiquai). I've got trimming to do, and had some thoughts today on how to deal with the tonal sidetracking that's happening mid-book. But momentum is carrying me forward, despite part of me thinking I should wait for feedback after shipping it off May 1 (on deadline!) to [exceedingly wonderful feedback opportunity]. 

I've caught up around the house a bit (we're no longer in danger of death by dustbunny), and caught up on my tracking. I'd been kinda ovaries-to-the-wall (with the occasional depressive slump and two out-of-town-trips) for two months. Which feels marvelously productive in one area, but there's all this other stuff that hasn't gotten done. 

It has been awhile since I have given myself any thinking-on-paper cogitating time, which this brain needs to SORT THINGS THROUGH. Ghods and jackals, I admire people who can do that on the fly, in their heads, and retain any of it. I frequently don't retain it even when I DO write it down, which is ... well, partly explains the whole Pheonix nature of my existence, I suppose.

Anyway. Things I'd like to sort through: 

-- writing skills and the work I am and am not doing regularly to improve

-- some of the reading I've been doing, and how those writers succeeded at what they were doing, and how some of their choices didn't work for me but clearly did for others and why

-- a general "whew, here I am, here's where I want to be, am I on the right track and if not what do I need to change."

-- ways I can breathe fresh energy into my life on a more regular basis than once every three months.

*exhales, inhales* 

That's a start.