author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

So Melissa did meet the Ghost Prince in today's writing. And the conversation was terribly stilted. And every line felt really, really unnatural and hard to eke out. And some days are just like that. I just keep telling myself, someday I'll know more about the story than I do now, and that will be a better day to think in terms of perfection. Today I know very little, and so I must content myself with exploration. Sometimes exploration is done by eking out stilted dialogue and out-of-character narration. Sometimes it's the only way to get from here to there.

My additional challenge this NaNoWriMo is to do one article a day for Demand Studios,, a work-for-hire content provider that publishes in respectable places (eHow, GardenGuides.com, etc.) and pays reliably on schedule. That's my endorsement. Go ahead and apply; I won't try to stop you. Some people who write for them make a full-time living wage from them, all working from home. Me, well, I've been patting myself on the back for four articles a week. I'm not satisfied with that, neither as an accomplishment nor as a paycheck. (Also, Demand Studios will soon be offering an optional health plan but only to writers who average 30 articles a month. I should like to qualify, if only to know I have that option.) So I'm trying to do one article a day in addition to 1667 words on the novel.

How've I been doing so far? Well, divide my current word count by 5 and then multiply by 30; I think you'll find the result to be slightly in excess of 50,000. However, I've only done two articles. Gotta be behind in something, I guess. But there's time yet to catch up. I've done two articles in a day before. I'm not worried. Tomorrow is a new day with lots of writing time scheduled in.

(Schedule, you say? Why yes! There's a calendar at the top of the Boulder Regional Forum home page. Go take a gander.)

That's enough for today. Food blogging tomorrow. Maybe. (But I still feel clever!)

Those with an eye on the calendar may have noticed that it's November. Yes, I'm doing NaNoWriMo again. Yes, I am a Municipal Liaison for Boulder again. You can buddy me at Nanowrimo.org via my handle "vortexae" if you like.

It's been going well. I've been sticking rather precisely to a schedule of 1667 words per day, which is just few enough to keep from getting overwhelmed by despair that my main character still hasn't met the ghost in the castle yet. Or that I don't really know much about my character once she's a teenager, a woman in her 20s, a woman in her 30s, etc. I just keep telling myself that exploring her childhood in detail will help me get to know the possibilities for her growing up. Meanwhile, I think I know why the ghost is in that castle. It's sort of half the traditional Beauty and the Beast set up, and half High Spirits only without the comedy.

My rough draft already has a beta reader volunteer--not that I usually like anyone to read my rough draft, but for this story there's precedent. I could have sworn I blogged this, but apparently I have not: Round about July 2005, I sat down with the creative writing prompt to take one of Tori Amos's more inscrutable songs and write a story that the lyrics could possibly, if you squint at them over your shoulder, be said to describe. I cued up "Toast" (audio link; lyrics here). After about an hour I had finished what I thought was the first scene of a short story. OK, a long scene, but rough drafts tend to be full of babble that'll get cut later, so, not worried. And I emailed it to John. And he called it "chapter 1" and asked "when can I read the rest?" And I said to the Muse, "You lied! You said this was a short story!" and She said, "No! Not lied, I was just, you know, mistaken..."

October this year had started and I still hadn't quite decided what plot I was going to try to stretch out over 50,000 words this year. John said, "When are you going to finish my ghost story?" I said, "You know what? I'll finish it in November." So I'm working on it.

(Also? It is not particularly subtle, naming the main character Melissa. Given that "Toast" is the last track off The Beekeeper. I C WUT U DID THERE.)

Today, I think, Melissa will finally meet the ghost. It will be midway through Chapter 2. Or it will be the cliffhanger of Chapter 2 and continue into Chapter 3, I'm not sure. I'll report on it later today, along with yesterday's pot roast. Because I feel very clever about yesterday's pot roast, that's why.

As I may have mentioned before, this is Chez LeBoeuf-Little's second year in CSA membership with Abbondanza Organic Seeds & Produce. Last year we had far, far too many veggies even for our renewed resolution to eat out less and cook together more, so this year I yielded to John's wisdom in signing up for only a partial share. Even so, possibly because I've been going out of town at frequent intervals and John's been working late, we have a situation.

Thus, on a snowy day in Boulder, I present OMG Nothing Will Fit In The Fridge Soup.

1. From that still unopened package of bacon you bought because it looked like a good idea at the time, remove four fat slices. Cut them into 1" squares. Start them frying.
2. If you like, add a quarter-cup chopped up roasted chilis. The ones that looked so gorgeous at the farmer's market last week. You only meant to buy three ears of peaches 'n cream sweet corn, but you can't resist a bag of freshly roasted chilis.
3. When the bacon is about half-done, delve into this week's CSA share. Slice up and add to the bacon pan the stems of that beautiful bunch of rainbow chard, one fat green pepper, and one yellow onion. Let these cook until the aroma makes you salivate. Let cook a few minutes longer.
4. Roughly chop the chard leaves and stick them in a soup pot with just enough water to cover. Dump in a can of navy beans. (This is why you stocked up on canned beans.) Dump in a quarter-cup or so of frozen turkey drippings. (This is why you save and freeze the turkey drippings.) Dump in a nice big anonymous spoonful (teaspoon? tablespoon? Who knows? Who cares?) of your favorite bouillon.
5. Take the pan of bacon-onion-pepper-chili off the stove and put the soup pan on. Turn fire up to "please come to a gentle boil, if you please." Dump contents of pan into soup pot. Stir.
6. When the pot's boiling, reduce to "simmer but don't take forever about it" and wait as long as you can stand it.

Typically some greens haven't been used up. Make stir fry tomorrow with the choi, using those Hazel Dell oyster mushrooms you bought for just this purpose. Also one of those great long yellowish-green peppers that you're never sure what to do with.

Take the rest of the chard, collard, arugula, mizuna, and whatever choi didn't fit in the stir fry, and boil them down for Green Gumbo. (This has the advantage of using up more peppers and onions, though you may have to go out and buy the celery and parsley.)

"Next time on the CSA Overflow Creativity Show: OMG Nothing Will Fit In The Freezer! Stay tuned."

The good thing about writing rituals is, they perform the purpose of any ritual. Which is: to shift your mindset in a conducive direction. Conducive to what? To whatever you're doing ritual for. Going to Mass puts church-goers in a frame of mind more in touch with God, community and prayer. Casting the circle puts Wiccans in a headspace where worship and magic come naturally. And writing rituals, theoretically, make it easier to achieve the focus needed for a productive writing session.

The traditional disadvantage to writing rituals is depending on them. I like to light a yellow candle, sip a mug of Assam or Pu Erh Tuo Cha, and turn on something instrumental and pleasant that won't monopolize my brain, like Blue Man Group: Audio or the Ink movie soundtrack. The combination generally turns on the "Time to write!" switch in my brain. But what if there's no quality tea to be had, the mp3s are on the other computer, and I'm in a no-flame zone?

So I'm trying to come up with writing rituals that require no external components, such that I'm never unable to perform them. This would make relying on them no downside at all. Well, except for the one perceived by people who like to huff that "if you need tricks to get you writing, you aren't a real writer." People like that can just ignore this post, kthxbai.

Three things you always have with you when you write:

1. Something to write with
2. Something to write on
3. Something to write about

For a while my thoughts were excessively religious. "The pen is my athame, which is Fire; the paper represents Earth and the ground I walk on; inspiration is Air; my imaginative attention to the world around me is Water." Except I'm not always using a pen, and my writing isn't always particularly imaginative. I mean, it's hard to get all RomantiWiccan about Demand Studios articles with titles like "How Does the H-R Diagram Explain the Life Cycle of a Star?" (Coming to you soon from eHow.com and Demand Studios and me!)

(And yet writing remains, for me, as much a religious vocation as a career goal...)

So the ritual use of "what I'm going to write with/on" has to accommodate both pen and laptop keyboard, both paper and word processor. The role of "what I'm going to write about" must encompass both the creation of fantastic worlds and the writing of how-to documents.

What I end up with are meditations. Here's one; feel free to use it if you find it useful.

Gaze meditatively at your blank sheet of paper or new word processor document. Envision whatever you plan to write about, even if you have no concrete idea, as a tangible, visible, simple object: a flower, a feather, an apple, etc. See this object on the page/screen. Hold this visualization until it's strong and comfortable.

Now let the object dissolve in your mind's eye and see a Door appearing to take its place. Give it solid detail: see every crack in the wood or inconsistency in its paint. Has it a doorknob? What sort? A doorknocker? Made of what? Is there a peephole? Which side can see through it?

Now see the Door opening. It opens away from you, "inward" from the point of view of someone approaching you. As it opens fully, you see The Muse standing in the doorway, smiling. Let yourself envision The Muse in full detail: gender, complexion, clothing, and all. The Muse need not be adult. The Muse need not be human. The Muse certainly won't be the same every time you do this.

What can you see of the room, or the world, on the other side of the door?

Now The Muse reaches out to you. Imagine that you lean forward, out from the safety of your chair and your body, and you take that offered hand (or paw, or mandible, or tentacle). Imagine that you allow yourself to be drawn through the door.

Remain inside this daydream for a minute or two, experiencing whatever is on the other side of this door.

When you are ready, begin writing.

It was actually only four rewrites; I estimated and slightly exaggerated on Twitter. Four requested rewrites, and now an acceptance. "The Day The Sidewalks Melted" will be published in Ideomancer Speculative Fiction. Possibly in March.

I don't really have much to say beyond that, except that I'm really happy, and, despite how weary I may sound of rewrites, really grateful to editor Leah Bobet for seeing the potential in this story and pushing me to make that potential reality. Her attention, patience, and persistence were vital.

Now I must write a bio. Hooray, a new assignment to affix my dread upon! I'm off to procrastinate now, which we shall call "reading back-issues of Ideomancer to get an idea of what kind of bios the authors therein do write."

I was tired yesterday. I'd started the day early, and after getting back from the Boulder Municipal Airport, I was not, Enn Oh Tee Not intending to leave the house again. I was done. I'd had a lot of stress and dread leading up to that day (for all that flight instructors repeatedly assure me that a biannual flight review is nothing to stress over), and, having walked away from the appointment with a brand-new endorsement at the cost of a slightly bruised ego (stupid power-on stalls, stupid left-turning tendencies, stupid turn coordinator ball making me look stupid) I wasn't planning on doing anything resembling work for the rest of the day.

Writing dates? Not hardly. I had a date for a face-plant into my pillow, thanks.

I fired up Second Life over a late lunch, figuring I'd play some mindless clicky games at my favorite arcade/casino spots until I was ready to collapse. Which was when I got the Writers Guild group notice about the Milk Wood Writers' Meet.

"Hope you can join us for an hour (or so) of focused writing. Bring your WIPs or start a new one. Join us and create something!"

And I thought, oh, what the hell. I haven't done my Morning Pages today; I should at least do that. So I teleported to the attached location and pulled my notebook and pen out of my bag.

The Milk Wood is a lovely forest scene, as you might expect, with trickling streams and crashing surf and swaying tree branches and birds that sing and fly in and out of sight. The Market, or Gypsy Camp, is a forest clearing between a small bridge and a big furnished caravan wagon.

In this clearing are several picnic benches. On each picnic bench is a candle, a stack of books, an apple, and a typewriter. Each object is scripted. You can light the candle, view the writing goals attached to the apple, and I forget what with the books.

The typewriter animates your avatar, of course.

And the effect is oddly compelling. Watching my avatar banging away at the keyboard, listening to the tap-tappity-tap-kaching!-tappity-tap-tap noises coming out of the computer speakers, I'm all, "Well, I might as well be writing too, mightn't I?" And it's not just Kavella Maa's typing that I'm hearing; the typing of other attendees is clearly audible as a series of separate tappity-taps. The space I'm sharing with other writers-in-action may not be physical, but it's absolutely real. It consecrates the hour and charges it with energy for the task. The other writers may in fact be puttering around the kitchen or visiting the bathroom, but from where I'm sitting, they look hard at work, and it gives me that added push to get my own work done.

As with most things Second Life, this simulation isn't meant to replace doing such things in person. But when local friends aren't available, when I don't have the energy to head out to a nearby cafe, or when I'm just craving the company of this particular group, this is a strangely satisfying version of Going On A Writing Date.

It's 1pm SLT on Mondays and Fridays. They are thinking of adding Wednesdays as well. Don't forget to tip your host. And if you're in the Boulder NaNoWriMo group, you will be hearing more about this on the forums come October.

Another revision on "Sidewalks" today. My office away from home was The Barking Dog Cafe in Lyons, because I started the day in Longmont and it seemed convenient to go west.

I should report that Highway 66 is all over construction. Ick.

Anyway... magic realism. Epiphanies. The one about the other. Let's see... It's not an easy genre to talk about. I'm not sure I can claim to write it, not being a Latin American author writing in the '60s. I'm not sure I can safely navigate the difference between "the magical" and "the fantastic". I'm not sure I can adequately rebut the accusation that it's just a fancy code phrase meaning "My fantasy writing is literary."

I'm going to keep using the phrase anyway. It seems the best way to label that which I aspire to write.

If you asked me a year ago to define the term, what it means to me, I'd have said, "Fantasy in which the fantastic element is presented as unremarkable, beside the point, or otherwise just a matter-of-fact part of daily life." Today I think that, as far as descriptions go, that works, but as a prescriptive it's not really enough. So here's what I'd say today--heck, here is what I am saying today.:

Magic realism is fantasy in which the fantastic element is not plot, but setting. When it really succeeds, the fantastic element serves to highlight the magical in the mundane. And the particular fantastic element should be of unique necessity to the story.

I'm not sure I've succeeded yet with "Sidewalks," but with each revision, the story has become more about the characters than the unexplained event; and the event has, I hope, stopped being just an SF/F stand-in for an earthquake or a 9/11. I'm starting to see parallels between the precise effects of that event and the dynamics of the main characters' relationship.

I mean, I think so, anyway. I could be wrong. And maybe I'm just overthinking things? Goodness knows the last thing a story needs is its author doing lit-crit analysis on it in public before it's even published. So... that's probably more than enough from me on this topic at this time. OKTHXBAI

This is just to let the world at large know that I did manage to enter the "I Made It On My Schact" contest (deadline September 1, why, what a coincidence, today's September 1). I spun up as much more of the 4 ounces of Cloud City's "rose quartz" roving as I could, since I was woefully behind on the project. After about two and a half hours I decided, what the hell, there's yardage here to spare. Just start plying already.

There was a lot to ply. And I am here to tell you that beading navajo-ply is a terribly finicky chore. When I got my 33 beads on I was all, "Yeah! Done with the ordeal! Now all I have to do is ply!" Yes. Ply. For another 3 hours or so. Occasionally breaking the single and having to patch it back in. How the heck do you patch your single while navajo-plying? Very carefully.

And the entry is all emailed off, and I can't wait to knit with this stuff. It's sock yarn, see. You knit cuff-down from the beaded end, so you get a nice beaded lace cuff. It'll be cool, you just wait! Coooool!

...And that is all.

As I mentioned a few entries ago, "Sidewalks" is in rewrites. Which is an awesome thing, because without someone else to push me, I might have left the story alone, never knowing how much better it could be.

And it is better. It started out as a story about a guy whining generically about love lost after having witnessed an extraordinary event. And, well, it still is about that, but the whining is very specific, the love was lost in a particular way, and the extraordinary event is necessary and not easily replaceable by some other extraordinary event.

There are a lot more details in the story. Not necessarily spelled out--that was how I ruined earlier drafts--but they're concrete in my head. They weren't, before. The rewrite request forced me to think about these things, to do a little worldbuilding, for all that the world is our own and the story's only 500 words long.

If you'd asked me last year to tell you how I knew whether a story should be in "short" or "flash" form, I'd have told you, "Short stories are told via a single scene, or a series of scenes. Flash-length stories are implicit in a single moment." I'd still say that today, I think, but putting it that way leaves something important out.

The difference between short stories and flash fiction is in the word-length required to tell them. But a story's word-length is not the same as its size. Short stories and flash fiction stories are exactly the same size as each other, and as novel-length stories, trilogy-length stories, novena-length stories: as big as the world. The characters must be equally real, their worlds equally huge. Word length is simply the frame through which the reader views the story.

Which means there is worldbuilding to be done and characters to be developed, no matter how short the story form is. Developing them fully is necessary before the author can choose which words, which images and thoughts and dialogue, belong inside the picture frame.

Anne Lamont, in Bird by Bird, talks about the one-inch picture frame that sits on her desk and reminds her not to try to tackle the entire task at once. "Just take it bird by bird," she recalls her father telling her overwhelmed brother on the occasion of an overdue homework assignment; similarly, she tells herself to just take her own writing inch by square inch. But that square inch of story remains part of an entire world big enough to live in, big enough to encompass untold thousands of stories.

I've been writing flash fiction for years, but only now do I understood that the flash fiction form is hard.

The aforementioned irrepressible Frank Wu took his Hugo for a walk today. He was one of the scheduled Stars for the final installation of Strolling With The Stars, and he arrived in the mist and rain with rocket ship in tow. And he says to fellow Strolling Star, Stephen Segal (Best Semiprozine, Weird Tales), "Why didn't you bring yours?"

We paused for the daily group photo, and Frank let everyone who wanted a closer look get a closer look. It's worth a closer look--it's an object of great beauty. The rocket ship is just taking off from an asteroid, and if you look close you can see the launch flames are in fact a collection of iridescent maple leaves. I got a very close look. I got to hold it. And what they say about this year's Hugo is true: It's frickin' heavy! It's a frickin' rock!

(Many thanks to Peter Flynn, who came all the way from Ireland, for taking pictures with his cell phone and emailing them to me. If you want to see more pictures, all the group shots will be posted sometime soon on the Anticipation '09 Facebook or LJ or somewhere. 'Twas Stu Segal who took them.)

Now, to sleep, to wake early tomorrow and toss my stuff into its respective containers and boogie down to the train station for a 9:30 AM departure. I missed the dead dog party tonight due to spending lots of lovely time with fellow Viable Paradise X alumni Barbara and Evelyn, but I will be attending the "carrying away the dead dog's corpse" party (as I continue to find it amusing to call it) in the cafe car on Amtrak's "Adirondack" on which several of us Making Light regulars will be riding together.