Sorry, TSE: February is the cruelest month
It’s been too long since I swung by here. I blame the groundhogs. They must be writers, because they’re all saying “put me down, put me down, turn those cameras off and let me retreat to my burrow so I can work!” Or perhaps I’m projecting. It’s been a busy winter.
I’ve been working on a first draft of my first Fangborn novel (which my faithful first readers are critiquing, even as we speak). This is based on the characters and situations from my short story, “The Night Things Changed,” which appeared in Wolfsbane and Mistletoe, edited by the wonderful Charlaine Harris and Toni Kelner. That was a lot of fun—and a lot of work. With nonfiction, you are constrained by the data (but there are data there to get you started). With fiction, you have no constraints (but you have to create your characters whole cloth, even if you are writing something very close to RL). With fantastic or speculative fiction, you may not even have the constraints of biology or physics, so there’s a lot of marble to create, before you can start sculpting it (as one of my writing teachers once said).
Since the holidays, I’ve been doing a lot writing. And a lot of shoveling and I had the nasty cold that was going around here. Traditional New England winter fare. On the happier side, I recently had a great visit with the amazing SJ Rozan, while she was up thisaway promoting Shanghai Moon. I’ve been reading some books about Greek archaeology and touring. But mostly writing.
I can’t read OPF (other people’s fiction) while I’m writing. I get worried that I’ll be intimidated and that will keep me from work. So I read a lot of nonfiction, and save the fiction for vacations, travel time, and the brief moments in between projects. But what I do indulge in is marathons sessions of watching serialized dramas. I don’t know why watching amazing TV writing doesn’t derail me the same way as the printed forms, and since I still require distraction and amusement, preferably in the form of a fictional narrative, I turn to my DVDs and On Demand. So we’ve been consuming the whole of Deadwood, NYPD Blue, Rome, Firefly, and reviewing True Blood. May even turn to I, Claudius, once we finish Rome (Rome ends, quite sensibly, where I, Claudius begins), but that will take me well into spring. I hope to be out and about before then. Stupid ground hog.
Tell me, please: how do you get through the long, evil tail-end of winter, when there are not even hints of lilacs?
I’ve been working on a first draft of my first Fangborn novel (which my faithful first readers are critiquing, even as we speak). This is based on the characters and situations from my short story, “The Night Things Changed,” which appeared in Wolfsbane and Mistletoe, edited by the wonderful Charlaine Harris and Toni Kelner. That was a lot of fun—and a lot of work. With nonfiction, you are constrained by the data (but there are data there to get you started). With fiction, you have no constraints (but you have to create your characters whole cloth, even if you are writing something very close to RL). With fantastic or speculative fiction, you may not even have the constraints of biology or physics, so there’s a lot of marble to create, before you can start sculpting it (as one of my writing teachers once said).
Since the holidays, I’ve been doing a lot writing. And a lot of shoveling and I had the nasty cold that was going around here. Traditional New England winter fare. On the happier side, I recently had a great visit with the amazing SJ Rozan, while she was up thisaway promoting Shanghai Moon. I’ve been reading some books about Greek archaeology and touring. But mostly writing.
I can’t read OPF (other people’s fiction) while I’m writing. I get worried that I’ll be intimidated and that will keep me from work. So I read a lot of nonfiction, and save the fiction for vacations, travel time, and the brief moments in between projects. But what I do indulge in is marathons sessions of watching serialized dramas. I don’t know why watching amazing TV writing doesn’t derail me the same way as the printed forms, and since I still require distraction and amusement, preferably in the form of a fictional narrative, I turn to my DVDs and On Demand. So we’ve been consuming the whole of Deadwood, NYPD Blue, Rome, Firefly, and reviewing True Blood. May even turn to I, Claudius, once we finish Rome (Rome ends, quite sensibly, where I, Claudius begins), but that will take me well into spring. I hope to be out and about before then. Stupid ground hog.
Tell me, please: how do you get through the long, evil tail-end of winter, when there are not even hints of lilacs?
posted by Dana | 9:07 AM
2 Comments:
Hey Dana:
Winter in Northern California is a strange, fleeting beast. These days, she comes earlier than the calendar says, and leaves sometimes as early as February. Sometimes, she leaves in February and comes back in March just to mess with all the trees and plants that are blooming.
It is this time of year that I wonder how my sister spent the first 45 years of her life here, and the last 4 in Andover Massachusetts.
And people think that I am the goofy one in the family.
Yeah, I have to say: a more temperate clime seems more and more appealing, every year.
And in northern California, you have this: http://grilledcheeseinvitational.com/norcal/
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