I feel like I’ve moved into a new level of writing.

There’s nothing concrete to put forth to present this.  But I find that, when I look at stuff I wrote even six months ago, I can see so many places where my writing is weak.  I can step back from it, and – even better – I can see how to fix it.

Undoubtably I’ll be saying the same thing in another six months about what I’m writing now.

This is a good thing.  There’s no point in writing and learning unless you can progress.

How has this come about?  Lots of different things.  Reading a lot – reading critically, especially of books that are popular (and often not considered “good”) is a really important way to learn.  It’s not all about dry technique – we can all point to a book that shows very little actual writing talent, but is loved by the public all the same.  I’ve also been listening to a lot of writing podcasts – namely I Should Be Writing, The Secrets and Writing Excuses.

Finding an awesome group of beta readers who are willing to deconstruct my writing word by word is probably worth more than all of these things combined.  I cannot express how valuable all of my betas are.  Anyone who’s writing in a vacuum – find yourself some first readers.  You won’t regret it.

I learn almost as much betaing for other people, too.  I read or heard recently that we’ll often look for the things in others’ work that we’re actively working on ourselves, which is a really interesting way of looking at it for me.

It’s challenging myself, forcing myself to keep on learning and developing.  And it keeps on going.

Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn.

I have been totally overwhelmed with RL stuff (one of the GOOD things was my oldest friend having her first baby - yay!), but I made time to reply to all your fabulous comments on my last entry. Thank you! I also made time for one hour each night to watch... this:



I've used the BBC America trailer because I think it's the best one. Five nights of brand new Torchwood = five nights of BRILLIANT entertainment. This was dark and gritty... I loved it! Did you watch it?*

Ladies and gentlemen, that was your Friday Five for this week. ;)

*Please don't post spoilers - I know lots of people who haven't seen it yet.

Originally published at Cheryl's Mewsings. Please leave any comments there.

The following window will draw in tweets from myself and a bunch of Finnish fans who I know are at Finncon. As the convention has good free wi-fi I hope to be able to log in and answer questions at some times during the weekend, but I won’t be online constantly.

Originally published at Cheryl's Mewsings. Please leave any comments there.

The Iron Sky guys are an endless source of amusement. For Finncon they have produced a mock tabloid newspaper called Truth Today. Naturally it leads with the rumor that there are Nazis on the Moon! It also has a bunch of other spoof articles, including “United States Accepts Soccer as Sport”.

Originally published at Cheryl's Mewsings. Please leave any comments there.

The convention is now in full swing and I am at the main venue. There are thousands of kids here, many of them in fabulous costumes. For the first time Finncon has a venue (just) big enough to cope with the numbers, and it has sprouted a Worldcon-sized dealers’ room to take advantage of the crowds. Despite the vast size of the venue, the con committee is looking nervously at the hordes and wondering what would happen if it rained and they all wanted to come inside at once. Thankfully most of them are outside photographing each other.

Our Swedish friends are here, and there are posters around advertising both the 2011 Eurocon and this year’s Swecon, whose GoHs are Liz Williams and Graham Joyce. I’m told that there are also Russian fans here, but I haven’t seen any yet.

My first job here will be to check out the rooms where my program items are. After that I’ll go take photos until 5:00pm when the all-GoH panel of writing is due to start. After that, dinner and pub.

By the way, I am writing this thanks to the free wi-fi at the convention. Yet another thing that Finncon has got right.

Originally published at Cheryl's Mewsings. Please leave any comments there.

Today’s academic papers were very interesting. I don’t want to go into every paper in detail here as it would bore most of you. However, I do want to highlight a couple of ideas that came out of the discussion on Jyrki Korpua’s paper on Tolkien.

Firstly we are all used to thinking of The Lord of the Rings as the archetypal secondary world fantasy. However, Adam pointed out that one of the functions of the hobbits in the story is to stand in for the modern, middle class novel reader who can then visit the far stranger medieval and Anglo-Saxon worlds of Gondor and Rohan. When Tolkien tries to do without our hobbit intermediaries, such as in The Silmarillion, we find his books much less accessible. This makes LotR much more of a portal fantasy.

We also discussed the whole idea of the novel as the story of a character’s life journey, the Bildungsroman, and how this is actually a Renaissance invention that was possible only when people abandoned the medieval world view of an unchanging society and started to see the world as something that could and should be changed.

Today’s progress:

Project: White Raven draft two

New words: 3,889

Total words: 16,534

Goal: 100k

Writing:

Yesterday was a useless day, hence the lack of update.  I did mess around and try to get some words down, but they were all pretty much worthless.

Today was better.  Managed to get this chapter edited, which was my goal for the week.

Real life:

Laundry.  Listening to the rain.

Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn.

Originally published at Cheryl's Mewsings. Please leave any comments there.

The Finncon media machine has produced its usual good coverage. We have almost a whole page in the most important Finnish newspaper today, including a long interview with George. They also did a “what’s on at the con” section, in which I get a name check as I’m on a panel with George. And of course the coverage repeatedly mentions that entry is free so everyone should come along.

I have more academic papers to review this morning. Opening ceremonies at the con are this afternoon.

So. First things first.

You guys know I'm having a new website designed. (If you didn't, um, I am.) It's going to go live next week, I believe; very soon.

And... I have decided, after much thought, to retire the Blogger blog.

The blog will stay here. I will still use my Blogger identity because I still read a lot of Blogger blogs (when I can). And ALL of the old entries are being imported into the new blog, so once your bookmarks are updated (if you're bookmarking me), you'll still be able to hunt around and find what you're looking for over there, without having to wander back and forth.

But the new site will be a Wordpress site (I'm a bit nervous about that. Wordpress didn't work well for me in the past but I have messed with it a bit since and I have high hopes). And I wanted an integrated blog, one that was an actual page on the site and not a separate page. I wanted one I could design to look like the rest of the site (or rather, that my web designer, the fabulous Frauke from Croco Designs, could design to look like the rest of the site. And I wanted to streamline a bit, and not have to wander all over the internet to update all my blogs with the same content.

So I had to give up a blog. And to be honest, livejournal is a bit easier for me to use; I like the Friends page there, where I can ee all my friends' updates without having to do all the clicking. And this way I can compose my posts in Wordpress and they will automatically copy over to livejournal (I may have to go modify them to get the tags in, I'm not sure).

It makes me a little sad, to be honest. But I really do want that site/blog integration. I'm trying--I'm going to try--to be better about my website, and not just focus on the blog while the site sits ages out of date. I think that will be easier now, at least I hope it will.

And for those of you who are my Blogger pals, well, I really hope you'll come visit me there. It may be the end of me doing a blog on Blogger but it's the beginning of a new, stylish blog at Wordpress, so I'm--cautiously--excited.

I'll post a link as soon as it's live.

Oh! I have also decided on a topic for our Summer Series. Yes, I know it's a bit late in the summer to start. And no, it won't be as long or as involved as the Strumpet series. But I'm going to be discussing critique partners: What to look for, what to avoid, how to give a good critique, and how to know when to take advice and when to ignore it. So if you have any questions about those topics, or about anything to do with critique partners or beta readers or anything, please leave them in comments (you can do so anon if you wish) or email me with them or whatever. We'll probably start next Thursday the 16th and run through the middle/end of August.

Something else cool is happening. And yes, before I mention it I should disclose that the people involved are my good friends. So, you guys remember when eBay was really fun? When it wasn't all clogged up with professionals selling the same items at inflated prices, but was just people? When it felt like a community? Because Lootslinger.com does. They're a new auction site opening late this summer. I can't give all the details, but the goal is to have fun again; to get to know people, to sell some cool stuff and buy some cool stuff--legal stuff, NOT pirated copies of stuff (they're very committed to copyright protection).

You can check them out on their Facebook page and follow them on Twitter. And you should. Ask them questions. Tell them what you want. Because it's going to be really cool, and because they actually care.

First of all, many many happy returns to the wonderful rozk. I hope you have a good day.

I have my programme schedule for Worldcon. It's mow close enough that I'm getting excited -- I've wanted to go to Quebec province since I was eight or nine. My schedule looks like this:

12.30 Thursday The Werewolves of Brigadoon
The appropriation of Scotland, Ireland and Wales as lands of "Celtic fantasy" by North American authors whose Celtic experiences appear to begin with Sir Walter Scott, travel through
Brigadoon, and conclude with bad Hollywood movies. This one could get interesting. I have Views and I can quite genuinely claim to be expert. As most of the popular beliefs are, well, wrong... Hmmm.
Kari Sperring, Peadar Ó Guilín (M), Ian McDonald.

2 pm Thursday Translation Challenges
What are the artistic and professional challenges faced by translators? How do they tackle translating between languages whose grammars are incompatible?
Jetse de Vries, Kari Sperring (M), Rani Graff, Tom Clegg, Fernandes, Eileen Gunn

7 pm Thursday Horror and Dark Fantasy Writers: What Makes the Story "Horror" or "Dark Fantasy"?
Horror and dark fantasy writers tell how they do it, how do they think up the horror and how do they know it when they write it?
Ellen Datlow (M), Kari Sperring, Maura McHugh, Susan Forest, Kaaron Warren

9 am Friday Medieval France: Just another fantasy?
Fantasy authors are often inspired by medieval France, but how much reality actually gets ends up in their fiction?
Edward James, Faye Ringel, Kari Sperring (M), Sean McMullen

2 pm Saturday he Middle Ages: Getting it Right
Description: Professional medieval historians help you avoid howlers and offer you unlikely titbits of information.
Edward James (M), Kari Sperring (The Edward-and-Kari show rides again).

4.30 pm Sunday Kari Sperring Signing
Say what?

7 pm Folk Tales
Description: Listen to some folk tales from around the world. (Children's programme and bilingual)
Josepha Sherman (M), Kari Sperring
(I'd like to tell a really scary Viking folk-tale. Will I be lynched?)

10 am Monday 150 Years Later: The Continuing Exploits of the Three
Musketeers
Description: Kari Sperring (as Kari Maund) is the co-author of The Four Musketeers: The True Story of D'Artagnan, Porthos, Aramis and Athos
My solo talk on Musketeer sequels.

11 am Monday Non-Fiction for SF Fans
What non-fiction should SF fans be reading? The panel recommends and discussed recently published books and perennial classics.
Geoff Ryman, James Cambias, Kari Sperring, Niall Harrison (M), Vincent Docherty

12.30 Monday Author Reading
Patrick Rothfuss; Kari Sperring; Michelle Sagara.
(Eep. I am reading with Important Writers).

Monday morning is going to be rushed, methinks! But I've done worse when I was still teaching in universities. Most of these look like fun, though my translation skills involve mediaeval languages.

Serious question: can anyone on the f'list put me in email contact with Josepha Sherman, please? I've never met her, but I suspect the folk-tale item will need careful advance planning. I can tell a Welsh story in French quite happily, and another Welsh one (or Irish or Scandinavian) in English, but I don't want to overlap and I know little about her interests.

The marquis is on four items -- 3.30 pm Thursday, a discussion of the Hugo-nominated novels; 3 pm Friday, Jedi training workshop for the children's programme; Friday 9 pm, on RPGs and their fictional tie-ins; and 9 am Saturday on Mediaeval Technology.

I found an ad on an internet marketplace, where someone had kittens who looks quite a bit like Emil when he was that age. I sent an email, and got an answer yesterday evening; they still have 2 kittens left.
I don't know if it's coincidence or something genetic, but of the 6 cats my family and I have had, the 3 who were black were much more affectionate and seemed to bond more closely with us humans than the non-black ones.
So tomorrow evening I'm going to go and have a look and see if any of them can become my new cat friend.

Originally published at Cheryl's Mewsings. Please leave any comments there.

Here I am in Helsinki, and Finncon is well under way. I arrived late last night and headed straight to a pub where I found our GoHs, George RR Martin and Al Reynolds, in the company of the usual suspects (including Toni Jerrman who can always be relied upon where beer is concerned). From there we went to an interesting restaurant called Zetor. It has something of a tractor fetish. I had the sauteed reindeer, which was very nice despite coming with an Evil Dill Pickle.

I am staying with my good friends Otto and Paula (and their two cats). Otto is once again providing guest liaison services and his car has been transformed into the official Finncon GuestMobile for the duration of the convention. I’m very grateful to him because today Helsinki is getting the weather that London had on Tuesday.

The morning saw the traditional press conference which I am pleased to say went very well (good job, Hannele). There were several journalists and photographers, and both Al and George got taken aside for interviews. The general question session saw the expected questions - George was asked abut his over-enthusiastic fans and Al about his million-pound book deal. However, we did get other stuff as well. I suspect that the thing you will be most interested in is the Song of Ice & Fire TV show. Here’s what George said.

Casting is currently under way, and they are very serious about this. They are even holding casting sessions in Australia. I asked if I could play Sersi, but George politely declined to reply. Filming will be taking place in Northern Ireland, actually in a studio on the site of the old Harland & Wolff ship yard where, as George noted, they built The Titanic. HBO will not make a decision about the series, or even screening the pilot, until after the pilot has been shot. As George explained, some pilots never even get shown. But hopefully this one will and a series will follow.

George was also asked why he started such a huge fantasy series. He said that after years in Hollywood he got fed up with being told that his ideas were too big and expensive to film, so he decide to go back to books where he could have whatever ideas he wanted. The irony is that now those big ideas will be filmed, but of course technology has moved on a lot in the last decade (hello Weta).

There was also an interesting discussion about book signings. Al said that the bookstores and publishers in the UK are not interested in doing signing tours, or even one-off signings, these days unless they are sure you will attract the sort of crowds that Neil Gaiman (and George) get. Even someone like Al, who is a big enough name to be signed to a 10-book million-pound deal, apparently only attracts 20+ people to a signing at Forbidden Planet. It is all very sad.

I’m currently in a book store in Helsinki that is run by my friend Iida, and I’m borrowing her Mac to do some quick blogging before having to head off to the academic conference at 13:00. I’ll be tweeting from the convention throughout the weekend, but don’t expect much in the way of blog updates unless I can find free wi-fi at the con. If you would like to see what the Finnish fans are saying you might want to check out the Finncon Twibe. However, that depends on people remembering to use the #finncon hashtag, so when I get a spare moment I will set up a CoverItLive session for the weekend that will capture all tweets from the Twibe members.

( My Readercon Schedule 2009 )

In Boston now, staying at a warm little B&B near our old house. Delia's reading & signing at Porter Square Books ['EAT/SLEEP/READ'] went beautifully. If you couldn't get there but want a signed copy of her books, or any of mine for that matter (including trade paperback TPOTS), we left a nice big stack all duly autographed. They sell by mail, as well.

We nearly didn't make it, though. We planned to pick up the rental car & leave NYC at 1 pm. We were excited about getting to ride back with our good friend Sarah Smith, who'd been in town to meet with her editor about a new book(!!). At 5 past 1:00 the phone rang. I heard Delia saying, "Oh my god. Oh. Oh, no." She didn't sound panicked, just a bit shocked.

Sarah was lying on the sidewalk a block from our house, waiting for an ambulance. She'd tripped and fallen, and was pretty sure her arm was broken. The call was from a guy who'd stopped when he saw her, and called 911.

I ran out. She was being a tremendously brave little soldier, but her wrist was looking bad & swelling up. I gave her Advil (racing to the nearby bodega for bottled water), and started calling friends. Ambulance came, and suggested - just in time - we take off her rings before her fingers got too swollen. I greased her fingers with the last of my Ayr menthol ointment from winter! (I'd just changed bags for the trip, and wasn't toting my usual handcreme). I was relieved to see she kept her color when she stood up. In the ambulance, they took her ID info while I found a friend of hers to meet her at Mt Sinai. Then we called her husband, who said he'd drive down from Boston to get her. This relieved my mind mightily; I felt awful just leaving her there, but we had to get Delia to her gig. I took Sarah's pack & computer back to my house, and we left the keys with the doorman (how I love the doormen!) so she could crash there when she got out of hospital. Which is what she did. (And the guy who called 911? Even after I got there, he stood quietly on the sidewalk - with the 2 large dogs he was walking - and watched until we got into the ambulance; must've been there a good half hour. She asked for his name so she could thank him later, but he just said, "Don't worry about it.")

Delia, too, was a brave little soldier; she'd thought her gig was at 6, not 7, and that it took 4+ hours, not 3.5, to drive to Boston. So essentially she thought we'd be almost an hour late, but I had no idea she'd quietly swallowed that bitter pill til we'd been on the road almost an hour. Fortunately, we made good time on a pretty day with little traffic, and were even able to check into the guest house before heading to the bookstore. It was so good to see old Boston friends there - and new ones, as well!

Lunch tom'w with more old friends, a little gentle retail therapy in the old neighb (Delia's knitting baby hats for all and sundry - she finds it soothing, and they are adorable!), and then, off to READERCON! I'll post my schedule separately.

We went again tonight. Regular readers of witchcraft_shop will know that today was the day that Lily dragged a wheelie chair twice around the shop. Once we get to dog training, however, it's like she's been replaced with another dog. She sits, lies, and walks to heel, generating cries of 'ooh, isn't she a little star!' from the training team. In the intervals, while other dogs bark their heads off or head for the door, Lily lies down quietly.

Since I am used to having the problem ones, this is something of a novelty.

Perhaps Lily the Artist is her own evil twin?

I'm flying out to Toronto very early Friday morning. This song and the story behind it? Not so comforting. (Good thing I never did learn to play that guitar?)

I didn't expect to make it to the Lit & Phil today.

Thing is, alternate Wednesdays, I have to collect my veg bag, from the totally opposite direction; which usually involves going to the supermarket first (which is even further, but in that direction), and by the time I get home, well, another long walk would just seem wasteful. And I can always work at home, right?

Of course I can. Even when I'm ouchie, and the computer here contributes most to that ouchiness, and I know that I'll do more and hurt less at the Lit & Phil...

So. Before and after fetching veggies, I did sit here and write; and grimly, between ouchiness and exercise, I got myself to the very edge of quota. And it was still only early afternoon, and I had eaten lunch (cheese-and-carrot-greens omelette: v good) and I thought, curse it, a walk will do me good.

And went to the Lit & Phil.

But not with the Laptop of Heavenly Perfection, that stayed at home. I just took a print-out of tomorrow's Phantoms story, to work through for cuts'n'such.

And did that, and y'know? I really really like it. It's almost a ghost-story-without-a-ghost, until right at the very end, but none the worse for that. It sits very much at the core of what it is that I do when I write a ghost story; and it's called "Walking at the Speed of Light, More Slowly". Which I like more every time I think it.

And now I'm home, and a turkey-and-pork terrine flavoured with carrot greens is in the oven, and me, I am writing more. Yes, and exercising. Every time I get ouchie. It sort of takes the pain away, if only because it hurts so much...

First of all, I want to thank those of you who have expressed your sympathies and support when I lost my dear feline friend.
Though words like "I'm sorry for your loss" may seem inadequate, I found it very comforting to see I was not alone in my grief.
Emil became sick very fast - from one day to the next it was as if he had turned from the equivalent of a fit 70 year old human to one frail and very weak closer to 100. He refused to eat, his breathing was laboured and it was obvious from the way he lay and the few times he moved that he was in discomfort. When he tried to drink from his bowl, he had problems controlling his front legs and was too weak to hold his body so he could bend down. I got an awful flashback to how one of our cats, Felix, was when he was dying.
I got an appointment with a nearby vet (who I took him to last year) as soon as I saw he wasn't getting any better. I was sort of prepared for the worst, but it was still devastating to be told that he was dying.
His liver had grown abnormally large (she hadn't noticed anything wrong with it a year ago), which meant that there was a very high probability that he'd got liver cancer. That, combined with his laboured breathing, obvious discomfort, refusal to eat, weakness and age, meant that it was very unlikely that he'd survive even the general anaesthesia needed for an operation. The best thing to do, the vet said, was euthanasia, to make sure he wouldn't have to suffer.
The vet was very kind and sympathetic; she explained everything about the procedure, and I could spend some time both before and after to say goodbye.
Even though it was hard, I decided to stay with Emil to the end. He was first given a sedative, so he wouldn't feel any pain, before he was given an overdose injection. I guess I could have left the room after he became unconscious, but I wanted to stay just in case he was on some level still aware.
Since I didn't have any place to bury him, having his ashes returned after a cremation seemed pointless, so I choose a communal cremation - but, if it was possible, I wanted to donate his body to the vet college. Maybe his body could contribute to knowledge about cats that would help other cats. The vet said she'd never had a similar request before - which I, personally, find strange - but she'd call them and ask.
The first week I was so overwhelmed by grief I couldn't even speak about it, except briefly mention what had happened to mum, on the phone.
Strange how it's possible to both feel all empty and hollowed out, yet at the same time filled with so much grief and pain and rage that it feels like you're going to explode.
I've been dealing with my grief by looking at all the pictures I have of Emil, and focusing on the good and the funny memories.
I'm trying to find a new feline friend, now. Though it's awful when you lose them, I don't think I can live without the company.

I was sitting up here quietly working, earning us an honest home-baked crust; they meanwhile were downstairs raiding the fridge. I don't know how they got it open - blind fuzzy luck, I suspect.

Total known score: the heel of a ham, the heel of an Italian sausage and two eggs. My lunch, in short.

I am currently stewing carrot-greens in butter, to see if they might make an acceptable filling for an omelette. How sad is that?

Just over two years ago, I wrote to my friend Lisa with a big favor to ask. We'd already met online, already clicked as friends and offered to critique each other's next books, but this was something new. I have a book I really want to write, I told her, but I'm really nervous and I don't know if I can do it. What would really, really help would be if I could send you the chapters as I write them, and you could cheer. Would that be okay?

Lisa wrote back with absolute enthusiasm. I'll send you chapters of my novel, too, and it'll be like a literary tea party, where we exchange ribbon-wrapped manuscripts over our teacups and slices of cake!

So I gathered up my courage and I pressed SEND, emailing her the first chapter of my novel, Kat by Moonlight (aka, A Most Improper Magick), and in return, she sent me the first chapter of her novel, which also had a different name back then. And oh, we cheered for each other! Getting Lisa's emails full of love for Kat and her sisters filled me with the confidence and security I needed to keep going, one chapter at a time, even though I was so sure that what I was doing, by crazily writing the book of my heart instead of the book of the market, was commercial death and a terrible financial idea.

But I had a writing buddy to help me through now, and better yet, I had an AWESOME heroine acting as a literary sister to my Kat - Lisa's Beatrice Shakespeare Smith, aka Bertie, a rebellious blue-haired teenager who lives in a magical theater with four hilarious and loyal fairy friends, a sweet, sexy pirate who wants to be her boyfriend, a dangerous, sexy fairy who might want something else, and a scared orphan heart behind all her wit and courage. Bertie was smart and sharp and funny, and I cared desperately about what would happen to her - but most of all, her book made me laugh and laugh, which was priceless. (Both her books, actually, since I was lucky enough to read the first draft of Book 2 as it was being written.)

Yesterday, Lisa's (and Bertie's!) book was published, Act I in the Theatre Illuminata trilogy: Eyes Like Stars. If you love strong, smart heroines, you'll love this book. If you love theater, if you love humor, if you love romance....oh, wow, is this the book for you.

But most of all, I just want to say, on both my and Kat's behalf: HUGE congratulations to Lisa and to Bertie!!!!!!!!!!

This weekend, we'll be going down to Wales, where my pre-ordered copy of the book will be waiting for me. (I NEVER pre-order books...but I pre-ordered this one!) I've already read multiple drafts of Eyes Like Stars, but every single draft has been even better than the last, and I can't wait to curl up again on Saturday with Bertie and her friends.