Going Down

While Christchurch sweltered in the summer heat, BamBam and the Tiny Dynamo and I explored an underground cave, complete with rushing subterranean river.

My favorite phrase from the gubbment's website: Please observe the warning signs about entering the cave - it has claimed lives. You must be properly equipped if you plan to walk through the cave.

We had jandals and shorts and one flashlight between the three of us. Most of us survived.

The limestone cave twists and weaves for about half a kilometer underground. The water is cold and strong, the rocks beneath the surface rough and punishing. Lots of places, the going was tough, but there were no helmets, guideropes, safety barriers or anything else. You slip, you whack yourself on the rocks and try not to be washed away.

A lot like writing, in a way. Of course, the cave is a lot easier to navigate than a seat-of-the-pants plot-- all we had to do was keep crashing upstream until we hit the waterfall at the end. ;)

Just downstream from the waterfall (near the end of the walk) is a beautiful wee lagoon, calm and deep and perfect for a swim, if you can stand the temperature. (having the body fat of a nine year old child, cold and I don't get along...) Of course, coming back to the city to find the tar melting on the roads, an icy underground river didn't seem so bad.

Today, I'm pleasantly banged up and lightly bruised.

It was awesome.

Second Act Insanity

Something I've noticed: the middle of every novel drives me insane.

Driving hard, never stopping, it's no wonder some of the more tender gears start to slip.

My first novel, large quantities of beer in the sun played a major part. At the time, I chalked up those crazy couple months to the effects of beer, and sun. My second, I got through that Scary, Saggy Middle in a deep and wistful melancholy. I blamed it on the winter, the poverty of those days, the cold and the lack of light.

Those novels seemed important at the time, but really, they were practice. By #3, when I gave away my car (in favor of my mountain bike) and reconnected with (and horribly, hopelessly alienated) several old friends from college now living Out East, I started to notice a pattern.

The recently finished #4 was one hell of a long hard slog. Long enough, and hard enough, that I went crazy twice: I found myself compelled to shave with straight razors, and later, to write with a dip pen.

Insane. Bloody insane.

So as I cruise past my Enormous and Stakes-Changing Center of my latest, I've kept a chary eye peeled. At 40,000 words, the worst I'd seen was that I reconnected with the Southern side of my heritage by making iced tea again: probably the first pitcher I've made in twelve or thirteen years. My cute wee Kiwi thinks the idea of cold tea is a crime against nature, but she eats whitebait.

I thought maybe this time, I had a pass.

No such luck. :-)

Turns out the owner of my tattoo shop is getting itchy feet. He's opening a new place across town, and I'm taking over the current place. So now my life is a flurry of equipment purchases, jewelry wholesalers, retail stock and the hiring and training of new staff. Exciting, yes. Exciting and something else.

Insane, that's the word. Bloody insane.

Day 43, the Full Throttle Daily Wordcount-O-Meter stands at 47,100.

Some things never change.

Keeping Warm

I'd blog more right now, but those cold nights ain't gonna warm themselves!

To make up for it, here is an utterly gratuitous picture of Mr. Butler Dynamo...

8 Days Later....

Five pounds lighter...


Twenty hours of sleep total...


The work stands at 68,238 words.


Events took some unexpected turns. Things that baffled me (why is that girl Irish? Why is she in here at all? What's with the horses?) have become clear. An encounter I'd been expecting the whole book never materialized. There are notes scattered through the text telling me what I need to add earlier...


The final showdown is underway.


The end is so close I can taste it.


Oddly, the Minor Bastard is still alive. I'm starting to wonder if he'll make it through the whole book. For that matter, I'm kind of wondering about the Hero and the Main Bastard as well. Both are more resourceful than I would have thought, and nothing is as simple as it seems.


I'm not quite finished, but I *am* having the time of my life!


Of course, once I'm finally done, I do plan to sleep for a week. That too will be most enjoyable!



In other news, the birthday was much fun.


The Tiny Dynamo provided me with some very nice gifts and a truly ginormous chocolate cake!

After all, I do have some missing kilos to put back on....

I May Be Some Time

I'm just going outside and may be some time. Though hopefully not as long as that nice Titus Oates...

I've got a week left til my birthday. The novel's current incarnation is on 41,500 words. From what I can see of the road ahead, I expect to come in around 80-90,000.

Like that kid on the left there, I've got a daunting task. But hey, slugging out of my weight is practically second nature.

I've also got some kind of summer cold/virus. Given that I thought I saw a white horse in the back yard just now, I may have a bit of a fever as well...

At any rate, my only prayer of finishing this beast involves unplugging the modem. I do promise to check back in on the 3rd and let you all know how everything went.

Meantime, here's a painting by Robert Bailey with a title close to my heart!

Rest assured that this week will indeed be spent at full throttle!

It Begins.... AGAIN!!!

Kate's making a big push on her WIP and thought a team effort would help her along. Anything to help out a blogbuddy! :-)

So in the interests of Science and Friendship, the old Daily Word Count-o-Meter is once again out of mothballs!

Day One: we'll start with the clock set at 'zero'. Handy for me, since I've *no* idea how much I've already written will go into the torturous Work in Progress. (Anybody like my Dickensian use of Capitals? I do promise to Stop, soon. Probably.)

So...

Official 30 day Word-o-Meter Word Count: 0

There, that wasn't so hard. but wait, there's more.

Actually, we're on Day 3, and I only just got the news. So.... (brief pause while I tally up three days' progress. Feel free to play your favorite music while on hold... still holding.... there!) we jump ahead to ....

Official 30 day Word-o-Meter Word Count: 3511

Staying on track, I guess. I might've done more, but yesterday was spent wrestling my lawn. Right now I plan to post about it on my other blog.

All right, back to work...

The Tamagotchi Gesture

I am very much a willing victim of what William Gibson calls the Tamagotchi Gesture.

I shave with straight razors. That means honing and stropping (a lot of stropping), a cupful of lather applied with a brush, and a certain degree of care. And sure, a few bloody wounds in the learning. Shaving now takes me the best part of half an hour. It's as far removed as possible from the world of ten-to-a-bag, blue plastic disposables.

It's also wonderful.

This is the very definition of the Tamagotchi Gesture: They're pointless yet needful, comforting precisely because they require tending.

Cut throat razors focus the mind. Zenfolk talk about being fully present, and nothing does that quite like having a big wedge of unimaginably sharp steel moving across your face. I come away from each shave centered and still, my soul the quiet eye of my usual cyclone of activity.

I think that's the heart of the Tamagotchi Effect. When too many things in one's life are instant and disposable, the overall effect is subtractive. By adding something that requires care and tending and concentration, we are nourished.

I'm writing my current novel longhand. And not just any longhand. After I ran Skatey the Skater Pen over with the car (yes, yes, I know!), I ended up switching to a dip pen.

That's right. A. Dip. Pen. Write a couple words. Dip. Write some more. Dip. Keep that pressure light, or you'll spatter all over the place. At first, it required almost as much concentration to form words as to think up what those words should be. (as much thought to write as to write, as it were)

The odd thing: My output actually *increased*. Something about the concentration in making the words frees the part of my brain that's trying to listen to the story from distraction.

There's no point using a hundred year old steel quill (I have a thousand or so lying around) to write a novel. Ballpoints are cheaper, cleaner and way more convenient. And the laptop is right here. But for me, for this novel, this works.

PS Finished the Tin Roof Blowdown last night. I need to let it settle a bit before I throw in my two cents. Or ten, as that's our smallest coin in New Zealand. Or 6.8 cents, as that's what ten of our cents are worth in America....

So Quiet

I've been quiet of late, I know. There are a few relatively juicy blog essays banging around in my head, but no time to write them.

Y'see, I'm writing again. Working title is This Rusted Cage (TRC), and it's shaping up to be a fair bit of fun. At least, I can't wait to see what happens. But it's autumn in the book, and autumn here on the ground, so I'm really trying to boogie while the impressions are all nice and fresh.

I dashed off maybe three or four thousand words on that earlier idea (the guy in handcuffs), but it wasn't there yet. I like his story, but this one needs telling first. Oddly, this story is one I made a couple of false starts on before starting (and finishing) the previous novel.

That one's still marinating. Another month or two, I'll print and edit.

In the meantime, I've put up the bones of a site for my writing. There's even an excerpt here. Of course, I'll have to do this all over when the publishers insist on a name change and I end up writing as Winter Fallon or some such.

On the home front, Midge has gone from staying outside to sleeping in the same room with Butler. On top of the bookshelves where he can't reach her, of course, but it's progress. They've also eaten at the same time, which is rather social for the Duchess Midge.

When the laptop's not handy (supermarkets, lines, waiting rooms, etc.), I've been working longhand in a notebook. Later, I transcribe those scenes in. Butler has also been most helpful in this regard.

Back!

Rested, recovered and once again hapily ensconced in Godzone.

Australia was lovely. I didn't get to see an opera in Sydney, or take a 4x4 across the outback, watch the sun rise on Ayer's Rock or dive the Great Barrier Reef. I'd love to do all of those things, but this time time and money were tight (especially since artists don't get holiday pay. If I'm not working, I'm not getting paid).

We did do a lot of this:

And a little of this:

I was dropped from and hurtled over an awful lot of iron in the last week. A lot of fun. Also went on my first water slide. And second, third, and eventually lost count. Sheltered soul that I am, I'd never been to a water park before.

The Tiny Dynamo, being part Selkie, is rather at home in the water. Being more of the Irish Setter model myself, I dog paddle and chase tennis balls, that sort of thing. I'll admit I went to the water parks mainly for the joy of of watching the Dynamo, slick and shiny and running around in her bikini. Turns out I like the slides, too!

And of course, we did get inland a bit for some of these:

Not once did I give in to that scratching at the windows of my soul. But there's this guy, see. He's got bloody knuckles on his left hand and he's taken out of the airport in cuffs, stuffed into the back of a cruiser and driven out into a tiny town in the rural South. The city cops hand the guy off on the cracked blacktop of a dark restaurant.

The sheriff unlocks the guy's cuffs. Explains it was all a misunderstanding. The guy isn't so sure. He's been gone a long time, and everyone's been happy with that arrangement. Now, he just wants to do whatever business brought him back to town and get back in the wind. But having him back, even for a few days, is making an awful lot of people are nervous.

There are secrets all over the place. And this guy, he's got plenty of his own.

And I kinda want to know what they are...

Quite the Service You Got Here

Happy Happy Joy Joy

According to this article, authors, painter and sculptors are some of the happiest people. Bartenders, cashiers and waiters are among the least.

Clergy are happiest overall (no creative blocks, since the text is written for them?), while roofers are the least. Poor damn roofers.

The article cites the satisfaction of serving others as the source of a lot of that personal and professional happiness. It's certainly what gets me up in the morning. It never ceases to touch me that people find it worthwhile to part with their hard-earned cash for my offerings.

Used to seem to me, everybody needs to eat, but nobody *needs* a painting, tattoo, drawing, or a story. Now I'm not so sure. Art and stories, beauty and entertainment, all fill a need deeper than any can of pork and beans can touch.

It's just harder to put a finger on the needs those things fill. But there's no mistaking the charge of knowing you've touched another person's life.

I credit that feeling of service to others to my own happiness. And my happiness to my continuing and unnatural youth...

After the Loving

(word count now irrelevant)

So what's next?

One problem with running full-throttle is stopping.

I finished last night and sat on my hands for a couple of hours before bed. Fortunately, the Tiny Dynamo thought she saw a mouse, so there was screaming and standing on chairs, etc. to keep me entertained.

It's fall. We live next to acres of fields. It's warm inside. But try telling a fearful Dynamo that. Like getting an amphetamine-fueled leprechaun to do algebra.

I also finished my latest read: The Blue Girl, by Charles DeLint. Good stuff, and I'll be reading more. Next up: Hunting Down Amanda, by Andrew Klavan and Clockers, by Richard Price.

Sometime in the next couple of days I've got a drawing to do for a client, a painting or two I've been thinking about and, apparently, a driving need to mouse-proof my home. Somehow I just know that will involve lots and lots and lots of (shudders, same voice Jerry used to say Newman) cleaning.

I'm trying to give it a day or two before I start back in. Not sure I'll be able to handle the break, but I'll try. Fortunately, I've got a couple of ideas in mind for my next two books, so I won't have to live with that 'will I ever write again' feeling. Just the 'will it be any good' and 'is this one I just did any good' ones. Oh, and 'what if the power has left me'. That's always a fun one, if you listen to it...

Mostly, I'll be a reader and movie watcher (when not -- ugh -- cleaning) for the next short while. I do loves me a good story. And I learn a lot from a bad one, so it's a win either way.