The Ghost of Christmas Future!

We just got back from an ultrasound, which was the sequel to what was supposed to be our last ultrasound. It all went a lot better than last time.

The halfway-point ultrasounds have one purpose: TERROR. Last time, the doctor told us that the baby had a choroid plexus cyst, a echogenic intracardiac focus, and a sandal gap toe. There could be other problems, but the baby wouldn't hold still long enough to let them look any further, and we'd probably want to get a genetic test for Downs Syndrome and Trisomy immediately.

And then no one ever called back with the test results. When Rebecca checked a week later, the doctor said oh, yes, everything looked fine.

All that gibberish above - those three problems? Those are fairly common things found in ultrasounds. It's just that when they're all together, the odds are slightly higher for genetic disorders.

The ultrasound today went just fine. The 'choroid plexus cyst', or 'little white spot', went away. The sandal gap toe ... well, no one could actually make it out this time. The baby seems to have a mild micrognathia, which seems to be an overbite, but - so do I, and the lower jaw is supposed to grow a lot during the third trimester. Everything's growing at the right rate and all the organs seem to be working out fine, so that's pretty good news.

And it's almost certainly a girl. I think we're leaning toward Miranda Harper as a name. We'll see.

I'm only thirty pages or so from the second draft of Mrs. Shadow! The other day, the plot for my next book came to me... and it's REALLY exciting. I'm ready to get on it!

BO-O-O-RING POST

Originally, I wanted to make this blog entirely about the process of writing. Which doesn't make for an entertaining read. It isn't like I'm inspiring future authors, so whatever. This doesn't have to be a Blog of Serious Times. We can sit back and post about ant farms instead!
BUT: just for today, I'm going to post a little about my new writing process.

Way back when, I had this idealized image of writing as a flow of creativity. You sit down, the wisdom and beauty spurts out, you fill your jug o' words, and then - WHAM - the faucet slowly dribbles out a few last spurts and, smiling proudly, you bask in your day's work.

No. Not really.

The thing is, it took longer than it should have to figure that out. Every day I planned to write, I'd sit down and procrastinate. Browse the internet, pick the perfect background music... anything but actually write. It wasn't any fun. Once I was maybe half an hour into it, it went fine, but until then, I dreaded actually working. It wasn't what I imagined writing SHOULD be. I figured that maybe it was that I wasn't making steady money off my art. Or maybe it was that I wasn't writing what I wanted to write.

Here's the truth, though: I'd set myself up to fail.

I wanted to work on my book four or five days a week. When I edited, my goal was to get through ten pages, and when I wrote, my goal was two thousand words. That makes for some fast progress, true. But no wonder I never felt like writing. I'd done the right thing by setting up a schedule, but I'd turned it into a chore.

For the past month, my schedule's been two days a week, Wednesday and Friday. Five pages edited a day. It's working out really well. Before, I used to take off a day or two a week just because I didn't want to get started. Now, whenever I write, I don't feel burned out by the previous day. I've ended up deleting something like thirty pages of drivel I wrote during my last stint, when my goal was just progress, progress, progress. I've replaced it with twenty solid pages. For the first time in a while, I think the second half of this book is shaping up to be something special.

Granted, I guess that the next book I write isn't going to be finished in three months. But it'll probably be a lot more fun to write.

I KNOW.

I know, I know, I know. I haven't updated in over a year. So here's where I've been.

It's much easier to not write than to write. Somewhere near the end of 2010, I started revising Mrs. Shadow. I was nearly two-thirds of the way through when... the holidays happened. So I couldn't work because it was about to be Thanksgiving. And I couldn't work after that because it was about to be Christmas. And then I couldn't work because it was a new year...

Procrastination. My thirtieth birthday started to loom, and I thought: If I don't finish this, I never will. So I made a calendar.

One month later, I've edited nearly 40 pages and deleted another ten. If everything goes as planned, I should finally finish in August, nearly two years after I started writing. When I reread what I've finished so far, I'm REALLY happy with the book for the first time. So. We'll see.

But I'm back. Thirty years old and, in five months, I'll be a father.

Hello, Ants! Goodbye!

For Christmas, I got an ant farm.

It wasn't just any ant farm - it was one of those sweet new neon-blue ant farms. The outer-space kind. Up until we moved into our new house, it sat unused in the closet, just waiting - as are we all - to be filled with red ants.

Last week, it was finally warm enough. I did not have to worry about coming out to the mailbox to find a package of frozen ant corpses. So I ordered a vial, and a couple of days later, I had twenty new friends.



And these little red guys were fast. A few hours after we put them in, they were already digging tunnels...


A day later...


They were pretty exciting guys. This one was my favorite:


In less than a week, the ant farm went from amazing to depressing. They stopped digging tunnels and started trying to chew their way out. And then came the dilemma: do I let them go or keep them? If I let them go, they're probably going to be eaten by a predator. At the very least, without a queen, they aren't going to be doing a whole lot of exciting stuff.
Then again: if I leave them in the farm, they'll die within a couple of months, all the while trying to escape.
SO, this afternoon:


So long, ants!

One year later

Actually, it hasn't been quite a year since we moved. Still, I have that feeling that almost everyone has when I look back - "I can't believe so much has happened" added to "I can't believe it's been a year already."

Here's where I thought I'd be: I thought I'd be about to quit the part-time job I'd get while waiting for my first book to be printed. I thought that surely, in a year's time, I'd have an agent and a publisher. And at least another book and a half written.

Well.

In the last year, I've finished editing The Cherubim and written a third book (Shadow). I've queried a couple of dozen agents; one actually gave The Dead Rise a full read-through (and a rejection.) I'm no closer to being published than I was when we moved.

This morning, I got up and edited another ten pages of Shadow. It's the best thing I've written to date, but I feel that way about everything I write - because everything else I've written to date is pretty awful. So there's that. I'm trying to feel optimistic about Shadow because it's stronger conceptually than anything I've done so far; it's the first thing I've written where I have something true to say. But does that make a good book? It's the story, and I'm not sure how strong the story is. I have to wait until it's finished and Rebecca reads through it.

But I'm happy I'm still writing. Even though I've taken a couple of hiatuses over the past year, I still love putting words down. And it feels good to still have an outlet.

We're closing on a house in three weeks. Since February of 2009, we've lived in three apartments in three cities - I'll be glad to finally settle down for a while. And I'll keep writing, knowing that commercial success isn't just around the corner.

Monthly update

It isn't that atheism embarrasses me. I live in Tennessee's state capitol, and as an urbane city dweller, one would think that one's fellow urbane neighbors would take any religious affiliation (or lack thereof) in stride.

But that's not how it is at my office. There, everyone's very proudly a non-denominational Christian. Scripture in email sigs, taped up on cubicle walls, passed along via loud discussions on Biblical interpretation.

So even though I'd decided I would proudly announce myself as an atheist if the conversation ever came up, I found myself quietly dancing around the fact.

"Have you guys found a church yet?" The woman who asks me is one of the nicest people I work with, but I've heard her disparagingly talking about non-religious people.

"Uh, no."

"What denomination are you?" Great. I'd been hoping my curt reply would end the conversation, but she's going to push it. So I decide to just put it on the table.

"I'm not."

"Oh, you're non-denominational? So am I! It doesn't matter what church you go to as long as you love the Lord. You do love the Lord, right?"

So now I'm in a bit of a quandary. The real answer to this question is mu, but I can't say that, because no one knows what it means. I could explain that I just don't believe in the Lord, but somehow it seems rude and confrontational. Then again, so's the whole conversation. So I take the lukewarm road, the worst road possible in a mixed metaphor, and say, "Uh... He's okay."

The woman looks bemused. "Well... does your wife go to church?"

"No, not really. We aren't really religious people."

"Well... you should come to church with me sometime." Then she wanders away.

Dream 1734

I had a dream last night that I woke up to find my right leg was amputated. Below my shin, there was nothing but a fresh, painless stump. I had to get to the restroom and couldn't find it, but nearby, there was a ruddy, hairy foot, complete with shin and shoe. I pressed it against the fresh stump. It felt odd. I tried moving my toes, and my big toe slightly wiggled. I stitched the foot on with a shoelace and hobbled out of my bedroom.

My parents were awake, but my mother was in a hurry to get to work and ignored my questions about where my leg had gone. My father was driving me around, and when I asked him what had happened, he seemed annoyed. I was asking too much too early.

"Well, when we looked in on you last night," he said gruffly, "we could tell you had blood poisoning in your leg. Took you to the doctor and they confirmed it. They had to amputate, at least until the poisoning went down. I knew you'd miss having it, so I left you my old leg."

"You couldn't have woken me up?" I asked, but he ignored me. He had bigger things on his mind at the moment.

He dropped me off near a town square where I was meant to see a doctor, but I wasn't sure why. I limped around for a while on my father's food and tried wiggling my toes. This time, it felt natural. My father's foot was beginning to become a part of my body.

I looked at my arms. They looked fine, except for the gaping holes in the middle of my forearms. When I looked inside, I saw muscles and tendons, and couldn't I see the telltale sign of rot? In fact, rotting holes weren't a good thing to have, were they? When I wandered inside the clinic, I thought of asking if it was possible that I had blood poisoning in my arms, but I wasn't sure of my doctor's name. My high school government teacher sat down and greeted me, and I left. I tried calling my mother's cell phone to ask her advice, but I couldn't dial her number. Every time I tried, my fingers fumbled.

ENOUGH!

I disappeared for a month! The book's bummed me out, so I'm dropping it for the time being. I'm supposed to be having fun with this, and even though I thought I was ready for this level of rejection - I wasn't. SO! Let it all calm down, start working on something else so I don't take this so personally, and think about querying later.

We went to a goat farm today!! Rebecca should have pictures up in the next day or two. Noble Springs Dairy is just a few miles away from us, and I buy some amazing chevre and feta from them every week - and they had their first tour today.

We milked a goat.

It was fantastic; this weekend feels like the first time in a long time that we've really been social, that we've really been out in the world, and it was fantastic. Even with my new job, it feels like I've put myself into a little bubble, and I've just started making little experimental voyages here and there. It's exciting.

Everything just seems so bright and full of possibilities. I've been feeling it more and more since I left Memphis - especially in the last couple of months. Escape velocity.

FIVE!

One month later, I've just gotten my fifth rejection. Twelve sent out, five form rejections. It's weird - The Dead Rise, even though it was clumsier than a third grader on roller skates, got at least a couple of personal rejection letters and a full manuscript request in the first ten queries. This one - no feedback. Some positive notes at Querytracker, but nothing from agents.

If I knew what was wrong with it - if it was the concept, the query letter, the first chapter, or just the genre - I might be able to fix it! But it's just a crapshoot right now. I'm working on a new query letter to send out when this batch is rejected - it's a little gimmicky, but a lot less 'distant' than the other. I'll post them both when the time comes and see what works best. Feels like like tossing pennies blindfolded, trying to hit a bottle across the room.

ONE!

First rejection! I told myself I'd send out five more query letters when I got my first rejection email. So I'll do that after work today. Weirdly: this does not concern me as much as I'd expected.