I write.

So some posts lately* have gotten me to thinking about something that, apparently, is a subject for frequent debate among writers.  When does someone get to say "I'm a writer?"  Let's be honest; this is obviously a deeply personal question for me.  When do I get to say "I'm a writer?"

 

At first, I thought of it like a job. You know, "I'm an accountant.  I'm a writer."  But ... what does that mean, it's a job? Does that mean you make your living from it?  Then I'm an accountant**.  What if you make part of your living from it?  Then I'm still an accountant, but someday I might be able to say "I'm an accountant and a writer."  But what if you are in the stage where you only intend to make a living at it?  Some can say that about their primary job - programmers that do contract work don't stop being programmers between jobs.  So, then, I'm a writer and an accountant now.

 

But then I thought, hell, I don't tell people I'm an accountant unless they ask "what do you do?" in that focused way that means they want to know what I do to make money.  A lot of times, when people ask the sorts of questions that are for getting-to-know-you purposes (yes, I have a song stuck in my head now, too), I say "I'm a knitter.  I'm a costumer."  So, hobbies count.  So I can say, right now "I'm a writer."  It's not a hobby I think I'm going to give up anytime soon, or one that may just be a passing fancy.  I've been doing this long enough that, like my love affair with yarn, I'm in this for the long haul.  Saying "I'm a writer" indicates a sense of permanency, something you're willing to identify yourself as being now and being in the future.

 

Maybe that's what it's all about at the heart.  Maybe it's about permanency.  It's not about the publishing world - that I still, despite my best efforts, do not control.  It's not about the weeks/days/months you don't write.  It's about the knowledge in the back of your head that you will write again - that you haven't abandoned that relationship, you haven't "given it up for good", it's just something you've done, you do, and you'll do again.

 

Nice to meet you.  I go by SilverRose on the web. I'm an accountant, kinda.  I'm a knitter, a costumer, a writer.

 

 

* No links, sorry; lazy

**Not really.  But I'm like an accountant, which doesn't make for such pretty sentences, m'kay?***

***Just wanted another one.  Today is all about the footnotes.

Welcome to the inside of my head, part 1

(It amused me to number these - mostly so that I can be amazed and astonished when I get to part 1803)

I get insomnia sometimes - it's not that bad, and certainly not cause for concern, but it can be irritating. But since I've started writing again, it's downright surreal. Here's tonight's little insomnia gem, presented for your amusement:

I chuckled when I looked at the chit that was directing me to yet another stop on my hunt. This one, at least, was going to be fun.

***

The seedy little storefront was harder to find than I’d imagined. You’d think that in the middle of block 910 it’d be easy to spot a small, unsignaled shop. The eye misses what it doesn’t want to see, though, and there weren’t a whole lot of people that wanted to see this place. I was a little disappointed when the door didn’t squeak when I pushed it open.

A small creased man behind the counter looked up at my entrance and his eyes widened. I’m always amused when I have that effect on people. So I was trying to hide a grin as I approached him.

“I'm here for model number 827A,” I let the grin escape, showing my teeth. His widening eyes were joined by an increasing pallor of complexion. He started to stammer out some sort of bullshit, like he didn’t have that model - until I slapped the vid pics I’d found of his back room on the counter.

“You don’t have the clearance for that kind of surveillance!” He had a high, droning voice, like a florescent light.

“Sweetheart,” I drawled at him, “you’ve got no idea what kind of clearance I can find when I’m real determined. Now go get me the pretty little thing, and I’ll pay your normal price.” I held up my credit note, thumb over the print reader to display my balance. As the card turned a magnifiscent shade of turquoise - legacy of the most recent step of this bizarre job - I could literally see his resolve fading. It faded at about the rate that his face aquired color again. But he wasn’t going to let me walk out for just a few hundred, not now that he knew the market - me - could bear more.

“Can’t sell you that model anyway,” he leered at me, taking in the softness of my hips and breasts, “you know you can't purchase it.”

“Yeah? Honey, we’re an awful long way from the Tower, and nobody around here is going to care that I’m a girl. Besides, you can’t afford to let the Tower know you’re selling sexbots on the side. So who exactly do you think I'm gonna worry about?”

The tattoo comes in handy on my wrist at times like these. I rotated it slowly, letting the golden sun over my pulse come into view - and I made sure he got a good look at the pulsing light behind it. Signed, stamped and authenticated.

He swallowed, his little mouth and little brain working furiously. He looked at the credit note like it was his only salvation, and the tattoo like it was going to take him straight to the ninth level of the pit. Then he closed his eyes, but whatever he was praying to, I was pretty certain it didn’t live in the Tower.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah. You want a brunette or a redhead?”

“My tastes are simple, bring me a dark one.”

I smiled, rewarding him for playing so nice. When he returned from the back with my package, I smiled even more. It didn’t even fade from my face as I paid his rate - twice what he would have asked anyone else, and we both knew it. I didn't let it go until we reached the street and I stopped to look at the petite, somewhat overlush woman that was for all appearances walking next to me.

Why the hell had they sent me to go pick up a girl? And what possible use did they have for a queer Locator and a soulless walking toy?

(Working file title? Lesbian Sexbot. Eat your heart out, search engines.)

I so need to sleep now...

First, Predraft Your Novel ...

So I've been (unsurprisingly) doing a little (a lot) of research on the actual process of novel writing.  I have my idea, my characters, and my world - but how, precisely does that go from in my head into "out there" (imagine me waving my hands around in a vague manner)?

 

I've learned two very big things in this:

 

1.  As in spinning, much of the work of writing comes from what happens before the words hit the page, and

2.  There's such a thing as too much knowledge at any point in time.  (I'm not saying I believe there's such a thing as too much knowledge - because I don't - but you really ought to give yourself time to absorb a good chunk before trying to pick up the rest.)

 

I just picked up spinning again, and I realized how adverse I was to all the, well, not spinning that happens.  Prepare the fibre.  Prepare it some more.  Smooth it out.  Prepare it some more.  When it's almost spun - but not quite - then you can actually spin the darn stuff.  Loathe though I was to admit it, all those steps really are necessary.  And my spinning has improved because of it.

 

I thought I was ready to write Circe, I really did.  And I was close - but I guess I needed a few more things.  More structured scene notes.  More information on my characters.  More information about motive.  It's all a little bewildering, and has left me asking "yes, but when do I get to write the damned thing?"  I'm trying to remember that - just like predrafting fibre is spinning, prewriting, outlining, and organizing are writing.  I'm getting it - but it's a hard lesson.  And I know there comes a time when you have to stop preparing, and start doing.  I think I've found where that spot is for me, and I'm ... almost ... there.

 

(Incidentally, I've just been introduced to Liquid Story Binder from Black Obelisk Software.  Silly me, I though writers used - y'know, Word or something like that.  Apparently, that's not the case for many wirters. It's rather overwhelming and has a steep (mountainous) learning curve.  However, it looks like it might actually be a way to store all of these pre-writing writing tasks with the actual novel.  I'll let you know how I like it when I'm done with the first book.)

Bone Tired

Some prewriting from the other day. I was exactly this tired, and decided to write down how it felt for future use.

When you’re tired -truly strung-out tired - your eyes get gritty and heavy and hot. When you blink it seems to take longer than you think it should, and you see hot red light behind your eyes, and everything becomes a little sharper in the middle and a little fuzzier around the edges – light is more acute, but images seem to dance around and you have to frown a little to figure them out. Your head slumps to your chest, you chest caves in on your stomach and your back just doesn’t want to support your torso anymore and there’s this weird hollowness in your chest, almost like being hungry, but not quite. Every time you move a finger or a leg or an arm you feel like you’re straining against weights, except the weight feels like it’s in your bones, not outside of you. You can’t breath right because your chest is all sunken in, and the breaths you do take feel like they’re going to migrate into sleepy breaths – deep, refreshing ones that don’t make any noise or really move your chest at all. And you feel like whenever you stop actively moving that all molecules in your body stop, too, and that any period of quiet non-moving you do is going to sink you into sleep. And if you do make the mistake of being quiet, and not moving, and closing your eyes, that red burny feeling behind your eyes suddenly becomes blue, and cool, and you feel like you’re falling, except it’s just your head that’s falling, and your spine sinking down even more. And you realize that your eyes have been closed – or that they’re really open but that you’re not seeing things anymore. And you get a kind of singlemindedness because you know that you have to concentrate and if you don’t you’ll just … stop.

The Comforts of Home

(or: smugness will never go unpunished)

 

I was, I admit, getting a little smug.  My unloved yarn and fabric was going out into the world to make other people happy.  I had resolved to be a careful and mindful purchaser.  There's no need for deprivation, certainly, but I could be a little more aware of what I spent my money on.

 

On Saturday, my books got culled – another step toward living with less "stuff."  I got rid of the books I no longer love and don't anticipate rereading (mostly vampire smut, oddly enough).  Freedom! Less clutter!  Woo hoo!

 

Wait – why is it so damnably hot up here?

 

My bedroom is on the third floor of a 100+ year old house.  All of the heat both outside and in likes to congregate there.  To combat this, we have an air conditioner in one window.  Okay, so it's never going to be arctic up there (which pleases Shoryl), but it ought to be, I dunno, livable.  Something less than 90 degrees, maybe.  Surely that's not too much to ask of one air conditioner, a ceiling fan, and a stand fan.

 

But apparently it was.  After sweltering all weekend, Shoryl finally looked at the air conditioner.  I learned a couple of things last night:  you are not supposed to have ice on the inside of an air conditioner, but you are supposed to be able to at least tell that the air filter has holes in it.  Um.  Oops.

 

So now we've cleaned the filter and have turned the whole unit off to let it thaw.  I spent last night sweating, trying not to just lay on the bed and watch ice melt*.  We thought we'd gotten it, put the whole thing back together, and turned it on.  Nope.  There is, maybe, ice where we can't see it.  Or something.  So it's still off.  I fell asleep around 2:00 in the morning, when I think it got to something close to "bearable" in the room.

 

Less stuff is all fine and good – but I resolve to remember that, just as other people have treasured possessions they can't live without, so do I.  I want my air conditioner back!

 

*A slightly more worthwhile endeavor than watching paint dry, since you can at least see some progress.