On Writing: Collaboration And Its Perils

Feeling a bit more caught up, some solid word count today. If I can bank a little more tonight, I’ll give myself a treat tomorrow and go down to check out the Santa Cruz boardwalk.

Today’s wordcount: 5102
Current Hearts of Tabat wordcount: 119160
Total word count for the week so far (day 2): 10976
Total word count for this retreat: 57637
Worked on Hearts of Tabat, Bloodwarm Rain, “Blue Train Blues”
Works finished on this retreat: “California Ghosts,” “My Name is Scrooge,” “Blue Train Blues.”
Time spent on SFWA email, discussion boards, other stuff: 45 minutes

From Blue Train Blues, completed today in first draft form:

The next obstacle presented itself a few miles further on. Fog covered the road, and the car swam in and out of it, a submerged salmon leaping through foamy water, curls and tendrils swirling in its wake. My lord drove slower, but barely, and more than once we swerved to avoid an incautious cow or deer. I tried not to think of how many things stood too low to be spotted through the fog.

We ascended to a hilltop and saw a basin of fog in front of us, an immense white bowl. I started to say something about the odd flapping noise that was just starting to creep up on my consciousness but before I could begin, my lord shoved me sideways, then rolled in the opposite direction himself. A massive claw flashed in the space between us and rasped against the metal before the dragon swooped back upward.

“Hold tight.” We leaped down the hill and into the fog.

My lord steered with face tense, watching the road flash by mere feet from our front wheels, not slowing. Overhead we heard the flapping of the wings.

Then the hoot of a train, off to the right, somewhat ahead.

“What are you thinking, sir?” I asked. “That’s not the Blue Train. It’s the train to the western coast.”

“I know,” he said. “But the crossing is up ahead, I can hear it.”

“But not see it.” Fog thickened and lessened around us; sometimes I could see his resolute face, other times he was lost to me. Overhead those wings flapped, and sometimes fire coiled, once a great wash of it directly overhead accompanied by a foul, sulfurous stench. My cap had blown off my head many miles ago, and I felt the hairs atop my head singe and vanish.

“Hold tight!” my lord yelled over the roaring of the wind and if he added anything to that, it was lost in the howl of the train and the sudden flap of wings and then somehow we were soaring through space just ahead of the train, so close I could count every bar in the cowcatcher in front of it and there was a vast scream and crash as the dragon and the train collided, and then a whoosh of flame, exploding outside, that cleared the world of mist and revealed chaos.

And I’m really happy with it, but holy cow, is it hard to rewrite a novel. Because you’ve got to manage it all in your head while working with smaller parts of it.

I was trying to think of a comparison to make to Wayne, who is a software developer. And actually, it’s a lot like working on a large program with pretty of submodules and pieces, because when you change one section you need to figure out how it affects all the other pieces. And there’s repeated objects, or other things, and I think a little of those like global variables, so to have to make sure they’re declared before you can start using them. (As you can tell, I spent some procrastination time on thinking this out.)

Something I’m doing, which is probably rather insane of me, is that I transferred the book, which was in a Word doc, back into Scrivener. That’s because I have been severely reordering the scenes. I printed it all out, and went through that hardcopy with pen marking up some stuff and shuffling it around until it was all in the order I wanted it in.

Part of that is the process for dealing with what I’m comparing to global variables. That’s a thing that gets referenced more than once over the course of the book. Because you want it set up right the first time it appears and then for details to unfold about it in an order that makes sense and keeps building on the thing.

Where another might have named them, I’ve listened long enough to know the names they have for themselves: Dust and Yellowhair, and their offspring, Finch and Flutter and Wall. They shelter in the evergreen, build nests of scraps of paper and rags. In this cold, they wrap bits of cloth around themselves in mimicry of clothing.

They like candy the best, but meat second to that, the fresher and bloodier the better. They scorn vegetables or breads, though they will take fruit, when it is at its ripest, just before it spoils.

They trust me.

Any mention of the Fairies that uses their names needs to come after this passage, which establishes. Later on, we find out one is getting picked on by its fellows:

Yellow-hair hangs in the air, watching me. But it’s not till I step back from the sill that she advances, dives to seize a candy, a ball of amber sugar as big as her head. As though she’s emboldened them, the rest come in turn. I try to see which of them might be looking more bedraggled than the others, but I can see little difference.

Jolietta kept chickens. There you’d see it. One more miserable than the rest, pecked and sat upon, with ragged bald patches. Animals have no patience for the weak, nor do Beasts. Is one of the Fairies ailing, perhaps? It seems to me there are fewer than usual. When they’ve taken their candies, I go back to the window, lean out despite the cold wind, and peer into the boughs. There, that little shape, is that a huddled Fairy? Snowflakes whirl, obscuring the sight.

That in turn builds this moment:

I go to the window and look into the whirling snow. There’s a limp little form in the corner of the window. Wind and snow greet me when I slide the window up, but I manage to gather the half-frozen little Fairy. Finch.

He’s fought with his fellows. They must have tried to drive him away.

There’s more further on down the chain, but I think that’s enough spoilering for one blog post. But you see my point: set up an object (or person, or place, or concept, or whatever) and then build with it. As part of my reordering, I’ve been making sure that all happens in the right order, and that’s let me trim out some repetitious bits as well.

The book was, at one point, chockful of different POVs, and I was (somewhat reluctantly) persuaded to pare that down. It was the right choice, though, because it made me focus on the two most important characters, Bella and Teo. I wanted to make them very distinct from each other, so I switched Bella’s POV from third person attached past tense to first person present tense. Holy CRAP did that make her come alive and let me take a character who had been unsympathetic before into one that you can (I think) really enjoy and love even when she’s at her most full of braggadocio and self-absorption.

I was sad to lose a couple of POVs, particularly three which had a nice love triangle going on, but they’ve been set aside to go into the second book (this is intended to be a trilogy). But now I’m going back to that rewrite after this short break for air, so wish me luck.

I still don’t know what the heck the title is, really. And I’m not so sure about my main character’s name.

Enjoy this writing advice and want more content like it? Check out the classes Cat gives via the Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers, which offers both on-demand and live online writing classes for fantasy and science fiction writers from Cat and other authors, including Ann Leckie, Seanan McGuire, Fran Wilde and other talents! All classes include three free slots.

Prefer to opt for weekly interaction, advice, opportunities to ask questions, and access to the Chez Rambo Discord community and critique group? Check out Cat’s Patreon. Or sample her writing here.