Retreat, Day 20

Eek, I thought I had been better about posting. At any rate, here I am still in California writing away. I had Wayne here Friday-Sunday, so no writing was done, but we really had just a delightful time with each other and both were very sorry to part when I dropped him off at the airport on Sunday.

Today’s totals:

Today’s wordcount: 5884
Current Hearts of Tabat wordcount: 119083
Total word count for the week so far (day 1): 5884
Total word count for this retreat: 52435
Worked on Hearts of Tabat, “Blue Train Blues”
Time spent on SFWA email, discussion boards, other stuff: 30 minutes

Besides working on “Hearts,” I have been finishing up “Blue Train Blues”, a steampunk set in the Altered America world, although over on the other side of the world, in their version of France, occupied by vampires. It’s not a pieceI’ve promised anyone, so it will probably go up on Patreon either this month or the next.

Here’s a section from it:

The evening wore on. Fortunes were squandered and won, and then squandered again. The cigar smoke haze thickened to the point of oppression, and the air grew stuffy except when someone entered or exited the car, bringing in a night breeze that cut through the heat like a saber stroke.

I tried to keep any thoughts from betraying us, but I could not help but wonder. The vampire knew my lord was cheating, he was threatening to say it openly, and there was only one end to it if he did make that accusation: they would kill my lord then and there.

But my lord seemed oblivious to his impending fate. He sat there playing and chattering away, an endless stream of blather that was his damned-silly-English-peer act, playing to the crowd with a touch of whimsy now and then. But underneath it all, he and I and the vampires knew, he was a werewolf, and while they had the numbers, he could at least account for some.

Lost in these thoughts, I swam back as the Renfrew beside me stepped forward to provide and light a cigarette, then retreated into his former position. My lord was talking about cars.

“Rover claims their new model goes faster than le Train Bleu,” von Blodam said.

“That’s nothing special,” my lord asserted. “I could leave with the train from here and my car could get me to my club in London before the train hits Callais.”

Von Blodam raised an incredulous eyebrow. “A bold claim.”

“It’s good English technology,” my lord said, and the edge to his voice was the same as though he’d bared his teeth, by the way the tension jumped in the room. I felt two Renfrews sidle closer.

But von Blodam laughed. “Then perhaps we should bet on. You will race le Train Bleu, and if you win, I will give you the prize of your choice.”

“And if that prize was to answer a question truthfully?” My lord’s eyes burned but could not melt the room’s ice.

Von Blodam smiled, and I could feel disaster looming like an iceberg. “Very well. Three questions even, answered with absolute truth, on my honor. What would you put up against something like that, my Lord?”

“Name it,” said my Lord softly. “For it’s clear that you are angling at something.”

The toothy smile broadened. “Very well. A reward of my choice, if the train reaches Callais before you are at your club.”

“A reward of your choice,” my lord said and his voice was expressionless. But his eyes still burned.

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Randy Rambo says:

July 20, 2015 at 5:37 pm

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Danielle Myers Gembala says:

July 20, 2015 at 5:37 pm

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On Writing: When A Story Clicks

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Photograph of wild bird-of-paradise blossoms. — While perseverance matters, breaks are important too. Yesterday we went to Manuel Antonio Park and spent a fabulous day, culminating with coming home and going walking in wonderful, warm rain for a delicious dinner. You can give yourself the day off - just make sure you do something that nourishes you in some way and that you don't make every day a break day,

One of the things I stress to students is that you cannot wait for the muse. And, in fact, the more you wait for her, the less likely she is to arrive.

For example. The last few days I’ve been working at getting back into the flow of writing daily. I held myself accountable and post daily word counts here or on Twitter. And lemme tell you, some of those words were difficult to wrestle out of my skull and onto the page. One way I can tell things are going in difficult fits and spurts is that I’ll hop around a lot from story to story.

One of those projects is “Prairiedog Town” (which is definitely getting a different title). I started jotting down mental notes for it while traveling through Kansas, but only had a thousand words or so on it before last week. It was slow writing, partially because I wasn’t sure how I was getting from one point to another in the story. I knew it was a piece about a woman reclaiming her humanity and I had a good idea of what the penultimate scene would look like.

So I kept jotting words down in sporadic clumps of a few hundred at a time, yerking the story along in an awkward and impatient way. It helped when I incorporated a prompt from Sandra M. Odell, a woman finding an abandoned teddy bear by the road. But it still was slow slogging. Yesterday I took a break from it.

And then, this morning, while working on it, things began to fall into place. A secondary character had popped up, and I understood how to bring her back into the story — and why. A piece that was supposed to take three days suddenly shortened into a single night, and with that, the ultimate scene came clear. I went through, pulling the threads into place as close to a thousand words came spilling out and into the story.

It’s not done yet — maybe another thousand words to go, but I’ve got a map of it, and comments where I need to go back and insert things. Here, for example, is what a section of today’s work looks like:

They end up chatting. Talia asks after father. Relates that he’s died. Talia asks if she’s going to the funeral.

No
It’s what you’d say either way, isn’t it.
That’s true
I’ll be there. On the outskirts.

She freezes again. It’s an old code word they used to use, back in the days when they worked together. It’s someplace close but (some distance) to the (direction).

And most importantly at all, things have come together to a point where I’m excited about the story, feel that some clever stuff has been worked in or has had places made for it. It’ll end up being around 4-5 thousand words, and I know I’ll finish it by the end of this month, because it’s designated as the next story to go out in the Patreon campaign.

And if I hadn’t done that picking away at it — scraping those words out of my skull, even though it felt painful and awkward and uninspired — I would have never gotten to that point at all.

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.

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