What’s the single most important thing you accomplished in 2010? And how do you plan to top it in 2011?
I moved out on my own last year and gained total independence from other humans. It’s amazing, apart from the slight drawback that I’m entirely dependent on myself now. I seem to be handling the challenge pretty well, though, and think 2011 will be spent just being myself and figuring things out more.
It’s odd, leaving behind things that previously influenced you so much. I keep realising I look at things exactly the same as my mother, and then I realise that that particular way of looking at things doesn’t hold up under scrutiny, so I change it to something that makes sense to me. And there’s no one to censure me for it.
I just went on a massive rant about censure, but then I changed my mind and deleted it. Suffice to say that pretty much all my interests were labelled “weird” and dismissed, and I don’t have that anymore. This allows me to sit writing at 3am while listening to the Doctor Who soundtrack, occasionally breaking off to sew a boning channel in a corset … without someone interrupting and telling me my music is boring and I’ll never wear a corset, so I shouldn’t make it.
My thing I’m planning on doing this year to ‘top’ moving out, is entirely unrelated. I want to finish the second draft of Nikara. I know if I can push through and get to the end of this book, it will be a massive achievement. And the book will be in good shape. It’ll still need a wording edit, but making the words flow is sooooooo much easier than figuring out pacing and plotting and stuff.
Unrelated rant: pacing and plotting and things that don’t really come to mind when you’re thinking about writing, don’t get enough respect from certain members of the writing community. I suspect those members have never attempted prose longer than a vignette, in which it’s virtually impossible to screw up pacing, and the plotting is so basic (or non-existant) that it doesn’t seem like a problem.
Arranging a multi-book story into something that’s continuously compelling is a huge feat. Even arranging a single book is a challenge, because while the plot might not be as complex as a multi-book thing, it’s still going to have a high level of complexity (hopefully), and you have limited space in which to convey it.
I’ve been talking to a friend about this a bit lately. She has a story that’s big, but she doesn’t want to split it into two books. Partially this is because sequels annoy her (Personally I have no problem with stories that are simply too large to physically fit in a binding being split), but it’s also because the first half of the book doesn’t have a satisfactory story arc. If split in two, the first book wouldn’t stand alone very well.
I feel she has two solutions to this. She can either massively chop down the story, really cut back until she has the bare essentials and a book small enough to fit into one binding comfortably. Or, she can tweak the events in book one to provide a pay-off that would make the split ok. I don’t think she’ll do either, and I think we have a lot of interesting conversations ahead of us once I’ve finished reading her novel. 
I look forward it, because these are the kind of interesting challenges that make writing so fun.
Perhaps I shouldn’t admit this, but I find the actual words part of writing sort of dull. When I’m not getting stuck over something big and dramatic, I’m getting stuck over how to phrase a particular thing, and it bores me and I procrastinate. I much prefer it when I’m in the middle of a bout of writing fabulousness and the words slip off my fingers with barely a conscious thought. That’s when I feel most alive, because the imaginings in my head are coming alive with very little effort. It’s fun and thrilling and I live for those times.
Mostly, the reward I get from writing is just solving things. How should I approach this scene? How can I insert an intimation of this future event in here? How the heck do these two resolve this argument? Solving these kinds of problems crop up all the time, and even when I’m stuck on one of them (I’ve been stuck on ‘how should I approach this scene’ for a few weeks now) it’s not so bad. I know that when I sort it out, I’ll have an amazing ‘ooh yes! Brilliant, that’ll totally work’ moment and feel all smart and pleased with myself.
I had one of those the other day, while in the bath (a fine place for revelations, although the shower is better). It was actually about book three, which is odd because I haven’t thought about that since November … 2009. I managed to finish Nano about 1,000 words before I ran out of defined plot for that novel (I know their ultimate goal, but have no idea how they get there … partially because I have no idea how they’re going to do it without dying). I haven’t really mulled over where to send them after the point I wrote up to, and yet it suddenly popped into my head while in the bath. The idea makes total sense, should provide some emotional whatjamacallit, and probably something will blow up at some point. If there are explosions involved, you know it’s a good idea. 
You make living alone sound almost tempting. I suppose that once I’m out there, I’ll feel a lot more free in ways that I never realized I was restricted. Right now, I keep thinking about what I’ll lose. Home-cooked meals, a steady allowance, someone to squash the bugs for me — though today I unplugged a toilet for the first time!
Writingwise, much of the frustration for me comes from realizing that what worked perfectly in my head just won’t work on paper. Or that what took me a frenzied, happy minute to outline will take me five weeks to edit. It would take less time, if I were willing to put in more effort.
We really need to do those wars again.
I had a really weird moment of freedom the other day. My mother used to have a weird OCD thing about folding plastic bags perfectly before putting them away. Usually I couldn’t fold them satisfactorily, even though I’d spend ages doing it. I now screw them up and shove them into a bag of bags because there’s no one there to care. It’s awesome.
And you know you can home cook meals yourself, right? :p