Eileen Bell

I’m trying to figure out Twitter.  This is a land I haven’t spent much time in, and it is proving to be difficult.  New languages to learn, new people to meet, and if there is an organizational principle behind it all, I have yet to find it.

Plus — and this is a big plus — I can spend A TON of time there.  A ton. I watch with fascination as message after message pops up, as all the people I’m following let me know exactly what they are doing at that moment.

There have been some surprising finds for me, I must admit.  I’m now quite hooked on a blog called Go Into the Story — It’s written by Scott Meyers about screenwriting, and it’s addictive.  There are others,  but this is the one at the top of my brain right now (because I was on his blog mere moments ago, and am now reading the screenplay “Dune.”  Because he offered it.  Go figure.)

Facebook — same, same.  I’ve been on Facebook for a while now, and I still feel like I don’t get it. It’s a decent vehicle for getting the word out about upcoming events, and when I’m writing — as I’m supposed to be doing now — I use it to update m word count.  Keeps me on track, because there are other people out there seeing it, and I don’t want the embarrassing questions like “So what happened to you on Saturday?” (or whatever day I didn’t write, but hung around, washing clothes and vacuuming dust bunnies, and maybe even going out and sitting in the sun, that sort of thing)  But past that, I can’t understand why anyone gives a darn what I’m doing with my day. (And why, in reality, they’d even care about my word count.)

And then there’s this blog.  I sometimes forget to come here and put words down.  I should remember.  This is my connection to the outside world, after all.  My connection to an unbelievably big world.  Millions of people, all looking for — something.  Could be what I’m talking about.  You never know.

Perhaps this is what’s freezing me.  The thought that there are millions of people out there, and any one of them could happen on this blog — or one of my Facebook entries — or 140 characters I dashed off on Twitter.  That would be their introduction to me.  Is there anything there can could possibly be compelling enough to make them try to find me again?  Even remember my name?

After all, I’m not offering much.  Sometimes a bit of my pain, or a bit of my joy.  Sometimes something interesting I found on the web — or out in the real world. Sometimes just the word count on my latest novel. Hope it’s enough.

If it’s not — read Dune.  Hey, somebody gave it to me!  The least I can go is pass it on.

This has been a good week, writing wise.  I’ve managed to get over 22,000 words down on the first draft of a new novel, working title “White Noise.”

It’s been a long time since I’ve put in good writing days like this lately and I missed it.  Not that what I was doing wasn’t important, and all that — but I tell you, that white hot writing place where I don’t hear the phone, don’t remember that there is laundry, come up for air wondering why my neck feels stiff before realizing that I’ve been writing, steadily, for three hours without moving, that is the sweet spot, for me.

I CAN write the other way.  Put in a day doing something else, then write 1000 or 1500 or (if time really doesn’t permit) 500 words, then put it away, and come back to it the next time I have a few minutes alone.  But I don’t like it.  Not as much as this.

This type of high velocity writing drains my brain so that at the end of the day, I have nothing left.  My husband talks to me, and I know I’m staring at him like he’s suddenly speaking a foreign language I didn’t even know he knew, but I can’t seem to stop. I just stare, hoping his words will finally start making a little bit of sense in my poor fevered brain.  He’s actually getting a little better about it now.  Just shrugs, and says things like “I’ll try again later,” or “You’re not going to permanently damage yourself, are you?”

No honey.  It’s not permanent.  I promise.  I’ll  just sit over in the corner, drooling and giggling to myself, but only for a little while longer.  And the writing went wonderfully, by the way.

This past couple of years haven’t given me much time to do high velocity writing.  I’ve been caught up in lots of other stuff.  Some of it was wonderful (book launches, and going to conventions etc), some of it involved incredibly high learning curves (that would be all the marketing stuff), and some if was just horrible. (I had my fair share of disasters in my personal life recently.  ‘Nough said about that.)  All of it seemed to come at me at break neck speed, so there was no time to stop, smell the roses, and see how many days in a row I could write 5000 words a day — or more.

But now, I have the time.  I put together a schedule for myself, and I’m sticking to it (believe it or not!). I wrote out an outline.  (Well, mostly wrote out an outline.  I know where 3/4 of this puppy is going, and I THINK I know who done it in the the murder mystery portion of the novel.)  Then I warned my people that play time was over, and that I had to get to work.

Most of them bought it, and they’re actually leaving me alone.  So, every day I sit down, usually by 9 AM, and write until I can’t write anymore.  In the middle somewhere I have lunch and take a walk. (Really.  Me.  A walk. Every day!) At the end, I eat something more, try to answer my husband’s increasingly tentative questions about how it’s going, and then, sometime later, I go to bed.  And that’s all I do.  Every day.

And you want to know something?  This isn’t work!  This is fantastic!  This is first draft pour everything on the page stuff, and I love it here.

If I keep going at this pace, I’ll have the first draft of my novel finished in less than 30 days.

Sigh.  Then comes rewrites.  And that’s a different animal altogether.

But for today, I sing, even as the last of my brains leak out my ears.  Because I get to write!

I was going to hide out this summer.  Get my back yard done (really, this time) and write another novel.  No fooling around about the novel — I’m tired of novellas for the moment, and want to dive into something longer and meatier.  It was going to be a great summer.  Or so I thought.

So far, not so good.  We did get the back yard sort of done — and then the gas boys came in and tore it up for us.  (Universe, cut me some slack, OK?)  My dog died, which was a kick to the head. (And no, they don’t all die in their sleep. Sometimes they die begging for help.) And that novel I was going to write?  It has been put aside until I get my back — back.

I have a screwed up back.  Had an operation to fix a messed up disc years ago — but I still have problems.  If I’m not careful (read if I don’t exercise enough) it will “pop out” which sounds fairly benign, but isn’t.  It’s a horrible feeling — along with the pain is the certainty that this time the top half of my body really will completely disconnect from the bottom half and slide off, held in place only by skin.  Blech.

So, went to my favorite chiropractor, and was met with his patented “look.”  His “I’m not angry, just massively disappointed” look.  “It’s been a while,” he muttered, writing furiously.

“Yeah.  Sorry.  Been kind of busy,” I replied, trying to stay calm.  Sometimes his ministrations hurt.  Actually, they always hurt.

He set to, and the cracking coming from my spine was ferocious.  Snapping and popping from the usual spot (lower back) and then he worked up.  And he frowned.

“Wood.”

“What?” I gasped, trying not to react.  Reacting for me would be leaping up and smacking him a good one for hurting me.  Isn’t that what a normal person would do?  Smack someone who is trying to hurt you?

“Your shoulders are like wood.  Two by fours, to be exact.  And your neck!”  Snap, pop, CRACK.  “Just terrible.”

After the pain stopped, he told me to make another appointment in a few days.  “However, if you need to, come in earlier.”

“Earlier?” He’s never said this to me before.  Holy crap, it really must be bad.

“Yes.”  Then he shook his head and shot me another “I’m disappointed” look.  “Too many hours on the computer.  That’s what’s doing this.”

Ah.  Computer.  As in writing.  Oh, wait.  It was my turn to frown.  This wasn’t funny.

My shoulders no longer feel like ground glass under the blades, and my head finally feels clear.  I’ve started exercising again (as my screaming muscles can attest) but I haven’t gone back to writing in any big way.  It only takes a couple of hours, and I start to knot up again.  So — no big sessions, which I LOVE.  And no novel.  Not so far.

Hope springs eternal — and I still have one more month.  I just have to keep exercising (shut up muscles!) and stretching between writing sessions. And remember to break up the long sessions. (Darn it.  I LOVE those long sessions.) And I need to keep going back to my chiropractor until I am completely healed.

Wish me luck.

Ad Astra was a blast!  Had a chance to be on a couple of panels – Collaboration, and Time Management – and enjoyed them. (possibly more than the audience!)  I won’t go into any details, because, hey, they’re done!  Suffice to say, you shoulda been there!  You would have enjoyed them both.

Signed up for the small torture known as the Autograph Session while I was there.  At least Ryan and I got to sit while we watched  Rob Sawyer and Kelley Armstrong handle their various line ups.  Some day, some day, that will be us!

While we were there, Ryan had a chance to speak to the Bakka Phoenix people — and they have since agreed to carry the Women of the Apocalypse!  How cool is that?  So now, all you folks in Toronto can’t complain.  You can get our book!

Since I got back, I’ve been working feverishly on my next project.  Gutting and ripping the first draft at this point, but I’m starting to like what I have down.  (Starting being the key word, here.) Ryan has it right now… and though he, generally, is kind, I’m expecting some “butt kicking” because this story has to be taken up a notch.  Trying to write the thing around the chaos that was my life for the past few months didn’t work quite as well as I’d hoped, so I still have lots of work to do.  Luckily, I’m getting my spirit back, so I can do it.

Tomorrow (Saturday, April 17) we will be at the Stanley Milner Library in downtown Edmonton, flogging our books and congratulating the winners of the Alberta Readers Choice Awards.  It runs from 10 AM to 4 PM, and it should be fun.  Hey, I get to hang around with Barb Galler-Smith (Druids) for a while, and I haven’t done that in a long time.  It should be good.

I’m glad I’m back at work.  I missed it.

All I knew about novellas when I first got back into the writing game was — I could write a fairly decent one in 3 days.  (Funny.  That’s the amount of time I had every time I wrote in the 3 Day Novel Contest.)

So, I’d write a novella in 3 days, then work hard the rest of the YEAR to make it something else.  Because novellas, generally speaking, do not sell. (That’s what everybody kept telling me, anyhow.)  They are an odd size — too short to be published on their own (due in no small part to the fact that a publisher can’t make a profit on them), but too big (unless you are an established author) to ram into a anthology, or into a magazine.

But I keep writing the things — because I LOVE that length.  I love working on one storyline, and seeing where it goes.  (All right, now you know.  I have NO idea how my stories will end.  Secret out.) I love the limits inherent in the size.  I love working from one character’s point of view. However, I didn’t love the idea that novellas are the children no one wants.

So I started asking people what they thought of the novella length.  I stopped talking to the people in the industry — because all they did was shake their heads and say “Nobody buys novellas.”

Instead, I turned to regular people. Busy, busy people who used to love reading — but just don’t have the time in their lives to dedicate to large books anymore.  These are the ones the publishers lost.  They read once, then stopped.  Had to be a reason why.

What they told me: they would like something that they could read on a flight somewhere.  Or something they could read while waiting for their children.  Everybody seems to wait for their children.  Or they’d like something to read while they are having lunch at work, or waiting for the dryer to finish, or waiting while the dog is clipped.  These are the minutes they can scrape from their schedules for reading. One or two hours a week, if they are lucky.  They don’t want to start the “big” books, because a person can get stuck in an endless loop of “what DID happen the last time I was able to read?”  They got tired of going over and over the same chapter, trying to catch up… so they stopped reading.

However, they seemed to like the idea of a short book.  Something with only one or two storylines, so that if it gets put aside, they don’t have to reread the whole thing to remember where the heck they left off…. something that fits into their amazingly busy lifestyles.  They weren’t looking for short stories, because they are too short. They were looking for — well — short books.

Luckily, there are publishers out there who are starting to look at novellas as a potential income stream.  (See Absolute XPress and ChiZine, for two.) There may be more, and they may have been publishing novellas forever — and I might just be finding them now. I must tell you though, I have been looking for potential markets for quite some time.  Remember, novella writer here!

Of course romance has always played in this field (see Harlequin) with their 50,000 word novels.  (A bit bigger than a novella, but no where near 100 – 150, 000 words — or more that you can find elsewhere.)  These too are written for busy people.  True, they are romances, and have other rules in place besides just the length — but they are being read.  In droves.  Is it something about the shorter length?  Or what?

Ryan McFadden (one of the writers from Women of the Apocalypse) came out here recently, and picked up a ChiZine novella (Chasing the Dragon, by Nicholas Kaufmann) for the flight back.  After Ryan got home, he emailed and said he saw a couple more people on the flight with novella length books.  (He also said he finished the book he’d bought.  On the flight.  And he liked it. A lot.)

So, how can we talk more publishers into taking a chance on publishing novellas, or even, like “Women of the Apocalypse?” novella anthologies?  And how do we talk former readers into taking a chance, and seeing that sometimes, smaller is exactly what they are looking for?

Any ideas?  I really want to know.  After all, novella writer here!

Normally, I don’t call Ryan.  The man lives in Ontario (!) and so is always living  2 hours in the future, which hardly ever works out well for me.  (I think about giving him a call at 10ish my time — and he is either at work or asleep, depending on the 10 I pick.) It’s inconvenient, because I actually have to think about what the heck I’m doing.  Plan for it.

I don’t do so well with planning, as anyone who has ever received my Christmas cards can attest.  (Mid February, anyone?)

So, when I went on Facebook (Yeah, I know, but whatever) prior to shutting things down for the night, the last thing on my mind was calling Ryan.

Then I saw Rob Sawyer’s post — and I was on the phone in a flash.  Of course, Ryan didn’t answer.  He is, after all, a father — and it was probably close to bedtime for his little girls.  So I left an incoherent message that asked — begged, really — him to check out Facebook.

Then I called Billie.  Luckily she was home.  I told her to check it out — and she did.  Then she lost her mind, and I knew I hadn’t imagined it.

The Hugo Award winning Rob Sawyer, science fiction heavyweight, who gets to go to all sorts of cool places and do all sorts of cool things ,  talked about Women of the Apocalypse.  He didn’t just talk about it.  He gave it an excellent review!

“Nothing gives me more joy than when my students do well, and so it’s with great pride and pleasure that I draw your attention to the fabulous new anthology Women of the Apocalypse, an anthology of stories (“Four women, Four Shooters, Four destinies to save the world”) by Eileen Bell, Roxanne Felix, Ryan T. McFadden, and Billie Millholland. The book — a handsome trade paperback with an eye-catching stark black-and-white cover — is published by Absolute XPress, a division of Calgary’s Hades Publications….This is, without doubt, one of the major theme anthologies of 2009, and deserves a place on the Aurora Award ballot — as do the individual stories. The anthology recently made the bestsellers’ list published in the Calgary Herald.”

Ryan eventually called me back, and we did the teenage girl jumping up and down and screaming thing for a while.  (Sorry Ryan, but people deserve the truth.)  And why did we do this?

Because back in 2006, Ryan and I were in Rob Sawyer’s writing class in Banff.  He ripped us both – bad.  He ruthlessly pointed out EVERYTHING we did that was keeping us from being published.  Everything.

We could have run away crying (like those self same teenage girls we emulated a couple of days ago). But we didn’t. Both of us took what he said to heart, and went away, licked our wounds, and stepped up.

Apparently we learned some of those lessons quite well.

Thanks Rob.  You’re the best.