I’ve finished the first two chapters of The Dogwatchers and started the third, and I’m getting a very Jane Austen feel from it. Partly, this is because it begins with a young girl who must go and live with a family of richer people who aren’t very nice to her. (I’d also like to note that I did write most of it before beginning to read Jane Eyre for the first time, which I just did.) I like the feel of the story so far – a bit downcast at the moment, but in that sort of cozy way, if that makes sense. Very The Secret Garden / A Little Princess and, though by complete coincidence, very Jane Eyre.

The mean people with whom our heroine is staying have been a fun challenge for me. I’ve been lucky enough in life to not know a lot of really mean people (let alone bad people – I’ve rarely written actual villains, though I have plans for more in the future), and even fewer with whom I’ve had to spend long periods of time. Envisioning even their behavior, let alone their motivations, can be tough; I keep wondering whether they are mean enough. Some authors I like – for example, my favorite author, Diana Wynne Jones – have had extended experience with thoughtless, irresponsible, even downright villainous people in their lives, and I certainly do not envy them. Part of the reason I became a psychology major was to write better characters; I’m currently in a class called “Motivation and Emotion,” and am keenly interested in its uses in writing fiction. So we’ll see. I feel pretty good about it so far.

I’ve had to pause on that, because my spring break ended; on the other hand, being back at school means I will soon be writing short stories for Advanced Fiction again! It also means meetings of Wordshop, the writers’ group of William & Mary. We met tonight, though I didn’t submit anything for this meeting; most of my short stories (and chapters of longer works) are too long. It’s a good group. We have hour-long meetings every other week (with informal meetings the other weeks to talk about books and so on), for which people send in writing. Two to five people read their work aloud, and we talk about it, attempt constructive criticism, etc. We’ve had everything from poetry to fanfiction, and I had the group look at the first eight or so (short) chapters of Dragons Over London, my novella.

“Reynard’s Menagerie” has not yet sent me the contract for the story they’re publishing, but Michelle has finished her paperwork with them (sent the contract back in), so I know that such does actually happen. How exciting!

This weekend saw two exciting and highly related accomplishments in my writing life: I killed off a character and finished my fourth novel. (Technically, the third was a novella, at around 53,000 words, but this one, at about 79,000 words, is a novel.)

I’ve never been one for the killing off of characters – ever. I can think of three I have slain in the past, being (in chronological order):

1. An elf sentry. I was at a creative writing camp when I was maybe fourteen or fifteen, and we went to an old graveyard and were told to find a name on a gravestone and write about how that person died. I rebelled at the idea of not writing fantasy, so I went with . . . perhaps a less-than-likely account as regards the actual owner of the gravestone. The story ended with his death.

2. A dragon at the very beginning of a short story; he comes back to life at the end.

3. General Holofernes, in an Advanced Fiction assignment a couple of weeks ago.

It should be noted that I actually felt guilt about having a character read in a history book in one of my fantasy novels that someone had died decades ago. Someone I had never characterized at all, nor did I plan to characterize. Someone who, if pressed, I would admit I had not given so much as a hair color in my head or even a last name (the history book refers to him as “Prince Andrew”).

So, this was a big deal for me, even though this was hardly a tragic death. In fact, the character is the novel’s villain. Seeing as he was the main driving force for his side of the battle in the last battle scene, I thought it would be dramatic if I could kill him off, but I really wasn’t sure whether I could handle it. Nor did I have that confidence in my characters. I debated with myself (at length, out loud, and dragging in the input of my ever-patient roommate, who is luckily also a writer) over whether I could do it, whether they could do it, who could do it, who would be traumatized for life, when they could do it, who could do it most dramatically, and so on. Eventually, I thought I would just finish that first draft of Lord of the Dark Downs without killing off the villain at all, then write alternate endings until I found one I liked. However, when the time came, one of my characters (or two, depending on how you think of it) stepped up to the challenge. I’m really quite proud of how it came out, and fear very little for the sanity of my fictional, death-dealing darlings.

The other big deal, of course, is finishing Lord of the Dark Downs – the rough draft, at least. There’s a lot of rough stuff, but a lot I like, and I’m a big proponent of finishing the rough draft and then putting it away for awhile and working on other things. It’s also quite exciting because, as mentioned last week, I have a policy of not working on more than one novel at a time (otherwise, I’ll just skip over to another story whenever I hit a difficult part and never finish anything), so I can now start on the next piece.

In fact, I have. Our Advanced Fiction assignment for this week included writing the first page of a novel (or non-novelistic story, if such is your leaning) and turning it in. Normally, I’d take more of a breather between such long works – especially because of the policy noted above – but I pretty much knew which story I wanted to write next. I’ve done the first page, and I’m not sure how much I like it: the story is set in my regular fantasy world, and the very beginning barely hints that it will be fantasy. Still, I’m excited. This next work is tentatively titled The Dogwatchers, and you should be hearing more about it in the future.

. . . for fun and prophet!

Well, the Biblical femslash I wrote today was actually for neither fun nor *ahem* profit, but for my Advanced Fiction class – not that I didn’t have some fun with it. To some extent, I was just very relieved to find an angle on the prompt which worked for me.

To start at the beginning, the prompt itself: we were assigned to retell the story of Judith, a beautiful Jewish widow whose city is being held under siege. She goes out, seduces General Holofernes (leader of the enemy), gets him drunk, and cuts off his head, which she then takes home with her. So for the second time in three weeks, our writing prompt has me borrowing my roommate’s Bible; I think my first problem was that, in my research, I read the story. Bear with me – I’m actually not dissing the Bible. It’s just that it told the entire story in a very strong style which is distinctively not mine, so I had trouble afterward with writing it my own way. It didn’t help that I know so little about that time period and location.

So here’s what happened: I started writing without having a clear angle. My Judith (the story was required to be from her point of view) was a determined woman, but not much else. I had vague ideas of getting her together with Achior, the fellow who is sent into her city by Holofernes (he’s angry at Achior for saying that the Israelites’ God won’t let them fall, so he sends Achior to join them, saying that if the Israelites really will triumph, our man A. will be fine, but otherwise Holofernes will kill him with the rest of the enemy). The occasion simply did not arise. I gave Judith a son; she’s been widowed for three and a half years, and the Biblical story says nothing about whether or not she and her late husband ever had kids. I thought this would give her a human motivation for her actions (given that Holofernes’ army has been known to kill even young boys in the cities he takes), one with which I could identify, but she did not manifest that kind of personality. Rather, she became a kind of God-fearing lunatic, motivated by nothing but God’s will. I could only too easily see her killing someone – there was no stretch, no drama or tension in her committing such a terrible act. It was God’s will, so she was gonna do it, so there. I wasn’t enjoying the story; the dialogue felt forced and unnatural, and the motivations much the same. The piece was being largely carried by one (admittedly rather awesome) metaphor.

Well. About halfway through this, I came up with a better idea: I could still humanize Judith with love, but with a love which fit more naturally into her story. Right. So, who does Judith have oodles of opportunity to get to know and spend time with? Who would make her perfect partner? Well gosh, look at that: there’s another woman with her in the Classical paintings of Holofernes’ death scene. That would be her maid, Abra. Her maid who runs her household, who goes with her right into the enemy camp and helps her smuggle Holofernes’ head out, whom she would later free when she went on to never remarry . . .

So I was rather amused by my own motivations for writing Biblical femslash: not to make a bold statement or be rebellious or offensive to anyone (though I’m certainly not shedding any tears over the ideas of having done those things, if indeed I have), but to humanize the character through love. I mean, honestly, I was going to put Judith with Achior pretty much because I liked his name. This makes much more sense. Plus, it’s just dripping with compassion and humanity: Judith and Abra, secret lovers, raise Judith’s young son together in a world that doesn’t understand . . . And actually, in the brief appearance Abra made in my first attempt at the piece, she was my favorite character. That was partly what led me to this approach.

I feel triumphant. This piece was mopping the floor with me, and I have conquered it. Also, this doubles the number of pieces of fanfiction I have written in my life, and expands my repertoire to include slash of both men and women. And I did it for class! Life is so cool sometimes.

In other news, I submitted a short story to a writing contest on my campus. The contest is a small one, sponsored by WordShop (our writers’ group), and the story an older one (because the word count limit ruled out most of my newer pieces), but of course I’ll let you know if anything comes of it.

. . . or our second scene, at any rate. My creative writing professor assigned a scene with much more inherent comedy value, or at least better comedic possibilities. The lead guitarist of a blues band is going to his girlfriend’s apartment to tell her that – oops! – he lost a hand of poker while using her photo and phone number as an I.O.U. (He thought he had a good hand, and was out of money; while shaking out his wallet for sympathy, he accidentally dropped her photo, and another player said he would accept it and her number instead.)

So that was fun! I got to write humorously, and set the piece in the real, modern-day world, unusual for me. The viewpoint was a new kind (a little older and more jaded, a little more swearing, a little more risqué) – a type which I may not use much in the actual novels I write, but it’s always nice to learn a new way to work. I feel my techniques stretching and becoming more varied. 🙂 And even if I never make a character like Razor (yep, that’s his name) as a point-of-view character, I may have better insight into the motivation of the next older, jaded, swearing, risqué side character. Hooray for broadening and deepening my abilities!

Of course, the weekly prompts do hinder my ability to write other things by taking up my time (as do other various things, including applications for money to help me pay for graduate school in . . . writing). As if to taunt me still further (and yet delighting me), my Russian Myths and Legends class continues to give me fascinating insight into a non-British medieval world.

WordShop, our on-campus writers’ group, met tonight. Last week, I read a short story there, which went well. This week, we dispersed with a possible prompt for the next formal meeting: fanfiction. (Which, to be fair, is not so much a prompt as an entire genre.) I do not write fanfiction. Its existence makes me giggle – a rather happy giggle, but not a “I want to be part of this” sort of giggle, largely because I love my original characters so much. Well, actually, okay, I did write fanfiction one time. One time. It was three o’clock in the morning, and, while watching a movie, I wrote sappy Zelda slash. Go me.

. . . of course, I probably don’t have time to write on this prompt, anyhow. But still, the idea of possibly writing Chrestomanci fanfiction is almost irresistible . . .

While I did work on my big action scene (it’s nearly done, although I recently had an idea which possibly changed my mind about how a major bit of it will work, so a great deal of editing will probably be in order), I spent a lot of time and effort this week on writing for class. The class, “Advanced Fiction,” is a lot of fun, and the professor is just trying out an exercise wherein he hands out one specific, detailed prompt to the entire class (sixteen students), and we all write the same scene (in about five pages – minimum 1,200 words). This week’s was about a young Catholic priest who witnesses a car accident in which a Peruvian construction worker accidentally hits and fatally wounds an elderly Russian man. Upon trying to comfort the victim (who speaks no English), he sees a serial number tattoo on his arm and realizes that this man was a victim of the Holocaust (prompt also specifies he is Jewish). There’s our scene.

It was really pretty amazing how differently people dealt with it. The professor was highly pleased, beginning the class with the words “I’m just going to unabashedly say this: I am a genius.” We wrote differently, and some of us (me, for example) were pulled out of our comfort zones (I generally write light, humorous work, often fantasy). I myself was actually pretty impressed by the seriousness and tenderness that this piece drew out of me – but that was when I wrote it. First came the research.

The priest was required to be the point-of-view character, so I browsed the Catholic Encyclopedia online and had a long phone chat with a friend who is a devout Catholic, currently attending a Catholic university with many priests-in-training. Then, I turned to the livejournal communities little_details; and to get translations for some Russian (I already know a lot of Spanish, so the Peruvian construction worker, specified to speak in “broken English,” was all right). A number of people on those communities objected to parts of the prompt itself, saying it is extremely unlikely for even an elderly Russian immigrant to speak not even a word of English; some also argued that he would not be an observant Jew. (My professor said that, if his Russian Jewish grandfather had read that, he would have flown into a rage and quoted the Talmud at the fellow at length.) On the other hand, I had all the translations I needed within ten or fifteen minutes. Both groups are really quite helpful.

This week (we meet on Tuesdays), we got a new prompt, this one lending itself much more to humor. I’ll let you know next week how it went!