Life in a Northern Town

I usually do these a little closer to New Year's, but I'm in the mood, so let's see how we did on last year's goals.

( Goals and results under cut )

I did better than usual, I think, although it was mostly concentrated in certain areas. The comics and art got badly neglected. Still, I'm pretty happy with my results.

And here's my list of what I sold and/or published in 2013:

( Things I sold or published in 2013 )

Frost-covered dead leaves on rocks.



We have been having still, cold weather for the last few days, which allowed frost to build up on everything until it almost looked like it had snowed. These pictures don't really do it justice; this wasn't morning frost, but an all-day-long frost that got deeper every morning. Anyway, I took this pictures a few days ago, and then last night it warmed up to 50 degrees, and rained all the frost off. Now there are puddles everywhere, and it's back to being brown and dreary again.



We usually would have had snow for a couple of weeks by now. What an odd year it's been.

A few pictures from a walk in the woods behind our property this weekend.


Yellow birch leaves look like gold coins scattered on the ground.


Still quite a lot of blueberries clinging to the bushes! They're much too withered to eat (although the dog seemed to enjoy them) but I hope they'll be good for the birds this winter.


Dog eating blueberries in the swamp on the backside of our property. Silly dog.

Most of Wednesday's snow melted off. But it snowed again yesterday, and the effect is much the same -- the trees are more yellow now and less green, but it's still very striking with the golden backdrop under the snow. It's starting to look less likely that we're going to make it back to autumn before winter comes down on us full force! Here are a couple pictures I took yesterday evening on a walk out to the beaver pond near the house:





Today, it's still cold enough that nothing has really melted, but the sun is very striking on the snow and yellow leaves! This first picture was taken from the deck. The one below it is looking down at the creek that runs through our property (the stairs in the foreground are an old set of wooden stairs off the deck that now lead to the creek bank).

We're already into early fall here in the land of the Midnight Sun. It frosted a week ago, to my shock and dismay, and the utter ruin of my tomatoes and peppers -- woe!

I went out with my camera today in search of some fall colors. There isn't much to be seen yet.


Colors starting to show up along the driveway.

( A couple more )

This week kicks off my latest (and most ambitious to date) contribution to ellenmillion's Torn World project: The Lichenwold Crossing - Part 1. For the next seven weeks there will be a new installment every Monday. It's about 14,000 words long, in total.

Torn World is a shared world project -- anyone can get involved -- and I have to say that "adopting" a character (actually two of them) changed my perspective on the whole thing in really interesting ways. I'd been contributing in small ways for awhile, because Ellen is a friend; I've been copy-editing stuff and doing little bits of art here and there. Last winter Ellen talked me into adopting Tiren and Anler, who are major players in the "Lichenwold Crossing" story and other parts of the storyline surrounding it. Somehow this eventually snowballed into me actually writing this part of the story arc, since 2/3 of the characters involved are now "mine".

And it was fascinating for me to notice how my perspective on the whole project changed once I had made Tiren and Anler "mine". I got to write Anler's detailed character description (Tiren already had one) and, while some decisions were already made because they were established characters, I got to make decisions about smaller aspects of their appearance and personality and who in the various Torn World villages they were related to.

But it also made me care in a way I hadn't before. I found myself going back and reading all the stories in which Tiren and Anler appear, trying to get a feeling for who they are as people, especially once I started writing the Crossing Lichenwold story. Torn World has two major settings, the North where Tiren & Anler live (an Alaska-like place with small villages who herd snow unicorns), and the South, where there is a major empire and a rather steampunkish vibe. I'd been sort of vaguely, broadly interested in both regions, but picking Tiren & Anler as "my" characters made me suddenly switch my allegiance to the North -- er, not that it's a sporting event or anything*, but I had never really cared that much before, and now suddenly I'm all invested in the North and what happens to it. It's interesting!

*Although it could be. Now I'm amusing myself with the idea that a century or two from now they might have South vs. North sporting events, kind of like the Olympics.

Anyway, I'm glad "The Lichenwold Crossing" is finally going live on the website so that I can share it with people. It's part of a story arc, South Meets North, which like most of the Torn World arcs consists of a number of (more or less) self-contained stories; the rest of the arc can be found at the Empire Explores the North story collection on the Torn World website. And here's the Torn World intro page.

Went to the farmer's market today for lunch (sesame chicken over noodles) and picked up some snap peas and a few pieces of fudge, which I may be eating right now (nom). I thought about going to the fair -- this is its last weekend -- but I don't think I'm going to make it out there this year. I just haven't really felt like it. Orion doesn't particularly enjoy that kind of thing, so I have to either go by myself or round up a friend to go with, and this year I think I'd rather sit it out. The main fun I get out of the fair is the food and the livestock barns, anyway. I'll go next year ...

And it's hideously smoky today, which makes being outside not much fun. We get kind of blase about wildfire smoke around here. My thought upon waking up and looking out to see the hills were gone behind clouds of smoke was "Well, suck, guess I'll stay inside today" rather than "Fire? Where?!"

While I was in town, I also hit the library and picked up a bunch of Agatha Christie and Robert Silverberg -- how's that for a mixed bag of writers. I haven't read much by either one of them, so I'll see how I like it.

I posted a brief write-up of my Summer Arts Festival class on my website: http://laylalawlor.com/wordpress/blog/2013/07/26/summer-arts-festival-2013/. I've just finished ANOTHER redesign -- basically just skinning it with a different, more graphical Wordpress theme, and deleting the chattier, more bloglike posts from the website (they're all mirrored here anyway). For awhile I intended the website to be my main blog, but all that ended up happening was that I used it as ANOTHER blog mirror, and blogging the same posts in three places is just silly. Especially when most people seem to read them on LJ/DW anyway.

So this will continue to be my main blog, while I'll do an occasional "article-style" post for the website (graphical! detailed!) when something of artistic/authorial importance happens. But I'll link to it from here, so you won't miss anything.

Or, shorter: LJ/DW is for socializing, website is for professional stuff. Easy enough. :D

A couple of days ago, someone asked me via PM if I could give them some advice on starting a professional writing career (they were interested in writing SFF and romance). I'm probably not the best person to ask given the current state of my professional writing career -- but I went and wrote out a ginormous infodump in a PM, and then I decided to repost it here, because it might be useful to someone else, I guess?

Plus, you guys can tell me if I'm way off base with any of this. Or if anyone has additional suggestions, tell me, and I can edit them in!

( Advice for aspiring writers )

So there it is ... maybe someone will find this handy, or maybe you guys have some better suggestions and/or would like to point out places where I'm way off base here?

The Boston Globe has an interesting take on revising your work: that it's largely a product of 20th-century culture (the Modernists) and technology (typewriters), and we might be seeing another shift as computers make on-the-fly editing possible.

Interview on writing with Elmore Leonard. Of particular interest to me is the part of the interview in which he discusses writing for money:

You’ve said that you’ve approached writing both with a desire to write and to make as much money doing it as you could. Do you think that kind of honest, unpretentious attitude toward writing has helped you be a better, more productive writer?

Oh, definitely. All writers are in it for the money. What other reason is there?

But what about the notion of the starving artist, not selling out?

Samuel Johnson once said that anyone who would not write for money is a fool. You know? From the horse’s mouth, that’s why we’re doing it, but still attempting to do it as well as we can and not sacrificing our voice. I’m not going to write like some guy who’s making a lot more money than I am just because he is.

Frankly, it’s not that important. The story is the important thing and then go for the money.

Are there any perils to writing with money in mind?

I’m not writing with money in mind. I’m making the writing as good as I can.

I like his honesty, and the fact that he pushes back against the interviewer's apparent assumption that writing for money = being a hack. I mean, doctors don't do it just for the money -- at least, the better ones don't -- but they still want to get paid!