“But what’s my motivation?”
It’s been a while. In the two weeks since Balticon, I worked many, many days in a row. I also wrote. I also banged my head against the wall (literally) trying to figure out what was wrong with Strix (again, still).
All I could say was that it was something structural. I couldn’t get more specific than that. Luckily, one of my roommates likes picking stories apart, and agreed to read the 50k I’d already written. Then we spent a good 90 minutes discussing it.
It was structural…kind of. One storyline didn’t mesh with the others. It forced characters to act in ways they wouldn’t, and diverted attention from the main through-line. Lack of a clear objective/conflict had been raised earlier as a potential reason for my angst, and it looks like that was at least partially true.
It’s good to remember that sometimes a simple change (that storyline got scrapped) can make a hopeless mess seem like a coherent story again. But it also made me realize how helpful speaking Actor can be to the writing process.
Preparing for Strix-the-Podcast, I realized there was a whole language out there that I didn’t speak, and that I needed to learn. Actors think in verbs. Suddenly needing to ascribe verbs to my characters’ emotional states (I caress, I stroke, I soothe…I HIT HIM) forced me to have those emotions and motivations much more clearly in mind.
Before recording went on hiatus, my cast and I would go through dialogue as a play-by-play, tracking the way each character’s wants and feelings changed in response to the other’s. Honestly, it was probably more helpful for me than for them. Sometimes it’s easy to let characters say whatever they want. Approaching dialogue the way an actor would keeps their emotions, motivations, and characterization a lot clearer in my mind.
And when goals are blocked, we get conflict, which is kind of important to stories. Here’s a tip: actors make great beta readers. They are trained to look very closely at characters. They spot inconsistencies, and if they can’t tell what a character wants, they’ll say something.
Sure enough, the main issue with this subplot was an unclear (read: nonexistent) goal. They didn’t want anything. No conflict, no drama, no story.
Cutting this subplot only cost me about 6000 words, which I’ve since replaced. I have a chapter-by-chapter outline for the rest of the book and renewed excitement. It’s getting to that point where the story is physically pulling on me. Half my mind is in that world, and even as I sit here on the bus, writing this post on my phone…
I want to be writing.
Balticon Buzz and Schedule
Conventions always slip my mind. I book the hotel room, the plane tickets, and listen to the pre-con buzz, but it never dawns on me that I’m actually going until…oh, the night before. Then, it’s a mad scramble to pack and organize books, and it still feels unreal until the moment I pick up my badge.
That’s how Balticon feels right now.
I have my schedule. Apparently, my past self was very crafty and booked my flight and hotel a while ago. I even have plans to meet up with a few people.
It still doesn’t feel like I’m actually going.
Nor has it really sunk in that I’m going as a guest. I’ve termed this feeling “Cinderella Syndrome.” Every so often, I look at my Facebook wall and think, “Oh, wow. How has this become normal?” Answering that would be another post in itself…and may or may not crop up on a few panels next weekend.
Speaking of panels, here are the ones I have confirmed:
Friday
4:00 pm – Meeting Other Podcasters
5:00 pm – Professionalism and the Emergent Writer
Saturday
2:00 pm – Writing Real Children
Sunday
11:00 am – Autograph Session (and reunion with Tim Dodge! Woot!)
12:00 pm – Professionalism and the Young Writer
1:00 pm – Reading
8:00 pm –From Page to Pod
Monday
10:00 am – Introvert’s Guide to Social Media
So…basically, I don’t intend to sleep this weekend. At all. If you’re around the con, come say hi! I like people.
Writing may also be a bit iffy. I’m just over 1/3 of the way through the Massive Strix Rewrite. If I keep to this 2000 words/day pace, I should be finished in just under a month (hopefully I can cannibalize more words from the original draft near the end, but I’m not holding my breath).
We’ll see. The dayjob, while awesome, is also very physically tiring…but I’m incredibly anxious/eager/excited to get this thing out to Gabrielle and my cast.
Next week: The Balticon Round-Up!
Things Airports Taught Me
One play that I’d really like to see in its entirety is Carol Shields’s Arrivals and Departures. Once upon a time, when I was a wee teenage drama student, we did excerpts from it in class. It’s a series of vignettes: slices of airport life.
I like airports, better than I like the actual flying part. While I can think of a million ways that flights can go wrong, airports appeal to my slightly neurotic side. Everything has signs, everything is scheduled, labelled, and ordered, and the rules are quite clear. Then there’s the notion of airports as liminal space, in-between space. That concept of the way-station, the passing-through point, appeals to me.
Plus, I write really well in airports.
Over the last year, I’ve been in a lot of airports. So many that when I tried to tally them up, it looked kind of obnoxious, and I wasn’t even sure if I remembered them all, and it just seemed better not to try.
You get good at airports, after a while. You learn their individual quirks, and how to adapt to new ones. You also learn to entertain yourself, which is what I’m doing right now as I sit at yet another gate. And so…
THINGS AIRPORTS TAUGHT ME
- Proximity to outlets is the most important factor in determining where to sit. Sometimes this is the floor. That is ok.
- It is also ok to wear dirty jeans and lug a giant backpack around, even if everyone else has a suit and briefcase.
- Jaffas are not the healthiest lunch, but you will survive. And if it is your birthday, you can eat all the Jaffas you like (yes, I spent most of my last birthday in an airport, but it was Auckland, so I can’t complain).
- I am generally pretty awkward, but I am getting good at whipping out my laptop, finding every last coin in my pocket, and shucking off my coat in no time.
- Sometimes, you know best. I cannot count how many times I have had the following conversation:
- “Ok, dear, come through.”
- “Wait, I haven’t taken off my belt!”
- “You don’t need to.”
- “But it always beeps!”
- “You can leave your belt on.”
- “No, trust me, it—”
- “Come through, dear.”
- Beep. Beep. Beep.
- Everyone has a story.
- Random things distinguish airports. I remember that Dulles has a Starbucks by the baggage claim. Wellington has the weird pay-as-you-go computer terminals (or was that Auckland?). The Island Airport has the awesome lounge of free things.
- Stressed-out, sleep-deprived people are not the brightest.
- The mantra of air travel: I guess we’ll find out.
- Departures is more fun than Arrivals, unless you’re arriving home after six months.
- Window or aisle? is a more revealing question that you’d think.
- Information travels best by osmosis.
- Free wi-fi is a wonderful, wonderful thing.
- Sometimes, looking young and helpless is not necessarily a bad thing.
- Air New Zealand rocks.
- Responding to “Purpose of visit?” with “A science fiction convention!!!” will, in fact, get you weird looks
Time to board!
KT
School Daze
I finish my undergraduate degree tomorrow.
After eighteen years of schooling (hey, I’m counting kindergarten), it all comes down to a two-hour exam covering the last term of a subject I realized too late I wasn’t entirely passionate about. I really hope I pass.
For a little while now, people have been asking me, “How does it feel to be almost done? Are you ready?” My answer has been an unequivocal, “Oh God, yes, get me out of here, I’m done.”
See, for the last year, my heart and mind have been elsewhere. I have a job. I have this writing thing. Never one to have a single posse, I have friends and associates from various spheres of my life, most of which do not involve school. I’m done. I came to the classes, and I learned stuff about history, and I learned to write essays the way people at Black Creek learn their trades.
But then, last night, as I looked at a map to figure out where this exam actually is, a twinge of wistfulness startled me. My four years at university were not necessarily the idealized vision of ivy, uni jackets, and tree-lined footpaths. But they were, on the whole, good. I have been accused of being the “most nostalgic person ever” (with good reason), but still – there’s a certain safety in the university years. There’s the safety of venerable buildings and terrible food, readings and registrars, midnight baking and those very deep, profound conversations that happen in the wee hours of the morning.
University is, I think, about potential. These four years have all been about potential. Even the ubiquitous question “And what will you do with that degree?” is based on possibility. What would you like to do? What do you dream of doing? What do you imagine beyond the walls of this quad? Possibility is intoxicating. And so, I see, somewhat, why schooling acquires such a golden haze in retrospect: students can peer over the cliff and glimpse the lands beyond, but no one’s asking them to climb down among the rocks just yet.
Except, now, it’s time. I’m still done. I’m still more-or-less burned out, academically. I’m still aching to reclaim those hours spent studying and attending class and put them towards things I want to do: writing my own work, podcasting, reading for my own pleasure and self-education.
Maybe I realize a little better now that for the next chapter to begin, this one must close. We’re students our whole lives, but it won’t ever be quite this way again. I have learned a lot here. Not just about medieval kings and queens and Victorian imperialism, but about myself. And that’s kind of the point of your teens and twenties, isn’t it? Figuring out how you want to scale that cliff, what kind of person you want to be, what kind of relationships you want with other people. This year especially – well, it’s been an education.
It’s been a good run. But now – it’s time to go.
PS. NEWS AND THINGS
I’ve been meaning to announce this for a loooong time, but, well, school and life exploding.
Nominations for the Parsec Awards in Podcasting are open. If you enjoyed Hapax-the-Podcast, please consider nominating it for an award – the form is here.
If you enjoyed Hapax-the-Novel, please consider leaving a review on Amazon, Goodreads, or Chapters. I cannot stress enough how important this is. Every review helps, every link you post helps, every person you tell earns a high-five from me the next time I see you. Thank you – it really does mean the world to me!
How I Wrote a Final Paper in 11 Hours
I saw something like this, somewhere. I don’t recall where, now, but I thought it’d be fun (or at least, interesting) to chronicle my progress as I beat this paper into submission. Due to a combination of an even bigger paper, Ad Astra, and exams, this paper basically needs to get written today. Preferably before 10:00 pm.
7:36 am – Crawl out of bed. I’ve been semi-conscious for about an hour, having spent most of the night tossing and turning and dreaming of far too many people demanding beer tastings.
9:17 am – Apparently checking library hours would’ve been a good thing. My usual haunt doesn’t open for another hour, so I’ve relocated. I’m ok with that. Thanks to my ability to bike one-handed, I have a travel mug of coffee at my left. There’s no outlet nearby, so we’re going on battery power. And the essay starts now.
10:41 am – We’ve relocated again, as my usual library is now open and my battery died. Now I have a proper carrel and outlet. Essay is approximately 1.5 pages long…I got distracted by reading the news, and also by a friend’s editing job that seemed much more interesting and pressing than St. John.
11:11 am – I wish I could be done this essay.
12:02 pm – Essay is four pages long and has two pretty pictures. In one of nature’s cruel jokes, I feel both low-blood-sugar-y and nauseous. I need to eat, but I can think of only a few things less appealing right now. Braving the dining hall to see if I can stomach anything.
12:20 pm – An English muffin and hot chocolate with a side of awkwardness. Awesome. So glad to know I’m putting my few remaining free meals to good use. In other news, I think my stomach hates me. Oh well. Back to St. John.
12:27 pm – Screw it. My body really hates me. Calling a short break to mindlessly surf the web and wait for it to stop this nonsense.
3:06 pm – Closing in on 8 pages done. This is the first time in my university career that I have included pictures in an essay, and I like it. However, I am thirsty.
3:38 pm – The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. Going home to rest. Will resume soon.
5:40 pm – I slept. There was also dinner. Bracing myself for another attack.
8:07 pm – Ok, so I got distracted. BUT I AM WRITING THE CONCLUSION NOW. FEAR ME, ESSAY! (Side note: Saint John is the patron saint of theologians, writers, and people at risk of burns. I am sometimes all of these things, so he’s totally got my back on this. Right?)
8:19 pm – DONE THE CONCLUSION. But…I still need a bibliography.
8:43 pm – DONE DONE I AM DONE!!! At 3661 words, four pictures, and 52 footnotes, we are done! Haha! Now I only have one giant paper to go!
But first…baking pretzels!
-KT
Spring is Springing
I was just looking out the window, wondering if I could summon the energy to write something, anything, when I noticed:
There’s a tree outside with buds on it.
That, friends, warms the cockles of my heart.
Spring is coming, for which I am incredibly grateful. Partly because I missed spring last year: I left Canada in the middle of winter, arrived in NZ at the start of autumn, spent winter down there, arrived back in Canada at the end of summer, and have since gone through another fall and winter.
It reminds me of the Monty Python Holy Grail line: “And winter gave spring and summer a miss and went straight on into autumn.”

Courtesy www.cardinalfang.net
Ironically, considering the tendency towards pathetic fallacy in my writing, it really has been a long, hard winter. The last few weeks especially, things have been so heavy, cold, and grey.
With a few exceptions, of course…
But spring is coming. It’s almost like I still have seasonal jetlag, as though once the snow melts and the sun shines, once there’s that fresh scent on the breeze and you can practically feel things sprouting and taking root…then, it’ll be like a reset button that gets me on a more even keel. Not that I think warmer weather is the answer to everything, but it can only help.
The signs are there. I worked last week (which, coming in the middle of the Essay Apocalypse, was both highly necessary for my own sanity and also a terrible idea), and even though it snowed, when the wind shifted just right, you knew.
We’re well into Easter music at choir, and after four years, Easter hymns are triggering the same seasonal expectations in me that Christmas carols do in December. They feel like spring. They feel like things coming back to life, things rejuvenating (and yes, I do appreciate the symbolism there).
For the first time since a very lonely night somewhere in the South Island, I wrote a poem.
The days are growing longer and warmer. The ice is melting. There’s still a ways to go, but maybe, hopefully, soon, it will be patio weather.
First round’s on me.









