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This may not make it into the final Book IV, but even if it doesn’t this isn’t a huge spoiler. I don’t think. But imagine you’re Dorrin Verrakai, and a Personage (one of several in the book) comes to visit–a Personage whose attitude to magery is not exactly positive.
And one of your very young relatives–a little girl about six–comes running in with a bird in hand and blurts out that she rescued it from the stable cat. By putting the cat to sleep so she could extract the bird from its mouth. And another child assures you (and the Personage) that the cat is fine, too, because he woke the cat up and fed it.
I wasn’t expecting this. Someone else, I thought, would be the next person to appear with a completely different message, but when this burst into my head it was too good to ignore.
Meanwhile, we had an internet gap from about quarter to 2 am (when, as I was watching the Shuttle back off from the ISS on NASA TV, we lost it) to late this afternoon. Annoying as it was not to be able to check email, send email, read and post to things, the result work-wise was 3000 words on Book IV without hand soreness. In fact, I did half of tomorrow’s wordage today. Book IV is now just over 115,000 words. I expect to be a little over 120,000 by the time of husband’s surgery on Monday.
Hmmmm. If I took just 3 days a week completely offline, could I accomplish the 10K words a week with less strain? Probably not…I need to be “on book” at least five, more often six, days a week, at least for a little. But absolute adherence to “zero internet until the day’s work is done” might be a good idea. (I can hear a snarky little voice inside saying “Yeah, like that’s going to work!!” Well…maybe it is. Read on.)
A new post up at the SFWA.org blog on how 100 days of intentional blackout from social media affected another writer (Monica Valentinelli) led me to her blogsite where she’s collected her posts during that time, and it’s fascinating. She has documented her withdrawal symptoms, changes in her thinking and work patterns during the blackout, and the effect on measures of career success (marketing type stuff.) You might want to check that out; I think it has implications beyond writers’ lives. I found all the entries fascinating.
Final note: husband brought home a sack of absolutely gorgeous big red cherries. Thanks to growing up in citrus country, I never had cherries (other than the kind in little jars you use as cake decorations) as a kid and had never been that fond of “cherry-flavored” things. But I crushed a few into a glass of club soda, along with the juice of a lime (love lime in club soda) and…wow.
Comment by Jonathan Schor — July 19, 2011 @ 5:36 pm
Very interesting observations. In the final analysis, only the author can do the work, whether quickly or slowly or in the midst of chaos. As long as you are having fun and can write what you want to write.
Comment by Jenn — July 20, 2011 @ 6:57 am
I love hearing about the verrakai children. It think it is the wounded puppy thing. Even if they seldom make it into the book I enjoy having their back story pop up from time to time on your blog.
On a off note: I notice in fantasy genre that if there is a woman warrior she is often described as never like or being good at the “household arts” (spinning, weaving, *knitting* etc.) she only wants to ride horses and swing a sword. It would be so nice to have one who after practice or riding was happy just to take up a piece of tatting or embroidery or whatever and be good at both.
Comment by tuppenny — July 20, 2011 @ 11:00 am
I like the kids running to show off to ‘Auntie Dorrin’ – How that must disconcert visitors who only think of her in her soldier captain/powerful noble-dubious mage roles!
Comment by iphinome — July 21, 2011 @ 1:09 am
Every time the Verrakian are mentioned I get an image in my head of the former duke singing the seven deadly virtues from Camelot.
Comment by elizabeth — July 21, 2011 @ 6:45 am
iphinome: He didn’t have that much sense of humor, alas. But the attitude–he had that.
tuppenny: It disconcerted Dorrin herself at first–she had no background for being Auntie Dorrin. And the children–as children do–have a talent for opening cans of worms.
Jenn: I think there are practical reasons why the “woman warrior hero” is less likely to take up needlework (for instance) than a less outstanding fighter. Fighting skills and needlework (or any skilled craft, say) require hours of learning time and hours of maintenance time to keep at a high level. Whether male or female, the warrior must spend hours a day in building and maintaining the physical fitness and skill necessary–and then more hours a day maintaining the equipment. In a pre-high-tech society, the soldier can’t go to Supply and be issued a new pair of boots or socks…the soldier will be darning socks, maybe even knitting socks, or whatever else is used on feet, oiling boots or sandals, repairing anything the soldier can repair because a cobbler’s expensive. The same with clothing, armor, and weapons. If in an organized unit rather than a solo adventurer, the soldier will have unit chores to do as well. The woman fighter most likely to take up embroidery (let’s say) in Paks’s world will be older, probably Girdish, someone who’s had a dual role all along–and she’s not an elite fighter because she hasn’t spent the hours at it.
Jonathan: It’s still fun…and I hope it continues so.
Comment by elizabeth — July 21, 2011 @ 10:52 am
118,000+ before noon. Hitting the day’s 2000 words before lunch is lovely–the afternoon nap comes with no guilt attached at all.
Comment by jjmcgaffey — July 22, 2011 @ 3:19 pm
Thanks – like the others, I love seeing the Verrakian children pop up, particularly when they’re blossoming.
Re: woman warrior and household skills – that’s one of the things I love about Mercedes Lackey’s Tarma (from the Vows & Honor series, etc). She _is_ an elite warrior; she also loves and gets along with children and is quite competent at household chores (though I don’t recall mention of skill at decorative arts). “A Tale of Heros” in Oathblood shows it strongly, but it’s a thread that runs throughout.
Comment by elizabeth — July 22, 2011 @ 7:57 pm
Well, Paks gets along with children, but she doesn’t want to be the primary caregiver. Like many oldest daughters, she’s done that already. Competency at household chores takes less time to learn (says someone who grew up expected to learn them) than needlework (which I was also expected to learn and generally–except for knitting and crocheting potholders–failed at.) And certainly soldiers learn housekeeping chores if they don’t already know them (Paks, like the others in the Duke’s Company, had basic housekeeping chores in the stronghold or in camp: clean mercs are healthy mercs.) But the original suggestion was knitting, tatting, crochet…which is very different from sweeping, dusting, bringing in wood, cleaning the hearth, washing dishes, etc.
Comment by Jennifer — August 5, 2011 @ 2:41 am
If a warrior is regularly on active duty, I can see a problem with keeping fine needlework *clean*, too. Darning and knitting socks is one thing, fine embroidery and camp dust (or mud) could ruin weeks of work, particularly without modern dyes or detergents.
Comment by elizabeth — August 5, 2011 @ 7:35 am
Very true. I can imagine people (men and women) doing finer work during the off-season, if their commander gives them enough free time–like sailors doing scrimshaw work. If you’re in winter quarters and there’s down time, once you’ve mended everything that needs mending. But you have to be able to keep the “makings” for whatever you’re doing tidied up and safe between sessions…much easier in someone’s own house than in a barracks. On campaign, your personal possessions will be minimal and interruptions frequent. Embroidery needles would be hard to come by and easy to lose.
In one of the Liaden books…it’s either Plan B or I Dare, the Yxtrang Explorer who’s now oathbound to Miri Robertson embroiders a flag for the Lytaxin Irregulars in his “spare” time. But it’s a situation in which he has access to the materials as well as the time.
Comment by Nadine Barter Bowlus — August 11, 2011 @ 5:12 pm
To comment on the thread about warriors and the fine hand arts. There is no mention, yet, of Estil Halverick doing any of the “tradtional” crafts of the fine lady. However, she does manage the Halverick steading, raise a family, and keep up her archery skills. We all have a basic drive to be creative, but not necessarily in a material way. I can see where Estil’ s ” craft” might be managing people. Elizabeth, you touched on this in Legacy of Gird, when you commented on the talents of various people — you used a term familiar to the country people in Fintha that I don’t recall — the German, beruf, comes close to the meaning. And as others have noted, it takes time to develop and maintain the necessary skills in any vocation/profession. I’ll happily knit the socks in return for the peace and stability the fighters provide.
Comment by elizabeth — August 12, 2011 @ 7:53 am
The traditional activities of a landholder’s lady of the period (late medieval, early Renaissance) were not those often presumed (and actually seen centuries later.) Especially if her husband was often away to the wars or other business, she managed the household and in some cases defended it (when the absenting of her husband tempted some neighboring lord to move in.) How hands-on she was with various tasks differed with the other help available, but she had to know how things were done, in order to supervise, if she wasn’t actually doing some of everything herself. She did not sit around all day sewing fine seams…or not all day every day.
The difficulty for the fiction writer is that telling a story requires leaving out a lot of stuff that is not properly part of the story. Even the protagonist will have off-stage time…not everything in his/her life is going to be in the story. What is shown is only part of what he or she does. If Estil were the protagonist of a book, more of her household management would be shown as it impinged on her story and not beyond. Does Estil sew? No doubt she does, but it has not been relevant to the story so far. She might spin; she might weave; she might do any of it–though not all the time, because her social role as Aliam’s wife requires management tasks in addition to personal tasks.
Does this mean her craft is managing people? Not sure. Her socially-assigned role requires her to manage people, but requires more than that. Was “parenting” her craft when her children were small and Aliam spent half a year or more away? Is “grandparenting” one of her crafts now? You would find that Estil could do most tasks reasonably well–shear a sheep and take the wool all the way to a pair of socks, plant a crop and take it all the way to food on the table, etc. Aliam thinks her bread is best, better than any of their daughters’ bread…but she doesn’t spend all her time making bread, either. I’m not sure she has just one craft–she is good at many things, better at some than others, and in her life has used a variety of skills.