Partners in Time: The Series

Written on Sun, July 12th, 5:17 P.M. PDT

As I sit here on a plane on a very very long day of traveling -- flying from England to Oregon involves about 24 solid hours of being in motion...this would be twenty-four hours to your body, not to any clock since you pass through no less than 8 time zones -- I find the current confines to be a great way to force me to write. Seriously. You are trapped in a seat for many hours; there is no Internet; there is no cell phone; and you need to do something to make the hours bleed into one another.

The additional factors of me being completely brain dead and conscious only by sheer force of will -- I am one of those people who is incapable of sleeping on planes, trains, or automobiles -- and a near constant stream of coffee also feed into it. Caffeine tends to sort of stoke the fires of creativity, and being so exhausted means it is easier for me to sort of slip into that hazy fantasy world I create.

In the two weeks I've spent in another country, I sucked in a lot of research. Yesterday, which seems like a lifetime ago, I got to check out the reproduction of Shakespeare's Globe Theater in London, which was super awesome; it fed into the ideas I have for a long-plotted PIT story that involves this, and I was able to get a lot of research -- both historical and personal experience -- done.

I also got to check out some real (old) castles and manor houses and see some real garderobes. (Seriously...they had discovered some and kept them as they were in the Tower of London...they were even marked as garderobes!) I got to have the experience of being a foreigner, of being in a position where people know from the moment you speak that you do not belong there, which can alter the way you are treated. (Also, I really really am no closer to faking any British accent than I was before I started, though after being in the country for going on 2 years, my sister-in-law can do a spot on impression.)

I also am getting the experience of being awake for more than 24 hours straight, fueled by coffee primarily, and suffering from a total mind warp experience of time lag -- er, I mean jet lag. Since I often push my characters in ways like this, I suppose it's par for the course that I have this experience on occasion to remind me how miserable it can feel. Ick.

I am trying to ignore the fact I felt like a total slacker these past two weeks since I did nothing with my writing...but I suppose churning out several pages in one sitting on these very long plane rides helps alleviate that. And there's the fact I was spending every day experiencing a variety of things that I planned to mine later in my writing.

At this point, though, my summer break is more than half over -- due to adjusting the beginning and end of semesters, we have this singular super short summer break -- and so this is adding a bit of self-pressure trying to get the book done before I go back to work on August 7th. (I'll be in Oregon another week-ish as well.) It may be a photo finish, or the first draft may not be done until after Labor Day. Urgh. So it goes, I suppose.

I started Chapter 21 today and already have 2 full pages down. With about 40% of my battery left, we'll see how much I can get done before I am forced to stop.

-KS

I've been traveling like crazy over parts of England this past week, and today my family hit up Warwick Castle. It's an old castle that has been bought by the same company behind those wax museum statues (Madamn Tussaud's) and they've tried to recreate Medieval England more or less.

In the course of exploring a lot of the rooms in the place, I came across a Real Medieval Bathroom. And I was delighted it looked just like the one I described in PIT2, which I'd done research about!

( The passage from PIT2, narrated from Sam's POV )

I snapped these two photos here, which I uploaded to Flickr with some notes: Medieval Toilets for Manor Houses & Castles

There are clearly some differences, but I was delighted things were so on the money with the research I had done.

It's always so awesome to discover things like that!

-K

Right now, I'm visiting England for the first time. Actually, this is the first time I've ever left the U.S. (aside from the 24 hour trip to Vancouver B.C. that my homeroom class took my junior year of h.s.) It's already given me scads of experiences that I can use in my writing, particularly the sense one feels when they are a foreigner. I mean, the second I open my mouth I think it's fairly obvious I am not from around here...if the way I dress and behave does not already give someone that impression. I've never had this experience firsthand before, so I'm trying to take a lot of mental notes and impressions for writing. TIme travelers get that sort of thing all the time, after all.

Between jet lag, spending time with family, and seeing a lot of sights, I've really been lousy with writing progress. On the flight over here on Saturday, I managed to hack out the whole of Chapter 20, which was awesome. Five pages in one sitting! But after that point I had drained my battery a lot and the layover before the super long flight (to England, which was 8 hours) didn't give me much time to suck up more power. I suppose I could think of it as I got five days worth of progress done at once.

Today my brother and his wife worked, so my mom and I were at their house all day. But I pretty much used that time to catch up on uploading photos, doing some reading about the destinations we're hitting this weekend, and catching up on news back home. The weekend will be quite busy, and I may not take my laptop with me at all.

My mom did ask me if, after what I've seen these few days, would I write PIT2 differently, since that was set in medieval England. I can't say I would. The biggest thing that shocked me is the sunrise and sunset this area has. Being summer, the sun is setting after 10 P.M. and rising around 3 A.M. PIT2, set in January 1191, the sun would probably rise late and set early.

Also, I am going to get so much awesome research done for PIT 7 while here, even though I'm years away from starting it. That probably sounds kind of cryptic, huh.

-K

Lately, due to the stress I've been under with work, I've found myself holding my breath subconsciously so that I feel like I can't breathe. Lovely feeling, that. But I am finding that as I sit down and really focus and write, that feeling slips away. It relaxes me, de-tenses me, and I can breathe normally again. Nice, that is.

Currently I am in a coffee shop, writing. This is what I see:





Exciting, eh? Outside it is windy like whoa...my car steered differently, that's how blustery it is outside. I'm in a windy part of the story, though, so I'm almost tempted to sit outside and savor. Except that I am also very allergic to all the pollens in the air now and would be miserable if I did that. Alas.

In semi-PIT related news, I am now officially going to England this summer! I am very excited. This gives me the chance to look at some of the sights I plan for Sam and Meg to see/visit during a future PIT story that involves the Elizabethean times. Very early research, LOL. Beyond that, I am just thrilled to finally have an experience of visiting a foreign culture and country....that fish out of water sense that will be so good to experience firsthand!

And now, I go back to writing. Because this will probably be all the work I get done for another week, alas.

-KS

Wrapped up Chapter 14 this evening, another chap that seemed to take for-ever. I feel like I've been spinning my wheels. Perversely, being sick -- I'm battling a cold right now...tis the season -- aided my concentration. I'm more spacy, less easily distracted. This was probably good, considering I was in Borders on a Saturday "open mic" night. As a bonus, I got Chapter 15 started before I started feeling ready to go home.

My parents are going on a Caribbean cruise in a week or so, and I gave my mom some instructions to find ship blueprints/diagrams and visit some authentic pirate history locals...and take scads of photos. I may not be able to swing a trip down there before this story is done, but I have no qualms sending other people off to do my work if they're in the spot.

Hopefully I can get more work done tomorrow on the book. Go, go, go!

-KS

"Be careful what you wish for." For a period of time, that expression was a tentative drafty title for PIT1. It also could explain my life in the past week.

Growing up in Beaverton, OR, snow was a bit of a rare treat. Typically it would snow a little and melt within 24 hours. In rare cases, maybe it would snow a bit and be on the ground for a week if we had a dry deep freeze. But in recent years, it's been pretty paltry and pathetic.

On Dec 14th it snowed in the Portland area, and the stuff is still on the ground. This has been a weather event of epic proportions, a "once in a lifetime" sort of storm.

While I love snow and the idea of a white Christmas as much as anyone...enough is enough! My flight home for the holidays (scheduled for Mon, Dec 22nd) was canceled due to the weather conditions in Portland. I was very very fortunate to get a seat on a plane leaving the following afternoon...and that one did go. On the ground at 3:30 P.M., on Dec 23rd, and after 90 minutes waiting for my luggage to come out (for they were that backed up), I took the light rail from the airport to the 'burbs. By the time I walked into my parents' house, it was after 7 P.M. that evening.

The snow is insane. We did get a white Christmas, fufilling a wish of mine -- it even snowed for about 30 minutes on Christmas Day. But after being stuck in my parents' house since I arrived on Tuesday, unable to drive because of lousy skills (and I would have to pry the keys out of my parents' hands over their dead bodies), I feel a wee bit ready for things to thaw NOW so I can actually see friends, go shopping, hit up favored coffee spots, etc.

Since I can remember, as a writer, I've been a big fan of research -- as in experiencing something to better write about it. One thing I've written about a lot but never experienced happens to be large quantities of snow being dumped outside one's home. This morning, I went out for a walk and found trying to fight my way through a foot of crusted, crunchy snowfall was not as easy as it seemed. My mind immediately went to Meg and Sam at the 1850 segments in PIT4. Ironically, I did bring and wear my Doc Martens on this hike, and found those to be quite nice in terms of traction and keeping my feet sort of dry.

And whenever I write my way towards Sam's present of Dec 2008, I will now have firsthand experience to draw from regarding The Arctic Blast of 2008 (as the local news has dubbed the 2 week snow event.) I wonder if there's a way I can use that in a future story line....?

* * *

Considering the MASSIVE DISTRACTION of wondering if I'd get to my family's home or not last weekend, my writing progress on PIT5 has been sort of lame. I got about a page done on the flight on Tuesday (until I realized that I left my glasses in Sacramento, which broke my whole grove of thought), and that's been it so far. Yesterday was, of course, Christmas, and my family hosted festivities, so it was impossible to really focus on writing then. And by the time the day wound up, I was too fried to write. (The forgotten glasses makes it hard for me to tolerate looking at a computer screen when my contact lenses are out. Said glasses are en route to me, being mailed out by my roommate and supposedly guaranteed to arrive today...though the mail service has been pretty disrupted due to the road conditions.)

Hopefully things WILL melt soon and life can feel a wee bit more normal. I do like excitement once in a while, but when one has plans to relax and catch up on stuff, it can make it hard to reach those goals.

And I'm not sure if I ever will wish for a white Christmas again!

-K

I've probably written more than 50% of PIT5 at work, so far. (With block periods, I do SSR/journal writing for the first 20 minutes, and cram it in during that time.) As a result, I've not been able to be as diligent at fact checking as I go along writing. I have a lot of bracketed notes to myself to look up something at a later date.

One thing that I kept missing was the nautical milage between two Caribbean cities. I hit that today, then did more research on ship speeds of that time. (This was harder than discovering the nautical milage!) The good news is that my guestimation of two days of travel time is accurate. The bad news is that the story morphed a bit to cram the action so far in less than 24 hours. Which means that if I don't want to be factually incorrect, I need to go back and "write in" an extra day. (Via exposition, of course.) Oh, goody. I'll do it, def, but it's one of those things that makes me kind of grit my teeth and bang my forehead in the knowledge that I should've known better.

This also backs up the idea/feeling I have that my first drafts are just stapled together scenes when compared to the better flow of subsequent revisions!

So that's the most noteworthy bit of info from today, I guess. I have started Chapter Ten, but I may be going back to add in the day before I really get more into it.

-KS

I finished Chapter Nine today, to my surprise. That took, what, three days? I am pretty sure it's done, but I can also foresee myself just putting a time break where I left off and skip ahead a bit in time. I'll sleep on it and make that decision tomorrow, I guess.

Had a surreal experience last night, while out with friends, in seeing a couple pirates in a restaurant. Evidently there was a renaissance fair nearby, and these people came in their full attire to the Marie Callendars. For three or four seconds, I thought I was hallucinating the sight, LOL. Period clothing stands out like whoa in public.

Halloween is coming very soon, with the first costume party of the year (for me) next weekend. My mom humored my request of last year and constructed me a really neat pioneer dress and bonnet. I'll be the old west schoolmarm! Should be fun research wearing that getup for Meg's POV...and yet I won't have all those other undergarments women did back then (thank God).

Anyway, things are gonna get more complex, plot-wise, from here on out.

-K

I'm in the heights of being completely out of it. This is what happens to me when I sort of plunge into writing something. Rare for me to go into this trace-like state while at home on the iMac -- I prob write 95% of a book on my laptop now -- but.... Yeah. "Symptoms," as it were.

- My eyes. My contacts feel weird, dried out, and I am prone to, I think, blinking less. I feel glazed over and numb.

- My brain. Mentally, I am seeing and experiencing the events in the story. I feel like I'm in a dream-like state. Groggy. It makes other issues sort of slide away...

- Time dialation. This is one of them. When I am like this, the time literally seems like it's on crack and accelerating like crazy. Every time I look at the clock, and hour has slipped by.

- Disjointedness from my surroundings. I am really not aware what I'm wearing, what I'm doing, etc. Sometimes I will often write something, get up, and pace a bit. I'm not really noticing the other things around me. This also refers to physical needs, like hunger or whatnot.

There is, I suppose, a euphioria that goes with this, in sort of stepping away from reality to just submerse myself in a world where consequences will not touch my own little life.

In related news, amid my trance-like state, I made some ginger tea (for research purposes) and...ick. Just, ick. Not my cup of tea (ha ha, bad pun). Next to it, the pepermint tea is waaaaay better! (I like to drink hot things while writing, and coffee can only go so far.)

I made a comment yesterday to one of my co-workers that I have "complicated" relationships with my fictional characters. Probably being that I have little crushes on Sam and Alex. Esp Sam. I wish he'd "come to life" for me. Sigh.

Back to writing now...strike while the iron is hot and all that jazz.

-K

I like how I just opened my PIT5 document, reread what I wrote Friday, and literally added one sentence to finish Chapter Seven. Strange that it didn't occur to me on Friday that I was soveryclose to wrapping that chap out!

So, seven chapters are down, and the document is about 55 pages long right now. With the start of Chapter Eight, I finally get to see some of the dominos start to fall that I've set up the last couple chapters. Awesome. And at the end of this new chap/beg of the next I get to write a scene that I have enjoyed plotting and envisioning out in my head for many months now. Even better.

Although I've been asked before about if Sam, Meg, et al, are based on real people, and the answer to this is "No," that has not stopped me from occasionally coming across people who resemble a character I created in some eerie ways. I knew for a time a guy who was like an incarnation of Sam. And recently I've met a guy amongst my group of new friends who is, swear to God, Alex coming to life in many funny ways, in particular with his appearance and sense of humor. People, I suppose, would accuse me of reading into things too much, but I always get a kick out of stuff like this. I've still yet to find a Meg incarnation, though.

There's about 7 weeks left before the Roseville book event. I suppose that in the next week or so I should start to send out press releases to local media.

In the immediate time, I'm going to try and lay down some lines of Chapter Eight before my raging hunger drives me away from the coffee shop where I'm currently hunkered to write.

-KS