Nicole Bross

Author: Nicole Bross Page 4 of 19

Caught you attention with that, didn’t I?

Before I elaborate, a preface: I am possibly the world’s worst texter. My missives are all over DYAC. I’ve reached a certain level of infamy amongst my friends and family. In real life I’m a bit of a stickler when it comes to spelling and grammar, but when I’m using my phone and tapping away at the speed of light on that tiny screen, all rules go out the window.

A typical example (me on the left). Who can tell me what I was trying to say?

More nonsense. More profanity.

But tonight my errant thumbs may have stumbled upon a new way for authors to bring their works to the wider world:

Me on the right this time. The Oracle said I would be published, so it’s gotta be true, right?

I mean, at least for SFF, right? But until those elves start accepting queries through normal means, I suppose I’ll keep trying to achieve publication the traditional way. But who knows what the future will hold?

(all opinions on elves, elf- and self-publishing are my own. I admire and applaud those who have the wherewithal to self-publish books either about or not about elves, and take on all the work that’s involved. It’s just not for me.)

Preserved

By Nicole Bross

On September 19, 2013

In Beyond Writing, Things to Ponder

This is going to be a bit of a ramble.

Every year, starting in about June and ending in October, writing gets shoved to a back burner and I focus on putting by enough food to feed my family for the next year. From freezing fresh fruit by the caseload to canning, pickling and dehydrating, the goal is to make it through the lean months of winter with a wide variety of food. Some of it I grow myself, most of it I source from local farms and markets.

Canning season starts with asparagus, pickled in brine with my own blend of spices. It usually ends with apples and squash, both sauced. Once the last of the kale and chard has been picked and the herbs hung from the rafters in the basement to dry, the garden gets put to bed and I start making soups and stocks to warm us on chilly days.

I’m committed to keeping as much of our diet local as possible, but you can’t get fresh Alberta-grown apricots or pears in February, so I have to get enough for the year in summer, and find a way to preserve them. The amount of produce that moves through my kitchen during these months is astonishing, when you add it up. 210lbs of tomatoes. 100lbs of apples. 40lbs of corn. 80lbs of strawberries. 60lbs of blueberries. You get the idea.

This is what it gets turned into.

I can’t remember if I’ve ever mentioned it on the blog before, but due to food sensitivities I can’t have dairy, gluten, eggs or almonds. This means virtually all processed foods are out for me, and I make everything from scratch. Without having all this stuff put by in the summer when prices are cheapest, I think my dietary restrictions would bring our grocery bill up to an amount that rivals our mortgage. And as a working mom it simplifies my life a thousandfold. Getting home from work at 6pm means I only have a short time to get dinner on the the table, so having safe and tasty spaghetti sauce ready to heat means all I have to do is cook the rice pasta.

But this is a blog about writing, right? Why the hell am I talking about canning? Well, because I see a lot of parallels between my path as a writer and my path as a canner. With both, I started out small and kind of fiddled around for awhile, trying different things out, reading lots of books, making lots of mistakes. With each new project I got a little bit better, started trying out different techniques and now I feel I’m rather good at both.

My now-not-so-secret desire is to one day write my own canning cookbook, featuring my original recipes, which will cause canning and writing to intersect even more directly in my life. It’s a few years off, but I’m starting to think about it, compile all my recipes and work on the ones that still need improvement. In the meantime, publishing my fiction is where most of my efforts are going to lie.

At the end of it all, whether I’m gazing at the hundreds of jars I’ve filled over the past few months, or reading the final page of my many-times-edited novel, the feeling I get from both is the same – accomplishment and a quiet sort of satisfaction. It’s worth all the work, the late nights, the tears, the bitter disappointments. It’s something I can be proud of.

Purple Haze

By Nicole Bross

On September 16, 2013

In Beyond Writing, Things That Are Awesome, Writin' It Old-School

It came today. It came today!

Giddy. I’m giddy.

That. That, my friends, is a Remington Portable No. 3. IN TWO-TONE PURPLE.

You can’t see the purpleyness of it in that pic so here’s a better one.

This one is from 1930. The colour scheme is officially called Orchid.

And from the side, so you can see the lighter lavender:

Lovely and worn in exactly the right way. This machine has been used and loved.

The first time I ever saw the purple Remington Portable, I knew it would be on my must-have list. Purple is my very favourite colour. But they seem to be astonishingly hard to find – not surprising, since they’re 80+ years old, and not many were made with these colours. I thought I’d never find one for myself, to the point where I was considering powder coating another typewriter of mine purple instead. But it would never be a Remington. It’s very simply a thing of beauty.

Then this one came along. Like so many of my favourites, I found it by chance on eBay. I wasn’t even seriously looking at listings; we had just gotten home from a long weekend of camping and I was browsing, seeing which auctions were ending soonest. And this came up – 40 minutes to go, still priced at what I thought was a steal. I’d never seen one for sale before. My heart was actually pounding, but I had to act all casual and off-handedly mention to my very understanding, if possibly typewriter-weary husband that there was something I might bid on, if the price stayed reasonable. I think he was going to start to say maybe not, but when he saw the pic I clearly saw the resignation in his eyes. There was no question this one was going to be mine. And after an agonizing 40 minutes, when I placed my sneaky last-second bid with moments to go, I was the proud owner of this lovely machine.

The two weeks it took to arrive from Michigan felt like months. And then when I got home from work today, there was a large package propped up on my front step. “Is it the purple typewriter?” Kid 2 shouted. Both of them clamoured all over me while I opened the box, then the travel case. And seriously, we all gasped in unison. For the next 45 minutes, during which I was supposed to be making supper, we instead fiddled with it, got the carriage unlocked, moved the margin settings, and typed out a short note.

It works perfectly. It’s 83 years old and every single key strikes smoothly and without hesitation. It might be my best-working machine of them all (and this makes ten). I’m not sure if I’m ready to say I love it the very best – Pinkie Pie, my Royal Quiet De Luxe, my two cursives (Ivy the Olympia SM4, still a work in progress, and a Royal Aristocrat, which will get its own post soon) and another you-won’t-believe-it machine are all near and dear to my heart, but it’s a strong contender.

It’s the only one I’ve taken into my bed, though. I’m writing this blog post right before I turn in and it’s laying beside me in the spot where my husband should be. Not joking.

I feel like the only thing it’s missing is a purple ribbon to complete the colour scheme. So that’ll be my next eBay purchase, and then I really need to put my account to bed for awhile.

Unless an Olivetti Valentine comes up at a good price…

Want to learn more about my typewriters: Check them out here.

Good Idea, Or…

By Nicole Bross

On September 13, 2013

In The Road to Publication, Things That Make You Weep For Your Sanity

Sending queries on Friday the 13th. Very bad idea? I’ve had a pretty fantastic day so far… in fact there could have been a lot of disasters, but everything’s gone off without a hitch.

I’ve got Grimes and Alt-J cued up and the firepit’s lit. The evening air is warm and the beer is cold. I’m going to try my luck.

Major Awkwardness

By Nicole Bross

On August 24, 2013

In Things That Make You Weep For Your Sanity

I mentioned in my previous post that I had sent out my completed draft of The Unseeing to a few beta readers for opinions and feedback. Pretty standard procedure, right? That group includes a few friends who enjoy the genre I write in, and my parents, who by virtue of raising me and all that, get first dibs on anything I deem share-worthy. And my dad in particular offers pretty good advice.

So what’s the issue?

The issue is, this book has some racy bits. Nudity and suggestive dialogue and the word ‘climax.’ <— That word a lot. Or ‘came.’ NIPPLE even, for god’s sake. You get the point.

OMFG I SENT THAT TO MY DAD.

Now I know it’s not his first time reading that sort of material (and really, it’s fairly tame). He read 50 Shades, of all things, just to see what the hype was about. That was something I could have been happier not knowing about him, but whatever. The discussion he attempted to have with me about the content was also something I could have lived without. One does not talk about such things with one’s father. But surely it must be different reading those things knowing that your daughter, who you cradled in your arms as a newborn, wrote them.

I am 33 years old. I’ve been married for ten years and have two children. It must not be out of the realm of possibility that I have naughty thoughts from time to time BUT MY DAD DOESN’T NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THEM.

Mortifying. You don’t even know.

I just… ugh.

Draft Complete, and Other Housekeeping

By Nicole Bross

On August 23, 2013

In Musical Interlude, Planning for the Future, Revision

I have a working draft of The Unseeing in my file folder. It’s been sent off to a few readers now to see how the greater populace takes it. I did two rounds of revisions before I shared it out, and cut about 7,000 words from the original draft. I think it’s in decent shape, but I also thought my third draft of The Unraveling was in decent shape and ended up doing a major overhaul in the fifth and sixth.

One thing I really wish I could find is a real crit group of other writers I could trade feedback for. I’m sure in my city of more than a million people there must be a few, but I have no idea how to find one. Then there’s the fact that I’d be coming into the group with two completed novels for critiquing. And the fact that I’d prefer a slow, torturous death to sitting in front of strangers and reading my rough work aloud. Is there an online-only crit group out there somewhere?

Seriously, is there?

While I’m waiting for the feedback from my beta readers to trickle in, it’s back to the grind of querying for me. I got some helpful notes with one rejection that I want to apply, so that’s my focus for the next couple weeks. Then I plan on spending a good amount of time outlining the next book. My tentative plan is to start writing it for NaNo 2013 in November, but I’ll need a solid outline if I’m going to hit 50K without losing my mind like I did the last time I attempted it. My outlines are no small feat – the last one was 6,000 words of point-form notes.

It’s nice to have the next couple months planned out, although the workload seems like it’s a bit light without major editing or new content to write. Might be a good time to start developing some of the other story ideas I have kicking around in my head… this song keeps coming up on iTunes and sparking scenes and ideas. I’m listening, universe…

The Book Was Written Passively By Me

By Nicole Bross

On August 8, 2013

In Learning, Revision, Things That Make You Weep For Your Sanity

I’m elbows deep in editing my current WIP right now, and to my dismay and bafflement, I’m seeing a lot of passive language. I don’t know how I fell into the habit, because it’s not my usual style of writing, but it’s all over the place and it’s been tortuously slow editing it all out and changing it to a more active structure. I have to look at every sentence I wrote and find the subject, verb and noun and make sure they’re in the right order. It’s easy enough with short, simple sentences, but complex ones sometimes make my head ache trying to sort it out. This is going to be a long slog, and I’m sure it’ll take a couple more rounds of revisions than usual to make sure I catch it all.

I did write the first draft much quicker than I did my first one – less thought into sentence structure in an effort to just get it all down on paper may account for it. I wonder if subconsciously it’s not a reflection of what my main character is feeling in this story as well – not in control for a lot of the time, having things done to her instead of doing things herself. With that in mind I’m preserving some of it, rules be damned. It’s told in first person, so sometimes a passive structure feels more appropriate. Just not as extensive as what I apparently wrote.

A couple links I found useful when it comes to passive voice:

Seven Examples of Passive Voice (and how to fix them)

Passive Voice: Linking Verbs and Wordiness

Fiction Writing and Other Oddities: Passive Voice

I found the last one especially useful because I’m writing in first-person, past-tense, which means I do use ‘was’ and ‘had’ in the course of my writing. Differentiating between past-tense and passive writing can be difficult when many resources advise to just look for those two key words (plus a couple more) and delete them. I’m definitely guilty of a lot of ‘was +ing verb’ writing this time around though, which isn’t passive, but is wordy and a lot of times can be changed.

The good news is, I’m getting aggressive with my passive writing.

Giant Cringe

By Nicole Bross

On July 28, 2013

In Distractions, Revision

Just for fun, I went back today and read the a couple chapters from the first draft of The Unravelling. It’s been so long since I’ve started it, and I’ve been through so many revision drafts that I didn’t really have much of a feel for the original manifestation anymore. Back in those days I didn’t outline and just let the words flow freely, at best spending a bit of time each night before I fell asleep dreaming up what I was going to write the next day.

Let’s be kind and say I’ve come a long way in a year and a half.

It’s actually kind of encouraging, if you look at it from the perspective of seeing how much I’ve learned since I started out. And the bones of the story were always good, there was just a lot of fat to be trimmed.

In all the cuts, I’d forgotten some little details, things that weren’t at all important to the development of the story, but make the characters richer in my mind. Things like the fact that Poppy was the fourth of eight children. Or that Callie’s job used to be designing websites. And revisiting characters that I subsequently cut completely from the book was kind of fun too. One has since reappeared in a slightly different characterization in The Unseeing, which just goes to show the importance of never deleting previous versions.

The next question is whether I have the courage to revisit my NaNoWriMo 2011 novel. I haven’t so much as opened the document again since November 30th of that year. But it, too, was a learning experience and while I’ll never even attempt to publish it, it was my first step toward authordom, and for that I’ll always hold it fondly in my heart, even if I have to read the whole thing peeking between my fingers.

Ivy, or the Cursed Cursive

By Nicole Bross

On July 19, 2013

In Writin' It Old-School

Olympia SM4 portable from 1959.

Ivy had a storied journey to get to me. I bought her on eBay for what I thought was a steal, then paid more to have her shipped to me than I did to bid. Such is the life of the international eBayer.

In the pictures posted in the listing she looked like she was in okay condition but would need some cleaning. The description noted that all keys were working, which is pretty important. There was a particular reason why I wanted this machine, so I bid and won.

Herein lies the beginning of Ivy’s tragedy. The typewriter was listed as coming with a carrying case, as many portables do. These carrying cases have latches on the bottom so you can secure the machine to it and it doesn’t shift around inside. Well, the seller put Ivy in the carrying case UPSIDE DOWN. Those latches, meant to prevent damage, instead scratched the everloving shit out of the top cover. Then it was shipped in a plain cardboard box with no packing paterials other than a couple crumpled up balls of newspaper. The box looked like it had been beaten with a bat. So needless to say, Ivy wasn’t in good shape when I opened the package. I could have cried when I saw her for the first time.

An example of the damage to the top cover. Sadness 🙁

Once I got my ridiculously high shipping fees refunded, I set to seeing what I could do to actually fix it. The damage from the poor shipping was totally cosmetic, but I soon discovered I had bigger problems at hand. Namely, the machine itself. The keys were not all working. They were not all working at all. About a third of them stuck, and that’s why I have it disassembled in the first picture. Note the many bottles of toxic solvents and cleaning tools (and my Method soft scrub – you know, for the environment). I have been cleaning Ivy for TWO MONTHS. I think somewhere along the way this machine was dipped in oil, and it’s full of sludge. In fact when I cleaned the exterior, it proved to be a completely different colour from what the pictures in the eBay listing showed. It’s actually robin’s egg blue, not swampy greenish. But all that oil has completely gunked up the inside and it’s been a bitch to sort out. Every time it seems like I’ve got it working, the solvent evaporates and I’m back to square one. But I’m making progress. Some of the keys wouldn’t strike at all in the beginning, and now they all will, as long as I give it a shot of degreaser first. The problem is the degreaser dries out eventually and it’s back to sticking. But I will persevere, even if it means disassembling it completely and soaking it in a cleaning solution for a few days.

As a side note, want to know what’s actually really useful to clean out a typewriter, for those hard-to-reach places? Tampons. You’re welcome.

So why go to all this trouble for Ivy?

I have a soft spot for cursive machines. They type beautifully, but they’re also hard to find and Olympia cursives usually go for a few hundred bucks. And I really, really love this typeset. I’m determined to make it work (and get a new ribbon, obviously).

Stay tuned for a hopefully victorious post featuring Ivy, fully restored. In the meantime, I need another box of Tampax because there’s still a lot of work to be done.

Want to learn more about my typewriters: Check them out here.

Face. Meet Keyboard.

By Nicole Bross

On July 16, 2013

In My Failings As A Proper Novelist, The Road to Publication, Things That Make You Weep For Your Sanity

And then meet screen. And then meet tabletop.

Query letters are bastards to write. Really there’s no other word. Writing the book was easier. Even editing was easier. Since I wrote the first draft of my query, I’ve done more drafts than I did of my novel (12 vs. 6). It’s also taken the same amount of time as my manuscript revisions took (four months), and nearly as much time as the first draft.

That’s insane.

Now I’m at the point where I’m obsessing over single words. Leave it in or take it out? Where to put the most weight, voice, hook, concept or pacing? And the big one for me, Canadian or American spelling?

I’m losing sleep over it. I’m waking up at 4am to take out a comma or move two sentences around. THE QUERY MUST BE PERFECT YOUR ENTIRE PUBLISHING CAREER IS DEPENDING ON IT the internet screams.

I’m giving myself 48 more hours and then whatever I have at that point is what goes out. Seriously, enough is enough.

Author: Nicole Bross Page 4 of 19

The Future of Publishing

Preserved

Purple Haze

Good Idea, Or…

Major Awkwardness

Draft Complete, and Other Housekeeping

The Book Was Written Passively By Me

Giant Cringe

Ivy, or the Cursed Cursive

Face. Meet Keyboard.

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