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So here’s where we are in our story: Narthé has abducted Ilsabet and is flying her to his castle in the mountains. I still haven’t figured out whether the castle is real or if it’s some kind of illusion Narthé came up with. I’m leaning towards it being real — as much as I sometimes stumble over the idea of him having a castle (why does he need it?), I stumble harder when I consider the energy expenditure it would take to maintain the illusion 24/7 while he holds Ilsabet. Especially since she has the freedom of its rather considerable square footage. Read the rest of this entry »
On impulse at the library the other day, I picked up Kathy Reichs’s Break No Bones. Years ago, on the recommendation of a friend, I’d checked out Deja Death, but I couldn’t get into it. Every time I see one of her Reichs’s books in the “New Fiction” shelves, I remember that past experience and I pass on by, so I’m not entirely sure why I borrowed one of her books this time. I might have opened Break No Bones up and liked the sturdiness of the prose; I might have hit a spot where she explains forensic anthropology. (Temperence Brennan, the series’ narrator, is a forensic anthropologist…just like Kathy Reichs.) I don’t remember in particular; I kind of went to town in “New Fiction” and my thought processes are a blur.
Whatever the reason I borrowed the book, I’m glad I did — in fact, I might go back and try another one. I finished the book last night, and I enjoyed the experience of reading it. I didn’t fall tip over teakettle over it — not like The Spymaster’s Lady, or the first time I read Lord of Scoundrels. With those books, I wanted more, now from the author. I’m not feeling that about Reichs.
The character, Temperance Brennan, is also the protagonist of a TV show, Bones, starring Emily Deschanel. The one episode I saw was a decent procedural mystery, with Temperance one in a long line of misfit detectives. There’s a sense that on some level she doesn’t entirely get the irrational nuance of human interaction, as if she’s tried to apply a formidable intellect to something that doesn’t work on an intellectual level. In the afterward of Break No Bones, Reichs talks about the TV Temperance, and how that character is the narrator of the novels in the early days of her career, while the narrator is rather older.
Still, there are part of the book’s narrative that reminded me of the TV character, of bits that weren’t quite sensitive, just a little smug or inappropriate. Maybe that’s what keeps me from wanting to glom Reichs’s backlist; I’m not sure I like her narrator, and I’m not sure I want to spend a lot of time with characters I don’t like. At least not now, when the bulk of my creative, narrative-centered energy is focused on my own work.
This morning I learned just how much firing up Mozart matters when it comes to settling down to scribble.
Last night, I recharged my mp3 player, the one that lives in my purse and comes out when I’m on the bus. This morning, when I went to take it out of my purse, it wasn’t there to be taken out. I’m pretty sure it’s still sitting on my desk next to my laptop, patiently waiting to be put to work.
I’ll still get my 100 words in — I’ll just do it tonight, when I’m at home. With my mp3 player.
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Late afternoon addendum: I puttered a bit despite having no music, and I puttered again at lunch, and I ended up with 400 words for the day. Maybe it’s because I’m in a groove, in the habit of writing. Maybe that’s one of the side benefits of having developed the habit, that I can write without music or some of the other things I thought I needed.
It also helps that I’m not fretting over how good or bad the writing is. A lot of it isn’t as good as it’s going to be, but that’s okay; that’s what revision is all about.
A few days ago, I got pretty much kidnapped by a scene I was sure was the last scene. It wasn’t the last scene I’d planned on; it was something new that would tie up some loose ends. So I started writing it, on the theory that it doesn’t matter when I write a given scene — if I know the whole story, I don’t have to write in order.
And I kept writing it….and writing it, and writing it. It’s too long and it raises too many questions to be an effective ending scene. So I’m starting to suspect it might be the opening scene of another story. I’ll finish it and keep it, and then I’ll look at it again when I’m in revision mode. Maybe what happens belongs, but I’m telling it from the wrong POV. Maybe I’ll get to the end and change viewpoints…and then use the original version in another story. I’ve done that before, only last time I didn’t do it on purpose — it just worked out that I had to use that scene twice. (And it was such a craft nightmare that I’ve sworn never again — If I’m showing the same scene from two different perspectives, I’m doing it on purpose.)
But I don’t know what, if anything, I’ll use the scene for, except my own education and entertainment. And that’s okay. Sometimes you just don’t need to know.
Happiness is a good workout.
I didn’t want to go to the gym today, I really didn’t want to go, but I went anyway, and I hadn’t been there more than half an hour when I realized I was happy to be there.
It’s a little challenging because they’ve changed over all the equipment, so setting it up is completely different. The resistance is different, so the weight I need to use is different. For example, there’s an exercise I do for my abductors. On the old machine, I used to set the weight at around 45 lbs. On the new machine, I was at 80 lbs. before I started working. On the other hand, I was doing a pulldown for my lats, and I had to drop the weight from my former 45 lbs. to 25 lbs.
But that’s just the details. The important thing is that I went, even though I didn’t want to; the important thing is that I was happy when I was done.
We’ll see how I feel on Tuesday, when I have to go again…
A few minutes ago, I printed out hard copy of what I have so far — 60 pages. I did it so I would have it, just in case something happened to blow up my hard drive and two flash drives. I made the mistake of looking at it — yawn. I immediately set it aside — I’m not going to allow myself to look hard at anything I’ve got until it’s all done…and even then, I have to wait anywhere from two weeks to a month after finishing to read it.
That’s The Plan. The idea is to get some separation between me and the story — to get the book out of my head as much as possible, so that my eyes will be (relatively) fresh when I look at it to start revising, polishing, tightening and just generally strengthening the story. I won’t be so sick of it that it seems stale just because it’s so familiar — any staleness I find after getting some distance is likely to be real, and not contempt bred of familiarity.
I don’t know if I’ll be sick of it by the time I finish it — at the rate things are going, I’ll be done in three months, and I’m not sure that’s long enough for me to get sick of a story.
But this is the first time I’ve written like this, so who knows?
Sadly, “book head” doesn’t refer to all the books I’m reading (though I am reading)–it refers to the fact that the book I’m writing has taken over my entire head and there isn’t a brain cell left to talk about what I’ve read, not least because I just finished Pamela Dean’s wonderful Tam Lin and that’s going to take some thinking to digest. Hopefully I’ll remember it when the scribbling frenzy has eased…
This is going to be very quick, because I am a mad writing fool, with only one or two brain cells that have not been drained dry by the work in progress…and I’m not even using those for this, since I intend to suck the juice out of what’s left before the day is ended.
I am on a roll. I’m on page 60, it’s over 18k words long, and I don’t hate it. I had a brief spasm of the ol’ I-can’t-write-a-shopping-list blues on Monday–you know, when you’re convinced your story is The Stupidest Thing Anyone Ever Thought of In the History of the World…and it’s badly written to boot–but then I got some sleep, and I wrote on Tuesday and my world righted itself. I might be working on The Stupidest Thing but I don’t think so, and even if it is, I rather love it, and that’s what matters.
Back in August, I wrote a post about having the joy come back. Here I am, six months later, and the joy is still here.
It doesn’t get any better than that. I don’t know if anyone else will want to read this when it’s done. I don’t know if an editor is going to think enough people will want to read it to make it profitable to publish it. I don’t care about any of that. Right now, I’m happy to write this, and that’s enough to keep me going.
