Was thinking out a certain portion of the backstory of my MC as I was driving around doing errands this morning. I already knew the very basic idea of what happened, but I was working it out in my mind, following the events step by step to see how they came about reasonably and believably in the world of the book. I was doing this because if I ignore or distort the reality of my characters and their world to make something happen, it can mess up the whole ms. Even if what I'm ignoring or distorting happens offstage, before the book even begins, it can still mess it up.

So I was thinking about this piece of backstory, and as I followed it through logically, popping around to check with the different characters involved in it to make sure they were behaving reasonably, I saw that this three-year-old (in story time) event is still very immediate and raw for the MC, and drives him even more than I thought it did.

To me, that says it needs to come into the story somehow. When I just knew the basic idea of this backstory, I covered it in a paragraph or two of narration stuck into the middle of something else. Now I think maybe it needs to come out in this Saharan section as dialog between the MC and the main secondary character, with paragraphs of internal thought by the MC where he adds painful details and thoughts that he wouldn't say out loud. I think this might also lead the secondary character to reveal something of himself, and that the MC is likely to get mad at him.

I looked at an article on flashback-writing, and one of the tips was to always place a flashback after a strong scene. Of course I can immediately think of ten million reasons and situations* where it would be the kiss of death to put a flashback right after a strong scene, but aside from that, it's an interesting idea and something to keep in mind.

I need to approach this backstory/flashback issue very mindfully, or it will get the better of me. I also need to remember: this isn't just about the emotional story; I can use these suckers to pull the reader along by dropping hints but not explaining something till I'm good and ready.

So maybe, in deciding how to handle each piece of backstory/flashback, some things to consider would be:

• It is just something the reader needs to know in order not to be confused?
• Does it inform and deepen the story?
• Does it establish an important emotional point for the reader?
• Can it provoke conflict, if divulged in dialog, in scene?
• Will hearing about it drive other characters to act, react, or change?
• Is there something about it that the main character isn't ready to face till later in the book?

I'm still not satisfied with the pacing of the beginning of Night Road, so that always looms at the back of my mind: You never figured out how to fix this. You fell short. You were unable to solve this writing problem. This dystopian--and probably the swordfighting ms, too--bring the exact same situation around again and drop it at my feet. It's like I'm not allowed to pass over the writing bridge till I can answer a certain question correctly. Only my question isn't "What's the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow," it's "How do you pace and structure a ms with necessarily heavy doses of world-building and backstory?"



*okay, maybe not that many.

Yesterday I only had about an hour to write, so I starting fixing some of the problems I'd noticed the day before. Now that I'm not so cranky, I think I do know what to do about it: get tougher with the self-editing.

I started switching up some of the language, rephrasing so it's less write-y and more speak-y, and looking for words that are evocative but not concrete enough, and dropping them. Also tried to be really hard@ss with my thinking: Does this have to be here? Is it necessary for understanding what's going on? I also took a good hard merciless look at where I paused slightly while reading. Those times aren't very noticeable, but when a reader does that, the choice is to refocus and keep reading, or put the book down. Ideally there wouldn't be any of those times.

I cut maybe eight pages total and dragged them all to the back of the ms where they will sit till I can figure out where to put them.

It occurs to me that I'm having the same problem lately, over the last three books. In Night Road, this book, and the swordfighting ms, I'm having to do world-building--and it's eating my lunch, pacing-wise. I'm having a h*ll of a time getting the world built, and the backstory that's necessary for character, and the story moving, all at once. In fact, I'd say that I'm failing at it. I seem to be able to do two at once, but not three. I need to notice/find out how other people handle this. I need to figure out what my problem is. Maybe my character-driven mind is lending too much importance to minor things, the way it does in transitions. In transitions, I have trouble not taking the characters through every little interim step in my head. Maybe I'm doing the same with world-building and backstory.

If that's so, then the answer is probably is more merciless hard@ss self-editing, plus when I get readers I'll have to ask them specifically to look for places where they can live without the info they're getting.* And otherwise, I guess just keep moving stuff around till I find an order in which it works. I don't know what else to try.

Now I need to figure out what I want to do today. I'm in great danger of overworking the beginning, if I haven't already, so I'm leery of heading back to that section. Dunno what I'll do. Must think.


*The problem with that is, I'm the most impatient reader I know. Most of my writer friends will read though something I'd have started skimming pages back.

A writer friend was saying something that made me realize part of my struggle with this WIP is probably due to voice. It's third person, which is something I've had to work at in the past anyway, but it's not the close third person of Night Road. It's not omniscient, either. It's just that the reader and I necessarily have to know or understand some things the MC doesn't--even more than usual. I sometimes say things about him, or explain things he wouldn't bother thinking about enough to put into words. So this voice is a stretch for me, on top of all the other stuff that's a stretch.

But anyway, I was pleased to find that quote yesterday, because I've been trying to find something--a word or phrase or, best of all, title--that pulls the book into focus for me. The quote is worded different ways, depending on where you look, but basically it says that reason lies between bridle and spur. It could very well be that this will help me rewrite my ending, when I get to it. It could be one of those thematic things you need in your head, to pull a book into shape. But we'll see. I know I can't use it in the title, because everyone will think the book is about horses and riding.

And I still don't have a title. Wish I did.

No writing of any kind for the past few days. There's not enough time in a day to get everything done; something always has to be set aside or pushed back.

I did have a little blip of a thought re. the MC for the Night Road sequel. I have no idea why that would pop into my head, out of all the things I've got to get done or want to get done. That ms isn't anywhere close to being worked on. It's, like, four or five books down the list. It's not connected to anything I'm working on or hope to work on. Still, it was a nice surprise to have even the thinnest of creative thoughts pop out on its own instead of me trying to pry it out during a specified time slot.

Today I am going to try to work on the w-f-h sample, which should have been finished last week. I'm going to set a goal of having it done by the end of the weekend. Along with a couple of other things.

Have turned in all first drafts of w-f-h, am waiting for rewrites. My brain is mostly dead, but the wee part that is not turns to my swordfighting WIP.

I haven't got a clue what to do. Or rather, I know what to do--basically I am starting over, and hopefully* eventually the new stuff will hook up with the old stuff timeline-wise and I'll know how to proceed from there. But I don't know what to write. I think I have forgotten how to start writing a book. I must spend, like, 99.9999% of my time rewriting. The last book I started was the former GN, and it sort of came out on its own in a non-book-like way that's not helpful to me right now. It was more like scribbling lines in a notebook than starting a novel. Before that, I wrote the Hallowmere book, and I had an outline to follow for that. Before that...I think the last book I started before that was Repossessed. With that, I had an idea, and the first line may have just popped into my head. The beginning of Night Road is lost in the murky mists of memory.

So, what to do? Maybe I should try to think about the conflicts that set up what I already have and see if any call to be fleshed out? Maybe just start writing a scene and see what happens? Maybe think carefully about how it feels to write something just because I know the plot calls for it, and memorize that feeling so that I don't repeat it?

My mind is sort of drifting toward the dad in the story--who dies early on, before the book even starts in the current version--and perhaps pinpointing something awful that set the events of the story on their course. In the back of my mind it's just a foggy blur of "dad got sick and died." But, thinking about it, something concrete happened to the dad to ignite anger in the MC. Somehow all his grief got channeled into rage that drives him through the book. Whatever happened, it is something that he can't examine too closely. Throughout the book, he refuses to listen to anyone or to consider the ramifications of anything he's choosing to do. He just continues to charge blindly ahead with his stupid, shallow, ill-thought-out plan that is not going to fix anything that's upsetting him. I suppose that in the end he'll have to see that

(I could think a lot better if the f*cking kids down the street would ride their mini-bike someplace else. They have been driving back and forth down our one-block cul-de-sac for hours. One block. A mini-bike motor. Up and down, up and down. For hours. If it was one continuous buzz it wouldn't be so bad, but the Doppler effect makes it crescendo every few moments. Then there's a pause while they switch riders. Then it starts again.)

Okay, back to WIP.

(Hey, maybe they'll run out of gas.)

(F*ck it, I put in earplugs.)

Okay, so the MC spends the book pursuing...the wrong goal? Willfully refusing to see...what? What does he need to see, by the end of the book? What happens to his dad? It would be nice if somebody killed him rather than him dying from a disease, because that would certainly provoke the kind of rage that would carry a not-very-bright action-oriented doggedly stubborn boy through a series of blindly stupid actions. Maybe the rage is directed at the wrong person, and the MC discovers (or admits it) at the end? So, who killed the dad, and why? And why would the MC misread the situation?

H*ll if I know. Will try to think.



*I know that's not correct usage, but it should be. I am determined to do my part to make it correct usage by repeating it over and over till the world agrees with me.

Same with double, triple, and quadruple negatives. And "y'all."

Ended up not doing any actual writing yesterday. However, I think it was a productive day because as I was scrolling through the ms file to get to the place I'm working on (about a hundred pages in) I saw the section I've mostly skipped because I don't know what to do with it. That's the part right after the traumatic event. All I have there is a tiny piece that has little to do with the story, but that rings true to me and feels very right. As I passed over that piece, I suddenly saw that the point of it is actually a thematic thread that runs through the entire book. It may even be the entire point of the story in a nutshell. So it could be that I now have the idea that I've been needing, to keep me focused and to keep the first hundred pages from veering off course and petering out, the way they're doing right now.

We'll see, but it looks very hopeful. Anyhow, that's what I did yesterday instead of write; I took notes and wrote a long e-mail to writer friends* explaining in excruciating detail what I thought about this nutshell/idea and why it was important.

Today I was thinking about Repossessed, because in the speech I gave in Anaheim I said that to me the book (Repo) is about rejection. Because I was talking to librarians rather than writers, and had other, more important points I wanted to make, I left it at that. But leaving it at that was misleading. It made me sound like I knew what I was doing the whole time I was working on the book. Really, knowing what a book is about only comes (for me) well into the writing process. Sometimes very, very late into the writing process. Sometimes I'm ready to pull the book together but can't because I haven't nailed down in my mind what it's truly about. And even after I get it nailed down, a lot of the stuff that's in the book is still subliminal. For the speech in Anaheim, I said that every character in Repo has to deal with rejection in some form. That is true--but I only realized it when I was trying to figure how what to say in the speech. I already knew that the demon had been rejected, because that's what was driving me to write the story, and I knew that the little brother Jason had been rejected because that was driving me, too. But it wasn't until the book had been out for a year and I had to give a talk about it that I took a close look and saw that that particular theme really did run through the whole book.

I think if you get saturated with an idea, it naturally comes out in a book. I think this goes for research, too--if you want to build a world, you can't just look up each detail you need to know and then go write it. You have to be saturated in the world yourself. Then it naturally comes out on the page and feels real to the reader.

But anyway. Blah blah. I was also thinking (Tyson and I walked four miles today. That's why I was thinking so much; Hobo is not so conducive to thinking because he's neurotic and also doesn't walk as far) about whether I can use any of this to help me when I pick up the swordfighting ms again. I was thinking about that feeling of strong certitude and rightness I have with that tiny piece in the problematic section--which may turn out to be the subliminal key to the entire book (or not; who knows). I was thinking that maybe I need to start that story (swordfighting) someplace else. Right now it starts smack in the middle of action, because that's how you're supposed to write a book. But I was thinking, maybe starting it in a technically perfect place is throwing me off. Maybe I ought to see if there's any other scene I feel compelled to write, that establishes something important to me that's not about plot. Because the whole thing just seems like a grind, from where I sit now. That's not right, is it? Should a ms feel like a grind when you step back from it and look with a little perspective? Any ms can feel like a grind while you're in the middle of it, but what if it still seems flat and pludge-y after you've laid off it for a few months? Isn't that an indicator that something's wrong?

I think it may be. But we'll see. It doesn't look like I'll be working on it for a while, so there should be plenty of time to consider.



*That's what writers friends are for. You can write them long excruciating e-mails about esoteric cr*p that is utterly confusing and means nothing to anyone but you, and they pay attention and even try to help you sort it out.

No writing yesterday. Brief respite from w-f-h today while they sort out specs on their end. I worked on part of Menelaus, and of course after taking a couple of days off I had to get my mind back into gear. While doing so I noticed that I've got a lot of work ahead of me because the first section has got waaaay too much stuff in it. This Menelaus section has specific, clear points to make, and in comparison I can feel how that first section slides into self-indulgent, bordering-on-trivial blah and fogs out. I am going to have to put on the heavy gloves and do some serious, merciless pruning. I'm going to have to stop thinking about all the things I want to get in there, or have been getting in there, and just look at what needs to be there. What has a purpose, what moves the story forward. I suspect that if I can clear everything I've already written out of my mind and truly look at what is there, I will end up cutting things I've always assumed were integral to the story. I suspect there are other ways to make the same points more cleanly and quickly and without adding extraneous baggage that must be explained and dealt with.

It's going to be a challenge. I never did figure out how to get the hemes on the road quicker in NR. They should have been out the door much sooner. I got that moved up as much as I could in the story, but there was just no way to put any more of the earlier info later, as far as I could see. I tried moving it around, and it just didn't work--it didn't make sense. So the beginning is a little slow for people who open the book expecting vampire-y action and death and attacks in the night. Those people probably quickly give up trying to read the book. I challenge them to figure out how to get everybody on the road quicker without messing up the world-building, the establishment of character, and the necessary backstory.*

But this WIP...I think this WIP will be snappier than it is now if I can manage to drop the selfish writer bit and figure out what is best for the ms. Not what I want to do with it, or what I like dwelling on, but how the story needs to be told, in order for me to do right by it.


*But if they do figure it out, I don't want to know about it. I'm not one of those writers who appreciates a post-mortem of my published book. I'm one of those writers who thinks that if you go up to writers telling them what you think is wrong about a book that is a done deal and completely out of their hands, you should probably be hurled off the nearest cliff. I don't tell you that your baby is ugly and you should have mated with a different genetic partner, and give you examples of the traits you should have been more aware of during your mating process.

long tedious post--you have been warned

This morning while driving Son #2 to school, I was thinking some more about the differences I noticed between those two scenes yesterday, and I think it might be important. The first scene is an event that comes from the research; it also fits well as a plot point that moves the story in the direction I want it to go--and I should be able to use it to drive the emotional story as well. Honestly, if it was just me, I probably wouldn't have it in there because it's so far from anything I've experienced. I have already watered it down a little for two reasons: to avoid pulling the reader off track from the direction I want them to go; and to try to make it more accessible for me.

The second scene is a much smaller event that I have experienced. I noticed yesterday that the moment I started working on it, I could see how to tie it in to the larger flow and use it as a clear step in driving the emotional story (and theme) forward.

I was very struck by how the first scene is a big blank for me, a sticking point that brings me to a halt. And the second one just slides in like it's been greased. And I started thinking that most of my books are a series of very small events that I do have emotional access to.

I was thinking about my first published book, Breaking Boxes. BB is mostly a series of small events, like getting detention or walking home from school or jogging. But the original ending was not what it is now. I didn't know how to end it, so I figured it out with my head and it was a big suicidal standoff with police and sirens and flashing lights. Now, BB was in the Delacorte contest, which meant it got read by multiple editors. In my first rewrite letter, my editor quoted another editor, who said that my ending "prevented the book from having its true ending." When I first saw that, I got p*ssed. I thought, "How can anybody else know what the 'true' ending of my book is and isn't?" I was p*ssed for a very short time, maybe only a couple hours. Then I started thinking. Gradually I felt out what might really happen, given the characters and what needed to happen to satisfy the character arc.* I was like, well, I already know that the character needs to break; so okay, what is already set up here that might drive him to the breaking point? There were a few things already in place, small things that might naturally add up to break him. So anyway, now BB has its current ending, which isn't perfect, but I think it does flow naturally and make emotional sense.

I was thinking about my swordfighting WIP, the one giving me fits. By its nature--this ms is me trying to learn to write plot--the story and turning points come from my head and not my gut. There is a series of events (there are a series of events?--h*ll, I dunno, take your pick, and thank g*d I don't have comments turned on), and the MC reacts to them. I have never experienced any of what happens to him. None of it is small in the way most events in my books are small. Like, say, in Repossessed, the demon tries to pet Shaun's cat and the cat scratches him. That is a very small thing--but I can connect with it, and I tried to apply meaning to it and use it as a continuing thread in the larger story, probably beyond what anybody ought to get out of being scratched by a cat.

In the swordfighting ms, I can't get to this connection, this natural, instinctive understanding of how it feels to have the story events happen to me. And perhaps because I lack that, the story is having trouble coming to life. It's just a bunch of writing, not a living thing that jumps off the page and grabs you and sucks you in.

I know that (I'm guessing) 90% of what I write is bad. I'm not talking about the finished books, because those are out there for other people to judge; they're past history. I'm saying that if you added up what I end up with from each day's writing, it's at least 90% bad, and actually it's probably more than that, but I'll be kind to myself today and say it's only 90%. I think one thing that makes my writing get better--makes it good enough to publish--is when I connect to it emotionally and draw out the emotional threads that run through the events of the story. Because I connect to it, it can make the reader feel what I'm feeling.

Some other authors can do this with big plot points that come from their heads. They are somehow able to hook those plot points up with their emotions so that it all becomes real and touches the reader. But now I'm thinking that my ability has lain mostly with very small things, daily-type things--in drawing those out and making something bigger out of them. I mean, look at Night Road. My connection with that is really small stuff, like driving a car for hours a day, or doing laundry, or swimming in a hotel swimming pool. I mean, for g*d's sake, these are vampires--and look how I dramatized them! I took those weensy mundane things and tried to draw meaning out of them and make them add up to something. With vampires--it boggles the mind, now that I'm thinking about it.

Most of my turning points are emotional, and they happen with very little going on in plot. I suppose I could say that this is how I do things and I might as well accept it. But I don't want to. I want to be able to take a story line that interests me and be able to immerse myself in it emotionally, and to immerse the reader, too. And the difference between these two events in my former GN--the unfamiliar event I can't connect with, and the later one that I can--is this whole struggle in a nutshell. It's me trying to move from connecting instinctively with small events I know well, to connecting emotionally with head-driven plot points that make utter sense and ought to work.

I'm not sure what to think about it. If other writers weren't doing this second thing every day, I'd say it can't be done or isn't any good. But by g*d, they are--and doing it quite well.

So I guess maybe the thing to do is see if I can feel out an approach to this sort of scene/point. See if there's some way to connect--maybe try to seek out some small aspect that I can totally relate to, and then expand that? I think that's what actors do sometimes, to flesh out their roles. I don't know. But if I can work out an approach for this one bit in this ms, it surely ought to help with the swordfighting ms.

And I'm telling you, every time I think I can't do something and ought to quit futzing around and just stick with what I already am comfortable with, I think about all the stuff I want to do with that swordfighting ms. It's the first of a series--a SERIES, I say defiantly!--and by g*d I want to go into manga territory novelistically (I don't think that's a word; well, it is now) and do some of the stuff mangas do with character and series arcs and moral spectrums. And when I think about that, I just clamp my mouth tight, duck my head down, and keep on.



* A big inspiration for me at this time was Bruce Clements. Never met him, don't know anything about him, but his books had wonderfully natural yet satisfying endings, smooth as silk. I was in awe. I say this because we stand upon the shoulders of giants; there are gazillions of us YA writers now, but we would not be here if it wasn't for the writers who broke ground for us, both in eye-catching ways and in quiet ones.

And while I'm on the subject, I will go ahead and say what I know I shouldn't: If you are a YA writer and you think "they didn't have YA when I was a teen" then you are a slap in the face of those who paved your way, and you should be ashamed of yourself.

No writing yet today. There probably won't be.

I'm cranky now because I remembered how it took me years and years (no kidding; years and years) to figure out what NR was about. I remembered how a writer friend shared her plotting/character worksheet, one that helps you define your characters' goals and use those to sort out your story. I must have used it at least three times over the years before the info I wrote in it (and I wrote the same stuff down every time) finally sank in. It took that long before I absorbed it, and was able to join the inner story to the outer one and bring it all around to the ending that had been on paper all that time.

Well, I had to figure out other stuff, too, but that was the last thing I figured out. The last huge thing, anyway.

I don't want to take years and years of sitting around like an @ss with no clue what I'm doing. I just want to write the frickin' book. I. Just. Want. To. Write. The. Book.

It's frustrating, because I'm smarter than my brain is. I know where my brain is falling short, but it won't step up and do its job. I can even lay out what I need it to do, the gaps it needs to fill, and it just lies there like a useless lump. Come on, brain! Get a move on!

But anyway. In what I have now, my MC has no inner journey. It's there, I just don't have it on paper. I know it's there because I know how he is and how he feels by the start of the next book, and it is totally different from how he is at the beginning of this book. The events of this book change him, they flatten him and make him step up to the plate so that he becomes wiser but also less trusting and more cautious, and with a buried edge of bitterness. None of that shows in what I have. So. Now I guess one thing I need to do is figure out how some of the events that happen in this book clearly make him change and show him changing. And if there isn't anything happening that makes or shows it, then I have my answer about what needs to happen as we approach the midpoint.

Here's a concrete, definite task: something my brain needs to do. Let's watch and see if it does it. And not take years this time.

Didn't get much writing time today. Still not sure about pacing. I was thinking about having a couple panels of quick backstory in the middle of this first scene, but I don't know if I can do that. In prose I would insert just a few lines to hint at something, bring it up briefly here so that I could go into more detail later when the reader is more firmly grounded in the story. But with visuals, I don't know. It feels like I'd be breaking completely away to a flashback, which would be a bad idea this early in a prose novel. Is it bad with a GN? I don't know. Could be it depends on how it's handled; could be it never works at all.

I guess I need to spend some time sitting down and looking at what needs to be in this first part, at what will give the reader the info needed to carry on, as well as raising enough questions to pull him/her along from page to page. Not to mention all the world-building that has to be done.

If I was an artist I bet I'd already have some ideas for how to juggle all this. But I'm not, and I don't.

Will try again tomorrow.

Hmm, this is interesting. Already I can tell I'm going to have to back off and look at what I have, pull it apart and rethink it as separate bits of info: the dialog, the inner commentary, the backstory, etc. Then I'll have to see whether I can put them back together differently. Perhaps the backstory will be like a separate little story with a "voice over" as one of the characters tells about it--that would take out most of the dialog. And what about the inner commentary that tells us the MC's current situation and his feelings about that situation? Maybe it can be hinted at in a single panel of, say, a framed photo, while the dialog is going on. I also see that the dialog can be juxtaposed with captions in the same frames, that would show us the MC's real, frantic thoughts belying his calm, screw-you words.

Who knows? Lots to think about, and my brain is fried. Today's been a long day.

I have to say, I've been very reluctant to try this route for business reasons that I won't go into, but that mean this story will probably be unsellable as a GN. I'd guess there's a 90% chance it can't sell as a GN. But if it does want to be a GN, that makes the project pure fun exploration on my part.

And that is actually quite freeing. You know, aside from the factors of starvation and foreclosure and my family living in a van down by the river. Aside from all that, it would be truly exciting if this wants to be a GN, because if it can't sell then there's no pressure at all to get it right. I guess we'll see. I could get stuck again as soon as I get through this first part. If that happens, I swear I'm gonna set it aside.

Settling in to keep trying this new tack again. I did a few pages yesterday, transferring over to GN format, and it went well.

However...today I'll hit a problem that was glaringly huge in the first version; so huge that I skipped over it and moved farther into the ms so that I wouldn't have to deal with it. It'll be very telling to see if I can solve it in this format or not. The problem was: a good 14+ pages (double-spaced) of dialog, all setting up and giving backstory.

For this story to work as a GN, it'll have to stand completely alone, even though it's a sequel. It's still in first person, but I think in a GN (this is one of the aspects of GNs that really appeals to me) I can skip around pov's without losing the reader. I think I can give backstory in real time, not in dialog or in thought, so it doesn't bring the story to a screeching halt. (I have no idea why a visual flashback doesn't throw the reader off the way a prose flashback does.)

One thing I don't have a feel for, though, is pacing. I know that 14+ pages went on waaaay too long in prose, because I can feel myself getting bored and impatient when I look at it. I don't have a good feeling for how to pace a GN. The only times I get bored or impatient with a GN-type thing are with some of the manga series where people are fighting interminably, or where there's a cute little interlude of a running gag about a character's personal quirks. Usually where people stomp each other's heads and it's supposed to be funny. But I don't think that bothers me because of pacing. I think it bothers me because I'm being forced to leave the story behind for something that's completely unnecessary, and often way out of line with the tone.

I don't see anything in the index of either of my Scott McCloud books (Understanding Comics, Making Comics) about pacing. I remember reading something; maybe it was when I was flipping through something in a bookstore. Most books about writing GNs or manga are all about drawing and have very little to do with storytelling structure or stuff like that. Maybe artists instinctively have a sense of pacing a visual story. I sure the heck don't. I just can't see this dialog going on for very long in this format either, because how many times can you look at pictures of two people talking before you get bored?

Although I swear Death Note had frames and frames and pages and pages of people thinking. Just thinking, either in thought bubbles or ostensibly out loud. They were thinking about what they were going to do next, what the other person might do next, what they should do to make the other person think they were going to do something they weren't really going to do next. That's the only manga that's ever taken me an hour per book to read--and that's because of all the thinking.

However, my characters' thoughts are not nearly that detailed or that involved. So. We'll see what happens as I work on it.

Not sure how it went today. Will keep on with it tomorrow.

Basically this is a format change. If the format was all that was wrong with it--if being in the wrong format was what kept the ms from progressing--then I ought to be able to work on it relatively steadily now ("relatively" in terms of writing, which really means "not steadily at all"). But if format isn't the problem, then I'll stall out again, and probably very quickly.

Of course, the problem could be external pressures keeping me from digging in. But usually I can write through those, at least to some extent. Sigh. I dunno, I dunno.

No writing yesterday. Family stuff, all day.

I'm wondering more and more if this ms isn't ready to be written yet. I can get a good day of writing in here and there, but I can't get any momentum going. This is worrisome.

Well, I think today I'm going to try a new tack. And if that doesn't get the ball rolling to where I'm able to at least feel like I have a grip on it, or can move forward without stalling out more than I'm actually moving forward, then I'll have to set this ms aside and pick up one of my other projects. I'm not going to beat myself up over this and make it into a hated chore. I've got enough hated chores, like scooping the cat litter and weedeating.

desperation

What a crappy writing day. I don't even know what I wrote; I think I just moved a bunch of stuff around. Blech, blah, argh. I have no clue what I'm doing.

But I know what I'm going to do now. I'm going to abandon this stinking computer and get my nice spiral hardback journal that a writer friend gave me, and a pen I have with an actual nib (although unfortunately the ink is purple) and I'm going to just write stuff, little thingees and snippets from my MC's pov. Just. For. Me. This computer has too much writerly pressure hanging over it, like a big old cloud of Write For Publication Doom.

Not a bad writing day, post-hamburger. I thought about viewpoints and decided to try one of the newer characters, one of the ones I added most recently. It felt good, so that's something. We'll see how it feels tomorrow when I open the file.

No writing yesterday.

I'm in a rough spot right now, can't tell what to do. The backstory isn't coming out in the MC's voice. That means it's like a lot of little dead ends. I can't even use them in the ms, if they're like this. There's so much of it (backstory), and it has its own little arc, so I don't feel that I can cut it up and sprinkle it around to hide that it's a different voice and style.

But the backstory is part of this character's arc--his "journey" starts way in the past, and is completed in present day--so it's not like either the backstory or the regular story will stand alone as a book. Not sure what to do.

In the back of my head, I'd thought for a long time about trying this as a graphic novel script, because that's a way to give equal weight to present and past (and parallel unrelated storylines in the present) without worrying about losing the reader. And the idea of working on it as a GN really appeals to me; I think I might not have to worry so much about reining in the darker aspects of it. Plus I could really look forward to working through some of these scenes visually, if I let myself.

But I've already got a GN script that obviously isn't quite right, and the thought of having two crappy GN scripts sitting around is more than I can bear.

And anyway, then the MC's voice came on super strong, and that seemed to indicate the story needs to be told as a regular prose novel.

But now not all of it wants to go that way.

One thing that occurs to me is that this book may be about pov and how the MC's guilt and anger colors his perceptions. Maybe I need to figure out more about what I want to say about that. I think I do want to say something about that, because it's an important subject to me. I'm just not sure what I want to say, exactly. Is it enough to just have him see more clearly, at the end?

And if that's a big point the book is trying to make, then how should the backstory be presented? And what about the parallel story of the stray--I was going to cut that, but maybe it should be used. Should I rethink the whole thing in terms of this idea--and rethink format? Maybe be more open to how this story needs to present itself?

H*ll if I know. I'm totally confused. I'm going to go eat a hamburger.

This ms is so odd. Half of it is dark, over-the-top weird sh*t, and the other half is modern snarky snappy-paced attitude. I just don't see how the two can fit together without losing the reader completely.

Nevertheless, I press on.

Pulled a bit out of the old version and started putting it into the new MC's pov and voice. I had forgotten that one thing that helped me figure out what NR was about was writing out an entire (bad) sequel. Something like 50K words of mostly unrelated figuring-out. But--here's the pertinent point--I'd also forgotten that I'd cannibalized parts of the bad sequel and put them in NR. Now I have to make sure I don't try to reuse them as I work through this ms. The bits I want to reuse are strong in my head, so it feels like I've already used them even if I haven't. It all feels so familiar.

I wonder if it's too soon to be working on this.

Thinking out loud...

...if the MC's main deal is that he avoids responsibility and consequences, then how do these two new characters play into that? The MC is sort of a Peter Pan type, only snarky and negative and oppositional and profane. He's supposed to take things very seriously--his life depends on doing so--but he refuses to, because he doesn't like being told what to do or feeling that he has to follow other people's rules. He's pretty immature, for somebody who's over a hundred years old.

And at the end, I know he comes to accept that nobody can fix some things; some things are permanent and ugly, and pretending they don't exist doesn't make them go away. Sometimes (rarely, for most of us) if you do what you know you shouldn't--what you were told not to do--the consequences are tragic and permanent. No matter how he refuses to take things seriously, the evidence that things are serious is right there in a tiny room off a hallway in a house in the middle of empty flat plains.

He has to learn to let go, to accept what he already knows: he can't fix it. He's been holding this knowledge at bay, but now he faces the stark, sober truth. It's not a big plot moment, just a quiet moment of recognition and sudden maturity.

So, by the end, is acceptance enough? In a way, I think it's like the stages of death, and he's stuck in denial all through his life, up till the end of this book. Huh, I need to look those up and see what the stages are (bargaining, denial, anger, acceptance--what's the fifth?) and if they're supposed to come in a certain order.

This is hugely important, because until I know what the point is, I'm not sure what to do with these two new characters. I don't know what their conflicts with my MC are, or how they advance the story or what any of their scenes might be. So far all I have is dialog and a feel for who they are.

And then there's the stray, Royal. How does he fit into this?

Does any of this fit together? What is the climax of this book? What is the conflict? How can these four characters meet and clash and join together in ways that will drive the MC to his journey's end? Do some of the characters not belong in this puzzle?

H*ll if I know. Could all be a waste of paper and time; who knows?

Back to work.