At some point before I left for VT, I split chapters 11 and 12 into about four or five or six separate pieces, because when it was all packed together into the ms proper, I felt like I was drowning in this part of the story and couldn't see it properly. I pulled it so far apart it ended up in separate files, because that's what it takes for me to be able to wrap my mind around it.

I took all however-many-there-are of these files to VT, but had no time to work on or even look at them.

So today I pulled up one of the files and started in on a new scene for it. I got a full crude draft of the scene written; it's basically my guy up in a tree not doing anything. However, he almost does something, then decides not to, and that's the point the scene makes. I ended it on a tremendous hook of forthcoming doom...and then realized I've got to somehow pick up from there in the next scene, which unfortunately has nothing whatsoever to do with forthcoming doom.

It occurs to me that this is going to be a continuing problem; each time I try to raise stakes plot-wise to keep up tension and pacing, I'm going to have to figure out what to do with that upping of tension as the next scene begins. It can't just disappear, can it? You can't leave somebody hanging on the edge of a cliff, then in the next scene show him doing laundry or eating supper as if the cliff-edge never happened. Can you?

Hmm. It's mental cliffs I'm having trouble with, not physical ones. I can get people to let go of physical cliffs and walk away. But I keep pushing my character to the mental/emotional edge (ex. "Hooray, I'm free to go kill everybody now!" or "OMG, I have just unleashed our doom!")...and that's where I don't know how to pick up and move on with the story. ("After unleashing our doom, I went to do a couple loads of laundry.")

I've never really noticed how other writers handle this. I need to take a look at some books--and/or remember some movies--that do handle it. Could be the answer's partly in the transition following the hook. Could be that the next section needs to start with narration and not in scene. Or vice versa? Wow, I have no clue. I'm not even sure if I should be thinking about it right now. Maybe I should just continue writing up these sections and not worry about how to pull them together for the reader yet.

Wait, just thought of something. Maybe one solution is to slant the hook. Like, instead of ending on "I have just unleashed our doom!" end on "I have just unleashed our doom, but Character X must never know!"

Something to keep in mind, anyway.

Further thoughts re. Heian diaries and former GN...

I was thinking about all the things the diaries don't mention--like names, and sometimes big chunks of the authors' lives, like, er, their own families. Many times the things the books don't mention are the very things that defined the roles and borders of the authors' lives in the real world, in their society and culture. That's one reason so many of the books have such an ethereal feel to them.

In the former GN, I've got a similar situation, where the MC is completely defined by other people and by her role in her culture/society. I've been trying to create her story...when it's not there. What I need to do--what I've actually already semi-done without noticing--is to create the stuff that's going on around her, and let the blank spaces that are left over define who she is. That's what the book is supposed to be, I think.

I'd already figured out that this is what's going on format-wise--white space helps define the character and tell the story. But I haven't carried that over to the actual choices I'm making about the written part. The written part needs to be like--well, okay, it's like the MC is an empty outline, but the reader won't be able to see that outline until I've filled in everything around her, by telling what's going on with all the other characters. She's a peripheral character in her own story, and the point is that we don't get her for herself. That was truly the point all along, and I've always known it was--I just never thought of being able to come at the writing part in that way.

In fact, I actually have been doing this all along in the writing, only I've been fighting it. All along the ms has kept going off to include everybody else's POV, while I never could quite nail the MC herself. I have continually assumed that this was a failure on my part. Creating sympathetic female characters has never been one of my strong points, so I've been pushing and pushing myself to overcome my weakness, to get this story down in a typical way, to figure out the MC's POV even though she doesn't really want anything because she's never had a chance to understand that it's okay to want something. I think I've been so busy reminding myself what I can't do well that I haven't noticed what the story's been trying to tell me.

I'm even thinking that all the saggy parts may fall out if I can handle this correctly, because I know what everybody else is doing during those times and what they want and need, and how it affects the MC.

It's going to be tough to write, but I've got 200+ pages to go over and "unforce"--to convert to however it's really wanted to be all along--and as I do so maybe I can see how it fits together to make a book. It's all in third person, and some of the formating choices are clear already, but the switches in time and POV will need some serious consideration. It'll be interesting to see how this develops. Essentially I need to try to write a book where the main character is continually a secondary character in her own story, but somehow it works anyway. Yeah, interesting challenge.

Added 3300+ words to ms yesterday. Most of them involved copying, pasting, and typing stuff from the bible/outline and other reference materials, to help me stay on track. But I counted them as my own words so that I could reward myself with a little work on the former GN.

I kind of like where this new tack is taking me with the former GN. I think it has potential. If nothing else, it's shaking me out of the mental rut I was in. I'm having to restructure the beginning* and make it more grabby and think in terms of tension and in terms of planting at least a grain of a seed of a question in the reader's mind, for g*d's sake, instead of drifting over 250 pages in a namby-pamby lyrical cloud of a non-story.



*Or rather, the old beginning, which now comes after what used to be the ending section. I'm cutting up the old ending section and interspersing it as a framework for the whole story. However, I think at some point framework and story will meet and the ending will just continue on as the ending in real time.

This all sounds very complicated. I guess it is. Still, it's right up my alley because it means playing around with various permutations of voice, style, and especially format. For now I'm just writing for myself, for fun, to see what I can get the words to do on the page. And what places where there aren't any words can do.

Still zero time for my own writing.

Had to help son #3 study for a final on The Book Thief, which I haven't been reading like I was supposed to in case he needed help. So I read over the last 3/4 of a inch quickly, which added to the first chapter I read at the beginning of the semester and made me able to get the job done.

I had been terribly impressed, at the beginning of the semester, when I read this line about survivors:

"They have punctured hearts. They have beaten lungs."

There's some really strong stuff in the book. I don't know why I'm thinking that if an American female midlist author had written it, instead of a young Australian male, it might never have seen the light of day in this country.

I have to give my copy back to the teacher, but now I'm curious as to how Zusak decided what order to put everything in, and what to put in and what to leave out. I like the way he didn't mind breaking things up.

I'm thinking about the former GN, and what I want to do is get back to it, and look at each section and think how to make it a punch in and of itself. How to make the reader be feeling something strongly so that every time they turn over to the next title page, they hit that white space and they've still got a lingering sense of ka-WHAM! from what they just read. With every section, I want to try thinking not about the general scene and what the point is, but what about it can hit the bone--and how to do that. Is there a way to tie up each scene in the same way, to deliberately use the same pattern over and over that would help? Or would that be too much? It'd be like a picture book rhythm where you know what's coming because you know the pattern. But you don't know the exact form it's going to take this time.

However, I won't be looking at that ms any time soon. Too many things to do. And I'm probably going to take on another project that will last all summer and take many focused hours.

Probably what I'll need to do is create a daily schedule and stick to it. However, "need to" and "will do" are two different things.

Been thinking about the last section, the one that doesn't match the rest in format or tone. Right now it's mostly in dialog because it's still in raw form from when the ms was a GN. These last scenes tend to be long flowing stretches of conversation, whereas the rest of the book is made up of concise bits with one main idea per page. I always figured I'd eventually divide the last section into smaller ideas to make it match the rest of the ms.

But the other day when I was going over it, there was this one particularly long stretch of dialog, maybe a page and a half or two pages of just talking, no tags or anything, and I thought, there's no way to cut this up because it's all one idea. Then I thought, maybe that means I should delete it completely, just get rid of it. It doesn't fit, it doesn't belong.

But now I'm rethinking. Maybe the long dialog stretch wants to be that way (long and flowing). Every time I rewrite it, it stays like that. Every time, I forget that it's not supposed to be like that and get lost in what I'm doing. This also happens with other dialogs in this last section--in fact, with most of the scenes with Paris/Alexandros and Helen. I haven't had this problem with any of the other sections of the book--not even the Menelaus section that also started out as GN. The Menelaus section went easily into the cut-up concise form. And I'm drawn to the thought of writing these last dialog pieces out as fully fleshed scenes.

Would it really be so bad if that part of the story starts looking more like a normal book? Doesn't that parallel what's actually going on in the story? That's what I'm thinking now. My gut is urging me toward it. I know the thought of writing that way feels like a relief. It'll be a relief to not have to be so constricted and careful and mindful and tight. That's how the MC feels, too at that point in the story--her state of mind matches the format. And now I'm wondering if the reader would feel relieved, too. It might feel good to suddenly be able to read a normal page with normal margins and ideas that slop over onto the next page.

It's not that simple, though. Right now the last section has only scenes with Paris/Alexandros and Helen--but other kinds of scenes still have to be written. I've got to finish up several threads that center on other characters. I know those won't feel right in regular prose. I can't even think about them that way.

So...today's thought, while walking Tyson...what if only the scenes with Helen and P/A are regular scenes, while other threads remain tight and constricted? Will that be too disruptive to the reader? Will have to think some more.

Today, events conspired to send me to the last section of the former GN ms. Before being driven there by circumstance, I had the thought that it's okay if this last part's different in voice from the beginning--more bare and dialog-driven--because then I can bring it back around to match the beginning's tone if I want to, at the very, very end. And that would not be a bad thing at all.

As I worked on it this morning, a couple of nice things popped out. First, a repeated image from earlier tied up with an image from the middle, and so there they are together near the end, providing a nice thread that goes all the way through and not only develops, but tells me something I need to develop in the middle part, which is where I'm sort of stuck.

Also, I got some nice inroads made into developing the last section. I've got a new image that could provide me with some footing in other places, but it may be too stupid--will have to wait and see.

Also--this is not about the ms--I had a nightmare last night from watching The Virgin Spring. I couldn't tell you the last night a movie gave me nightmares. And TVS is an arty gore-free Swedish movie! It's very violent, but the power of the violence is in the way it's staged and filmed, not in explicitness. I'd seen the very, very end of the movie a while back, and thought it was kind of sappy, but when I saw it was on again I thought I'd take a look--not realizing that despite the sappy ending it was an Ingmar Bergman film. I got hooked even though it was kind of slow and quiet. Even the violence is slow and quiet and understated.

I've only seen a couple of IB movies before, and the only one I remember anything about is The Seventh Seal, which I didn't see all of, but which has the same slow pacing as TVS. Somehow the slow pacing gives me time to absorb and think, without boring me. In fact, it almost forces me to think. Maybe it's that the pacing's not really slow, but that there's a lot of silence. Maybe it's the way the shots are so carefully constructed in that silence, so you actually have time to think about what it means that they're that way.

I don't know what this all means to writing. I don't know what the equivalent of silence and carefully constructed shots would be, in a novel. I don't know how you'd achieve that leisurely pace while keeping the reader hooked and also drawing them in deeper. The thing about novels is that you can't control how long the reader takes to read. You can affect the pacing in the way you utilize sentence length and white space, but some people are going to read faster and some are going to read slower and there's nothing you can do about it. Unlike in a movie where if you have a 30-second shot, it's going to take everybody 30 seconds to watch it.

I saw a Youtube video where Ang Lee talked about the profound effect that TVS had on his work. He mentioned a scene near the end of the movie that I'd noticed, but hadn't considered in movie terms because I was busy thinking about the character. Not wanting to give spoilers, I'll just say that the shot shows an anguished man of faith speaking to God. Ang Lee points out that the natural shot for that--it's a climactic point of the movie--would be a close up on the man's face. Instead, IB used a long shot from behind the man, as he puts his fists to the sky, collapses, etc. The shot is outside, and I believe we see the man walk away from the camera, down a grassy slope we've seen before, and we end up slightly above him on the slope, looking down at the man who is centered on the screen as he has his moments of spiritual agony.

So: why? What does it accomplish to show the man like that, rather than letting us see all the details of his expression? To me, his agony doesn't seem any less because of the distance. Maybe it makes it worse because he seems more alone in the middle of the screen. You'd think that drawing close and getting a really good look at him would be more raw and powerful--but this scene is somehow constructed so that staying at a removed distance does the job better. And we don't see his face, only his back, his posture, his gestures.

Maybe it's that you know he can only walk so far, and he can't outwalk anything that's happened. You know he's got to stop right there; he has no choice, really.

There's something here to think about re. writing, but I don't know what it is yet. I already know that when you try too hard to show tears or laughter, you kill the moment. I already know it's usually stronger to understate emotion. But this is different--the whole thing is constructed opposite of what you'd think. I wonder if there's an equivalent for it in writing--a long shot for an emotionally wrenching scene, where distance somehow doesn't lessen what we feel.

So I started reading through, and realized suddenly what I've done to myself. I'd thought that this format was maybe about equal with regular prose as far as effort--harder than cut-line-type stuff*, but easier than regular prose because of the simplicity, since each page basically has one idea. But as I read today, I thought, Hey, this ms could be good. It has the possibility of actually being good, if I fix this and that and move such-and-such here and tweak so-and-so. But here's what I also saw: there cannot be one single freaking line out of place, or it sucks. There isn't any room at all for error, because there is no flow to carry the reading along so that you can blip over a bad part and still maintain understanding and interest. You get one page of flow, and that's it. If that page has a misplaced thought, the whole thing is murky and confusing.

Now, that doesn't sound so different from writing cut-line-type stuff. But with cut-line-type stuff, you're focused (or at least I am) on every word already. Here, I'm focused on larger pieces, sentences and paragraphs. It is prose, after all. But it's got some of the worst aspects (as far as being a pain in the you-know-what) of trying to write verse-ish-ly. Doing it this way is harder than if the whole thing had wanted to come out as a normal novel. It's going to take me forever. It's like I'm knitting a sweater with toothpicks. The damn thing's already falling apart by page...oh, I don't know, page 30? I'm not even going to look back to see where I was at the beginning of summer, or last year, or the year before. I don't want to know, because I already have a very good idea where I was, and it was probably about where I am right now only the knitting's better quality now. Jebus. It's times like these that make me wish I drank.**



* The reason I think cut-line-prose is easier is because it doesn't have those prose transitions, which are my downfall and take me twenty times longer to figure out than any other writer I know. Other people might find regular prose easier.

** I do drink, in theory. Just not in practice usually, because what's the point? It costs too much, I'd rather use the calories on chocolate, and I already shoot my mouth off too much as it is.

Worked on former GN today; may be able to work more later, but I'm not counting on it.

I was thinking more about the sample and how I moved the timeline around. If that actually works--if it's readable and smooth and the time jumps don't lose the reader--it does a great favor to the ms as far as pacing and tension. What it looks like right now is this:

1. Present time:
Intro MC
Set scene
Set her problem (boyfriend dumped her; she's sad)
End mid-scene on a conclusion the MC draws about emotion
Break (white space)

2. Flashback:
Start with general explanation about emotion and relationship with boyfriend
Move into scene where MC was dumped
End on action.
Break (white space)

3. Present time:
Set scene again, in very first line.
Scene picks up essentially where we were before flashback.
Stay in scene, hit the plot points and the hook (dead body!).
End chapter.


So what I'm wondering is whether there's something to take from this and apply to my swordfighting ms. I think that ms might work okay the way it is now, but it doesn't snap, crackle, and pop. It's okay...but I wonder if there's a way to have my cake and eat it too. I wonder if there's a way to keep the hook-y first chapter that threw me totally off course because it wasn't at all tied to the emotional story. Is there a way to somehow mess around with time so that the reader gets both hook and backstory at once?

One problem is that the swordfighting ms needs to be accessible to slightly younger readers than my upper YAs. That makes jumping around in time harder to do. Hmm. Double hmm. Plus it's one thing to have a single flashback, but what if the backstory is just as big as the present-day-hook-y story? Hmm, must think about structure and format.

I remember reading Rats Saw God a long time ago. Some other people I knew had read it and liked it, but others didn't because the time changes confused them and they found it hard to keep up. I believe--too lazy to go look--that past and present were indicated by dates at the beginning of diary sections (or whatever they were) and also by font--perhaps italic vs. regular?

I had no problem reading RSG, because I knew ahead of time to take a second to reorient myself at the beginning of each section. Obviously you can't count on readers knowing they need to do that--or even being willing to; it is asking a bit much to require them to work at reading your book. So...can you make the ms do the work for them? What if you make it blindingly clear that the reader needs to reorient? Can you smooth time jumps by upping the clarity of your clues? You can change fonts and put a heading. But I'm thinking maybe you could pretty much force them to reorient if you use stronger means. Like spelling out the headings--for example, instead of putting a date, put "From So-and-so's diary."

Or...instead of having a break and font change, you could start a new chapter with each font change. For good measure, you could also title the chapters with a clue/indicator.

You could even go so far as to stop, have a page with just a heading/title, then pick up with the time jump on the following page.

But the real question is, can this work without screwing up the pacing, without losing tension, without coming off as jerky and disorienting?

The ending section I have for the former GN is all fluff. It's fun fluff, but I'll need to tie it to the front part better. Maybe one thing to do is keep track of issues raised (i.e. stumbling blocks thrown in the MC's path) in the front part, and try to show them being relieved them one by one at the end? Not sure. Somehow I want the reader to be rooting for the MC to make a choice that maybe isn't the wisest course, and in retrospect will turn out to be a very bad idea with dire and far-reaching consequences. Somehow I need to get past all that and make the reader want her to make that choice.

The formatting I have (at the moment) for the main story:

paragraph breaks rather than indents
text of each page centered top-to-bottom
border around the text
as the story progresses toward the last chapter, margins get wider, text gets less space, borders get tighter--all still centered

Formatting for the out-of-POV clips:

same, but no borders and the margins are always standard.

And at the moment the title is Boundaries. Don't know if this will hold up; none of the other title ideas have. But it's working for me at the moment, and so is the formatting, although I know I probably can't submit a ms that looks like this. However, if the clips end up remaining in the ms then the formatting may have to stand till an editor sees it, because so far I can't think of a better way to show the differences between the clips and the main story. Right now I feel that changing fonts is not strong enough. I know it's best to standardize the format and let the words speak for themselves, but that's not enough here. Here, the form helps tell the story.

Of course, there's always the worry that I'm just being Russell Crowe in that shed in the backyard in A Beautiful Mind--that my ms will end up being only the sad and strange evidence of a disordered mind. And I know from Beating Heart that a lot of people don't get formatting that's tied to story.

Nevertheless, I press on. Now that I think about it, I need to go through the entire back half of the ms and reconsider each scene. That part was all written as a GN, so of course it comes off as a little glib now, when all that's left is dialog. The front part was conceived as prose-ish, so it's more...I dunno what to call it. The ideas are more concise, concrete, and separate, whereas the later ms flows from scene to scene and you can't tell them apart without pictures. I need to fix the later ms so it's a series of punches, and I can get my mind around each individual punch.

So, where to start? At the moment, I am clueless. First order of the day: get a clue.

Working on same area. What I've done is break it down by place, each having a brief bit to itself and separated by white space. I think I'll probably have to go back and take out the white space where there's no time passing or real change in setting. I mean, if this was a movie or play the setting might change--or at least the shot--but in real life it'd be like continuing a conversation while you move from one room to another. So, will have to look closely at pacing here.

Now I've come to a very, very brief transition. This time it's driven by character. The characters are in one place and decide to move to another place for a very specific purpose. This sounds easy, like I just have them say it out loud and go. But I've got to be very, very careful, because this is the exact thing that has messed me up before. Notice I said "have them say it out loud." This shows that I'm already slipping out of the mindset where the characters drive the story. A page or two of showing setting and movement, and I'm in danger of losing my grip. Somehow I've got to pause and get back into their heads. They need to do it on their own. They would do it on their own--I know they would. I just need to get my head back in the right place to feel it out.

Looking at it, this wee transition is really kind of important. The reader won't understand what the characters are deciding to do, because I haven't set it up. The story previous to this is full of other things and won't support more explanation or backstory. I don't know that I can dump it here, either--but it has to come out or nobody will understand what's going on. Maybe the thing to do is try to figure out what bare minimum of info is needed. Often just a hint serves as a hook till you can really sit down and explain it. Then there will be the question of exactly when the sitting down and explaining takes place and what it consists of, but I don't suppose I'll worry about that right now.

Today is one of those days I am reluctant to blog and feel I shouldn't even have a blog. The purpose of an author blog is to network or promote books. I look like an idiot, blogging honestly about daily process. I look like the only writer out here who doesn't know what I'm doing. The comparison with other blogging writers is probably actively harmful to my career. Not to mention most people interested in thinking about the nitty-gritty of writing probably just want answers. They want to know that there's a right way to do things, and they want somebody to tell them what it is.

Well, anyway. Sigh. For the past two days I have been working on a transitional scene/chapter in my WIP. It's like pulling teeth because it's a transition. It may also be like pulling teeth because it sucks, but I don't know that yet. The fact is, this ms requires me to write descriptions, explanations, and transitions that are needed for story rather than for characterization. I have a transition here, where two characters have to go from place A to place B. But to get there they have to pass through places C, D, E, and F, which will all show up again and which will all be somewhat important, so I don't feel I can skip them with a break for white space, or cover the whole movement with a line or paragraph. I think I need to cover each place with enough punch to be remembered, but I need to do it quickly and succinctly--just enough so that the reader will recognize the place next time we're there, and have a feel for it.

Also, by the time the characters get to place B, the reader has to know circumstances G, H, and I. This is all a matter of pacing; I can't stop dead at an exciting point and insert information about why it's exciting. It has to be planted earlier, so naturally that the reader has absorbed it without breaking reading stride. The problem is that as I'm writing I can't tell whether I'm putting all this stuff in the right place, or whether I'm mucking up the pacing and bringing everything to a halt. I have to just do my best and then come back later and look at it. But this forces me into a patchy craftsman kind of mindset that is nothing like the flowing mindset I apparently need for a ms to come to life.

What I think is that I need to be able to do both (patch and flow; explain and feel), without having one swallow the other up. Right now I must get this transition in; the characters have to move through physical space, and it can't be skipped with a break. I'm trying to pull in other things (dialog, character, feelings) along the way so that it's something I can get into rather than just doling out information. But I'm terribly worried that I'm not working towards being able to do both (p&f; e&f); that I'm really getting off track again while loftily assuring myself that I'm using my strengths to push through my weaknesses.

The amusing/sad thing is that I'm not under any illusion that this is the great American novel. At best, it'll be just a fun book. Nothing earthshattering or remarkable about it. You'd think all this work and thought would produce a masterpiece, but alas, such is not this ms' fate. Knowing this doesn't make me love it any less, though.

Oh well. Back to work.

Did a little bit on my WIP today, but not as much as I should have--so am about to work some more and (we hope) achieve enough to be able to watch Robot Chicken with a clear conscience.

Yesterday I went back and worked through that "kitchen" scene more carefully. I went in with the idea that I'd figure out what one very small moment meant--but I never did figure it out. I tried, but I still have just the description of the room and the two people, basically, only with more details and a more concrete "picture" for the reader to see.

But...somehow that was enough to make me see that I needed to have a chapter/section break much earlier than I did. This part of the ms was a long series of scenes flowing into each other, with some narration/explanation/transitional stuff, and that kitchen scene, then some things that happened afterward that led into still more scenes and narration. After I got that one small "picture" clearer, I suddenly could wrap my mind around a chunk of the ms. I realized I had to lop this one section off and finish it. All that "afterward" is something new that will need to be addressed on its own.

I don't think it's coincidence that somewhere around the end of this long series of scenes is where my writing momentum petered out and I started becoming unsure where I was heading.

It makes me think about my other WIP, the swordfighting one. That's completely different, because it's a normal prose ms, not an experiment with shards of prose and white space. But I have the same confused feeling with it that I get with this ms when I lose my momentum. So if breaking into smaller, more manageable pieces helps here, maybe I can use a similar process to help with the swordfighting ms somehow. But that is for another day.

So anyway, earlier today I tied up that lopped-off section and tried to make it one basic idea. What I'm shooting for right now with this ms is that every page has one basic mini-idea (centered mid-page, with equal white space at top and bottom), and every section is a bigger idea that the individual pages add up to. Like, this section is now 16 pages, around 2600 words. The title of it (for today) is No Harm Done. One page might be a couple of paragraphs whose main point is that Helen's life is dull because her brothers are gone, and they are the only thing in her world that ever changes from one day to the next. Another page might tell about this slave boy and what his duties are. Another describes a dark, narrow staircase that Helen is going down. Etc. etc--but the overriding idea of the entire section is that she leaves her prescribed part of her world and edges out just a bit to take a peek at what lies beyond.

That's the form I'm working with right now. Why not just a regular prose novel? I don't know. All I know is, it doesn't want to be a regular prose novel. It never has. It never has come out that way, not from the very beginning. And I learned the hard way with Damage that it's a freakin' waste of time when the ms is pushing you strongly one way and you try to fight it. With Damage, I thought using second person was the stupidest thing ever. I thought, nobody can read this, and nobody will want to, and it will never sell. And I thought you're supposed to have a good literary reason to choose a pov tense. So I tried forcing the ms into first person, and when I kept losing momentum with it I tried alternating first person pov's among the characters--at one point I had three pov's--and I vaguely remember I tried third person, too. All a waste of time. Just go with it, that's what I learned from that. Otherwise you make yourself miserable and you doom yourself to failure and you're just going to end up doing the exact thing you're fighting so hard against.

The problem comes in when the ms isn't telling you strongly what it wants, or when you feel great because you're writing along in whatever way it insists on being written...and then it just stops coming. I don't have any solutions for those. But I'm trying hard to increase the number of tools in my repertoire, so maybe as I gain experience I can find solutions quicker and not spend 15+ years with a ms hanging cluelessly around.

Very antsy, having trouble settling in to write. Something doesn't feel right. Hmm, hmm, hmm. Let me think.

I think maybe it's that the part coming up is a long in-scene section that doesn't fit the style and tone of what's come before. It's all dialog-y and spread out--really, it's very normal prose, and maybe that's what's bothering me. So maybe what I need to do is think in snapshots rather than focusing on the flow of conversation? I often start scenes with this kind of bare-bones dialog and build up from there to a fully fleshed-out true scene. Maybe this time I need to go at it with a different mindset and build it in a different way, with a different goal in mind. Hmm. Not sure.

So...snapshots. Maybe I can look at what the characters are saying--and what I want to say--and tease out the main points and break them up and see if I can get one point per page.

At this rate, the book is going to be a thousand pages long.

I missed a day of Pepys, and when I went to catch up, there was this:

"...another neighbour of ours, Mr. Hollworthy, a very able man, is also dead by a fall in the country from his horse, his foot hanging in the stirrup, and his brains beat out."

This is in Pepys' usual mix of matter-of-fact commentary about how his day went. The "also dead" refers to a previous item about a neighbor dead of plague.

I wonder if Mr. Hollworthy got thrown while he was out alone, and later somebody found him dangling gruesomely. And now that very able man's entire life is one gruesome remark in the diary of somebody who's been dead for three hundred years.

But you know, that's more than most people get.

Anyhoo, off to write.

Went back to the beginning and cut everything up smaller, breaking it into more "chapters." Also rearranged some bits. I feel better about the ms now, like my feet are back on the ground--or at least closer to the ground than they were yesterday, anyway.

I've got to try not to lose track of what it is I want to do with this ms. When I get that far away, I start to wonder why I'm even writing it.

Maybe there's a lesson in here to apply to my swordfighting ms. Although I don't quite know what, or how.

Barely did any writing yesterday--just enough so I could say I did. It doesn't feel right, and I was thinking about the ms last night and realized that in spite of all my blather about not having transitions, that's exactly what I've been wrestling with the past few days. So of course it doesn't feel right; I'm pushing it in the wrong direction, I'm doing the same old sh*t I always do. So today I thought some more and decided I've got to back up and simplify, simplify, simplify.

I'm going to cut the earlier sections up smaller than they are; I've got too many concepts I'm trying to shovel in here so my "chapters" are turning into regular novel chapters that run on and on. I can't always get each page standing completely alone by itself, but I've got to stay very light, clean, and simple. I want the reader to be able to look at this the same way they can look at red or black figure vases and see a series of strong concepts, clean lines, precise details, simplicity.

I am pretty annoyed with myself for projecting my thoughtless habits onto this ms, like I'm an assembly line for novels, a robotic machine that punches them out the same way every time. This ms deserves better than that.

Squeaked in a wee bit of writing yesterday, just enough to be able to say I did. Now today's almost over, but I'm turning my attention to figuring out what I want to chip away at next. I've lost all sense of what I was doing a few days ago, or whenever it was that I got good long satisfying hours of work in.

I think I want to look at fitting some of these bits together in a different order. With the way it's currently set up--every page is a discrete idea or scene; in other words, I'm doing the page breaks--time may flow a little differently than it does in a normal prose ms. Here there are no transitions except for page breaks and chapter headings, so maybe it's okay to split one sequence of events up and sprinkle it around in a way that would be confusing in regular prose. Perhaps here that will give a sense of time passing, because each page will clearly be a different day. I have an uneasy feeling about this area I'm working on right now, and today's theory is that this is caused by cramming a storyline about my MC's brothers going on a journey together in one long sequence of scenes, and a storyline about the MC leaving her bounded area together in one long sequence of scenes. I have moved these things around in the story for a while because I don't like where either of them is. So now I'm going to try breaking them up and interspersing them.

That may end up being as confusing as it would be in regular prose. There's no way to know till I try it and look at it on the paper.

No writing time yet today, but I'm going to get some in tonight. I hope. Still thinking about format. Saw a snide comment re. Beating Heart, saying that apparently the only reason for the format was a desire to waste trees. Yeah, that's why my next book will only have one word per page. The book will be 60,000 pages thick. With any luck, I can devastate an entire forest in one go.

Picked up Fable II and a player's guide today. I don't have time to get hooked on a video game, but boy, if I did, this is probably the one I'd play. I like the idea of creating a character over time through decisions and actions. I leafed through the beginning of the guide whilst between errands, and thought the distinction between morality and purity was interesting. Morality refers to choices that affect others; purity to choices that affect only yourself. And all your choices, of every kind, reverberate down the game, changing your options as you become more good or more evil.

The first Fable (or maybe the expansion pack?) had brothels to visit, and you could get married, but this seems to go a step farther because you also have a choice about wearing a condom or not (I don't think that was in the first one). The guide says that if you have unprotected sex with your spouse, you may have a baby instantly--no pregnancy, the kid's just there. That means you must continue to provide money for it, visit it, and bring it gifts.

If you have unprotected sex at a brothel, you can get a disease--no idea what happens after that, if it takes away health or kills you or makes you pay through the nose for a cure or what. But...this is interesting, and I'm not sure what I think about it--if you use a condom at a brothel, you get a purity bonus that can exceed the corruption points earned for doing the deed with for-pay partners in the first place.

Needless to say, this is rated M. However, I expect many, many young teens will be playing it. Perhaps even while their parents are out picking on librarians for having a book with the word "scrotum" in it.

Oh, hmm, I like that (see previous entry re. paragraphing). It'll have to be used at the right moment, a big moment before the last section where things start opening up again. I'm thinking it fits exactly where the MC's husband hits her and she suddenly comprehends the consequences of not guarding her words and behavior. But we'll see.

Worked a couple of hours. I need to get some other stuff done now, but it occurs to me that I need to see how the ms will feel if the story switches from spaces-between-paragraphs to indenting-for-paragraphs. In other words, go from a business letter format to a regular ms format. Since the margins have been squeezing gradually inward all along, by this point the words should be noticeably limited to the middle of the page, and I'm thinking this additional change will give a claustrophobic feel. But I want to give it a try before I put the ms away for today; it may just be too intrusive.

So, back for a quick peek. If it doesn't look right, will have to rethink.

Decent writing day, amidst other stuff that had to be done.

Talked to a writer friend on the phone. WF had a good idea re. swordfighting ms. Specifically, since it's in third person, why not put a short teaser at the very beginning, from an unknown person's pov? Let us know somebody is watching the hero, but we don't know who. Periodically put little bits like this between chapters, where they seem to fit. Voila!--instant tension and raised stakes. It also lets us know up front there's a villain, where otherwise you wouldn't know till well into the book.

I noticed I had a bear of a time trying to explain the story line to WF. It's so confusing to me, I can't even describe it over the phone. Not good.

I worked on the used-to-be-GN. Did one of the, er, raw scenes, one of those that are going to get me in trouble and prevent this from selling. Also started developing other bits that seemed quick and simple, but when I got started, I realized they're threads that go all the way through the book. This really is a novel, even though it's not going to read like one.

Also thought about formatting. At the moment I'm going with no indentations and an extra space between paragraphs. Then when the first thing happens to limit the MC, the margins shift in. I don't know how this will work as I progress and her world gets smaller and tighter, but it's a good place to start.

I don't have the dialog form down yet, though. I don't like what I have, and don't even stick to it as I write. Will have to see what happens with that.