Worked on former GN. You know, not a heck of a lot is happening in this book. That's sort of a problem, isn't it? I mean, I know not much happens in any of my books, but there's a gargantuan amount of nothing happening in this book. To the point where I'm thinking anybody who gets through it will turn the last page and immediately forget everything they read. That can't be good.

Today is one of those days where the publishing biz makes me want to go take a shower. Nothing particular has happened to me; it's just hearing about things and knowing about things. Like agents and editors who tell authors not to write what they want to write. Forget that ms, the writers are told, because the idea doesn't sound marketable. Any time spent writing something that may not sell is a waste, so those ideas must be nipped in the bud.

And then there's the flip side; publishers coming up with ideas and hiring writers to write them. I have no beef with this at all, as long as everybody's upfront about it, more or less (I understand that discretion can occasionally be the better part of valor). But man, when I see a packaged book aggressively marketed as one writer's tenderly nurtured inspiration, it makes me feel like I've been coated with somebody's leftover cooking oil.

I don't see anything wrong with a publisher coming up with ideas via committee and auditioning writers to find the right one for the project. Of course the publisher wants to make money, and the writer wants to make money as well as writing something fun or interesting or challenging, and the readers want a good, fun read. A packaged book can make everybody happy. But I get an icky feeling when I see this kind of partnership presented to the public as a single author's creative inspiration that was discovered as a gem-like seed and brought to fruition. It implies an artistic patronage--and a belief in artistic patronage--that isn't there.

OTOH, gatekeepers and probably a large part of the writing community look down on a collective effort as unworthy. A lot of the time they can't tell it's a collective effort when they read it--only if they find out it's a packaged book does the snobbery start to show. We've all seen packaged books (to one degree or another; I'm using the term "package" very loosely) win kudos--but if it leaks out later that such a book wasn't the author's brainchild, gatekeepers et al. seem to get p*ssed. Books aren't judged solely on the reading experience they provide. This is what I meant by discretion and valor; if you make a tasty homemade sausage for your family, and they don't ask for details, why volunteer the words "pig intestines"?

OTOOH, it just ain't right to label and market pig intestines as, I dunno, organic soy-based casings for vegetarian sausage.

And all this is one reason I like to live in a cave most of the time. Just me and my ms, alone in the dark.

No writing. Still not well, and am trying to parcel out my energy in order of priorities.

No writing today. I did see a blog entry by another writer that freaked me out. It was explaining how to do something, because the writer now understands and has mastered that aspect of writing. The writer listed some of the things that other writers must understand, to master the aspect themselves. I was like, no wonder I can't just sit down and write a book! The stuff on the list never even crosses my mind! The stuff on the list is clearly, clearly, something a master writer would have already absorbed into his/her very pores. And yet, I don't even notice it. This is why I'm a Lose. Er.

I guess if I had to make a list, it would be more from the point of view of just write whatever feels right, then read it over and ask yourself:

1. Does this bore me?

2. Does this confuse me?

Then pin down where, and try to figure out why. Then try to think what to do about it.*

I was going to add "Of course, this approach has not served me well," because I'm befuddled and groping my way along most of the time. But in the big picture, maybe this approach has served me okay. I've published what, six or seven books? OTOH, I'm not particularly well established, and I sure as hell ain't rich. So I guess it depends on your outlook, and your goals.


*I guess there would be a third thing:

3. Does it make me want to read on?

That sort of falls under "does it bore me," but not really, because you can have a chapter that really moves and isn't dull at all, but it can still end with the reader sticking in a bookmark and going to bed and not being interested enough to pick the book up again the next day. I think "wanting to read on" can just be about the right chapter hook, but it can also be about larger questions developed over the course of the ms.

Well, bloody h*ll, I'm having trouble sitting up and keeping my concentration again. I'm not sick anymore. It's like lingering aftershocks of being sick. Very annoying and inconvenient aftershocks.

I have two more stories for a w-f-h project I need to do, but I'd prefer to have one long focused go at each story so I know what I'm doing. And that deadline has suddenly become flexible. Now comes another potential w-f-h project, much shorter, but it's certain to be under the gun deadline-wise. I also have to drive 40 miles to turn in tutoring paperwork--paperwork which is late because I was sick on Friday and couldn't drive 40 miles and back.

I don't know how to sort out my priorities at the moment. I'm very confused. Maybe I shouldn't have worked out yesterday. Maybe I should lie around today--but I'm pretty sure I won't. There's too much stuff that has to be done.

I did work on my former GN a little last night, and am currently of the opinion that I'm going to drop a character--Helen's daughter. I have kept her in all the versions so far, but there's no question that she's a bit of a problem. First: her name is Hermione. You just can't use that name anymore, can you? Second: Helen leaves her behind and goes off with a guy. I'm pretty sure I can deal with that so the reader won't mind too much--the problem is that doing so takes too much time and space. The amount of explanation required feels like it takes the story off on a tangent--but deserting your child is a very unlikeable act and making the reader okay with it can't be handled quickly. This is exacerbated by the fact that the baby doesn't show up till the story's nearly over, so it's like bam, there's a baby, bam, here's the end. Between the two bams I have to cram a ton of stuff in, if I want the baby to work. But that's on top of the normal story that's already leading in a straight line.

However, I like some of the issues that comes into the story with the baby. Still...current thinking is that the problems outweigh the possibilities. So for the time being, I'll probably X the baby.

Come to think of it, that will be a nice change from X-ing the parents. I've X-ed a ton of parents to streamline mss, but never a baby.

Being sick really threw me off. Maybe because my two anchors are writing and exercise, and I couldn't do either one, and that makes me get whisked into the ever-present downward spiral. So. Must get back on top of things.

This afternoon: Finally worked out, and it was a half@ss session, but at least it was a session.

Now: I need to get a grip on this Menelaus section. I need to get a clear sense of it as a series of steps--downward steps, ha! Then at some point I'll have to go back and rethink everything before that, because the two pieces don't match. Now, the Menelaus section has to be different, because it's smaller and tighter on the page. There's no room for anything but the very, very basics. But the writing styles of the two sections are so terribly different--one is more literary and lyrical and the other is more snarky and personal. Not sure what to do about it. I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing for the ms to pick up right in the middle and take off, but that makes the first section false advertising, and wouldn't it be better if the ms picked up and took off from the very beginning? However, I don't know that it can.

Was thinking that it's no wonder all the stories are about men, because the men actually did things. The women sat around waiting for the victors to come home, or to be taken into slavery. The only ones who didn't are the ones who got written about, but their stories are still told in terms of the deeds of men.

Was also looking at some of the lists of women working as slaves. Okay, must stop and explain, because this doesn't make sense without explanation. The Greeks--or whoever; Greek is not the exact right word but it'll have to do for now--went on raids, burnt/sacked the cities, killed all the men, and brought home the women and loot. So in Bronze-age inventory-type lists, women show up as wool-workers from other areas of the world--they were taken home to serve in the wool industry and as bed-warmers for whoever they were given to. BUT the women always have kids listed with them--only it doesn't say if the kids were children of the raiding Greeks, or from the fathers the Greeks killed. I was thinking that when the raiders swept in and took the women home with them, they surely took the women's children, too, if it wasn't a pain. Because if they killed all the husbands and destroyed all the homes, AND killed the children, the women wouldn't have a heck of a lot left to live for. Seems like at least some of them would have been suicidally p*ssed and caused trouble for their captors. The raiders needed the women to accept their fate. So it would have just been good business to keep their children alive and with them, if doing so wasn't terribly difficult.

OTOH, wouldn't that raise a generation of captor-hating little kids? Not sure. Not sure how to find out, either. I guess it's not really pertinent to my actual ms, but I feel I need to understand.

I thought I was going to write while I was sick, but it turned out that sitting up was not an option. Now it's more of an option, but I am suddenly stricken with the extremely grumpy feeling that everything I'm working on is unutterably* dull.

I pulled up the former GN but am too tired and grumpy to even start to figure out what to do with it now. Then I tried to read through the swordfight ms beginning I'd printed out to take to jury duty (which I ended up not even looking at because first I had to stand waiting for two hours and then I was too out-of-it from standing waiting for two hours to care about reading over my own stuff). But tonight I just can't get interested in it, and not knowing whether I can't get interested because I'm grumpy or because it really is uninteresting makes me even more grumpy.

I think I should just spend the rest of the evening wallowing in grumpiness in hopes of getting it out of my system by tomorrow. I think this day is a lost cause.


*It figures that spell check is saying that "inutterably" is wrong. "Unutterably" ought to be wrong. It sounds like the name of a cookie. And I didn't even ask spell check for an opinion. It decided to be snotty all on its own.