I've been thinking a lot about process, and the difference between this new WIP and the swordfighting WIP. As I get into this new WIP I'm keeping an eye peeled for anything I'm doing that might help me with the latter.

There are clear differences in the way each has developed (so far). The sf ms started as more of an experiment in plotting my way through a book. I started with an "inciting incident" (I hate that phrase) and went from there. I figured out who the people were, why they were there, what happened next, then in my head took them step by step through a story using a combination of reason (what would logically happen next?) and plotting (what stumbling blocks can I throw in the way? What would make a good hook?). That failed. When I wrote it all out into book form, it didn't work.

In this new ms, I begin with the same kind of incident (somebody meets somebody and more or less carries them off), but before that I already have an idea of the thematic problems I want to think about (mercy/empathy/compassion in a world where those qualities are liabilities). And instead of moving forward through the story step by chronological step, I'm more in my usual comfort zone--buried in a massive tangle of story threads that I'll have to comb out and sort into the best chronological order.

Because I know the MC and his problem (he's a naturally compassionate guy), I automatically know what kinds of things will torture him and put him in conflict. I can throw those things at him. So I've got five or six storylines, or chains of scenes, already that need to be written.* I don't know how they fit together to make the story. Somehow they'll have to be woven into each other to rise and build. When I get that done (years from now, probably), I'll have a book.

So I was thinking about the s-f WIP. I know the MC, and I know his problem: he's too impulsive; he doesn't think things through, but he's so stubborn he can't let go of an idea once it's in his head. He won't quit. What's the difference between the way I'm handling him and the way I'm handling this new MC? Well, I took a firmer hand when I put him into the situation (into the "inciting incident") that starts the book. I kind of have to work to get that inciting situation going.

Then I thought, so what? I'm a writer, and I know this guy inside and out; I can easily change things to where he's in that situation and does the exact same thing all by himself. So what difference does it make?

Then I thought, well, maybe it does make a difference. Maybe it would make the story unfold on its own. The MC would have a slightly different attitude. The story would be founded more on his impulsiveness in the beginning than his bullheadedness.

And now that I'm thinking about it some more, that would mean that he hadn't planned for all the stuff that happens afterward. There would be no plan. This would totally blow all the other stuff I like about the story out of the water. I have no idea what would happen after that first scene.

Maybe that's what I need to do, is start over and rethink from that "inciting incident." Except I don't think it'll be that simple; there's a big difference between this s-f story and the new one. No time to think about it now, but I know the s-f MC starts off at a low point in his life, and the MC of the new story has stability and order until the first scene of the book. The s-f MC's world is already in a kind of chaos, and he's at the end of his rope by the time of the first scene. The new story's MC's life is threatened by his taking in the person he meets in scene 1.

Anyway, like I said, no time to think about it now. Oh well.





*Example: the MC's girlfriend sleeps with this other guy. That means I have to show the MC finding this out and reacting to it. Then I need a scene (or scenelet) where he sleeps alone (they all live in the same place) and how awful that is for him. Probably I need a scene where he keeps fuming. Probably some confrontations between the MC and his girl, and between the MC and the other guy, to show how everybody's processing the situation, and to build up tension. Then--because the story's about mercy and compassion--I need to have a situation where the MC has an opportunity to kill the other guy. But he doesn't do it. Perhaps he even saves him instead. And I'll need to think what that shows to the MC and to the reader, and what it can do in service to the story overall.

Belatedly got one w-f-h assignment sent in today (two more pending, and packets start up again on Monday). Today I had enforced writing time in the library, and wrote I don't know how much, maybe 2-3000 worth of new stuff on the dystopian ms. I know the MC, the problem, the theme, at least five other characters by personality and function in the story, and a whole bunch of scenes or snippets of scenes that need to happen.

I find this very annoying, because I have worked my you-know-what off on the former GN, and it's probably not any good right now, and I've also worked my you-know-what off on the swordfighting ms, and I know it's not any good right now. I wish something about them would flow effortlessly onto the page.

The only reason I'm not bored with the dystopian ms already is that I don't know which scenes actually need to be in it, or what their function is (the order they should come in) and I don't know what the climax needs to be. I kind of know where I want to end up, but that's the resolution, the last scene. I notice some of the characters aren't there, so maybe that means I get to kill them off. Or maybe they will end up there, who knows.

note to self: re. gender diff. (warning: crude)

Son #2: Hey, [son #1] just texted me.

Me: Oh? What'd he say?

Son #2: He said, "You need to wipe your butt. I can smell you all the way out here in Lubbock."

Me: Well, when you text him back, you tell him I said "Don't make me have to come out there and whup you."

Son #2: (puzzled). Why would you want me to tell him that?

Me: Because when he's 300 miles away and hardly ever gets to see you, he ought be texting you loving messages of brotherly affection.

Son #2: But that's what this was.

Here's what interests me about this new WIP: the idea of mercy, compassion, empathy. Why are those inherently good things? What if they're liabilities and have a direct, negative impact on your own survival? Why would it be a good thing to have them, in that case? Is there something about them that deserves being nursed along, even when there's no apparent upside to having them, and many clear downsides?

Was thinking about The Hunger Games. I haven't read the second one, only the first. One thing I noticed about it--can't remember if I've mentioned this before--was what I think of as the Disneyfication of violence. I don't know if that's the right way to use the word Disneyfication or not, but what I mean is that--to me--the MC never really kills anybody in morally ambiguous circumstances. She kills from afar, she kills out of mercy, she kills accidentally. I'm thinking the only person she kills for "real" is a heinous, cruel, bad guy of a murderer that the reader wants dead. There's always some reason for moral disconnect, so that she doesn't seem like a bad person. The Games are constructed so that (you'd think) she's going to have to choose, at some point, between killing a stranger up close yet impersonally--looking them in the eyes and taking their life, like "Sorry, bub, I don't know you but I'm going to slice your throat and watch you die"--or being killed herself. But that never quite happens.

At first I wondered if this aspect of HG was because the MC was a female and girls aren't allowed to be openly violent and must have extenuating circumstances--but then I decided no, it's probably just because the book is for YA. Younger YA, if you ask me. People may think it's upper YA because it's violent, but the tone and this Disneyfication thing makes it feel younger to me. And I know "Disneyfication" sounds bad here, but I don't mean it in a bad way. It's appropriate for the age group. The book brings up ideas about violence but eases the reader into thinking about them without getting too heavy.

I was thinking about this because yesterday I was at Best Buy with son #2 as he bought BioShock 1 & 2, and the register had a block on it that wouldn't let the cashier proceed until son #2 had shown ID proving that he was at least 17. I hadn't seen this block before; not sure why, because the cashier said it's not new. I was thinking about books for YA and how you don't necessarily need a register block for them, because you could never get a book through mainstream publishers if it had the stuff some of those video games have in them.*

I don't have anything to say about ratings or censorship, just that maybe there's a gap between the real everyday world of average American teens and the world that makes books available to them. In the real everyday average world you can turn on your TV and chainsaw a guy's skull open, animation-wise. And it's a good thing. You get a sense of accomplishment from doing it. Somewhere a group of parents or educators or politicians are gathering round a table to commiserate on how awful it is that people are exposing children and teens to animated violence, but that's got nothing to do with the everyday fact that you accomplished something today by using your chainsaw to get past that guy and move on to your checkpoint.

Books are written by adults, and they go through a whole series of people gathered round tables before they get on the shelves, and then they go through even more rounds before they might make it into the hands of a YA reader. So, you know, it's no wonder most YAs don't read for fun. They never did, but they do it even less now. If you spent the afternoon ripping out hearts and exploding somebody's intestines and in doing so saved an entire world, then most books might seem like something your grandma wrote.

I don't have any point to make about all this. I think I'm just working at the problem of how far I want to go with the violence in this ms, morally speaking. How deep do I want to dig into moral ambiguity? For myself, I'd probably want to go pretty far. But how far do I want to go for the reader? Maybe not so far. On one hand I think, "You know, somebody who's spent their day chainsawing skulls probably needs to spend some time considering what that really means." But on the other hand I think, "Nobody who spends their days chainsawing skulls is ever going to see this book, and the ones who will see it are a little wimpy about that kind of thing, and need to be coddled a bit." Will have to think about it.

Okay, wimpy's probably the wrong word. Maybe sensitive would be better. Or humane. Or enlightened. There. Now everybody can feel better.



*Some books veer into shock-related territory, but as far as I can tell it's nowhere near the degree of video games.

Note to self: reread Elie Wiesel's Night

I need to get a copy of my own, too, at some point. But I guess the library will have to do for now.

I do not have time to work on this dystopia* ms. It's stupid to work on it. It's bad, bad, bad to work on it. But by g*d, I'm going to do it anyway. Just for a little while. Just an hour or two this morning. Even with two w-f-h deadlines tomorrow--in a few hours, I'll be good and close that file and open the ones I'm supposed to be working on, and behave myself. And meet the deadlines, even if it kills me. Which it might.

I also think next semester I might schedule my Vermont packets at two a week. I think most other people put them all together, five in one week. But I don't think that's going to be the optimum way of working for me. I don't even think the way I have it now--five packets spread over nearly two weeks--is going to be optimum. Maybe I have ADD, I don't know. I just don't seem to do my best writing-related thinking when it's just one thing straight through. It's like the back of my mind thinks better when the pressure's off and the front of my mind is doing something else--so long as that other thing isn't teaching (like math/English/reading), or yet another family crisis.**

Perhaps that's why--oddly enough--packets are not only not interfering with my own process (so far), but seem to be stimulating it. Of course, it's only been a month or so, so we'll see what happens with that. But I'm thinking it could be because the packets are just writing, and thinking about other people's writing has never really interfered with my process. However, we shall see.



*That's what I need to reread Night for. I want to play around with the idea of mercy, pity, compassion and empathy in a world where not only is there no upside to those things, they're also a flat out liability.

**I also wonder about the feeling-overwhelmed thing people keep telling me about. It was supposed to happen at the residency, but didn't all that much. Maybe they meant physically overwhelmed with exhaustion rather than mentally and emotionally.*** Or maybe it's still coming. Or maybe one good thing has come out of having a life where multiple urgent situations explode all over me out of nowhere: I'm immune to low-level overwhelm-ed-ness. Maybe now it's like a gnat I just brush away. But then again, this is still early days. Maybe it'll get worse when I find out I was supposed to be doing certain paperwork that is now late.

I have a terrible foreboding that I'm not doing some kind of vital paperwork required by the office, and at the end of the semester I'll be in trouble and people will either be hounding me or tsk-tsking and making me feel like sh*t.

However, notice that this foreboding is not quite terrible enough to make me contact any powers-that-be and find out if I am supposed to be keeping up with vital paperwork.




***I did hit the wall everybody told me about, the one halfway through. Except that everybody said "On X day about halfway through the residency you'll hit the wall, you'll be crying, but don't worry because everyone cries on that day, and the next day you'll feel better." And--this says something about me, I don't know what--I didn't cry at all, I just suddenly hated everybody and everything and wished an earthquake would swallow every person at the residency and replace them with other people who didn't yammer on and on about writing all the time. But that only lasted half a day or so, and then I was better. And I don't think I ever stopped yammering about writing while I was there.

Note to self: let it go; do your work.

Put other crap aside. Deal with it later. For now, do your work.

Still very busy, but once in a while I think about the new ms. Yesterday while out with Tyson I figured out a bunch of stuff I want to explore re. conflicts between personalities. Also some situations/flashpoints. I also think I'm going to go back and add a character into the first chapter/scene, which means switching from all internal narration to some dialogue. I'm thinking this will present my MC as more fully rounded from the get-go, but we'll see. Dunno when I'll have a chance to do any of this. I wrote down a page or so of notes so I can remember the stuff I thought of.