Still putting in a few minutes here and there on the WIP. For three days I've slowly worked on grounding a plotty scene that's been sitting there in raw pieces for a long time. I'm doing the roughest of rough grounding--like where everybody is and what's going on physically--and I get so bored that I keep jumping up and walking off to take care of something else. However, day after day I've been forcing myself to stick with it for my 15-20 minutes, so I can get down that first solid layer of the scene.

I'm almost through this first rough pass, so soon it will at least be all one piece.

Last night as I knitted two bits of dialog together I noticed that one character's comment would completely knock my MC for a loop. I sat there and looked at the gap between the two lines of dialog, trying to think what would go there--just some kind of emotional marker to be replaced later with something sturdier and more carefully thought out. But I came up totally blank. I looked at the situation, and couldn't for the life of me think how to get across the stunned feeling my MC was hit with.* Finally I just put down:

(beat)

which is slightly pathetic, but at least it's still a step up from pieces of unknitted dialog scattered all over the page.

Anyway, I don't feel too bad, because I keep remembering that w-f-h piece where I started figuring out this whole idea of "layering," and also the fight scene from this WIP that was so boring to work through, mechanics-wise, but that people seemed to get into when they read or heard it. I know by now there's a good chance that, although the first few layers are an excruciating drag to write, the scene will probably start perking up after I get it grounded and the characters start to enter into it more.


*I can't stand the thought of writing "stunned" as a placeholder here. "Stunned" is exactly what the MC is, but it's so smoothly generic a tag that I can't afford to stick it in there now, because that might allow me to ignore the gap and not pay attention to it. If I'm going to use "stunned," it will need to be chosen and placed,** not tossed off and then forgotten about since it more or less fits the bill.


**"chosen and placed" means I need to play around with sentence structure, paragraphing, and also think deeply about how it really feels when you get this kind of news, like physically, and also what it does to your perceptions of what's around you (what are you noticing as you feel that way?). I cannot afford to stick in f*cking "stunned" just because it's easiest right now. Sloppy writing is a slippery slope.

Have been jumping around forcing myself to write the actual story parts of the book. It's tough going because my mind doesn't want to stay with this type of work and I keep suddenly getting up and going to do something else.*

This has made me realize that I've gotten to a point where I need to work out a good map for the story world. I've been sticking to vague general layouts in my head, but I need to pull them together on paper and get them nailed down--including distances and direction--because I can't get this thing grounded properly until I do. I also need to get specific sites in my head for some of these scenes I'm adding, for the same reason: proper grounding.

Today I made myself start filling out the big conversation between the MC and the main secondary character, the one that's the "reveal" for the book. As I did so, I had to go back to side documents where I'd moved freewriting and background work, and had to copy and paste bits over into the main document. As I did that, I admitted to myself that the reveal seems stupid and gimmicky and hokey, and I noticed that the side pieces give the "reveal" heft (in my mind, anyway) that makes it not seem quite so stupid.

I also see no way to work those side pieces into the ms** without doing what's been in the back of my mind all along, which is suddenly cutting, after 20 or whatever chapters, to another POV character. And not only that, but doing it in second person.***

I have avoided committing to anything about this part of the book because it's an extremely terrible idea to suddenly snap into another POV and voice, especially so late, after the reader's quite firmly entrenched in the MC's POV and voice. And it's most especially a terrible idea to do it using second person, which requires an even greater leap from the reader--a leap which quite a few readers are never able to make. But this growing feeling that my crucial plot information is stupid and hokey has driven me to go ahead and let this one breakout chapter go the way it wants to go, against all sane self-advice. If nothing else, it'll eventually help me see what absolutely has to be there, that might be worked in in other ways. And maybe if the book gets published I can put the chapter online, if it's totally messing up the book's flow.



*On the bright side, my teeth have never been so well flossed.

**Because there's no way my characters would discuss all this in any depth, much less the depth that would make the reveal seem less gimicky.

***The reason it's in second person is because that's the way it came out and that's the way it wants to be. Later, another option might be to try putting into first person and letting it be an extended monologue disguised as dialogue. However, it has resisted going this direction so far--hence, the side document storage rather than placement in the full ms.

Today, nearly put myself to sleep writing out plot stuff I already know happens, trying to make it readable and, er, get it down on paper instead of allowing it to continue its vague existence solely in my head. Then as I worked through it, I found a nice little place where the characters are stripping a corpse and I realized I ought to show them doing it, so I got to go off on a wee tangent that was more interesting to me--meaning nothing actually happened except one guy almost puked and they dug a hole. To me it was fun, though.

After I was done writing (in fact, I quit a little early) I was cranky because I made myself do plot stuff for most of my writing time. But it has to be done; it needs to be put down on paper so I can see what has to be there and what doesn't. Also because wee tiny tangents can creep in that add up to tell me more about the deeper story--like, today's half-a-page tangent tied to maybe three or four other threads.

But, still. Sigh.

warning: cranky post follows

Got an e-mail from agent checking on progress with the WIP. Since I should have had this bloody ms done six months ago, I set everything else aside* to clean up the end of that first 100 pages to send in for feedback. I need feedback because I'm worried about it. And indeed, the more I read it over and worked on it yesterday, the more I was struck by the fact that this ms really sucks. The whole thing. It's like the Frankenstein's monster of mss--nobody will be able to stand to even look at its scarred and stitched-together face. The pacing is a mess, like two or three different writers wrote the same story using the same characters, then tore their work up and pasted the pieces on top of each other. It's too dark, too slow, it's uneven and weird and just plain embarrassing.

So I meant to send it in yesterday, but it's such a mess I am still trying to clean it up to where reading it won't be deadly torture. If I work all day, and I'm very lucky, I will have it done by late tonight--and it's still going to s*ck when I'm done. No question about that: it's still going to suck. The crappiness of it is so deeply interwoven that it can't possibly be decrapped.

However, in the writing biz, you always have to be up for severe humiliation. I said I'm going to send it in--so I'm gonna. This unfortunately puts my agent in the unenviable position of having to think of something to say about the ms and its progress--but hey, what can you do?

And so, to work, with hopelessness and grim determination.




*If you are a person to whom I owe something from the pile on my desk, sorry. It's coming, it's coming.

Busy with school starting and family stuff going on. WIP will have to fall by the wayside while I bear down on family and writing-related obligations.

Right now, the WIP seems to really suck, anyway. I haven't read any of it for real (like, sat down and tried to read straight through as a reader instead of a writer) in a long time, so I don't know if it sucks in the real world or not. But in my head, it's like a blob of unflavored gelatin on the sidewalk. I look at it and I think: Bleh. Bleh, bleh, bleh.

So what I've been doing instead is trying to find the right place for the bad guy's winter camp/home. It's been gnawing at me that this isn't settled, because I can't properly write the scenes that take place there until I have a feel for it.

Also, I want to find the right place for the final confrontation.

I did flesh out some of a falling-apart-shoe related piece. I'm now thinking I need pieces like this in order to write a book that works, because they're simple and character-driven and there's no larger questions to consider about what the reader would be expecting or wondering about. If I write too many scenes where exciting stuff happens that moves the plot forward, I get bored, and eventually confused, uninterested, and disconnected. Like now. Pumped-up fictional life-or-death drama is just not real enough for me to stay related to, not when it's scene after scene after scene.

So I'm going to lay off the writing--unless I get a craving for it--and instead make sure that every day I focus on something about trying to get strongly connected to the ms again. Which means stuff like finding settings, thinking about how these people got here, and trying to understand what their daily routines and lives really look like, from inside their bodies and heads. Much of this type of thinking can be done behind the wheel of a car, so I don't know how often the actual file will get pulled up.

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.

Now I remember why I never do word counts. Yesterday it appears that I wrote 2000 words, but I'm sure it was more like 800 because I copied and pasted pieces from the story bible to keep me on track. Plus I rewrote parts, trimming them considerably to make them fit together more smoothly, so my word count went backwards sometimes. Word counts never mean squat, where my writing is concerned.

Still, will pretend they do mean something for now, because I will surely hit the keyboard daily to avoid having to man up and blog that I didn't do what I was supposed to do.

In more interesting (to me) news, I had a small epiphany while jogging. It's interesting--not just because I am now seemingly used enough to jogging that I can think about something besides how much I hate it and that I really ought to quit right this second because only crazy people do this to their joints and anyway I could go get a Milky Way or some Ruffles--but because I think I may see a way into the former GN. I'll keep the new experiment in structure (i.e. starting with the ending section and interspersing it throughout the story) and do some hardcore change-up with the voice. I'd like to stick with third person (I'm uncomfortable with the idea of first in this particular ms), but pull into a closer third that matches the protagonist's age and outlook.* In other words, the reader will grow with her, and realize things with her. This feels like a good idea to me, a good thing to try. It feels like it might be forward progress.

In fact, it sounds like a lot more fun today than trying to write 2000+ words of someone else's book. However, first things must come first.




*Now that I think about it, this is similar to what Karen Hesse did in Music of Dolphins, although that didn't have anything to do with age.

For some reason I stuck with chapter 4 today, trying to craft it into shape. Is it getting any better? Don't know. Hope so.

Worked on first of two slightly related scenes (same ones from yesterday). It was hard going at first, but by the end it felt like I was getting a grip on it. Lately, though, I can't count on that lasting. I could pick up tomorrow right where I left off tonight, and sit there gaping at it, utterly clueless. I'm having trouble getting any momentum going.

This morning I caught the last half* of Sword of Doom, and now must find a way to see the rest of it. Because I started it so late, I couldn't figure out who the MC was for a long time, but eventually saw that he was the bad guy, a cold, heartless killer. It was fascinating. His eyes were cold and dead, but there was this scene where he watched Toshiro Mifune foil the bad guy group's attempted ambush/assassination (of Toshiro Mifune), and you could see awe and self-doubt creeping in, just from the look on his (the bad guy MC's) face. But he didn't change, not for a second. His character remained consistent all the way to the very abrupt end of the movie. It looks fascinating--I'm still thinking about it, and I only saw half.

Plus, there's this great sword fight at the end, and I was watching it, and after a while I started thinking, Wow, is this all one take? I think it might have been, and if not it sure was a long one anyway. You could see the MC melting down both mentally and physically as it wore on and on. He was like an animal that's going to keep fighting with every last bit of energy it has, until the moment its heart stops beating. I need to see it again.


*Why, oh why, IFC, must you start Samurai Saturdays at 7:00 a.m.?

Backed up and worked on an earlier scene that informs character in the scene I was working on yesterday, that used to be the beginning but is now somewhere in the middle. I'm guessing I may work on these two scenes in tandem for a day or two, but who knows. I am not exactly blazing with inspiration at the moment.

Also today--played Mario Party with the household punks, and won even though I got soundly beat in all but two mini-games. This was because we ended up playing on Bowser's level (level isn't the right word; I forget what you call it) where you can steal stars from other players. Knowing that I suck at mini-games, I set myself to stealing other people's hard-earned stars, fully expecting that everyone else's superior game play would enable them to overtake me. It didn't. I'm not sure what the lesson here is, but I don't think I like it.

Yesterday, worked on a section in the tough part, but toward the end slipped into trying to make the characters' actions and words fit the plot. So today I skipped ahead to what used to be the first chapter, but now is about 80 pages in. There I have been trying to write what the characters would do, not what I need them to do. Thus I now see the entire middle slipping away, joining the end that already slipped away, leaving me with a ms that no longer has even a skeleton of a plot to follow.

Had some trouble today because I tried to work on a chapter that's got a lot of dialog where people exchange information and come to decisions about what to do. I find this so stinkin' boring that I have difficulty making myself do it. I can't stay focused, I have trouble sitting still. I think I'm not going to push myself about it for the rest of today or tomorrow, but try to skip to something else that seems more interesting.

In fact, for the rest of today I might just scribble some notes to see if I can find something I'd enjoy working on tomorrow. I see a little part that might fit the bill, maybe. Must think about it.

It's weird, because in the part I was supposedly working on today, I couldn't even figure out where to start the scene or where it was happening or what needed to be real-time and what needed to be quick narrative overview. But I can look at this little wee bit that seems like it could be fun, and just glancing at it, I already know where it starts, where the characters are, how they're feeling, how they're going to treat each other, and how it ties into the scene that will come after.

Here's what I hope. I hope I've got enough writing chops to be able to pull together a scene that doesn't interest me but that needs to be there for story. I hope I have enough craft under my belt to be able to make it readable, clear, and interesting so that nobody can tell it was like pulling teeth for me to write it.

Tomorrow maybe I should think about why today's scene/chapter seemed so effing dull that I couldn't settle into it, and why this other wee bit might not be--what's different about them, and is there any way to make boring parts less boring for me? Because from where I sit right now it looks like they both have dialog with people exchanging information and coming to decisions.

Jumped ahead to a tough part, although I'm not into the worst of it yet. I saw today that while sometimes it's good to get things right before you move on, other times it's just dumb. It's extremely clear that some of the problems I was having with tone are going to dissolve under revision. That sounds good, but it might not be because I've got to go back and cast everything in a different light. I'm a little worried that I'm going to dig my way into this and eventually run out of places to dig--and that's how I'll learn that none of this is going to work. The whole ms, an unworkable story. I cannot imagine a worse hell at this point.

So. I guess tomorrow the thing to do is continue to look at the tough part, although I'm not even sure what scenes need to be in it, or what all they need to do. I have a vague idea, but that's it.

What's tough about them? I guess that they're the kinds of scenes you'd prefer to write around if you could--too raw, too close to the emotional bone for this character and, therefore, for me. Of course, this means a very real risk of overwritten melodrama. On top of that, the rest of the story rides on these scenes because they provide the motivation for everything that follows--every despicable, unlikeable act the MC does. I have to somehow get the reader on board, or if not on board, at least sympathetically wishing they could warn the poor guy not to do what he's going to do. And if I can't do allllll that, the whole story falls.

Somebody remind me, please--why didn't I just get a job flipping burgers? Oh yeah, that's right--the smell of grease. We'll see how much longer that seems like a minus.

Spent all writing time today revamping a chapter, I think it might be four. I am sick to death of trying to figure out northwest European 17th and 18th century cows, barns, byres, and hay. I need to let it go and just make something up.

How do you know what to show and what to tell? Trial and error sucks. It's exhausting to sit down to a blank chapter and know that I'm probably going to write it wrong ten times before I work around to something even remotely heading in the direction of being right. It's hard to get started on a day's work that might well end up with me in the clueless middle of wrongness.

But what else is there to do? It doesn't get written if I won't pull it up and work on it. Gawd. Now I know why all those writers drank.

Yesterday I wrote some stuff that might end up in Chapter 7. That was all pludging, and it wasn't fun, but I've got to get something down on paper to work with. Today, did some revision on Chapter 4, which ended up not being such dreary work as I anticipated, because pieces of it took on a little life as I was working on them. Now I'm going to see if I can get a bit more done, not sure where, before Bleach comes on.

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.

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.

I thought I'd have a nice long uninterrupted writing session today, but things have cropped up and I'll have to squeeze patches of writing in here and there. I guess it doesn't matter that much because yesterday I worked on getting the first section smoothed out so I could read the whole thing--but it's taking longer than I thought, as usual. It'll take at least a couple of days to get that done.

But I'm happy and pleased with the world in general because I heard two pieces of very good news from other writers day before yesterday. The first is that a writer friend finished up a ms that said WF has been working on for several years. The wonderful thing about this is that I've seen a couple of incarnations of this ms, so I know that WF has consistently, patiently, doggedly worked toward feeling out what this ms wanted to be, consciously refusing to let market or business fears interfere with the heart and soul of the creative process. As a consequence, the ms has been a stylistic stretch from WF's previous work, and because WF didn't rush it or push it, but chose fruition as the ultimate goal, the story has visibly grown into its depth and potential.

I can't remember if I've posted this, because I say it so much, and everybody who knows me already knows my opinion, although they may not agree. For me, every book has an ideal form, and my job as a writer is to strive toward that ideal, to feel out the possibilities with an open mind, and to figure out what the book needs and wants to be. I will always necessarily fall short of that ideal, but it's the struggle and searching and goodhearted effort toward the ideal that are the true goal, not the printed and bound book that sits on the shelf. What happens to the book after it's published is a separate matter that has nothing to do with process. And although it would be nice if goodhearted effort was proportional to sales and acclaim, it usually is not. The only thing I have for sure is what happens when I'm alone in front of the computer, just me and the ms.*

So it pleases me down to my battered writerly bones to hear WF decide that the ms has indeed reached its current potential (we all know that another level of potential will be set when an editor gets invested in the ms) and is ready for the next step.

The other good news is from a WF whose ms I read several years ago, and which we discussed. We fell out of touch, but the ms has stayed at the back of my mind, because its strong points were extraordinarily strong, and because it was so very deserving of struggle and goodhearted effort. I hoped WF had not been ground down by this sucky business. To me, a ms becomes a living thing that requires its authors not to give up. If a living thing is going to die without you, you can't quit on it completely just because you're exhausted or feeling hopeless. Set it aside, yes; refill the well, yes--but not quit completely to let it die.

So anyway, this WF contacted me out of the blue to let me know that said WF had indeed been plugging away all these years, had been struggling and working to bring this ms to fulfillment--and that it had just sold in a multibook deal.

While I've been plugging away in various degrees of hope and hopelessness, other writers have been doing so too, with quiet dedication to craft and to their stories. Knowing this sooths my battered bones and warms my soul.



*It's an irony of this business that the more you focus on what a ms needs to be and the less you focus on whether it will be published, the more likely it becomes that the ms will be published. I will be so bold as to state that as a fact. Feel free to argue.

Realized there aren't two sequences causing me trouble. No, there are at least four. Hmm.

I don't want to try moving any of this to the first "chapter," because that flows so nice and smooth right now. I scribbled a potential outline on the back of a grade report at breakfast this morning, and will dig a little deeper into that thought.

This is familiar territory for me, having a bunch of scenes and no clue what order they go in. It hasn't become any easier to fix, but it's not a new problem. At least this time I can move things around without as much hassle as if it were normal prose; I f*cking hate having to move things around over and over after between-scene transitions are set up. Even thinking about it gives me a sour feeling--you've got all this nice smooth lead-in to a scene that makes sense and you've spent a lot of time describing interim stuff so it's not choppy. And then you have to chunk it all, rethink the time frame, maybe forget what you realized about one of the characters or try to work it in elsewhere, and of course you have to go back and make ten bazillion little changes all up and down the ms because now everything's different. But there's no way around it because you didn't know it wasn't going to work until you put it together and smoothed the transitions and then saw that it sucked.

Thank G*d that's not what I'm doing here. Shudder.

The weird thing is, I think I do better writing like this. Sometimes when the ms seems to dictate that I write in a certain order because it makes sense, I feel like I'm on a leash, or in a harness pulling a plow down the rows. This is probably part of the problem with the swordfighting ms; I get frustrated because I know certain things have to happen in a certain order and I feel like an old mule whose day is going to end with a mouthful of hay and a barn wall to stare at.