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.

Despite the lightened workload of between-semesters life, I am still behind. I'm supposed to be--I want to be--writing like a bat out of h#ll right now, but my thyroid has conked out again (second time in as many months) and that means my ability to process the larger picture of scenes and novels has shut down. It's like I'm trying to think through mud. So not only am I unable to do much but sit and stare at my own WIP, I'm also unable to do much but sit and stare at the VT-related replies I still need/want to make for the semester--more than a week after the semester is over.

There are no words to describe my level of annoyance and frustration. Well, there are, but they would be overly dramatic and scare people. For example: "If I had a dog I would kick it. No, wait--I have two dogs. Lemme go get my boots on."

The weird thing is, the back of my writing mind is unaffected--I can tell, because a couple of times I've had one of those unexpected flashes, the kind where your writing subconscious is a container of simmering water, and a bubble suddenly rises and pops. Both of my flashes had to do with structure/format, which has been on my mind a lot this term.

And oddly, one was a sudden epiphany about the former GN, of all things. I haven't even thought about that in ages. But suddenly I know what I want to do with it, structure-wise.

Hmm, let me see if I can explain this.


First of all, it's all in third person present.

It's in my voice, from my POV rather than that of any of the characters, because my burning drive is the engine for the story, rather than the characters' particular desires.

It's going to start with wee centered boxes of prose set in present day, in "Sparta."

Then there's going to be a reader cue in the form of a heading that flat out says something like: "Nine years earlier," or however long it is.

From there the format shifts to regular margins as the story jumps back in time--but is still in "Sparta."

Then it's going to stay in the past time frame and in regular margins, but another heading will cue the reader to a, er, continent change. In other words, the setting moves across an ocean, but takes place at the same general time in the past.

Then it switches back to present day, cued by the format going back to the wee centered boxes of prose.

Repeat, repeat, repeat. Three revolving stories: Helen in the present, Helen in the past, "Paris" in the past. And the past will gradually move close to the future with each set.


Now, later this will pose a problem as the three sections start to meet up. But the immediate problem at hand is this: I've done a ton of research on the details of domestic home and palace life in the Mycenaean age--and almost none on daily life for regular people or outside the house. Bringing in the second character ("Paris") is going to be a royal pain in the @ss, because he goes through a whole gamut of roles in Bronze Age Turkey: a village peasant, a shepherd...

Hmm. As I write this, I think I can skip the towns, fairs, and cattle-judging, and take him straight to the royal city ("Troy"--which I have a lot of detailed books on, thank goodness), and then on to war.

Okay, now I'm working this out as I type. What I need to do is get the peasant-thing set and grounded, then move him to the city so he can experience life with his royal family, and I think he does need to go to Bronze-Age battle--which might be fun, if I can find time to reread all the good parts of the Iliad. He also needs to be on a ship, which will be hard to write because I know squat about being on a Bronze-Age ship, or any ship for that matter.

Now I've lost my thyroid-deficient train of thought. I'm like Dory from Finding Nemo.

But I've actually talked myself into a less annoyed state, because the nature of this ms is that it's in snippets. It always has been. That is what it wants to be. So the trick of it isn't to build one long snowballing plot, but to weave snippets and storylines together.

So...since it's snippets, for now, if I work on this new part, I don't need to be able to follow a long train of thought. I can just focus on snippet grounding and immersion.

None of this helps my dystopian WIP (which my agent is waiting for, and which my bankbook is waiting for) or the people whose stuff is sitting on my desk ready to be answered. But it does help Hobo and Tyson, who may now avoid a kicking.*




*That's a joke. A JOKE!

Yesterday, very busy, but still got some work in--continued freewriting from secondary character's pov. Today was very productive; more freewriting led to a real scene. This scene marks the first solid foray into the middle of the book.

I also went ahead and moved some of my freewriting into the actual ms because that new scene would naturally lead to an explanation of the secondary character's backstory. I'm considering leaving the freewriting as is; in other words the ms would suddenly switch pov, tense and voice for this big chunk of backstory. Right now that seems less draggy than the lengthy in-scene conversation that'd be required to get in this same info. However, I'm probably wrong, and also it may turn out that the info needs to be chopped up and scattered around the ms. Will have to see.

I also had the thought that one of the pieces from chapter six would do a stronger story job later in the ms, but I'm not moving it yet.

Again, 2000+ words today, even with doctor visits and family stuff going on. Took a notepad and scribbled some word lists and other thoughts while in the waiting room.

Thinking about the Hobby Formerly Known as the Former GN. Glanced through it, feeling very dissatisfied. It's got a lot of purty writin'. To which I say: So what? I'll bet my dog could write purty, if I trained it to type.

I thought about why I want to write this ms--obviously I do, because I keep sticking with it even though it's just purty and nothing more. The reason I want to write it is because I'm annoyed and angry--but not super angry, just sort of smolderingly angry.

Then I thought about where the ms picks up and gets interesting--the places where it gets more than just "purty." It perks up and gets a spurt of energy in the places where my snarky smoldering annoyance slips into the third person narrative.

This story is set 3,000 years ago. The points I want to make are from today's perspective. I've tried to make those points staying in a 3,000 year-old POV, but every time I go through the usual process of getting the reader to come to their own conclusions by experiencing a sequence of events along with the MC, it clearly warps the ms. There's too big a gap between today's world and the world of the book.

If I look at what I have, I've got a ms where I've consistently taken my own snarky conclusions out and tried to make the reader "get" the same conclusions on their own. It's clear that this process is not working.

I think a big part of this is getting the right third person voice and understanding how present I need to be in this ms.

A big part is also figuring out how to transition from piece to piece. I like the floating-around thing, and it's fun--but it's not satisfying me as far as actually getting something said. If I wasn't annoyed or smolderingly angry, I could probably float around the story forever and be content. But you can't float around a ms and be angry; the two just don't mix. Anger has purpose and direction.

Sigh.

I've got at least three different types of story going on here, and I don't know how to transition between them. They take place at different times and on different continents. In some the same people have different names. I don't see that I can just label the transitions by place and time, because it's so confusing that labels would be meaningless. On top of which sometimes the people in the sections are the same and sometimes they're not, and sometimes they're the same but the reader might not know it yet.

I pulled out my Scott McCloud, as an aid to thinking about transitions and spaces between. He lists five choices about visual storytelling: choice of moment, choice of frame, choice of image, choice of word, choice of flow. They also apply to textual storytelling, IMO.

Choice of moment: which moments to include and which to leave out.
Choice of frame: distance and angle.
Choice of image: Characters, objects, environment within the frame (scene).
Choice of word: the actual writing part.
Choice of flow: guiding readers from scene to scene.

More things to think about:

Choice of frame affects reading flow.
Choice of flow includes clearing the readers' path of obstacles.

Also, the types of transitions are: moment to moment, action to action, subject to subject, scene to scene, aspect to aspect, and the non-sequitur. The ones I'm having trouble with are scene-to-scene, taking the reader across space and time. McCloud points out that deductive reasoning is often required in reading scene-to-scene transitions.

Hmm. I need to look at what I have (which is about 250 pages worth of stuff) and see what idea storyline A could end on, that would echo or pick up on an idea in the first scene of the next section, which may be storyline C, but it may be B, I dunno yet. I don't know if storyline B and C need to go one at a time, or intercut.

I also need to get storyline B, the main storyline, carved to a bare minimum.

I also need to write out storyline C, because I only have some of it.

It also occurs to me that you can remove all obstacles by repeating a sentence or paragraph that opened or ended a scene earlier in the book. If you repeat it again later, the exact same way, that puts the reader right back in the same scene, at the same place where s/he first heard it. That would be a strong and effective way to transition the three storylines back together near the end: repeat the exact same words from storyline A--carry the reader straight back into A, only now knowing everybody's baggage and being fully invested in the stakes.

Around 2800 words over three days. Oh dear. I do feel like I'm getting a grip on the background material, though. The background is very complicated and a little intimidating, and requires a lot of reading.

Worked on former GN a little, but the voice keeps lapsing back into default, which is isn't helpful because that's the same old rut I've been in for several years now. Today's theory is that if I write this ms every single way it can possibly be written, eventually all that's left will be the one way I haven't written it, which will be the way. Eventually I'll use up all the other combinations of words in the universe, till all that's left will be a hole in the shape of my ms. Then I can plug the hole with the last exact combination of words I haven't tried, and it will be perfect.

Only 28,995,430,511 combinations of words to go.

Writer friend came up with an interesting approach to a problematic tangle of a ms. Said WF used sticky notes on a poster board to lay out the entire ms visually in order to see it all at once. The stickies are different colors depending on who is in the scene.

Another writer friend said that a third writer friend used a method like this, except the colors were about settings rather than characters--and that this helped WF3 to see the big picture and proceed. Sometimes with a novel you just have to step back and try to get a bead what it is you're doing. I'm thinking I need to do something like this with the dystopian ms--except I'm not sure I can really do stickies because I don't have my scenes in order yet. Those two WFs had complete or nearly complete mss. But I do feel the need to make a stab at getting some kind of mental order to the many threads of the dystopian ms, because I think doing so might possibly help me stick to something that moves forward at a brisk clip rather than going off on boring tangents. No time to try this out at the moment, though. The former GN is so chopped-up in format, it lends itself more to being worked on at the same time as other full-steam-ahead projects. Not so with dystopian, which is all of a piece.

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.

No time to work on my own stuff, but I did glance at the first scene of the new ms last night, just to see how it reads. I was wondering exactly what I'm going to need to figure out as far as voice in my head vs. voice on the page, because it's already clear to me that this is going to take some juggling. Transcribing dialect straight to the paper is usually not a great idea because it trips up the reader's eyes. What we hear in our head is not how other people are going to read it. Often a good way to handle that is to spell everything normally, and let the grammar and sentence structure carry the dialect.

So I looked over the first scene and saw right away that I do need to spell everything correctly, even though it's a long step from how you'd actually hear the guy in person. But I also saw that I probably need to clean up the sentence structure some, too, because transcribing him straight gives an immediate impression that he's stupid. Which he's not. I don't want stupid, I want laconic, removed, with a touch of menace. So...this should be interesting. No time to think about it much right now, though.

I am extraordinarily displeased.

Due to lack of laptop access, I had to take a printout of the first 80 pages to the library. I don't like the smarmy fake voice of the first 40 pages. I don't like the way it tells a bunch of cr*p and nothing happens. And I don't know what to do about it.

I wasn't at all in the mood to work on this part today. And I don't mind if the beginning is a little slow, because that will weed out more immature readers before the R-rated stuff starts happening (why so many parents and teachers think 14-up includes 6th and 7th grade is beyond me). So probably I should take my current cranky attitude with a grain of salt. At least a partial grain of salt.

Still. Ugh.

Yesterday I somehow ended up working on a part I didn't really want to work on. I don't know what happened; I was skimming along trying to figure out where I wanted to start work, and got sucked into changing and rewording and it snowballed from there. It didn't hurt anything, but I was hoping for a more productive use of my time.

Now today once again I'm edging into the middle and I can see what a big mess of trouble it's going to be. Too many tones (close third person literary, familiar third person conversational, removed third person historical, snarky third person me), and the "pacing" is going to be splotches of story that happened to fall onto the page with no rhyme or reason to them. I don't know what to do. Maybe the thing to do is quit trying to make sense of the whole and write out some of the individual pieces that I know have to be there, and see what happens. Just focus on definite, small, chewable bits.

I am ignoring a certain thread toward the beginning that I keep almost taking out because it seems like it's too much and too complicated at that point in the story, but then I also keep seeing that it moves the tone away from the misleading chipper midgrade voice of the story beginning, and also it adds tension and adheres to the main idea that drives the story for me. And it's pretty well woven in right now; it's going to be a pain to un-weave. So for now I'm making myself leave it and not think about it.

I seem to be tiptoeing into the Paris section little by little. I have no idea how I'm going to write it without devolving into light steamy romance. Not that I have anything against light steamy romance--it just wouldn't match the rest of the book. Will have to give the matter some thought.

Still too much other stuff going on. However, last night I figured out an approach to the w-f-h sample, so did a little of that. I don't know if it's what they'll want, but it's something I can live with and expand on without feeling like I'm pulling teeth for 60,000 words. I hope it is, anyway.

On the my-own-stuff front, I'm likely to switch back over to the former GN and work on that for a while. If I get the w-f-h job, I ought to be able to work on both, because they explore similar themes (or at least themes that are in the same ballpark), and because the former GN is more cut up and doesn't have to flow like the regular prose swordfighting ms does. (Since it's all cut up, I won't have to maintain focus for weeks and months, but can work in spurts here and there.)

I retitled the former GN (again) and decided the latest framework I provided for the story is all wrong, so I cut that and took out some of the formatting, too. Now I'm thinking about trying a framework based on that scene from the Iliad that just kills me, the one where Helen is on the battlements of Troy with Priam and they're looking out over the Greek armies.

I know I've got to do something; I can't just dive into the story because it's boring. There's no problem. The problem only comes up slowly, so for pages and pages the story is just la-di-dah description and blah-blah-blah. I feel a framework is needed to provide a problem, but I didn't like the way the latest framework was all over the map, with each piece showing a different person and different place and a different thing happening. Rather than holding the story together and drawing the reader in, it felt like it just added unrelated fragments to the mix. I don't know that looking over the armies is much better, but we'll see.

When I was thinking about it this morning I realized that the new framework is in first person in my head, while the main story already on paper is in third. But I think I'll just go with the flow for now. It might end up working just fine--and if not, I'll worry about it later.

(note to self--remember to use MC's name up front so the reader knows it's the same person as in the story proper, even if pov/voice/tense is different.)

Beware: spoilers re. The Wreckers

Decent writing day, hooray. This chapter (the one with the dead body) is more in my usual line because it's all about one thing already, and there's lots to do as far as pacing and word choice to make the moments work. I felt like I was writing The Wreckers, only not as good, and nothing to do with ships, and more character-driven, and not as well researched, and anachronistic in language and tone. Actually, I don't know why I was reminded of The Wreckers at all. All I know is my favorite part of that is all the dead bodies in the surf and the guy gets killed and you're like, "OMG, did they just kill that guy???" That is one of the most grabby scenes I've ever read in any book. I've read it out loud to groups before, and the groups have been all bored, but when I read that they zero in like lasers, if lasers could listen to somebody reading. You can see it in their faces: "OMG, did they just kill that guy???"

Yeah, now that I think about it, my dead body chapter isn't anything like that.

I wonder if I still have my copy of The Wreckers or if I lent it to somebody. If I do have it, I'd better not reread it, because it might mess with my voice, which I'm only now starting to get comfortable with.

I've been tempted lately to reread Johnny Tremain, though. I don't think that would mess with anything. I know Johnny Tremain is downstairs. But I'm still slowly working my way through Jane Austen's Letters, The Climax of Rome, and Alexander the Great. I really shouldn't start another book. It takes months and months to finish anything, and the book lies around with the others, cluttering things up.

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

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

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

No writing of my own--all w-f-h.

Was thinking about swordfighting ms, wondering if I'm all messed up and wrongheaded about it, and need to rethink from scratch again. Then I thought, no, the best thing to do (when I pick it up again) is to jump around as needed and work on the parts that have a strong sense of story to me. Of course, when I say "story" I don't mean what other people mean, because I don't have a strong sense of story. I mean the internal story, the emotional story, taking the MC on his emotional ride.

I know that doing this actually can work for me, process-wise. I ought to be able to leave little blanks where I understand what happens plotwise, then after I get enough of the emotional ride put together, to go back and hammer away at the gaps till they work in the emotional story, too. I remember I had to do that for Repossessed late in the revision process, in the scene near the end where the demon and Lane are together. I knew what happened plotwise, but couldn't get it right, so I had to just redo it and redo it till it came to life properly, in a way that meshed with the rest of the ms. So what I need in the swordfighting ms is a strong emotional drive for the MC--at least in my head--and I need enough of it to provide a firm base so that I can leap over the gaps where plot must step in and carry the story. I can fill in the gaps once I have the rest.

The question is, can I get enough of the emotional story for that firm base? I'll have to think hard, and go back to the part where the dad dies and take it afresh (in my head, not writing it out yet) from there. I'll have to toss out the plot and just focus on what is going on at the moment and think what happens next. How will this connect with the plot I already have? No idea whatsoever. G*d help me, maybe it won't, and my lovely plot will have to be tossed.

Was thinking about the movie 300 and the movie The New World, and how some critics hated 300 (the Thermopylae movie) because it was more style than story, but loved The New World (Terrence Mallick movie re. John Smith, Pocahontas, et al.) because it was more style than story. I like them both because in each case the style is strong and seems to me to match the story. I'm not sure if the anti-300/pro-NewWorld critics are snobs, or if my teenage-guy streak is prejudicing me.

I think both movies have extensive voiceovers. What is the equivalent of a voiceover in a novel? Not sure, and no time to consider right now because I must get back to w-f-h.

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.

Sick today, but I'm going to write anyway. I never found my sticky note, and never remembered exactly what it was about. However, I now have a new sticky note that I wrote this morning in the car, about something else--something smaller and less big-picture than the gloriously comprehensive sticky note I once had and still mourn. But still. I have something to focus on.

This is not a networking or promotional blog, so I don't like to mention names of current authors or their books, usually. However, a writer friend just told me of yet another book with an autistic character who speaks without using contractions. This reminded me that there's a book coming out this fall called Episodes, by Blaze Ginsberg. I think it bears mentioning because Blaze is a young adult on the autistic spectrum, and the book is about his life, in his voice, from his POV. I highly recommend it over any books by people who magically had an autistic character's voice pop into their head, and therefore wrote a book with said character as MC.

I also see this as a warning to those of us who ever have a character's voice magically pop into our heads: just because you dreamed it don't make it real. I know that there's been a lot of storm and fury on the internet re. writing outside your own experience. Of course most of us write outside our own experience. Otherwise we'd all be writing autobiographies. However, my feeling is that while we have a right to write anything we want, our good intentions don't have to count for squat in anybody else's eyes. The farther outside my experience I go--and the closer to hitting someone else's raw nerve--the more I'd damn well better be prepared to take it in the you-know-whats after the book is out.

I also think there are a lot of crazy people on the internet, who will gladly give it to you in the you-know-whats, heartily and often, if they don't like something you did. So, write whatever you feel you must--but go in with your eyes open, is all I have to say.


Disclosures:

Yes, I have an autistic son.

Yes, I blurbed Episodes.

No, I don't know Blaze.

No, nobody I've ever met who is on the autistic spectrum speaks without contractions.


Side note: The formatting/structure of Episodes is extremely interesting and unique. Hmm, now that I think about it, I wonder if it's subliminally influenced me. Could be.

Was thinking about the time I spent yesterday going over and over the same thing. If I had to watch somebody else doing what I did yesterday, I'd say they were neurotic and obsessive and have some kind of self-sabotage thing going on where they are subconsciously making sure they never actually finish a book. But I felt I made progress yesterday, writing my same 1000 or so words over and over again.

I spent much time redoing certain paragraphs. There were a few that were really causing me trouble. I realized, thinking about it later, that the object of rewriting a paragraph for hours usually would be coming up with a perfect paragraph, one that a writer would be proud of. But these paragraphs are very workmanlike, and my object isn't to perfect them, exactly, but to make them disappear. I need the reader not to even notice that s/he's reading words. I need the meaning to come out and the words to fall into the background.

Here is one sentence and some of its versions:


But the sight of Father's cut had momentarily frozen him in that wary, alert stillness rabbits get when they hear something move in the brush.

But Simon had seen the slashed arm, too. He had gone still, his eyes wary and alert and fixed on Father, who had never lifted a hand to Simon, nor even his voice.

But Simon had seen the slashed arm, too: he sat very still, his eyes wary, alert, and fixed on Father. Father, who had never lifted a hand to Simon, nor his voice.

But Simon saw the slashed arm, too; he sat very still, his eyes wary, alert, and fixed on Father. He could not shake the habit of expecting explosions, even from Father, who had never so much as raised his voice at Simon in the entire seven years he'd lived here.


I expect to be doing this sort of thing today, too--only on chapter 2. I'm not so neurotic and obsessive that I can't leave imperfection and move on.

I realized yesterday that sometimes the point of writing is to stamp images into the reader's brain, to be evocative. Other times the point is to be invisible, to drop out of sight in service to the story or characters. Funny, but I think maybe the first one is considered to have more literary value. Not sure why. Maybe because it tends to last longer in the reader's head?

After the negative morning, I have been surprised to find that this has been a good writing day. I think I got a good 10-15 pages in a working order--or at least to where I can wrap my mind around them for further work.

I think part of this may be due to the writer friend wh0 reported back on the bit I sent. When I sent the first 20 pages, I included the first 4-6 pages (or however many it is) that are framework and out of voice, even though I haven't been working on that part at all. WF said that part isn't working, but that the main part of the story--the part I have been working on--is.

I didn't realize that I had been fretting a little, in the back of my mind, about the framework and structure. I knew I was coming up on a piece that has been in the framework/structure viewpoint, and although I've been moving it around, it's been getting in the way while I try to think out this section. It does not fit. In the back of my mind, I had been thinking--but not wanting to admit--that really, most of the framework/structure viewpoint stuff could probably be folded into the main story and not made to stick out in in style or design. Most of it--except that very first 4-6 pages.

So when WF said the first part isn't working, I somehow gave myself permission to let it go for now, and let the rest of the story work itself out as smoothly as possible. Just forget about that and focus on what's in front of me. You wouldn't think I needed somebody else to say something that would allow me to do that, but apparently I did. I was like, "Oh. Well, I guess I'll just pretend that part's not there and continue on as I have been."

Yesterday I printed out the first I-don't-know-how-much (maybe 50-70 pages?) and was going to read through. But suddenly I found that I loathed the entire ms with the fire of a thousand suns and could not bear to look at it. I was going to force myself, but then I didn't. I reread some manga instead.

So today I sat down and started reading, still loathing it, and by p. 8 or 9 decided it's awful, loose and meandering and making no points, so I'm going to "save as" under another name and then butcher the damn thing, and try to get this very first section down to something a lot tighter and clearer and sharper than it is. I've got pages 1-13 in front of me, and the first four aren't going to change much, but the rest I'm going to go after with a cleaver. Although I guess I'd better back up the last version before I do that, because I'm sure to need it later, for scavenging if nothing else.

I think maybe one tough thing is that this isn't contemporary and the entire point of the book and understanding of it relies on the reader having a good grip on the world the story is set in--the physical layout of things and the attitudes and the organization of the society. But there's just too much of that and it's dragging the whole thing down. I need a strong feeling from every page, and it's just not there.

So, to work.