I suddenly realized I'd better make sure I've got something with me for the reading I'm supposed to do in VT. I don't have anything halfway cohesive* that will also fit in the designated time slot, so I decided I'm just going to e-mail myself some freewriting from the dystopian and read that. It's a bunch of rough and nearly unintelligible pieces, but hey, that's where I'm at in my writing right now. A book does not spring forth fully formed from the mind of its author. Life behind the curtain is messy and sometimes downright ugly.

As I starting pulling out pieces and putting them into one document, I saw that I'd better explain to the audience what I'm using them for, as far as helping me to get the book written. Otherwise, my reading is going to sound like random selections from the backs of different cereal boxes.

The last piece I'll probably read is one that will end up as an actual scene near the climax of the book. Right now there's not much to it, and there's also a gap where the character epiphany takes place; the MC makes his choice and acts on it in this scene, but he currently has no reason for doing so. I just know that he does, I know it for sure, and so I know there's a line or two missing that shows the exact moment where the previous 2oo or however many pages of the book add up to make him decide: I will now do ____.

In short, one of the huge epiphanies that helps form the core of the book is missing.

But here's what happened: I wrote out a brief explanation of the scene for the reading. Then I moved on and tried to succinctly explain the gap.** And as I was trying to explain about the gap, I suddenly noticed that, back when I'd explained the scene, I'd also unknowingly written out what drove the MC to make his choice. It's pretty funny, really. In struggling over how to word the fact that I didn't have a clue what I was doing, I accidentally wrote down exactly what I was doing.

They say God looks after fools.

So anyway, it feels good to have this pinned down as I move forward with the ms. Having a grip on that one wee but crucial spot will help me carve the whole thing into shape.


*I'm not flying 1500+ miles to bore myself to tears by reading from one of my already-carved-in-stone books. The only thing that's interesting to me about doing a reading is if I'm reading something I'm still trying to figure out. Because then I can hear how it sounds and catch pacing problems I wouldn't normally see just from looking at it on a computer screen or on paper.

**Because VT College is, after all, a writing school. If I know there's a gap in my ms, I don't want anybody to think it's okay. I want them to understand that a gap is there and needs to be fixed.

A writer friend informs me that I missed one of my favorite movie scenes this morning. It's a scene I consider to be one of the best moments in movie history: Charlton Heston putting on his pants in Big Country.

See, Gregory Peck comes to CH's bunkhouse in the wee hours to wake him up so they can duke it out mano a mano in private. CH gets out of his bunk and, in about one-and-a-half seconds, Puts On His Pants before heading outside to fight. By g*d, it's the manliest, toughest putting-on-of-pants since men have had pants to put on. Charlton Heston is not messing around. This guy is mega-macho, and he's ready to kick Greg Peck's @ss.

Ah, here it is, at 2:32:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEFJllAj9b8&nofeather=True

What this has to do with writing is that I suddenly realized this is one of the signs I need to keep an eye out for, to make sure I'm not losing character in service to plot (and therefore getting off course). Losing track of character in tiny moments--for example, a generic putting-on-of-pants when the character would in reality Put On His Pants--may be a sign that I'm rushing through to get to a plot point.

So I need to make sure I stay in touch with the character consistently, especially during transitions like this one in the bunkhouse. As I work out this story, I need to make sure to go back and check every moment from inside the character's head and body, to ensure that I'm not skimming and therefore risking getting off track.

Also, even if a generic putting-on-of-pants is called for, it's so much more satisfying to make something like that strengthen and sharpen, rather than letting it slide by as a throwaway. Hmm, I just saw about a million of these places very well done in Dorothy Dunnett's second Lymond book, Queen's Play. But I don't have time to find any of them right now. When I start book 3 I'll try to remember to mark some as I go along. She's fantastic at this sort of thing.

But I just remembered something else. I do have a generic putting-on-of-pants in my WIP. And the reason I have it, now that I think about it, is because I'm fudging: I don't know what this guy wears, exactly. This is not good. I've got to get it figured out at some point*--preferably sooner rather than later.



*Figuring it out means going through the backstory and world in my head to understand what's available for everyone to wear, what this guy's clothes are likely to look like and be made of, where he got his, etc. I'd also better know how this group of characters handles their clothes, like mending, laundry, etc. This is not a civilization that's going to have a lot of throwaways; clothes are hard to come by. They're going to be wearing everything down to rags, and they don't have soap, either. However, they also know about bacteria and how diseases are passed along.** So. Lots to think about.


**Hmm, Laurence Wylie's Village in the Vaucluse has something useful to think about here. The French kids are extremely careful to keep their clothing clean; they're brought up from childhood to never get a speck of dirt on anything. They have few clothes and most of their moms have to wash everything via hand-scrubbing.

I wonder if there can be a difference in the degree of pacing via chapter-ending hooks. Ex. if you have chapter hooks like "Who is this mysterious person?", does that read differently from something like "OMG, he's about to get shot in the face!"? And if you have a whole series of the former kind of chapter endings in one area of the book, would it feel slightly looser or less urgent than a series of the latter kind?

My guess from the gut is that it's best to use both kinds and intercut them to vary it up. Except maybe as the book approaches its ending; then I'm thinking it might generally be better to have the shot-in-the-face kind of chapter hooks, one after another, bam-bam-bam. Hmm. If that's true, that means that there is a difference in the degree of pacing.

And that would probably mean I need to keep an eye on the middle of my WIP and make sure I don't go on too long with the "Who is this mysterious person?" types of hooks. Which tells me something about how I need arrange some of these scenes.

I have gradually shifted all the pieces of the ms around so that like pieces are together, and the major sections are in order. Ex. all the stuff about beating up the guy is together now; all the backstory is in one area; the huge breakup scene and its aftermath; the night attack; the trip to the walled compound. Also, the not-plotty stuff like the hair-braiding scenelets (don't ask), and the stories the characters tell each other, and the secondary characters' backstories & freewritings, each now have their own little areas of the ms.

So what I've got now is the entire story laid out in a basic shape (a very patchy basic shape), and the non-plotty stuff will gradually be worked in around the action so as not to make the pacing sag too much. That's the ideal, anyway.

Current mood: fearful, discouraged, frustrated. I should have had this ms done by now. Am feeling like its moment has passed, so basically any work I do is just p*ssing into the wind.

However, I don't really care how I feel about it; I'm going to work on it anyway. I am worried about losing touch with what's important about the ms by getting caught up in the storyline; it's so easy to think in context of what everybody would do and feel in scene--and to lose sight of the fact that maybe the scene would never have happened in the first place. However, I don't care if I'm worried, either. Do. Not. Care. Worry, fear, discouragement, and frustration sap time and energy; they are luxuries I'm not going to afford.

Have been trying to make sure I at least open up the WIP file and do something on it every day. Mostly it's just been a sentence, a couple of sentences, a paragraph--which is kind of depressing, but oh well, what can you do? Today I pulled some like sections together throughout the book and gave each one a heading coupled with a section break to help me see the overall structure. Looks like I've got about 200 pages worth of novel here, and I can make out a general shape for it, even just from the messy pieces I've got lying around.

I'd like to print out a copy and do some more compiling, because I sometimes have more than one version of the same scene or exchange in various places in the ms, and it'll help streamline everything if I save the parts I like but get rid of anything that's duplicated. And I can't do that effectively while scrolling through a document of this size.

Set work aside to write for an hour, with no plan, no idea what to start with. And now, after having lost track of time, I feel like I just wrote the best scene I've written in years. I know tomorrow it won't look that way, but right now everything is suddenly falling into place most swimmingly. The heavens have opened and the angels are singing. I'm going to wallow frankly in enjoyment whilst enjoyment's here to be had. Ahhhhh.