Entry tags:
It's like progress
In the end, you just have to sit down and write the words. Inspiration's nice, planning can be useful, but ultimately, you have to do the work and make the words.
Entry tags:
That con I run
I really should post more about Narrativity here. It was excellent again this year, as always. Some behind-the-scenes drama made it far more stressful and exhausting for me that it needed to be, but that got resolved pretty smoothly once I could address it in person, and it didn't spill over into anyone's enjoyment of the con. (And please ghod, we should be done with that particular flavor of drama from now on. A group of people all pulling together in the same direction is a beautiful thing.) I'm always too tired once I get home to do more than scrawl a few brief lines, if that, and by the time I recover it's been long enough that the con-impetus is past. But I'll see what I can do here:
As usual, the best part was the people, both old friends and new. One of the new folks was a long-time friend of the con who was finally able to attend, and turned out to be even awesomer in person than he was in email; another was a serendipitous find in the "smoking lounge" (aka the hotel parking lot) who turned out to be very much One Of Us and was promptly sucked into the rest of the con. And many other nifty new faces who I'm hoping to see next year, along with the standard crowd.
Probably my favorite moment was hanging out in the hotel lobby... some evening... (I was a bear of even less brain than usual this year)... with S and L and K (one of the nifty newbies) discussing my "weird clown story", which turns out to not have at all the problem I thought it did, but some other problem entirely that was expertly mimicking the first kind, and branching off into visual vs. non-visual readers and kinetic vs. visual understanding of one's location in space, and all kinds of brains-are-neat-and-also-weird stuff. This, my friends, is what Narrativity is for.
I also tested a theory. I have talked many times, here and elsewhere, about needing to learn how to Do Plot. (This is different than understanding plotting in general; I chose those words deliberately.) Well, one of our panels was "Help Steve Write A Book", which sounded an awful lot like what I'm talking about when I talk about plot. And... it wasn't, quite, because he comes at a book, or at least this book, in a very different way than I do, but the process was similar enough in principle that I could apply it to my own struggles. And yes, that. That is what I'm looking for: something that functions the same way a big room full of people all focused on helping figure out how to make this particular story go the way the author wants it to does.
IOW, I need a writers group. Which sucks, because I've been trying to find/build one of those for long enough that I've pretty much given up on ever getting what I need, but it's good to identify, at least.
Writers need other writers. The stereotype of the hermit writer in their attic churning out pages may exist in a few, isolated cases, but for most writers, some like-minded folks to bounce ideas off of is somewhere between incredibly helpful and vitally necessary.
And one of the things Narrativity does is help people make those connections. That's pretty fabulous.
As usual, the best part was the people, both old friends and new. One of the new folks was a long-time friend of the con who was finally able to attend, and turned out to be even awesomer in person than he was in email; another was a serendipitous find in the "smoking lounge" (aka the hotel parking lot) who turned out to be very much One Of Us and was promptly sucked into the rest of the con. And many other nifty new faces who I'm hoping to see next year, along with the standard crowd.
Probably my favorite moment was hanging out in the hotel lobby... some evening... (I was a bear of even less brain than usual this year)... with S and L and K (one of the nifty newbies) discussing my "weird clown story", which turns out to not have at all the problem I thought it did, but some other problem entirely that was expertly mimicking the first kind, and branching off into visual vs. non-visual readers and kinetic vs. visual understanding of one's location in space, and all kinds of brains-are-neat-and-also-weird stuff. This, my friends, is what Narrativity is for.
I also tested a theory. I have talked many times, here and elsewhere, about needing to learn how to Do Plot. (This is different than understanding plotting in general; I chose those words deliberately.) Well, one of our panels was "Help Steve Write A Book", which sounded an awful lot like what I'm talking about when I talk about plot. And... it wasn't, quite, because he comes at a book, or at least this book, in a very different way than I do, but the process was similar enough in principle that I could apply it to my own struggles. And yes, that. That is what I'm looking for: something that functions the same way a big room full of people all focused on helping figure out how to make this particular story go the way the author wants it to does.
IOW, I need a writers group. Which sucks, because I've been trying to find/build one of those for long enough that I've pretty much given up on ever getting what I need, but it's good to identify, at least.
Writers need other writers. The stereotype of the hermit writer in their attic churning out pages may exist in a few, isolated cases, but for most writers, some like-minded folks to bounce ideas off of is somewhere between incredibly helpful and vitally necessary.
And one of the things Narrativity does is help people make those connections. That's pretty fabulous.
Entry tags:
A Mysterious Epiphany
I realized something last night that goes a long way toward explaining why I'm having trouble getting any of my mystery ideas off the ground.
1. Red Herrings
Red herrings are necessary to a traditional mystery, the suspects and leads that seem promising at first but ultimately prove to be unrelated (or only tangentially related) to the crime. Often other crimes are revealed in the process of investigating them; the dead man's wife didn't kill him, but she's been acting secretive because she's having an affair or embezzling from the company she works for. The embezzlement has nothing whatsoever to do with the murder; at most it might be her alibi because she was at the office after hours fudging the books when he was killed.
I've also been known to use "red herring" to describe a plot thing I hate to write, but have reluctantly accepted the necessity for: the things the main character tries that don't succeed. (I should probably come up with a better term for it.) They're necessary to build tension; if the spy tries to hack the computers, and fails, then tries to finagle information out of the secretary, and fails, and then finally uses her best friend's daughter to pose as an intern and plant a bug, it's much more dramatic than if the spy just shoves the daughter into danger in the first place. All fine and well, but my brain knows those first two things aren't going to work, and it resents spending the time and effort on portraying them.
A mystery, therefore, is largely composed of things I hate to write. Dramatically necessary things, I don't dispute that, but that doesn't make me like them. And since I'm an extremely intuitive writer, what my brain doesn't want to write comes very hard to me.
This part I kind of already knew, but it ties in with the part that really struck me last night. (After watching the end of Magpie Murders, for those who like tracking influences.)
2. Characters
A traditional murder mystery requires a fairly large cast of characters, because you need multiple people who had reason to want the victim dead. Most of those reasons will ultimately be set aside by alibis, by not being a strong enough motive, or by other factors, rendering them irrelevant to the solution of the mystery. They're distractions, effectively.
In any other genre but a mystery, irrelevant distractions are a bad thing. They're something you want to cut, or not write them in the first place.
Now, characters are normally not a problem for me. Characters routinely wander into my head and set up shop, unbidden. If they're main characters, they kvetch until I sit down and write their story. If they're comparatively minor characters, they normally don't show up until I'm writing along, and then they appear when I need them. The operative phrase there is need them -- that is, they show up when they're necessary to the plot. The main line of the plot, that is, or as a characterization or setting tool that's integral to the story. They don't just wander in, give voice to something that ultimately doesn't matter, and then wander out. My brain simply doesn't generate characters who don't have a useful function, or if it does, it edits them out before my consciousness ever sees them.
In a science fiction adventure, or a spy novel, or a romance, this is a good thing. You don't need to hear about the hotel clerk's problems with his girlfriend, if his only function in the story is to demonstrate the hotel's low standards; he's not really a character, he's just mobile set dressing. The rich man's poor sister, who resents his success and her poverty, doesn't have anything to do with the spy who's burgling secret documents from the safe, and bringing up her issues in the middle of the theft would make no sense at all.
But if the rich man is the murder victim, then his sister's letter berating him for not helping with his nephew's school fees may be a vital clue. And when her handwriting turns out not to be a match for the fake suicide note, that doesn't make her whole sub-story an irrelevant distraction that should be cut, it makes her a red herring that is now resolved, which is a valid and necessary thing to a good mystery.
Most of the characters in a mystery are "red herrings" in my own idiosyncratic terminology, as well as in the more commonly accepted meaning. My brain generates characters for me without conscious effort, but my brain also doesn't waste time generating things I don't need. Therefore, I'm sitting at the front end of a mystery not knowing what characters I'm going to need because they'll come to me when I need them, but I'll need them to produce the clue that they're tied to, but I don't know what that clue is because it comes out of the characters' relationships, but I don't know what those relationships are because I don't have the characters yet, which I won't have until I have the clue.... And here we see the difficulty.
Characters come easy to me, but I don't just sit around noodling over a character and making up all his friends and enemies and relations and rivals whether I need them or not, and muddling through their histories and what happened last week or ten years ago that they've never really gotten over. My writing brain is much more efficient than that. And I'm beginning to wonder if it's that very efficiency that's causing me problems.
1. Red Herrings
Red herrings are necessary to a traditional mystery, the suspects and leads that seem promising at first but ultimately prove to be unrelated (or only tangentially related) to the crime. Often other crimes are revealed in the process of investigating them; the dead man's wife didn't kill him, but she's been acting secretive because she's having an affair or embezzling from the company she works for. The embezzlement has nothing whatsoever to do with the murder; at most it might be her alibi because she was at the office after hours fudging the books when he was killed.
I've also been known to use "red herring" to describe a plot thing I hate to write, but have reluctantly accepted the necessity for: the things the main character tries that don't succeed. (I should probably come up with a better term for it.) They're necessary to build tension; if the spy tries to hack the computers, and fails, then tries to finagle information out of the secretary, and fails, and then finally uses her best friend's daughter to pose as an intern and plant a bug, it's much more dramatic than if the spy just shoves the daughter into danger in the first place. All fine and well, but my brain knows those first two things aren't going to work, and it resents spending the time and effort on portraying them.
A mystery, therefore, is largely composed of things I hate to write. Dramatically necessary things, I don't dispute that, but that doesn't make me like them. And since I'm an extremely intuitive writer, what my brain doesn't want to write comes very hard to me.
This part I kind of already knew, but it ties in with the part that really struck me last night. (After watching the end of Magpie Murders, for those who like tracking influences.)
2. Characters
A traditional murder mystery requires a fairly large cast of characters, because you need multiple people who had reason to want the victim dead. Most of those reasons will ultimately be set aside by alibis, by not being a strong enough motive, or by other factors, rendering them irrelevant to the solution of the mystery. They're distractions, effectively.
In any other genre but a mystery, irrelevant distractions are a bad thing. They're something you want to cut, or not write them in the first place.
Now, characters are normally not a problem for me. Characters routinely wander into my head and set up shop, unbidden. If they're main characters, they kvetch until I sit down and write their story. If they're comparatively minor characters, they normally don't show up until I'm writing along, and then they appear when I need them. The operative phrase there is need them -- that is, they show up when they're necessary to the plot. The main line of the plot, that is, or as a characterization or setting tool that's integral to the story. They don't just wander in, give voice to something that ultimately doesn't matter, and then wander out. My brain simply doesn't generate characters who don't have a useful function, or if it does, it edits them out before my consciousness ever sees them.
In a science fiction adventure, or a spy novel, or a romance, this is a good thing. You don't need to hear about the hotel clerk's problems with his girlfriend, if his only function in the story is to demonstrate the hotel's low standards; he's not really a character, he's just mobile set dressing. The rich man's poor sister, who resents his success and her poverty, doesn't have anything to do with the spy who's burgling secret documents from the safe, and bringing up her issues in the middle of the theft would make no sense at all.
But if the rich man is the murder victim, then his sister's letter berating him for not helping with his nephew's school fees may be a vital clue. And when her handwriting turns out not to be a match for the fake suicide note, that doesn't make her whole sub-story an irrelevant distraction that should be cut, it makes her a red herring that is now resolved, which is a valid and necessary thing to a good mystery.
Most of the characters in a mystery are "red herrings" in my own idiosyncratic terminology, as well as in the more commonly accepted meaning. My brain generates characters for me without conscious effort, but my brain also doesn't waste time generating things I don't need. Therefore, I'm sitting at the front end of a mystery not knowing what characters I'm going to need because they'll come to me when I need them, but I'll need them to produce the clue that they're tied to, but I don't know what that clue is because it comes out of the characters' relationships, but I don't know what those relationships are because I don't have the characters yet, which I won't have until I have the clue.... And here we see the difficulty.
Characters come easy to me, but I don't just sit around noodling over a character and making up all his friends and enemies and relations and rivals whether I need them or not, and muddling through their histories and what happened last week or ten years ago that they've never really gotten over. My writing brain is much more efficient than that. And I'm beginning to wonder if it's that very efficiency that's causing me problems.
Entry tags:
Plot again, or maybe something adjacent to "plot"
Happened across this Pat Wrede post; I missed it at the time and comments seem to be closed now, which is a pity because I think she may have inadvertently explained the thing that I keep trying to explain and failing. Specifically this bit:
"When I’m writing Chapter Two, I don’t need to know how my protagonist is going to beat her challenger in the magic duel in Chapter Ten; I only need to know that she will. I don’t need that detail until around Chapter Eight or Nine (and if I haven’t figured it out by then, I’m usually in for a couple of weeks of dithering about how to make it work)."
When I say I don't know how to do plot, I think what I'm really saying is that I keep running into that sort of dithering and I need better tools to get out of it. A few weeks of dithering here and there may be unavoidable in writing; a year and a half of such dithering sucks. And even a few weeks of dithering, over and over and over again, in every story one attempts, gets really old.
I should note here that for me, the dithering is *NOT* about "Which of these appealing ideas should I use?" I easily recognize which ideas are wrong for the story: "No, none of those are the right idea, thank you, yes I will know it when I see it, no I'm not just being difficult, look, thanks, but let's talk about something else, shall we?" is not an unfamiliar pattern when talking to other writers. :-( But it's much more likely that I have no idea at all. I'll know what kind of idea I need, I'll know the "feel" of it and/or what requirements it needs to fulfill, but the actual thing? I got nothing.
To use the headlight analogy, I'll be driving along with landmarks wafting forth out of the the fog, but at some point I hit a stretch where there aren't any landmarks appearing, and in fact I can't even see the road anymore. I know which way is forward because the car's pointed that way, but I've no idea if there are signs or buildings or if the road twists or turns or dips; there's nothing but fog.
I need better ways to pierce the fog, at least for the next ten feet or so, so I can get the car moving again.
Does that make any kind of sense at all to anyone but me?
"When I’m writing Chapter Two, I don’t need to know how my protagonist is going to beat her challenger in the magic duel in Chapter Ten; I only need to know that she will. I don’t need that detail until around Chapter Eight or Nine (and if I haven’t figured it out by then, I’m usually in for a couple of weeks of dithering about how to make it work)."
When I say I don't know how to do plot, I think what I'm really saying is that I keep running into that sort of dithering and I need better tools to get out of it. A few weeks of dithering here and there may be unavoidable in writing; a year and a half of such dithering sucks. And even a few weeks of dithering, over and over and over again, in every story one attempts, gets really old.
I should note here that for me, the dithering is *NOT* about "Which of these appealing ideas should I use?" I easily recognize which ideas are wrong for the story: "No, none of those are the right idea, thank you, yes I will know it when I see it, no I'm not just being difficult, look, thanks, but let's talk about something else, shall we?" is not an unfamiliar pattern when talking to other writers. :-( But it's much more likely that I have no idea at all. I'll know what kind of idea I need, I'll know the "feel" of it and/or what requirements it needs to fulfill, but the actual thing? I got nothing.
To use the headlight analogy, I'll be driving along with landmarks wafting forth out of the the fog, but at some point I hit a stretch where there aren't any landmarks appearing, and in fact I can't even see the road anymore. I know which way is forward because the car's pointed that way, but I've no idea if there are signs or buildings or if the road twists or turns or dips; there's nothing but fog.
I need better ways to pierce the fog, at least for the next ten feet or so, so I can get the car moving again.
Does that make any kind of sense at all to anyone but me?
Entry tags:
Goals, heh, yeah
So, my newfound resolve to produce 2500 words a week is proving... complicated.
Based on my January 1 output, it seemed like a reasonable goal. And for the first week, it was. Easy, even. What I neglected to account for was that that was the initial burst of starting a new story (and one that had been lurking in the brain waiting to go for ages, at that), which is usually a high-output phase for me. But a whole story, even a short one, doesn't go at that pace all the way through; even if the writing goes very well and quickly, as this one did, there's still the little fiddly bits to wrap things up at the end. So by week two, I had a day where I wrote about 50 words. That was filling in the find-a-better-word brackets and applying some research to fine-tune the world-building, so they were very necessary and important words... but there were still only about 50 of them. This is not an avoidable part of the process.
The other not-avoidable part is that I can't just leap straight from finishing one story into white-heat on another story. There's a mandatory refractory period, during which my brain eases out of the world of the completed story, basks in the glow of accomplishment for a bit, then starts poking around at the pile of ideas to see what else looks like fun. This isn't such an issue if I'm working on a novel, obviously (there are other issues with novels), but right now I want to concentrate on short stories for a while. And since that refractory period tends to be about a week, depending on the story... there's a significant glitch in my math. ;-/
The obvious solution to this is to have one longer-term project in progress, so that I can just drop into that in between short stories. I really don't want to get into another novel right now, but I do have The Green Ring, that just-for-funsies novella I started mumblety-something ago. It's been fallow for an appallingly long time, but I decided to boot it back up and use it for my fall-back project. And it booted up quite quickly, only took a day or two. Great, right? Except that, having gotten it booted up and gotten all the remaining pieces precariously balanced in my head so I can get them out in the right order and with the right pacing and the right antecedents, I am deeply reluctant to let go of it even for a week or so to work on something else, lest I lose it and have to do all that balancing act all over again. That was hard work, and it feels like juggling plates that are going to shatter if I drop them.
So, now I have Green Ring on the front burner, and it's going slowly because the juggling-plates phase is also the sticky, tedious phase where the words have to wade through all that damn plot stuff, and I'm loath to set it aside to work on, say, the next Dix Dayton story, even though that's what it's supposedly here for. It's week 3 of the year and I'm having to push hard to make quota -- I've met it so far on average, but only because I did nearly double the goal in week 1.
And of course there's the usual factor that all this writing doesn't leave much time for anything else. I can write ~833 words in a day, but it takes a large chunk of the day, which means a lot of other things aren't getting done. And sitting in bed until mid-afternoon writing leaves one feeling much the same as lying in bed until mid-afternoon dozing -- nice at the time, but loggy and not good for much for the rest of the day.
Writing is hard. ;-)
Based on my January 1 output, it seemed like a reasonable goal. And for the first week, it was. Easy, even. What I neglected to account for was that that was the initial burst of starting a new story (and one that had been lurking in the brain waiting to go for ages, at that), which is usually a high-output phase for me. But a whole story, even a short one, doesn't go at that pace all the way through; even if the writing goes very well and quickly, as this one did, there's still the little fiddly bits to wrap things up at the end. So by week two, I had a day where I wrote about 50 words. That was filling in the find-a-better-word brackets and applying some research to fine-tune the world-building, so they were very necessary and important words... but there were still only about 50 of them. This is not an avoidable part of the process.
The other not-avoidable part is that I can't just leap straight from finishing one story into white-heat on another story. There's a mandatory refractory period, during which my brain eases out of the world of the completed story, basks in the glow of accomplishment for a bit, then starts poking around at the pile of ideas to see what else looks like fun. This isn't such an issue if I'm working on a novel, obviously (there are other issues with novels), but right now I want to concentrate on short stories for a while. And since that refractory period tends to be about a week, depending on the story... there's a significant glitch in my math. ;-/
The obvious solution to this is to have one longer-term project in progress, so that I can just drop into that in between short stories. I really don't want to get into another novel right now, but I do have The Green Ring, that just-for-funsies novella I started mumblety-something ago. It's been fallow for an appallingly long time, but I decided to boot it back up and use it for my fall-back project. And it booted up quite quickly, only took a day or two. Great, right? Except that, having gotten it booted up and gotten all the remaining pieces precariously balanced in my head so I can get them out in the right order and with the right pacing and the right antecedents, I am deeply reluctant to let go of it even for a week or so to work on something else, lest I lose it and have to do all that balancing act all over again. That was hard work, and it feels like juggling plates that are going to shatter if I drop them.
So, now I have Green Ring on the front burner, and it's going slowly because the juggling-plates phase is also the sticky, tedious phase where the words have to wade through all that damn plot stuff, and I'm loath to set it aside to work on, say, the next Dix Dayton story, even though that's what it's supposedly here for. It's week 3 of the year and I'm having to push hard to make quota -- I've met it so far on average, but only because I did nearly double the goal in week 1.
And of course there's the usual factor that all this writing doesn't leave much time for anything else. I can write ~833 words in a day, but it takes a large chunk of the day, which means a lot of other things aren't getting done. And sitting in bed until mid-afternoon writing leaves one feeling much the same as lying in bed until mid-afternoon dozing -- nice at the time, but loggy and not good for much for the rest of the day.
Writing is hard. ;-)
Entry tags:
Hey there, 2023
It's the start of a new year, and I have started as I hope to go on: 870 words this morning. Venturesome Sheep Day has long been lurking in my brain, the usual idea in search of a plot situation, but this morning I woke up with an idea for the mcguffin which has so long eluded me. (And thanks to the commenters on Pat Wrede's blog, who have occasionally asked if VSD would ever get done; I'm sure it was reading one such last night that got my brain working on it while I slept.) It's probably an overcomplicated idea, but I'm enjoying it so far.
Being the start of a new year, I've been reflecting, not on resolutions, because those are so closely linked with failure in our society, but on goals. My biggest goal really does need to be getting back to writing regularly, and this morning is a good start.
I did a little math, and if I could do 1000 words a day, five days a week, that works out to two novels and about 16 moderate-length short stories a year. Fabulous! The flaw in this otherwise excellent plan, of course, is that I can't do 1000 words five days a week -- or at least, I never have. But even half of that would be outstanding; I'd be quite happy with one novel and about 8 short stories a year. This morning's output, three times a week, would... be about that. Hmm. Eeeeeenteresting.
Being the start of a new year, I've been reflecting, not on resolutions, because those are so closely linked with failure in our society, but on goals. My biggest goal really does need to be getting back to writing regularly, and this morning is a good start.
I did a little math, and if I could do 1000 words a day, five days a week, that works out to two novels and about 16 moderate-length short stories a year. Fabulous! The flaw in this otherwise excellent plan, of course, is that I can't do 1000 words five days a week -- or at least, I never have. But even half of that would be outstanding; I'd be quite happy with one novel and about 8 short stories a year. This morning's output, three times a week, would... be about that. Hmm. Eeeeeenteresting.
Entry tags:
Lightning has struck twice
Finished. The. Novel.
Mind you, this is the definition of "finished" that includes about a billion find-a-better-word brackets, and I'm not sure about the flow on the last page, and we'll see what my alpha-reader says. But unless I've missed something, I have a continuous stream of text from the beginning to the end. It clocks in at just under 102,000 words, which I believe makes it the longest thing I've ever written.
And now I get to prep for attending two cons simultaneously, one in person and one virtual, and finish inventory-ing for Narrativity so I can get all this stuff out of the entry hall, and find a new home for the extra cat, and so on. Like the saying goes, before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water; after enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.
But still. Finished. The. Novel.
Mind you, this is the definition of "finished" that includes about a billion find-a-better-word brackets, and I'm not sure about the flow on the last page, and we'll see what my alpha-reader says. But unless I've missed something, I have a continuous stream of text from the beginning to the end. It clocks in at just under 102,000 words, which I believe makes it the longest thing I've ever written.
And now I get to prep for attending two cons simultaneously, one in person and one virtual, and finish inventory-ing for Narrativity so I can get all this stuff out of the entry hall, and find a new home for the extra cat, and so on. Like the saying goes, before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water; after enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.
But still. Finished. The. Novel.
Entry tags:
That whooshing noise is *not* a deadline going by....
I just finished a 2500-word story.
In two days.
This is, if not unprecedented for me, certainly damned unusual. That's half a month's output, by my typical standard! And even when I've written that many words, I don't think I've ever finished an entire work that quickly.
It still needs a title; yeah, this is that definition of "finished". But it's printed out and awaiting the housemate's opinion, as soon as she gets home. That's pretty damn cool, in my world.
In two days.
This is, if not unprecedented for me, certainly damned unusual. That's half a month's output, by my typical standard! And even when I've written that many words, I don't think I've ever finished an entire work that quickly.
It still needs a title; yeah, this is that definition of "finished". But it's printed out and awaiting the housemate's opinion, as soon as she gets home. That's pretty damn cool, in my world.
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The thing is done, and I was only up until 3:30 am doing it.
The "creepy fae thing" (a.k.a. "Going Home") is now in the hands of my alpha reader.
Writing challenge: Write what basically amounts to a 1500-word torture scene without overusing the word "pain" to the point that it ceases to have any meaning.
Writing challenge: Write what basically amounts to a 1500-word torture scene without overusing the word "pain" to the point that it ceases to have any meaning.
Entry tags:
I'll be darned, it looks like a story
I have written a 3600-word story in six days, 1600 of it yesterday. That is very nearly unprecedented for me -- despite the story fighting me every step of the way.
And despite my having referred to it as a "flaccid lump of story" at one point, I ended up with something I'm actually pretty happy with. My alpha reader laughed in the right places, which is always a good sign. The key seemed to be when the main character made a play on words and suddenly developed a rudimentary personality, which he'd been utterly refusing to do until that point. (This never happens to me.) And then the words I'd consciously crafted because they weren't coming any other way suddenly took on a different cast, and it all pretty much worked. So thanks, front-brain; it's not normally your job, but it's nice to know you're there to pick up the slack when the back-brain, I dunno, decides to skip off to Aruba or something. /*glares at back of own head*/
Dinner last night ended up being a hazelnut mocha and some Doritos, whilst hunched over the keyboard. I meant to eat something better, but sort of forgot. I got the story formatted and sent off with all of twenty minutes to spare, then stayed up another hour or two playing solitaire before I processed that I should just go to bed, dammit. Thus is the glamorous life of a writer.
And despite my having referred to it as a "flaccid lump of story" at one point, I ended up with something I'm actually pretty happy with. My alpha reader laughed in the right places, which is always a good sign. The key seemed to be when the main character made a play on words and suddenly developed a rudimentary personality, which he'd been utterly refusing to do until that point. (This never happens to me.) And then the words I'd consciously crafted because they weren't coming any other way suddenly took on a different cast, and it all pretty much worked. So thanks, front-brain; it's not normally your job, but it's nice to know you're there to pick up the slack when the back-brain, I dunno, decides to skip off to Aruba or something. /*glares at back of own head*/
Dinner last night ended up being a hazelnut mocha and some Doritos, whilst hunched over the keyboard. I meant to eat something better, but sort of forgot. I got the story formatted and sent off with all of twenty minutes to spare, then stayed up another hour or two playing solitaire before I processed that I should just go to bed, dammit. Thus is the glamorous life of a writer.
Entry tags:
Oh, well
There's nothing like writing a story specifically for an anthology, only to learn that they've received a surfeit of similarly-themed stories repurposed from some other anthology. *sigh*
Oh, well. Sent it off anyway, because why not? Maybe it'll be the one that tickles their fancy.
On a related note: Hey, I've been writing! A whole story, start to finish! Been a while since that's happened. I'm quite pleased about it.
Oh, well. Sent it off anyway, because why not? Maybe it'll be the one that tickles their fancy.
On a related note: Hey, I've been writing! A whole story, start to finish! Been a while since that's happened. I'm quite pleased about it.
Keep Calm and Talk Writing
So, Michigan is under stay-home orders as of today, essential services excepted -- pretty much what we were supposed to be doing anyway. Housemate is already working from home because of the broken leg; my freelance work is from-home anyway, and the Day Job is considered essential, so no real change here. Except that coordinating a trip to the grocery store is even more of a hassle than it is under normal conditions, as I try to guess when the panic-buyers will be at low ebb but there'll still be something on the shelves.
In the meantime, who wants to talk writing? I'm declaring this an open post for any writing-related subject that's on your mind. Comment with your questions, insights, or muddled writerly musings, and let's get some discussion going.
In the meantime, who wants to talk writing? I'm declaring this an open post for any writing-related subject that's on your mind. Comment with your questions, insights, or muddled writerly musings, and let's get some discussion going.
Entry tags:
And there was writing!
Lost in the shuffle of cons and cats and exploding electrical lines, was the fact that I came back from Narrativity having promised myself I would start writing again, settled down after a few days' recovery time with the best of intentions, and my writing laptop promptly died. Now, this was the not-happy machine previously mentioned, so it could have been worse, but watching it half-boot, crash, and restart itself, wash rinse repeat, was kind of a giant middle finger from the fates.
So I ventured forth (sporadically, because life) to find a replacement. Of course, none of the sources that other people had been assuring me with entirely unverified conviction would have what I wanted, did. The problem here is that what I'm looking for is really old -- pawn shops and the like don't deal in anything even remotely close, surplus stores generally cleared out that generation of laptops a decade or more ago, eBay lists a few but none of them are tested (and the prices are outrageous, though I'd pay that for exactly what I want if it were guaranteed functional). And even other people's closets are starting to be bare of the era of equipment I'm seeking.
So when the MSU surplus store offered a laptop that I could theoretically find a swappable floppy drive for, that would theoretically run what I wanted, I decided to risk ten bucks ($5 for the laptop, $5 for the hard drive) and see what happened. What happened was a lot of swearing; the machine powered up fine (as tested in-store), but getting a bootable OS onto the hard drive was another matter. My no-product-key Win98 CD was corrupted, so I went for plain old DOS, just to get something in place so I could test out the hardware. I FDISKed, I formatted, all the stuff was there that should be, but the machine kept booting to the KillDisk blank-drive message. WTF??? A trip back to Surplus didn't help. ("You could install Ubuntu" -- riiiiiight. I'm going to spend 6 hours of my life figuring out how to install an OS you're comfortable with, because you don't speak DOS? I think not.)
I finally gave up and ran the Win98 install from my other CD -- not ideal, because you spend an hour-plus going through the install before you find out if the product key you cribbed from another machine will actually work. But the install ran, and the product key did work! And then I got all the way through the setup and discovered that Win98 does not play well with more than 512M of memory, and this thing has 2 gigs. Oh, bugger. And none of the tricks recommended on the intarwebs worked; one managed to get me through the final steps of the install, but Windows still won't boot. Bug-ger.
On the other hand, I can now boot to DOS. Which won't let me run any of the other stuff I'd really like to have, but will let me run Textra, my word processor of preference, which is the one thing I really need. Which I had to install from diskette, but for reasons that I'm sure make sense to someone the USB floppy drive works fine even though USB drives proper don't, so that was okay.
And so last night, after all that tech fiddling, I wrote. 334 words, on the post-HoM self-indulgent Thing that's been niggling hardest at my brain. (Of course, the instant I had a working writing laptop, the urge to write that's been hammering at my skull faded. But I sat down anyway, and words happened.)
I'm still using the external USB floppy, which is less than ideal. But I like the machine otherwise; the keyboard is comfortable, the display is properly-proportioned and brightness-adjustable, and it's sleek and just generally has a good vibe. It probably is worth my time to find it an internal floppy drive.
I am, for the record, still in the market for old, working laptops with built-in floppy drives. I could stand to have two such machines in active use, and spares are good, too. So if you've got one kicking around in your cupboards, do let me know. But in the meantime, I am at least up and running again. For the time being, but that's all we can ask in this world.
So I ventured forth (sporadically, because life) to find a replacement. Of course, none of the sources that other people had been assuring me with entirely unverified conviction would have what I wanted, did. The problem here is that what I'm looking for is really old -- pawn shops and the like don't deal in anything even remotely close, surplus stores generally cleared out that generation of laptops a decade or more ago, eBay lists a few but none of them are tested (and the prices are outrageous, though I'd pay that for exactly what I want if it were guaranteed functional). And even other people's closets are starting to be bare of the era of equipment I'm seeking.
So when the MSU surplus store offered a laptop that I could theoretically find a swappable floppy drive for, that would theoretically run what I wanted, I decided to risk ten bucks ($5 for the laptop, $5 for the hard drive) and see what happened. What happened was a lot of swearing; the machine powered up fine (as tested in-store), but getting a bootable OS onto the hard drive was another matter. My no-product-key Win98 CD was corrupted, so I went for plain old DOS, just to get something in place so I could test out the hardware. I FDISKed, I formatted, all the stuff was there that should be, but the machine kept booting to the KillDisk blank-drive message. WTF??? A trip back to Surplus didn't help. ("You could install Ubuntu" -- riiiiiight. I'm going to spend 6 hours of my life figuring out how to install an OS you're comfortable with, because you don't speak DOS? I think not.)
I finally gave up and ran the Win98 install from my other CD -- not ideal, because you spend an hour-plus going through the install before you find out if the product key you cribbed from another machine will actually work. But the install ran, and the product key did work! And then I got all the way through the setup and discovered that Win98 does not play well with more than 512M of memory, and this thing has 2 gigs. Oh, bugger. And none of the tricks recommended on the intarwebs worked; one managed to get me through the final steps of the install, but Windows still won't boot. Bug-ger.
On the other hand, I can now boot to DOS. Which won't let me run any of the other stuff I'd really like to have, but will let me run Textra, my word processor of preference, which is the one thing I really need. Which I had to install from diskette, but for reasons that I'm sure make sense to someone the USB floppy drive works fine even though USB drives proper don't, so that was okay.
And so last night, after all that tech fiddling, I wrote. 334 words, on the post-HoM self-indulgent Thing that's been niggling hardest at my brain. (Of course, the instant I had a working writing laptop, the urge to write that's been hammering at my skull faded. But I sat down anyway, and words happened.)
I'm still using the external USB floppy, which is less than ideal. But I like the machine otherwise; the keyboard is comfortable, the display is properly-proportioned and brightness-adjustable, and it's sleek and just generally has a good vibe. It probably is worth my time to find it an internal floppy drive.
I am, for the record, still in the market for old, working laptops with built-in floppy drives. I could stand to have two such machines in active use, and spares are good, too. So if you've got one kicking around in your cupboards, do let me know. But in the meantime, I am at least up and running again. For the time being, but that's all we can ask in this world.
Entry tags:
Character Descriptions, Again
As a writer, I struggle with physical descriptions of characters. Partly this is because, as a reader, I'm largely oblivious to them; I'm not one of those readers who envisions a movie in her head whilst reading, and what people look like is especially not something I devote mental processing power to. (I have considerable trouble with it in real life, too.) And partly, I don't understand why it matters; surely it's more important how the character behaves than what color eyes they have?
I also struggle with whether it does actually matter that much. My Horrible Ex Writers Group (tm) insisted it did, but I'm not sure that wasn't an excuse on their part to avoid an in-depth discussion of what was lacking in a story, which would have required time and analysis that nobody much wanted to put forth. What's worse, I suspect the real answer is that it depends on the reader. I've never had a satisfactory conversation with someone advocating for the other side on this matter; I would dearly love to get inside such a person's brain and figure out why knowing what a character looks like is important to them. If I understood it, I think I could either do a better job of catering to it, or perhaps find something else that would satisfy the same need without contorting my own poor brain.
So of course it pleased me to run across this in a recent Jenny Crusie post:
This is Relevant To My Interests, especially since it sounds like it might parallel a certain scene in a certain unpublished novel. I think the housemate has that one; I shall have to see if I can find it.
I also struggle with whether it does actually matter that much. My Horrible Ex Writers Group (tm) insisted it did, but I'm not sure that wasn't an excuse on their part to avoid an in-depth discussion of what was lacking in a story, which would have required time and analysis that nobody much wanted to put forth. What's worse, I suspect the real answer is that it depends on the reader. I've never had a satisfactory conversation with someone advocating for the other side on this matter; I would dearly love to get inside such a person's brain and figure out why knowing what a character looks like is important to them. If I understood it, I think I could either do a better job of catering to it, or perhaps find something else that would satisfy the same need without contorting my own poor brain.
So of course it pleased me to run across this in a recent Jenny Crusie post:
For example, when I was writing Maybe This Time, I didn’t spend much time on Andie or North because what they looked like didn’t matter. What mattered were the details they noticed seeing each other for the first time after ten years, how they’d changed and how they hadn’t, how that hit them. I don’t remember what Andie looked like except that she had her hair pulled back and North didn’t like it; I remember that North looked tired and that made Andie catch a little.
This is Relevant To My Interests, especially since it sounds like it might parallel a certain scene in a certain unpublished novel. I think the housemate has that one; I shall have to see if I can find it.
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Aren't you terrified of waking up too tired to try again?
(backdated; found on USB about a year after the fact)
The original plan was to take December off, goof around with writing fanfic or whatever took my fancy, and then get back to Lightning Strikes Twice. Technology and other issues put paid to that, and I ended up not writing at all for most of December. So then January was supposed to be my goofing-off month -- and I did noodle around a bit with fanfic and such. But I also had this idea of starting a new series, and writing the first story in January -- which I mostly did, putting the finishing pre-beta touches on "Dix Dayton, Jet Jockey" only one day into the next month. Only now it's February, and the deal with taking January to goof off was that I would start cracking on LST again in February. And I'm still scrambling around with half-assed technology, and a non-writing project that's eating all my spare time and badly needs more, and the last-gasp push on querying Highway of Mirrors that somehow was also supposed to get done in January and is... only half so, and I am in no headspace to dive back into LST even if it is at a much-reduced pace from NaNo's.
Somehow, this month, I need to:
-reactivate LST
-finish querying HoM
-sub one|more short stories
-write another short story, no wait, two short stories (I still owe somebody one from May)
-do something about the writing laptop situation
-do enough stuff for the non-writing project to qualify as a full-time job if I were getting paid
Let's all sing the Doom Song now, shall we?
The original plan was to take December off, goof around with writing fanfic or whatever took my fancy, and then get back to Lightning Strikes Twice. Technology and other issues put paid to that, and I ended up not writing at all for most of December. So then January was supposed to be my goofing-off month -- and I did noodle around a bit with fanfic and such. But I also had this idea of starting a new series, and writing the first story in January -- which I mostly did, putting the finishing pre-beta touches on "Dix Dayton, Jet Jockey" only one day into the next month. Only now it's February, and the deal with taking January to goof off was that I would start cracking on LST again in February. And I'm still scrambling around with half-assed technology, and a non-writing project that's eating all my spare time and badly needs more, and the last-gasp push on querying Highway of Mirrors that somehow was also supposed to get done in January and is... only half so, and I am in no headspace to dive back into LST even if it is at a much-reduced pace from NaNo's.
Somehow, this month, I need to:
-reactivate LST
-finish querying HoM
-sub one|more short stories
-write another short story, no wait, two short stories (I still owe somebody one from May)
-do something about the writing laptop situation
-do enough stuff for the non-writing project to qualify as a full-time job if I were getting paid
Let's all sing the Doom Song now, shall we?
Entry tags:
What should I work on next?
One of the things that always happens when I'm nearing the end of a novel is that I start pondering what to write next. It's a great procrastination technique. This time was no exception, though what with computer failures and internet outages, the speculation is a tetch stale by now. But I'm going to post it anyway -- and not just for my own reference. This is not a democracy, and I think I know what I'm going to tackle next, but I'm very curious to see what pings for other people.
So, without further ado, the current list of novel ideas that are developed enough to consider starting on:
The Kitten Case - contemporary mystery. Has characters, first few steps of plot, no idea whodunnit. Kitten! Need to discard opener & start over. Potential sequel/series.
Financial Wizardry - fantasy/mystery. Will Wallace is a financial advisor to wizards, who has to find out who's been fiddling the till before his clients turn him into a toad. Has main character, assorted world-building snippets, blurb-level plot but not much step-by-step. Potential sequel/series.
pseudo-fairytale-princess thingie - fantasy. Backstory is sort-of-Cinderella; what happens after the commoner becomes Princess? Theme song is The Killers' "A Dustland Fairytale". Has characters, general idea of plot, and magic system, but no names. Need to revamp opener. Need to resolve minor world-building snag.
Sacrifices - secondary-world fantasy; "the swordfighting novel". Has opener from writing prompt but need to discard distorted later bits; characters, approximate plot, world-building. Needs clever linguistics trick to make plot work.
(Niall) - secondary-world fantasy; the magic-is-really-science novel. Has characters, premise, something approximating plot, opener and ending; needs clever science tricks.
Low Roads - post-Soviet-Union espionage (a Department novel). Has characters, start of plot but not resolution. Need to learn Russian.
No Gentlemen Here - post-WWII espionage (a Department novel). Has main character & some others, general plot outline. Theme song is Talking Heads' "Life During Wartime". Really about the formation of the Department. About 10,000 books to read for research.
urban fantasy thingie - urban fantasy, obviously, with possession and... other stuff. Has character, buckets of world-building that may or may not apply, scene snippets, but no cohesive whole and nothing even approximating a plot. Has most of a soundtrack.
Lightning Strikes Twice - sequel to ...And the Kitchen Sink; rollicking space-opera adventure, with spies. Has characters, partial random-stuff list, as much idea of plot as the last one. Probably a NaNo project.
litfic/romance - OTT romance with lit professor & diplomat. Has characters and full plot outline. Need to learn Italian.
There's also the adventure-novel thingie, but I need to figure out whether it's historical, contemporary, or futuristic before I can really count it as an option. It's got an Indiana-Jones-type feel, but that doesn't necessarily lock it down.
So, without further ado, the current list of novel ideas that are developed enough to consider starting on:
The Kitten Case - contemporary mystery. Has characters, first few steps of plot, no idea whodunnit. Kitten! Need to discard opener & start over. Potential sequel/series.
Financial Wizardry - fantasy/mystery. Will Wallace is a financial advisor to wizards, who has to find out who's been fiddling the till before his clients turn him into a toad. Has main character, assorted world-building snippets, blurb-level plot but not much step-by-step. Potential sequel/series.
pseudo-fairytale-princess thingie - fantasy. Backstory is sort-of-Cinderella; what happens after the commoner becomes Princess? Theme song is The Killers' "A Dustland Fairytale". Has characters, general idea of plot, and magic system, but no names. Need to revamp opener. Need to resolve minor world-building snag.
Sacrifices - secondary-world fantasy; "the swordfighting novel". Has opener from writing prompt but need to discard distorted later bits; characters, approximate plot, world-building. Needs clever linguistics trick to make plot work.
(Niall) - secondary-world fantasy; the magic-is-really-science novel. Has characters, premise, something approximating plot, opener and ending; needs clever science tricks.
Low Roads - post-Soviet-Union espionage (a Department novel). Has characters, start of plot but not resolution. Need to learn Russian.
No Gentlemen Here - post-WWII espionage (a Department novel). Has main character & some others, general plot outline. Theme song is Talking Heads' "Life During Wartime". Really about the formation of the Department. About 10,000 books to read for research.
urban fantasy thingie - urban fantasy, obviously, with possession and... other stuff. Has character, buckets of world-building that may or may not apply, scene snippets, but no cohesive whole and nothing even approximating a plot. Has most of a soundtrack.
Lightning Strikes Twice - sequel to ...And the Kitchen Sink; rollicking space-opera adventure, with spies. Has characters, partial random-stuff list, as much idea of plot as the last one. Probably a NaNo project.
litfic/romance - OTT romance with lit professor & diplomat. Has characters and full plot outline. Need to learn Italian.
There's also the adventure-novel thingie, but I need to figure out whether it's historical, contemporary, or futuristic before I can really count it as an option. It's got an Indiana-Jones-type feel, but that doesn't necessarily lock it down.
Entry tags:
The problem with that whooshing noise....
I meant to get the novel done before the beginning of May. Then before MediaWest. Then before the end of May. Then June 21?, which would have been exactly the four-year mark since I started. Then the end of June. Then the end of July. At least I made it before BistoCon, which was deadline... six? seven? of the current crop. There were whooshing noises for some time before that, too.
In the grand scheme of things, it doesn't matter when I got it done. I'm not under contract, or even (yet) in any professional relationship with expectations about productivity. And for my personal writerly development, the difference between four years and four years and two months is not that big a deal -- though I am deeply frustrated by not being able to hit that target.
However, that original May deadline wasn't just to fit it in around convention season; it was also about what would happen after. A nice, leisurely read-through, followed by edits as necessary and then setting the book aside with a sense of finality (for now). A couple of months off, in which I could mess about with short stories, get back to that just-for-fun project I've been missing, maybe play with some fanfic. Do some querying and submitting, that's been left by the wayside in the push to Finish The Book. Recharge the batteries, relax the writing muscles. Not no-writing, because my brain gets troublesome if I don't write semi-regularly, but low-pressure, small-stretches kinds of stuff, so I can remember that this writing thing is supposed to be fun.
And then, after several months of recuperation, think seriously about doing NaNo, and gear up for that.
Instead, I find myself with less than half the time I originally envisioned -- and the resulting drive to hurry-up-and-relax-right-now. The just-for-fun project has about 15-20K left to go; that's 3-4 months for me when I'm in good form. There's the story I promised someone at MediaWest. There's the final due-diligence push on querying Highway of Mirrors, which has also blown past more deadlines than I can count. A dozen or so short stories that should all be out there right now, and kept out there til they sell. The Doctor Who fanfic that I figured out how to un-stick a while back, and that Star Trek series I'm not writing, and maybe that last Atlantis story, and the fanfic all counts just as much because I promised myself I would relax, dammit!
And frankly, Falling From Ground was enough of a death-march that I'm a tad leery of grabbing hold of the hot stove element of another novel just yet. Even if I did nothing but doodle for the next two months, what kind of state would I be in, writing-wise, come November 1st? The NaNo project (should I choose to accept it) would be the sequel to ...And the Kitchen Sink, my NaNo win from a few years back. It should be fun, fast-paced, a bit wacky but sensible in a surreal way. I'm calling it Lightning Strikes Twice, and there's an implicit challenge in that title. Am I up to that challenge? Am I going to be up to that challenge, and can I possibly pack enough relaxation into the remaining time to make myself so?
Yeah. Hurry up and relax. 'Cause that's gonna work.
In the grand scheme of things, it doesn't matter when I got it done. I'm not under contract, or even (yet) in any professional relationship with expectations about productivity. And for my personal writerly development, the difference between four years and four years and two months is not that big a deal -- though I am deeply frustrated by not being able to hit that target.
However, that original May deadline wasn't just to fit it in around convention season; it was also about what would happen after. A nice, leisurely read-through, followed by edits as necessary and then setting the book aside with a sense of finality (for now). A couple of months off, in which I could mess about with short stories, get back to that just-for-fun project I've been missing, maybe play with some fanfic. Do some querying and submitting, that's been left by the wayside in the push to Finish The Book. Recharge the batteries, relax the writing muscles. Not no-writing, because my brain gets troublesome if I don't write semi-regularly, but low-pressure, small-stretches kinds of stuff, so I can remember that this writing thing is supposed to be fun.
And then, after several months of recuperation, think seriously about doing NaNo, and gear up for that.
Instead, I find myself with less than half the time I originally envisioned -- and the resulting drive to hurry-up-and-relax-right-now. The just-for-fun project has about 15-20K left to go; that's 3-4 months for me when I'm in good form. There's the story I promised someone at MediaWest. There's the final due-diligence push on querying Highway of Mirrors, which has also blown past more deadlines than I can count. A dozen or so short stories that should all be out there right now, and kept out there til they sell. The Doctor Who fanfic that I figured out how to un-stick a while back, and that Star Trek series I'm not writing, and maybe that last Atlantis story, and the fanfic all counts just as much because I promised myself I would relax, dammit!
And frankly, Falling From Ground was enough of a death-march that I'm a tad leery of grabbing hold of the hot stove element of another novel just yet. Even if I did nothing but doodle for the next two months, what kind of state would I be in, writing-wise, come November 1st? The NaNo project (should I choose to accept it) would be the sequel to ...And the Kitchen Sink, my NaNo win from a few years back. It should be fun, fast-paced, a bit wacky but sensible in a surreal way. I'm calling it Lightning Strikes Twice, and there's an implicit challenge in that title. Am I up to that challenge? Am I going to be up to that challenge, and can I possibly pack enough relaxation into the remaining time to make myself so?
Yeah. Hurry up and relax. 'Cause that's gonna work.
Entry tags:
Too Tired to Remember a Subject Line
So, here I sit, some few chapters/15,000 words or so from the end of the novel. I know, in broad strokes, what still needs to happen: they find the bad guy's contact and interrogate him/her, the rebels do that thing I've been thinking about since I realized I had a sub-plot, the second both helps and gets in the way of the first, etc., etc.
And I've got no words.
This can mean a number of things, including that I've taken a wrong turn (don't think so, in this case), that there's some necessary element missing (quite likely), or that I'm utterly exhausted by various Life and can't brain (pretty much certain). The missing element requires brainstorming (if I don't just want to wait for it to appear, and I don't), so I've spent the afternoon playing with post-it notes, and organizing the remaining snippets I'm hoping to use, and reading plot-related articles. So far I've gotten that there's a bit I set up that will come in handy for a plot twist -- don't know what -- and there's a character I set up earlier that I meant to use again and haven't, and maybe he can provide the solution to the twist -- don't know how. And I've still got no words.
I remember something similar at about this point with the Haley novel, where I knew what happened and couldn't make it go. Maybe I should look up when that was, and see if I uncharacteristically made any journal entries that shed some light on the process.
The Oblique Strategies offering for this is "Don't be afraid of things because they're easy to do".
So maybe I should just go ahead and write the MC and compatriot chasing after the contact, which seems like it'll be too easy, and see what pops in to trip them up.
After a nap or three, that is. |)
And I've got no words.
This can mean a number of things, including that I've taken a wrong turn (don't think so, in this case), that there's some necessary element missing (quite likely), or that I'm utterly exhausted by various Life and can't brain (pretty much certain). The missing element requires brainstorming (if I don't just want to wait for it to appear, and I don't), so I've spent the afternoon playing with post-it notes, and organizing the remaining snippets I'm hoping to use, and reading plot-related articles. So far I've gotten that there's a bit I set up that will come in handy for a plot twist -- don't know what -- and there's a character I set up earlier that I meant to use again and haven't, and maybe he can provide the solution to the twist -- don't know how. And I've still got no words.
I remember something similar at about this point with the Haley novel, where I knew what happened and couldn't make it go. Maybe I should look up when that was, and see if I uncharacteristically made any journal entries that shed some light on the process.
The Oblique Strategies offering for this is "Don't be afraid of things because they're easy to do".
So maybe I should just go ahead and write the MC and compatriot chasing after the contact, which seems like it'll be too easy, and see what pops in to trip them up.
After a nap or three, that is. |)
You might be a writer if....
Despite being a walking plague vector and permanently attached to a box of kleenex, I wrote 410 words today.
Go (cough, cough, blow) me!
Go (cough, cough, blow) me!