Everything is held together with stories

[pjthompson]

Quote of the day:

"Everything is held together with stories. That is all that is holding us together, stories and compassion."

—Barry Lopez, interview, Poets and Writers, Mar/Apr 1994

Writing business of the day: 1000 words today. Not even a half-page yesterday. There's always a bit of struggle and flailing about when I segue from the 6th century portion of my novel to the 1975 and then 1968 portions. It's like I'm so caught in the dream of that distant past that I have to reset the Tardis and give it a couple of good kicks in the control panel before it enters the next dream. The mindset is very different in the Back Way Back. (Which reminds me, I've got to finish the last 40 pages of The Life of the World To Come that I've been afraid of reading for the last month and a half.)

The reverse happens, too: transitioning from '68 to the 6th. Getting my head, man, around the really old timey way of thinking after being in such groovy times. It's a trip and a half, man!

Typo of note: "You cannot hold on to that which is list!"

Sounds like somebody's got a Scots accent.

Ouch of the day: I'm fine until the Alleve and the Myoflex wear off. At this rate, I should be just about healed by the time I'm ready to do this to myself again. :-)

I told my mother that they had classes for people who had restricted movement, either because of surgery, injury, age, weight. "That's nice," she said. "You should go," I told her. "It's just ten minutes from your house." "Oh no, I'd be way too intimidated to walk into a class like that."

My God, it's genetic. And I'm just like my mother after all. Oh noooooo!

Comments

[everyonesakitty.livejournal.com]

niiiice quote :)

[pjthompson]

Barry's a nice writer. :-)

[handworn.livejournal.com]

Got me wondering now...with cellphones omnipresent today, what form would the Tardis take? Sure would stand out as a phone booth. Someone would try to sell it as an antique.

[pjthompson]

In the last incarnation of the doctor (Paul McGann) they had the Tardis appear in an alley (in America of all places!) and people were kind of freaky about it. And that was pre-2000. I can only imagine how freaky it would look today.

[handworn.livejournal.com]

Hmm. They could disguise it as an SUV, here, or at least they could if they wanted to be obnoxious. Or a dumpster, which would at least have some humorous possibilities. Or if it appeared in Europe, it could appear to be one of those freestanding pay toilets.

[pjthompson]

lol-For some reason tanning booth popped into my brain. All except the SUV have comic possibilities.

[wine-love-pen.livejournal.com]

There's always a bit of struggle and flailing about when I segue from the 6th century portion of my novel to the 1975 and then 1968 portions.

I'm doing this too in Beacon. What I've decided on is that I'm not writing the story as it will appear--with alternating snippets of the past and the present. I am writing the entire past scenes first, then the present. It's the only way I can keep myself grounded in that moment. Plus, it will give me time to really hunker down and immerse myself in historical research without having to come back to the present and lose the emotions and details I had just gathered.

This means I will not be posting the novel chronologically on OWW, but oh well. :)

[pjthompson]

What I've decided on is that I'm not writing the story as it will appear--with alternating snippets of the past and the present. I am writing the entire past scenes first, then the present.

That's the sensible way of doing things. Unfortunately, I can never seem to do what's sensible when it comes to writing things down. :-) For me, to keep the story straight--and I know this is entirely counterintuitive, but so me--I have to tell it the way it's going to appear in the book.

Bottom line: everybody has got to do what works best for them. Whatever gets words on the page.