Echoes in a Hollow Space

It's been awhile since I've lived in the dream of a story. I'm not sure why. Or maybe I can think of a lot of reasons, each too boring to go into. But I miss it. The phantom limb of my imagination throbs, but I can't scratch it.

And yet, things seem to be moving again. Slowly, the phantom limb solidifies. Last week an old high fantasy novel that I abandoned long ago started whispering to me again. "I've got a new title for you, dearie. Much better than the tawdry old one."

Ice In My Bones

I'd done quite a lot of work on that one without actually writing it. So much outlining, in fact, that it killed the dream of the story, which effectively killed the possibility of me writing it. The main character of that one has never quite left me alone, though, popping his head up now and again like a toadstool on the lawn. I think he'd like his shot at a fairy ring or some such. Maybe now that I've forgotten many of the nuts and bolts of the story I can go back to dreaming it and write the damned thing down. Maybe not.

Pressing a lot harder last week was the sequel to A Rain of Angels. I've done quite bit of work on that one, too. I still don't have a solid enough ending, but most of the main characters have names now. Still one crucial person left unnamed. I'm sure she'll whisper her name to me one of these days soon, though. Carsten and Rye and the others will return, but there are a new batch of New Batchers, too.

And still no title for that one: An Intermittent Flurry of Angels perhaps? A Blitzkrieg of Angels? Even More Barfing Angels?

It remains a mystery. But one that will probably be solved.

And I'm doing the "reader's read through" of A Rain of Angels right now. I'm not allowing myself to make major changes, just reading several chapters a day as a reader would (minor fixes allowable). I'm glad I am. Many more typos than I would have expected and odd bits of formatting and left out things. I'm up to chapter 16 and it reads pretty good. Not perfect, but yanno, I'm done with it.

And Venus in Transit? Still working it's way slowly through the workshop to much general ambivalence. I've inched closer to a solution to the problems on that one, too, as well as some major revisions to what's already done—which I'll probably do before posting it to (hopefully) get reactions on the new material. But some crucial things still elude me.

I imagine my imagination will come up with something there, too. Where there's life there's hope, after all.

I missed two of my weekday writing sessions, plus I didn't get any writing done over the weekend. Fortunately, on the days when I actually did write, I had better-than-average sessions, so the word count isn't as pitiful as it might have been.

I was also convinced most of the week that I was writing the current chapter from the wrong POV, but as I closed in on the end of it, I finally saw why it needed to be from that POV and it smoothed out nicely. Funny how that happens. It does me absolutely no good to ask myself, as They recommend, "Who has the most at stake in this scene?" to determine who's telling the tale. Once my instincts decide on a POV, that's pretty much it and I've got to live with it. Every rare now and then I'll switch the tale-teller in rewrites, but usually, not so much. Because most of those times, the instincts seem to have it write. Or right.

Or I could be delusional. Funny how that happens.


Venus In Transit (SMF)

87,750 / 100,000 (87.8%)

Random quote of the day:

"Fucking up, if you aspire to be an artist, may be the great creative principle: getting broken, broken wide open, and then delving into the shards. Moving on. Painting, writing—these are always, first and foremost, struggles for authenticity."

—Breyten Breytenbach, in Lawrence Weschler's "A Horrible Face, but One's Own," Calamities of Exile: Three Nonfiction Novellas

( Illustrated version. )

The Delving Part

I edited the above quote so I could fit it more easily with the graphic (and because it gets posted in a public place at work, I had to fiddle the "fucking" part), but I think the full quote is worth sharing:

“Self-knowledge is not self-abasement or self-rejection. I was, I am, a flawed human being. But that’s more interesting than being an iron cast. And there’s something to be said for fucking up. In fact, fucking up, if you aspire to be an artist, may be the great creative principle: getting broken, broken wide open, and then delving among the shards. Moving on. Painting, writing—these are always, first and foremost, struggles for authenticity.”

I have to constantly remind myself of this: that doing art is not just about success, but about failure. Failure—trying stuff that doesn't work, learning from it, moving on—is how the creative process works. It's about pushing yourself and examining yourself and constant reevaluation and doubt and insecurity and fear and, every once in a while, something really splendid, something that makes you know it's all worthwhile. Being an artist is not at all a comfortable thing, though there's a lot of romantic notions about the process. Anyone who is seriously doing art knows how uncomfortable it can be to want to do something right and not quite make it. There's a fine line between a nutter and an artist. As Jung pointed out, sometimes an artist is a nutter who has learned to channel their neurosis successfully. He stated it more politely than that.

I am not saying that you have to suffer for your art, just that if you're serious about it, that's probably going to happen anyway, inside, in that place where you doubt and fear and live and die. I am not saying artists are better than anyone else on the planet, or a special class of people, or need to be worshiped as truthgivers or any of that other junk that's so often hung around their necks. I am saying that through a convoluted combination of nature and nurture artists are people who move through the world with an overwhelming need to create that goes against all common sense, all practical considerations, all naysaying. It's an integral part of who they are and without it they feel lost. They may give it up, but the hole inside never closes, and often turns sour.

Much is made about succeeding in the publishing game or the gallery game or the dance hall—wherever the money and acclaim part of the equation sits. And that's all good stuff, really good stuff. But for an artist, I think, success and failure is more than that. It's about those incremental moments of trying to do better, pushing yourself, discovering yourself, rediscovering yourself, getting sick of yourself—and starting the whole thing over again. We all quit the business sometimes when it gets to be overwhelming, but we usually start back up again once the latest crisis passes. The only true failure is giving up completely, and finally. Because it is about the art at the end of the day. It's about assembling the broken bits in new ways, of stumbling your way through the world, trying to see things from a fresh perspective, about being true to yourself. It's about a life raft on a vast, wine dark sea that nature/nurture threw you into when you were too young to have a say in things.

In each novel I always seem to reach a place, generally somewhere in the middle, but not always, where I commit an egregious infodump outrage—pages and pages of IN-FOR-MATION. Sometimes, I'll admit, I commit more than one of these. It doesn't do any good for me to try editing it down in the first draft because if I try to limit or edit-as-I-go it stalls the novel. I just have to release that "breath I didn't know I was holding" and get on with it. Let it have its way and worry about fixing it after the first draft is done.

I'm an organic writer and used to writing on the fly, but even so I do a great deal of worldbuilding before I commit to a novel. Mostly the big stuff, but also quite a bit of minutiae. Since I find it impossible to work from an outline, this is my hedge against jumping off the cliff and not being fast enough to "build my wings on the way down." In the day to day of writing, though, "stuff" is going to come up that I haven't sufficiently thought through. It took me awhile to figure out that these infodumps were how my psyche chose to work through things.

My first drafts are always about me telling the story to myself. I am writing with an audience in mind and generally try to do a good, clean job, but ultimately, that first draft is mine—which is one of the reasons outlines don't work. If I've already told myself the story, I feel no drive to tell it again. I need to get caught up in the momentum of finding out and that's part of what propels me forward through the months of completing the draft. I know what happens in the end, but there are all these things in the middle that are surprises. These mysterious pathways remain obscure until I put one foot in front of the other heading for that far off ending, peaking like the pinnacle of a Mayan temple over the top of the rainforest.

So I have to "tell" these pathways to myself, often in painful and unnecessary detail, in order to internalize them like all the other stuff. I no longer sweat the infodumps. If they remain infodumps in the second draft, then it's time to sweat. Time to get out the machete and hack my way through the creeping lianas and strangler figs to that temple in the sky, waiting for me to discover it and liberate it from its jungle covering.

This morning—or actually, I guess it's afternoon—I realized that I might not have dueling novels after all. I've been thinking of these as "part of JK's story" and "part of Sam's" story when, really, the answer has been staring me in the face all the time.

It's Ramona's story.

She won't be telling it herself and that's what's confused me. Ramona's story actually works better viewed from the observation of others, and that's a deeply unconventional way of telling a story, at least for me. But it's an ironic, twisty, humorous story—although I doubt Ramona would understand the irony of it all. She is, within her narrow confines, even more earnest than JK and deeply committed to her own P.O.V., and that view is often at odds with everyone else's perception of reality (including the reader's, I suspect). So the irony only works when told on the outside, and it's all about shaking up perception.

So I am both dismayed and energized by this revelation. The discovery process is what thrills me about writing, but now I have to refigure wherein square one lies so that I can mosey my way back to it. I suspect it starts with that damned story between JK and Ramona, but I'm not going to stop the flow of what's going on now in order to do that moseying. I'm pushing forward with this since it's flowing so well. If it dries up, or if it brings fresh revelations and ideas, I...may do something else.

In the meantime, onward.


I caught this morning morning's minion...

Instincts play a big part in my writing. Generally, if I follow them they lead me to interesting places, making connections between my story and my characters that my conscious mind can't get to. For me, outlining kills this process of discovery. The story stalls because to my instinctual mind it's already been written, so why write it again?

This method isn't without problems. Sometimes it doesn't work at all, other times it only half works: I'll start off with an idea, some characters and setting, and pretty soon I think I know what the story is about and head off down the highway. Inevitably, I hit a pothole—usually a big 'ol pothole that can turn into a sinkhole. I flail around trying to get out of the pit, having a hard time (sometimes) even recognizing where the edges of the pit lie. (Or lay, as the case may be.)

When that happens, I can either keep flailing until something pulls me out, or lay the story aside and wait until my conscious mind catches up with my instinctual mind. At times I need the help of an outside agency. When the problem isn't with my characters or setting, but with the deeper layers of plot—the themes, for instance—I sometimes have to look to research reading to rescue me. I do a certain amount of research reading before I start writing, but only on the ideas that I recognize up front are going to be part of the story. The problem is with all those ideas I didn't realize were there going in.

( Case in point... )

Chapter 14 is a plot point chapter. Plot point chapters always give me fits because they're the places where the Maguffin happens, where the wrench goes into the works, and you've got to make sure that when they're done, your book is still aiming in the right direction.

Not that I tend to think of my fiction writing in moviespeak terms or plan things out that thoroughly (though once a film student always a film student). Once I know the characters fairly well and the general worldbuilding has taken shape, once I know how the thing is supposed to end (however I get there), then I take off running and jump from rock to rock. I don't say, "In chapter 14, plot point C happens." I just write like a hellion until I reach one of these pivot points and then I squiggle and squirm until I work my way through them. These chapters always take longer then the headlong dash of story between the pivots.

I'm still squiggling and squirming even though I know, essentially, how chapter 14 turns out; how, in other words, it turns in the direction I want it to go. And for once, it's being cooperative and agreeable about turning that way.

It should be clear sailing, but instead, to cloud this entry with yet another metaphor, I'm like a horse that refuses the jump. I stop dead, and the vision quest of my story goes sailing over my neck, or into the jump itself, or crashes to the ground. But the dream is hearty. It gets up, brushes itself off, and starts riding me again. Points off for balking, but I've been taking the rest of the course well. It'll head me around for a new approach to the jump. Maybe this time I'll go over it without a hitch.

But not today. Today I read some more of Warped Passages by Lisa Randall. But that's another post.

Random quote of the day:

"Death is only a horizon; and a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight."

—Rossiter W. Raymond

So, is there anyone out there who's not on their way to WFC? And why do I think WTF every time I see WFC? I think WFC is a perfectly fine convention and hope to go there some day, maybe next year, but my mind persists in turning it into WTF. I am some funny in the head sometimes.

Unsolicited plug of the day:

Whenever I log onto Amazon it keeps popping up with Magic Bites by Ilona Andrews--iagor. (Awesome cover art, btw.) I get excited and reach for the Add to Cart button, then realize it isn't out yet (March 2007). This is a pre-order nudge. But I appreciate their eagerness to sell it to me. I'm eager to buy it. It looks good. You should check it out.

Writingness of the day:

Eudora's Song got a no-thank-you yesterday, so I did a quick read through, cut maybe another half page, and sent it back out today. It's good to keep it circulating, though I remain as unhopeful as ever. And although that's true, I'm not particularly bummed. I'm writing something new that I like so all's write right with the world. I'm not even mopey over the failure of Night Warrior/The Making Blood earlier this summer--though I suspect that wouldn't have been as big of a deal, either, if it hadn't coincided with my summer mopey season. And I should say that now, with the perspective of time and a new project, I don't consider that an outright failure. It's a problem that needs solving--but that's for another day.

Which reinforces yet again that it's the process that's the most important thing.

Unless, of course, you've got a publisher breathing down your neck saying, "Where's the next book, dammit?" (We should all be so lucky.) Then it's pretty much, "Screw the process! It's the outcome that's the most important part!"


Random quote of the day:

"The truth is rarely pure and never simple."

—Oscar Wilde


Damn straight, 'Scar.

I've written five. Okay, okay, so I'm counting that last one as two because I'm going to break it in half and make two out of it. Whatever. That doesn't qualify me for much, but at least my "technique" has worked more than once.

I think I'll let my list speak for itself.

Here's what I do:

⇐ open door inside brain
➜ watch character do or say something strange
➘ ponder what this means
↑ become obsessed with character
⇔ want to find out what this means
➤ flesh out character so I can see what it means
↵ start asking character(s) snoopy questions about their background
↓ allow other characters to latch on for the ride
➷ grab a bunch of random, unconnected ideas floating in the media, the zeitgeist, or the air and see if they apply to the character(s)
➯ watch in amazement as some ideas stick when thrown at the character(s)
➬ read up on more stuff like those ideas, in depth
← throw more stuff at the character(s)
↕ start fleshing out connections between character's background and ideas which are sticking to character(s)
➽ envision a place in which the character(s) and the ideas coexist
➚ flesh it out in excruciating detail, doodling and dawdling
⇐ get a vague idea of what happens in the middle/end of the story
➲ sharpen a dozen pencils, none of which will be used in the process, but the act of sharpening gives more time to ponder
➹ point brain in direction of the ending
➠ start writing stuff down

Quotes of the day:

"He who cannot give anything away cannot feel anything either."

—Friedrich Neitzsche


"A human being has a natural desire to have more of a good thing than he needs."

—Mark Twain


Writingness of the day: So I'm trying to complete a new Dos Lunas story—yeah, that series of stories I was just talking about, the ones that have yet to generate a sale. But I haven't completed a completely new short story in well over a year, maybe more like two, and I know from past experience that sometimes I've just got to finish something, anything, in order to bust up that kind of creative logjam and move on. This Dos Lunas story probably has the best shot at getting written of any currently in the unfinished pile.

The other thing I'm trying to get past is that little voice of judgment that's been a pox on my house lately. That mini-magistrate is the voice of doom for finishing projects, always negative, and I've learned that if I don't figure out how to shut it up, I can't create. I'm not talking about creative judgment here, that's always got to be part of the process, I'm talking about that mean little fucker who mocks the first draft into incompletion.

It doesn't matter how crappy first drafts are. The first draft is the one where you just put it on the page, try stuff out, get in there and wallow, go over the top if you need to, and the judge and jury should play no part in it—at least not in my process. Because those negative voices generally have more to do with the people who have put me down in my life, tried to keep me in my place, or make me conform to their version of reality. They have to do with negative programming going back to childhood, as they do in most people's lives who share head space with a mini-magistrate.

We never lose those little judgers. That programming is so integral to the fabric of our childhoods that we can't rip them out of our consciousness without ripping out a part of ourselves. If you like the art you do, the life you're currently living, or even—miracle of miracles—the self you currently are, then you have to embrace the whole package. Everything that happened to you, every crappy little voice, as well as the good stuff, contributed to making you who you are, as an artist and a human being. You'd better learn to live with it all because ignoring it just doesn't work. It comes out in ugly ways if you try to hold it down, and it will come back to bite you bigtime on the ass. You'd better develop coping strategies, otherwise the judgers and the crap merchants inside you will make sure you don't accomplish anything at all.