Echoes in a Hollow Space

Writingness of the day: I've rechristened Brother Wolf because that working title is completely obsolete under the new scheme. Its new working title is, Rough Magic, but I'll probably change that, too. It harkens back to The Tempest, which isn't a bad thing at all, but unfortunately both Mary Stewart and Mercedes Lackey have used This Rough Magic, and a Russell Crowe movie was also called Rough Magic. (I happened to have loved that movie so much I bought it, but Rotten Tomatoes only gave it one fresh tomato out of seven, which I think is way too harsh.)

Yeah, yeah, I know, you can't copyright titles, but I don't like to go into a project with a title that I know has been used a few times. If that happens after a book has sold, tough bananas, but until that time, I'm going to try to come up with something else.

Titles are usually one of the first things that come to me for a project, and they become thoroughly ingrained with the story mythos—so changing the titles can be a painful affair. This one has had three so far: A Taste of Night was the original title, but it became obsolete, then I was considering taking up that name again until Vicki Petersson used it. Woe is me. One advantage of having so many back and forths with the name is that I didn't feel at all conflicted this time out.

What was I thinking? of the day: You know that inner critic you have, the one that's always telling you that your writing sucks? Yeah, I know you have one. I haven't known a writer who didn't, pro or non-pro. One of the more disturbing aspects of looking over this old material is that I apparently went through a phase where I formalized that internal negativity by putting them as footnotes in all my manuscripts. Egad! No wonder I didn't finish any writing for three years.

I got this one from sosostris2012. It's a different take on the first line meme. This is everything I worked on in 2006, finished or not. (So, I cheated a little with some of these and put the opening paragraph down—but only on a few.)

If this had been a list of everything I finished in 2006, it would be a short list indeed: Night Warrior, a novel. I did a lot of revising this year, some of it quite extensive (Shivery Bones) and started some stories, but the only thing I actually finished was NW. That novel just about killed me, which seemed to be a theme for the year.

( Behind a cut to reduce boredom. )

Quote of the day:

"To ask an author who hopes to be a serious writer if his work is autobiographical is like asking a spider where he buys his thread."

—Robertson Davies


I'm not sure I would agree with that, any more than I would agree with the cliché that you have to suffer to produce great art. Certainly autobiography, neuroses, and difficult lives have been components of the artistic experience, but I don't think they're necessarily the only things that produce good art. I think the need to produce art comes from a vacuum somewhere, though. Whether it's a painful past; a dissatisfaction with the way the world is and wanting to make it better; a feeling of being lost in a crowd and wanting something that is uniquely yours—there are many entrances into that Void Which Needs to be Filled.


Writing talk of the day:

I've just realized the old novel I recently took a look at, Brother Wolf, is basically the plot of the documentary film, Unknown White Male, but with SF and thriller elements thrown in.

My novel was inspired by an interview with a woman who was in a terrible accident and lost her entire memory. Fascinated, I started researching memory and amnesia.

Complete and permanent amnesia is very rare—most get partial amnesia and gradually recover their memories, or most of their memories. It's not at all like it's usually portrayed in fictional movies. But what happened to this woman, and apparently what happened to the true life man portrayed in Unknown White Male, is that once the memories are completely gone, a whole new personality emerges, as if what makes us distinctly who we are is the thirty percent or so of our personality matrix that is due to experience (i.e., that isn't genetics and/or "womb experience").

One striking incident, a great telling detail, I remember about the woman I saw interviewed, was when she related how odd everything in her home seemed to her when she finally returned to it. She looked in her closet and thought, "God, what awful clothes. They're hideous." She got rid of everything and started building a new wardrobe to go with her emerging new taste. She worked outward from there, changing everything in her house, and everything in her life. Some of the relationships she'd had before the accident survived this process, some did not. But she said she couldn't help that. She couldn't be the person she used to be anymore because that person and her tastes and attitudes were a complete stranger to her.

People who have seen Unknown White Male report a similar arc for the man portrayed in the film. One critic said the new Doug seems happier and more comfortable in his skin than the old Doug. He's starting fresh and he has a chance to build a life all over from scratch.

The other way to look at that, I suppose, is that he lost himself and may never get that self back.

I'd be hard-pressed to say what is better and what is worse.