Echoes in a Hollow Space

I've got nothing to complain about. I live a privileged life, all told, and so far my health is holding up. I have a roof over my head, more than sufficient to eat, a job to pay the bills, a second job that I mostly love except when novels refuse to finish themselves without my assistance.

I even managed to write 1000 words this morning. It fought me every step of the way (or I fought it, hard to say which). It was, in fact, a fight scene and I'm bloody sick of writing fight scenes—but it's written now. From this point on it's just writing the heart of the book, the thing that I've been aiming at for 484 pages. The thing that makes the entire enterprise stand or fall. (Mommy!)

I don't know why I should be nervous about that, especially not after the disaster of Night Warrior/The Making Blood. No, I'm sure that failure to stick a clean landing isn't playing any part in this refusal to take that final jump and finish the course. Nope, nope, couldn't be that.

I'm going to go to the post office and do some other errands, then maybe I'll come back home and try to write some more.

Spread the lolbook:

http://jimhines.livejournal.com/tag/lol

(courtesy nikwdhmos)

Okay, ow, of the day: Three rejections in three days. Universe, could you please space them out a bit more? Thank you.

But it's not so bad of the day: That just means I'm sending more stuff out, and once the initial blech was over, I moved on fairly quickly and sent more stuff out.

And finally of the day: I'm finally starting to get excited about closing in on the end of Charged with Folly. I finished off chapter 27 (redux) with a flourish and am actually anticipating the final chapter (or two) with eagerness. Huzzah!

It would be nice to finish this weekend, but I can't guarantee that. I'll just do the best I can.

Books I've just finished reading and will admit to in public of the day: Territory by Emma Bull. Hmm. Not sure what I think about it now.

ETA: Duh! Territory is the first of two books. Everything makes sense now! This book is definitely worth the read: rich and complex characters brought vividly to life; a marvelous melding of Old West and magic without any of the hokeyness I feared might take place; good writing. One of the most original books I've read in awhile.

Random quote of the day:

"For dreaming may be the only method of initiation left to us: each night brings a 'little death' by which we acclimatize to the Otherworld, rehearsing the journey that all souls have to take in the end."

—Patrick Harpur, Daimonic Reality

I've always wound up hating my novels by the time I'm writing the last of them, in a I-don't-want-to-do-this-anymore way. Not uncommon, I think. I'm literally within chapters of finishing Charged with Folly, but each writing session is a force myself situation, and I can barely eke out 500-750 words. I don't know why. Usually I get swept up in the "Oh! I'm almost finished!" excitement by this time, but it refuses to come. I know I've probably hated finishing other novels this much, but my perception of the moment (always an untrustworthy narrator) says this has been the worst.

Which is not at all the same as hating the novel as a piece of work. Even though this one has problems and will need some fixing, I'm overall happy with it. I think it will wind up being a decent piece of work once I whip it into shape. Flawed, but they're all flawed in their own way.

I've just got to get over this last little recalcitrant bit.

Okay, all done whining now. For now.

116,500 / 120,000 (97.1%)

Chapter 27 is well-launched, but I just couldn't stand to look at the story on Friday, so I took the writing session off, and wound up taking Saturday and Sunday off, too. (Busy weekend.) But I'll dive right back in tomorrow. Swear.

113,750 / 120,000 (94.8%)

So back in the day when I was writing on my lunch hour in longhand, I produced an average of 500-750 words a day (but more often 500), and that included the time it took me to reread and "correct" the previous day's session (a good way to get my brain back into the writing space quickly). It wasn't uncommon for me to hit 1000 words on a given session, and on a really good day I could produce 1250 or 1500, but the average was 500-750.

Now that I have technology on my side (go, Neo!), I'm producing 750-1000 words a day (but usually 750). On good days, I produce 1500 or 1750, sometimes even 2k. So the Neo has provided me with an extra page a day on most days. Not a blistering pace, but it's definitely an improvement.

I have bad weeks, of course, but overall things have improved. Technology is a good thing.

And since I'm on an Anne Lamott kick this week, here's another one for you:

"One writer I know tells me that he sits down every morning and says to himself nicely, 'It's not like you don't have a choice, because you do—you can either type or kill yourself.'"

—Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

103,250 / 120,000 (85.0%)

I don't know how near, but at last I can see the end of Charged with Folly looming on the horizon. And it caught me all unawares!

I've been worried the last month because it seemed I was veering off onto another one of my infamous tangents. I wasn't at all sure how it related to the main body of the story. I kept writing, hoping that I would either quickly find its relevance to the story, or it would become evident that I'd tricked myself. If I had tricked myself, it would mean chucking a lot of work, but fighting this thread of narrative wasn't working, either. When I fought it, I got stalled. I just had to go with it.

Then late last week everything fell into place. I knew where the tangent was taking me, how it related to the larger story, and, it turns out, it wasn't a tangent at all, but an integral part of the puzzle. Once I saw that, the ending rose out of mists and dark waters—and it's not all that far away!

There may yet be snags ahead, but right now it looks like "Land ho!" and clear sailing to port. Arrrr!


Random quote of the day:

"We have a habit of turning out to be what we're supposed to be, regardless of whether we like it or not, or know it or not."

—K. J. Parker, Shadow

Note: Until I did a google image search to illustrate this quote with filters off, I did not realize how many online porn stars were named Destiny. (Do not try this at home unless you really do want an eyeful.)

I said to my friend this week, "I'm quitting writing."
She said, "What, again?"

She's right, of course. I'm always quitting. It never sticks. I have no illusion it will stick this time, either. But there's always the possibility it will. Sometimes that panics me. I feel no particular panic right now.

I took the week off because I desperately needed to be doing something besides writing right now. After four days I already thought of a way I wanted to rewrite the ending to Shivery Bones to make it more consistent (and to allow me to steal part of it for the current WIP without having to do a total rethink on that). I'm not exactly yearning towards other ideas, but they're tickling. Late in the transmission of a novel, other ideas always start up with their own bandwagon. It's different this time, only I'm not sure how yet.

The only thing I'm not yearning towards is the current WIP—and I'm so close there, so damned close. It's stalled, and I don't know if it's just because I need a break, if this is another version of late-in-the-manuscript panic, or that I've gone off on a tangent that's leading me astray. Sometimes I stall when the gee-whiz-this-would-be-neato center of my brain takes over and pushes the story off in a new direction. Sometimes this is the correct direction, sometimes it isn't, and sometimes I have to pause until I figure out which. I don't mean figure it out in a brain sense, not think it through logically and plot it out, but figure it out in a gut sense. Let the gut catch up with where I've headed off to, let the gut digest whether this is where I really want to go. Sometimes no left brain analysis is involved whatsoever. All the processes takes place off screen, if you will. One of the perils of organic writing, at least the way I do it, is that there's a lot of gut action involved—and as we all know, sometimes the by-product of guts isn't, um, pleasant.

Or maybe it's a right brain action posing as gut action. This thing that guides my stories feels centered in the gut, but I suspect it's really north of there and hiding down dark alleyways where lurk unsavory characters: cutthroats, thieves, hoors, and other unscrupulous but fascinating types. They are the ones that know how this world works beneath the skin, beneath all the shining bright promises that turn out to be false. Typically, they love doing by subterfuge, pretending to be a gut when they are really denizens of the shadow synapses; the lonely, dark byways where writing hits the road.

It will all work itself out. Or won't. I have passed through this landscape before. I imagine I'll pass through it again. I'm just following the bread crumbs.

93,000 / 100,000 (93.0%)

93,000 / 120,000 (77.5%)

First, I had to write a self-evaluation today, an exercise in hyperbolic conflation if ever there was one. And I had to carve time out of a over-busy morning schedule to do it. That'll lead to chocolate bingeing every time. Then, I've been denied writing time two days in a row. Four if you count the weekend. I usually get some writing in on the weekend, but that didn't happen this weekend. More chocolate! Next, some people who had to do the same self-evaluation as I were having whiny snivelly fits about having to do it and I was not in the mood. Be a man! buck up! CHOC-O-LATE!!

Adding to all this, I've reached a point that I reach in every novel, what I call the panic point. That's when I've got a sufficient bulk of novel behind me to know I'll probably finish, but still have a ways to go before I type The End. This is also the time when the passages through the story start narrowing as I draw closer to the denouement. Alternate possibilities disappear on the horizon, never to be seen again, and I begin to wonder if I'm going to be able to pull off the vision thing as, well, envisioned. Do I really know what I'm doing? Is the ending as viable as it seemed when I thought of it, or is it just an absurdity echo in the gag factory of my mind? Am I about to make a really big fool of myself? Did I write the correct novel after all? Or should I have turned the story in a different direction and written that other novel?

Oh, slather me in chocolate!

Knowing this panic happens with every novel, I should draw comfort from it, but I never do. This time around I've got a fresh failure to remind me that I don't always pull it off at the end: the overly ambitious Night Warrior/The Making Blood—three, three, three novels in one! I expect that one's going to continue haunting me until I either do a successful rewrite or successfully finish another novel. I'm hoping Charged with Folly will be that successful finish, but one never knows.

I do like the ending of CWF. I took a mechanism I used at the end of my first completed novel, a sort of generic quest fantasy with a science fiction twist which will never see the light of day again, and will apply part of it to this ending. Then I took another piece of science and added it to the mix with a bunch of metaphysical/philosophical crud to finish off the concept. It seemed like a viable resolution. But some days there isn't enough chocolate in the world to reassure me—until the damned thing is actually done.

Random quote of the day:

"I'm here because I was born here and thus ruined for anywhere else."

—Colson Whitehead, The Colossus of New York


Something for the boys (of both sexes):

Well, the Work Project From Hell has finally wound down and I've spent the day trying to catch up on everything else.

Somewhere in there, chapter 14 got finished, as Charged with Folly hit 62,000 words. I'm thinking this middle of the book may be suffering a bit from plot flatulence. There's a certain aroma which reminds me of Plotting By Stupidity, but we'll see if it airs out over time.

Maybe what's wrong isn't plot flatulence but worldbuilding flatulence. The thought occurred to me today that perhaps when I do the rewrites I need to put in more shiny steampunk machines or exotic critters. The middle of the book hasn't seemed saggy to me because for the most part it's been chugging along quite nicely and I haven't felt that middle book fatigue (yet) because I struggled so much with the beginning. But plot or worldbuilding gastric distress...yes, that's a possibility.

Or maybe I'm still just obsessing on last week's stomach virus.


Random quote of the day:

"Always listen to the experts. They'll tell you what can't be done, and why. Then do it."

—Robert Heinlein


Which quote I find somewhat ironic considering how often he's invoked as The Voice of Authority.

Between being laid low for several days with stomach virus (which I'm still trying to get over), and taking a day off the usual writing slot to think through the plot point chapter I'm working on, production has been abysmal this week. Alas, alack, maybe next week.

This week:



Last week: