Echoes in a Hollow Space

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I've come to the conclusion that I'm not young enough to be absolutely certain I know the truth. The shades of grey multiply with each year. But that's okay. The things that important are beyond those kinds of thought processes. We can feel around their edges, if we try real hard and remember they're always changing shape anyway.

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I’ve been sick for the last few months, all sorts of unusual gastrointestinal and stomach issues, about every two weeks, interspersed with bouts of feeling absolutely fine. I finally went to the doctor last Friday. He thought it might be pancreatitis brought on by a medication he prescribed just about two months ago, because that’s one of the rare possible side effects. I’m not sure about that because people are usually hospitalized for pancreatitis and he didn’t suggest that. True, I resisted going to the doctor all that time--because that’s just what I do. I finally took myself off that medicine in late June. I’ve been gradually improving, sort of, although I’ve been sick again for the last 4 days. Each bout of this is milder than the last, but I am definitely sick of being sick. I think doc was mostly baffled by my symptoms but agreed with my decision to take myself off the medicine. He is having blood and other tests done, but no results yet.

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Today's Google doodle is quite wonderful--and quite emotional for me. Maybe it's because the moon landing was one of the seminal events of my young life; maybe it's because we had hope then that the world might come together now that we could see how tiny and fragile our Earth was. I've never had that kind of hope again--well, maybe for a short time when the Berlin wall came down. Hope is as fragile as our Earth suspended in the immense blackness of space.

I should also add that I had that kind of crazy hope again when President Obama was elected. But.

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I bet the phone answering system in Heaven is Hell.

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Great article by Maria Popova at Brainpickings: The Banality of Evil: Hannah Arendt on the Normalization of Human Wickedness and Our Only Effective Antidote to It

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Best fortune cookie fortune I ever got? After a long dinner conversation with my artist friend about whether we should continue to pursue our art or give up: "Art is your fate, don't debate." My friend got the same fortune. We told a mutual artist friend about it and went back to the same restaurant, partially because of the food but partially because of the fortune. We got the usual run-of-the-mill fortunes but our other friend, who had also been questioning whether to give up the art, got "Art is your fate, don't debate." #Synchronicity

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That feeling when you listen to a piece of music you loved in your youth that you haven't listened to for a long time...but it no longer works. #NotOdeToJoy

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The Universe is infinite, yet small enough to fit in the palm of your hand.

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SOCIAL EXPERIMENT: Someone on Twitter posted, "If you come across this tweet, reply with the grade you were in when you had your first nonwhite teacher." Oh God. I can't remember even one, even in college. THIS IS SO BAD.

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People are surprised that a large segment of the public are credulous and strenuously resist logic. Even a casual reading of history shows this has always been so. The difference now is that we have entire news outlets and social media sites promoting the lack of critical thinking.

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Everyone is a conflicted human being. We have to admit that to ourselves or risk getting ourselves into a lot of trouble.

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It's interesting: Because I just write and push through without editing to get words on the page, my first drafts always have a lot more of my working class origins in them. I leave some of that language in if it suits the character, refine it if not.

Random quote of the day:

“Blood cannot be cleaned with blood.”

—Afghan proverb

 

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Random quote of the day:

“The apparently unendurable conflict is proof of the rightness of your life. A life without inner contradiction is either only half a life or else a life in the Beyond, which is destined only for angels. But God loves human beings more than angels.”

—Carl Jung, Letters, Volume 1

Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Random quote of the day:

“If you want to live a different life without understanding what has brought about [your] confusion, you will always be in contradiction, in conflict, in confusion.”

—J. Krishnamurti, “How To Live In This World,” The Urgency of Change

 

 

Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

 

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

I do believe Venus in Transit is the most diffuse and rambling novel I've ever written. There is a real conflict in the story, but through most of the book it's taking place at an elevated level that I've left hidden from the reader. Bad idea—at least from a genre POV. It's one thing to charm the reader with antic or exciting goings-on, but if the conflict remains invisible, they will probably give up in frustration, muttering, "Where's the beef?"

Clearly, the story needs a big restructuring and I need to stop with the coy stuff and let the reader know what is at stake and how those stakes effect my main characters. As structured now, that doesn't become evident until quite a bit later in the novel. I'm not sure the readers will stick around for the reveal.

I've been trying to hold my feet to the fire the last couple of days, forcing myself to write out a detailed outline of what's happened so far, what's going to happen. It's already quite evident that one whole chunk of the novel should be removed in order to get to the revelation of conflict sooner. The seven chapters I've already posted to the workshop could also probably be reduced by half. And I need to reveal the protagonists more directly, maybe give the reader information that my characters don't yet possess. That, at least, would give them a sense of the sly, serpentine bad mojo lurking beneath the bright façade. It would at least give them some sense that there is conflict, that it does impact my characters, but the characters don't have any idea yet.

Yeah, that's what I should have done. These things are always so clear in retrospect. I can't decide whether I should pull VIT from the shop, do the restructure, then repost or if I should just proceed from this point on, fixing as I go, with the idea of fixing the front end in the next draft.

Decisions, decisions.

The novel that's working most powerfully on my psyche right now is actually the sequel to A Rain of Angels (maybe because I'm just about to start marketing AROA). I've done a lot of prep work on the sequel, and the main characters not only have a good, serious conflict but they now have names: Evanne and Scorch. For those of you who read AROA, Carsten and Rye are still around, but they'll be sharing the focus with these other characters. I haven't yet decided on POV, whether it will be with one character or multiples, but once I have that locked down I might actually be able to start writing this little baby.

But I dohave a tentative title. I've been jokingly calling it Intermittent Showers of Angels, but I think the new official working title will actually be The Great Awakening. I'm not sure if that title will make it across the finish line, but at least it's something to call the thing.

Quote of the day:

"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."

—James D. Nicoll


Writingness of the day: Epiphanies are good things. I like them. I realized through a recent review (thanks—you know who you are) that sometimes I confuse tension with conflict. It seems glaringly obvious to me now, but the obvious isn't always obvious when you're sitting too close to the screen.

This conflict/tension confusion isn't a problem in my novels so much. They pretty much have the classic A must do B or C will happen structure, or A must overcome B in order to prevent/attain C, etc. But this is definitely a problem in my short fiction. My stories always seem more about, "Some characters are hanging out in an interesting setting and something gets them all scared/unhappy/excited/smiley, and then everybody goes home."

Not quite that bad, but almost. It's rare that I have that problem-solving kind of structure. There are perfectly fine short stories out there that don't have a problem-solving structure, some that I love with a muchness, but the thing is: I haven't written any of them. I don't feel bad about that, except in a generic way, a sense that I should feel bad and do something about it. I'd like to write better stories. I'd like to sell some short fiction. But short stories aren't my passion. And therein may lie the real reason I suck at them.

Not all things are for all people. Not every novelist can or wants to write short stories. That's just a fact of life. I'm not entitled to write good short stories just by the fact of being a writer. They aren't my passion. Short stories must be worked for, sacrificed for, and they require different muscles than novels. I probably could learn a lot trying to develop those muscles, but I'm not sure I will ever burn hot enough to write good short stories.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not saying I don't care, but I don't feel mopey about this, it isn't an "I stink" low self-esteem moment, it's just something I'm being honest about with myself and whoever else might be listening.