Echoes in a Hollow Space

Being a character-based writer means that generally plots tend to accumulate around who my protagonists are rather than the other way around. So I usually have the illusion of knowing a great deal about my people before I officially commit them to the page—officially being when I actually type “Chapter 1″ at the top of the file. Every once in awhile I get a surprise.

That seems to have happened with chapter one of the new novel, Time in a Bottle. (Really dislike that name, really need to think of another.) As soon as the protagonist, Molly, spilled onto the page, she came across much perkier than I’d originally envisioned her. Younger. More a creature of sunshine than I would have made her out to be. I resisted this pull, even typing a note to myself at the top of chapter one: “Age her up, serious her down.” But she refused my admonition. She persisted in being who she was.

I’ve long since learned that when a character pulls that hard in a certain direction, I really need to shut up and follow. I’m just along for the ride, after all, and most times they really do know best. If I analyze this in that light, I see that the story which is going to unfold might actually work better with this personality. She’s going to be dealing with the shadow world of the subconscious, helping to dispel some of those shadows, so it really doesn’t make sense that she’s as serious as I tried to make her. She’s going to need that sunshine to get through this, to even buy into this mess in the first place. She’s something of a rescuer, after all.

Of course, sometimes I’ve been fooled in this regard, too. Sometimes a character pulls me off in an unexpected direction and it turns out to be a dead end. Generally, this means I haven’t gotten to know them as well as I thought I had before starting out on the journey and they turned out to be tricksters, having their teasing way with me. This can be painful and require much rewriting.

But hey, writing is rewriting, right? There’s always going to be a lot of that in my future.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

So I posted chapter 1 of Charged with Folly to the workshop. I hadn't planned on doing it this soon after starting the novel. It's still rough, and I like to get several chapters ahead before beginning. But I found myself itching to get on with it, to kind of force myself onward. Since I released chapter 1 and 2 to my local readers on Friday, and already got some reactions on chapter 1, the itch had even gotten worse. (And jasperh helped push me over the edge.) It feels like an official beginning to the novel once I've posted it to the 'shop.

Alas, if only later chapters were as easy to get hits on as chapter ones. Such is the nature of the beast and the serialization of novels. Still, the OWW model works for me because what I'm chiefly looking for with first drafts is whether the superstructure is credible (not polished, but credible): characterization, pacing, plotting, worldbuilding, etc. You can get a fairly good idea of that even in serialization.

Although arguably not so much as with a dedicated read through of the whole novel, the serialization at least keeps me thinking about what needs fixing once the draft is finished and allows me to push on without having to go back and obsessively fix everything. I've got a record in my OWW crits of all that and can relax about it. I find having a dedicated read through of the second draft, after I've fixed all the places where I've change course in the plot, the language, and etc., much more beneficial because the first draft is allowed to be inconsistent and messy so I can get the damned thing written. After the second draft I've lost some perspective and can use an objective outside opinion on the whole enchilada.

Which brings up another question: what should I fix for dinner? ☺

ETA: Arrr.

I sent out a story today and will probably send another tomorrow. The current crop of revised stories before the next novel comes on me and I stop making short stories.*

The next novel is heading my way. I feel the eruption bubbling in my gut, got all the necessary research ducks lined up and quacking. And the Universe keeps sending things my way, things that would make a very good addition to Charged with Folly.

Does that ever happen to you? It seems like whenever I draw close enough to an idea that writing is imminent I'm suddenly surrounded by things to feed the idea: some odd crag of reality I can carve to my purposes, strange factoids that deepen and enrich existing plot/worldbuilding ideas, bits of dialogue and images from the every day world that I can adapt. It seems the airwaves, the books and magazines I pick up, the 'Net are suddenly full of stuff I need and can use.

Now, I know part of that may be that I'm in the frame of mind to notice these things, but it's weird nonetheless. And I much prefer the romantic notion that the Universe (or my Right Brain or Subconscious or Higher Self) is saying, "Do this one!"

But first, I have to finish that last aching groan-and-cut rewrite of Shivery Bones. It's actually going pretty well. I'm dead on my word-cut schedule and I dropped below an important psychological point last week: the novel is now less than 130k (from 143k). In fact, it's down to 126k at this point, and I'm only halfway through. I need to give myself as much wiggle room as possible because I'll want to add a couple of pages at the front of the novel for the new prologue-short chapter one. (It's not a prologue, as it takes place just before the action portrayed in the old chapter one.)

And then I'm never rewriting SB again unless someone pays me to (or asks nicely). I said that before about SB, right before I sent it to Tor and they requested a full, but I mean it this time. Really!


Random quotes of the day:

"May we not then sometimes define insanity as an inability to distinguish which is the waking and which the sleeping life? We often dream without the least suspicion of unreality: 'Sleep hath its own world', and it is often as lifelike as the other."

—Charles Dodgson


"The wealthy are grouped together because it gives them a warm feeling to look upon others of their own kind. The poor are lumped together because they have no choice."

—Peter David, Sir Apropos of Nothing


*Not my choice. I just can't seem to concentrate on stories and novels at the same time. Wish I could.

I was having a conversation this morning with a friend and loyal beta reader in conjunction with this quote of the day:

"In order to swim one takes off all one's clothes. In order to aspire to the truth one must undress in a far more inward sense, divest oneself of all one's inward clothes—of thoughts, conceptions, selfishness—before one is sufficiently naked."

—Søren Kierkegaard

He asked, "I wonder how long it takes to strip down completely?"

I said, "I don't think it's a process that ever ends. I think there's always another layer. The onion is never peeled completely."

He laughed. "I guess that's why I'm still in therapy."

"I can't afford therapy anymore so I do it vicariously through my characters."

Which, of course, was mostly just a smart alecky thing to say. I'm not really doing some extended Mary Sueism in my fiction. My characters ≠ me. Bits of me are probably in most of them, but if you add up all the bits they don't all come from some hidden corner of my psyche. They're more an amalgam of people I've encountered, myself, my friends—and something else that I can't quite explain which comes from Some Other Place. I don't label what this place might be—my subconscious, the land of Booga-Booga, whatever. It's just Other and I have a superstitious feeling it's best not to think about it too hard.

On the Other hand, putting my characters through sh*t does help me think about the sh*t in my own life and work on it. Doesn't make any of my flaws go away, doesn't "cure" me of neurosis, but such things aren't possible, anyway. The most any therapy can do, whether it's lit therapy or the couch variety, is give you coping skills to work around those neuroses.

Except sometimes, of course, when it doesn't help you work around those neuroses. Backsliding is common, whether it's in religious conversion, coping strategies, or addiction. It really is just one day at a time.

And no, not everyone in California is in therapy. Just every Other person. :-)

Other news of the day: My first beta reaction to chapter one of Charged With Folly was good, but my friend wanted to know how I got such a "weird" idea. I told him that I was just falling asleep late one night when the central image popped into my head and I had to pop out of bed to write it down. "It was a gift," I explained. "You don't argue with gifts, you just go with them."

Ah, this is serious.  I've started serializing my new novel to my local readers. Reactions to chapter one have been very positive.  This must mean Night Warrior really is a go. 

None of my locals are writers, which is a cool thing.  I get straight reader reaction from them.  And even if they are my friends, they usually tell me when they think things have gone wrong—quite forcefully at times.  They take this beta reading thing seriously, and their help has been invaluable to me.  I'm lucky to have three such intelligent and engaged readers to filter my first drafts through.  (And none of them read this blog, so that piece of suck up is just because.)

I guess I'll start posting chapters to the 'shop soon.  I want to build up a bit more steam first.  Also, my historical research is ongoing and I'm always reluctant to put the work seriously out there unless I've got the milieu down.  For one thing, all those niggling details are what make a historical setting feel real and I find that if I saturate myself with the details of the past, it's richer, more real to the reader.  Still, I feel like the emotional substratum and the plot of this novel are pretty solid and once I've internalized those two things, integrated them into my psyche, it's almost impossible not to start writing.  I reach a critical mass inside my brain and it must be written down.  Even if the research lags behind.

I also want to get some more crits finished before running this thing through the 'shop.  Most of the crits I'm doing these days are offline—that's how far behind I was.  But it's been a good opportunity to get a little closer to equity.  When I was pumping out a new chapter of Shivery Bones every two weeks, I built up a lot of debt because most of my regulars were not posting as fast as I was.  God Bless you everyone, if you're listening.  I appreciate all your help.

I find it fascinating how different the reactions can be between my non-writer friends and my writer friends.  After the locals have their say, I usually post to my workshop.  Sometimes chapters the locals loved get torn to shreds on the 'shop.  Sometimes just the opposite.  Both sets of input are valuable.  One gives me a "non-technical" reaction, the emotional response; the other helps me with the hard work of turning the writing into a serious piece of craft.  But it's still fascinating when the two camps disagree.

I'm sure there's a profound lesson there somewhere, but I can't quite see it at the moment.  I don't know what it means, if it simply means that different sets of readers have different requirements for fiction.  I suppose it could be tangential to the fanfic discussion that's heating up LJ these days: readers have different needs from writers and editors.  But I wonder if that's true?  All writers and editors start out as readers, after all. 

In terms of the fanfic discussion I can't say as I agree that slash is the wave of the future.  But I do agree that most literary fiction reads like a plotless ramble, while most genre fiction lacks emotional resonance.  Finding books that have both bright, shiny sentences, enthralling plots, and a clear understanding of the way real humans feel things is sometimes tough.  The writers who do it for me are Connie Willis, Kage Baker...There are others, but unfortunately my brain is refusing to work at the moment.  I'm sure I'm forgetting someone Really Obvious.