Echoes in a Hollow Space

Random quote of the day:

“Good writing is always about things that are important to you, things that are scary to you, things that eat you up.”

—John Edgar Wideman, Conversations with John Edgar Wideman, ed. Bonnie TuSmith

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Laurel and Hardy, Ariana Grande, or the Salvation Army Band. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Writingness of the day: I've had good writing sessions each day this week. But today I realized that yesterday's session had gone off on a tangent—and it's too late in the story for tangents. Besides, if I'd headed in that direction it would have undermined the entire philosophical underpinning of this story, the themes I've been working with, the thing that made me want to write it in the first place.

I don't always have a problem with that kind of thing—sometimes a book becomes what it's meant to be, not what you intended for it. (In fact, I'd argue that's more frequently the case than not, especially if you're an organic writer.) In this case, though, I think it really was just a wrong turn. An "Ooh look at the shiny" distraction that was going to pull the story away from its foundations.

So I scrapped that part and started again. We're not talking about a huge amount of text here, but at this point any delay in ending this thing feels monumental. I can smell the ink on "The End" at this point, so I resent anything that keeps me getting closer to it.

It is what it is. More important to head in the right direction than to keep stumbling forward and fall on my face.

Quote of the day:

"You only see the tree by the light of the lamp. I wonder when you would ever see the lamp by the light of the tree."

—G. K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday

( Illustrated quote of the day. )

Writing talk of the day: I'm working on chapter 37 now. Chapter 32 has just been posted to the OWW. Major revelation in that chapter (hint). One everyone's been asking me about for months (hint). I'm working steadily towards the end of the book, reaching a rather frightening word count, see much cutting in my future. I already have some ideas about what can go, but I'm not tackling a rewrite for awhile after finishing this monster.

( More stuff on new writing projects, finding themes and books that influenced my novels. )

Hmm. I may have to come up with a story to go with that title.

Anyway, I've been trying since Friday to finish a story I started in November '02. Today could be the day! But we'll see. Every time I get to the last jump, it refuses and goes around to some new material that I didn't know existed before. But it's close, damned close, and I thought it was worth delaying the novel rewrite a few days to get it done. This story is called The Green Ones, and it's a contemporary horror comedy with science fiction overtones—in other words, my usual cross-genre mess. It hasn't got great literary merit (in fact, it may actually have anti-merit), but it's been enormous fun to write. It has a kick-ass, bitchy heroine and a truly goofy premise. So we'll see if it's fit to post after it's settled for a month or so. And after I've finished it, of course.

I haven't worked on it steadily all this time, naturally: three or four bursts of concentrated energy followed by long hiatuses (hiatusi?), my typical work pattern. Which is why I prefer to say my unfinished works are on hiatus, not abandoned, because eventually I get back to them. Sometimes years later, but I get back to them. In fact, after I'd concluded earlier last week that Ramona was going on hiatus I decided to finish out the week by working on more short stories before heading into the massive rewrite process of Shivery Bones. So I turned my attention to an old story, The Horse My Father Rode, and cleaned that up a bit. I dunno about that one. It has some good elements but I'm just not sure it works. It is most definitely not a comedy and I'm just not sure about it. However, way back in the misty days of yore I sent it to a lit magazine and got my very first encouraging personal rejection from an actual editor, so there's something there. I'm just not sure what or how much.

You know, an encouraging acceptance would really be welcome at this point in my non-career.

So I've hauled out the xerox box filled with the draft of Shivery Bones plus all the reviews. (Yeah, I'm so un-Green for not keeping everything electronic, but I just need to edit on paper. Sorry! I do recycle the paper once I'm through with it, though.) I haven't actually pulled anything out of this xerox box yet. I keep looking at it out the corner of my eye and shying away like a horse mistaking a hank of rope for a snake. This rewrite process could be ugly. The finished first draft is just over 151k. Ugh! I foresee a whole lot of cutting in my future. That's okay. It'll be much better without the excess. I don't mind revision on novels so much. It's torture for me in short stories because I always wind up horribly confused about what should stay and what should go; what tells too much and what not enough. Somehow I don't have that problem as much with novels. It's much more obvious to me in a novel context what should stay and what should go. Novels, of course, have their own methods of torturing me, but that's another story...

If you're listening, Jon, my confusion may have something to do with discovering the theme prior to writing, which I don't do. That doesn't nail me in novels so much because with a work that long I think trying to force a theme up front can queer the whole deal. In a novel the theme tends to reveal itself over time and, for me at least, is much richer for that journey through my psyche. That's not so much the case with shorts, but since I'm incapable of saying, "This is the theme," and working from there (tried it several times, failed miserably), I guess I'm screwed.

And on the Go-Ahead-Reject-Me-I-Don't-Care front, I got my "no grabee" for Sealed With A Curse from Mr. Adams at F&SF as expected on Monday—this Monday, not last. The delay may have been my fault: I was semi-brain dead when I sent the package out and after mailing it, had a vague notion something was wrong with it. I'd done something very stupid with the SASE, which I won't detail here—too embarrassing. But the curt note scribbled on the back of the envelope indicates a certain irritation . . . How to win editors and influence associate editors. :-/

I had zero expectations that they'd accept that story, but that mutant seed hope just can't be crushed completely. SWAC will go back in the drawer until I'm ready to face it again. Increasingly, I'm convinced I'm a novelist and shouldn't waste my time with stories, but they do make a nice break from the long stuff, and there's a certain sense of liberation in finishing something short. So no rule which says I can't write them, but I may have to face the fact that I won't sell them.

I will push on with my literary demerited story today and see what happens.