News

We have power, or rather didn’t loose it yet. I can’t explain it but I know that somewhere in the process of getting the generator that we will loose power. So I’ll blog while I can.
I got over the hump with the scene that was giving me such fits. How?
By throwing out the chapter; by destroying the scene that wasn’t working.
Once I finally let it go, and rewrote it completely it worked. Cool.
Then I did the next day’s work and I ended the chapter with a main character very hurt. Hurt enough that I made a note, is such and such dead for good?
I got up this morning to that note on my computer. No wonder the writing isn’t going well.
I could loose some of the minor men, frankly, as a writer the extended cast is getting to be a burden, but the main guys. The core group, that is a different thing all together. The person now lying on the floor in Maeve Reed’s house is not someone I ever thought we’d loose.
I’ve debated all morning.
I finally realized that I was willing to let him go. I’m tired. Physically, emotionally, every way. This tiredness comes to almost every book, a point where I just want it done. It is a dangerous point in a book this almost desperate weariness to be done. If you are not careful you will make choices that you will regret later. There is almost always a point of desperate weariness where you simply want done. Ironically for me, it is almost never close enough to the end to be the end. It’s close to the end, but not that close.
I’m frantic to be done, but there are too many pages left to do a marathon session and be truly done. But I know that if I’m not careful I will end up finishing the book sooner, but having to rewrite it from the point where I got frantic. Because I will inevitably make a choice that makes it quicker to finish, but not better. So then, I’ve actually cost myself time, because an extensive rewrite is needed on the last third or so of the book.
It’s that old saying, haste makes waste. Too slow, drives me crazy as a writer. I spend a great deal of the last part of any book balancing those two instincts. Fast enough to finish, slow enough to make the right choices.
I also should never have left a note at the top of an empty page, “Is such and such dead for real?” It was almost guaranteed to make the writing grind to a halt. I know better than that. I know never to end at a difficult point without at least throwing a few sentences out so that the next day begins with something, a beginning.
Sometimes I write like I’m building a bridge across a huge chasm. I lay a few boards at a time, then I can see a little more, and I move by inches or feet. Putting that note in front of me as the only thing on the next page was like stepping up to the bottomless chasm with nothing but empty space between me and the next side. I know that I need at least a little rope, a few boards, something so that crossing that emptiness looks a little more possible than impossible.
There are three kinds of scenes that I never want to start with a blank page the next day: sex scenes; fight scenes; emotionally powerful scenes. A blank screen for either of those three is bad thing for me. But yesterday I didn’t know what to do. I was caught off guard by the potential loss. I hoped that getting away from the computer for awhile would help me decide, or give me the courage to see it through. But no, I just got up to that awful note and stared at the screen.
This feels strangely like that moment near the end of CIRCUS OF THE DAMNED where I’d planned to kill Jean-Claude off. When push came to shove, I could not do it. Now, all these years later, I’m glad I didn’t do it. Anita and I would have missed him. The series would be completely different. There, having written that, helps me think, at last.
The man lying on the floor, so hurt, is too valuable to us. We would weep for him, Merry and me. Me, being tired and wanting the book done, and wanting more control over the plots, by that I mean . . . Well, with Jean-Claude he was taking over the plots more and more. I wanted him not to do that and was willing to kill him to stop it. With Merry it’s just the sheer number of the men. It feels stifling and difficult. I need a smaller cast, but killing people arbitrarily is not the way to do it. Just as killing Jean-Claude would have been wrong, this character would be too missed to loose, I think.
So hard to know for certain. I think I will write the scene from two, maybe three plot of views. (Yes, I did mean plot of view, not point of view. I know my point of view, it’s Merry. But through the same set of eyes you see things differently if the plot changes. So I will do three different plot of views.) Dead, not dead, and metaphysical. Or sort of a combination of all of the above. We’ll see which one flies, but at least if I write them out, see them, Merry’s reaction, I’ll be better able to know what is needed here. One of the things I love about fiction is that you can kill someone today and bring them back tomorrow, with no one remembering that they died yesterday, because they didn’t. I have the power to go back in time and change things. God, I love that. If only it worked in real life, eh?