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Done. I was half-tempted to just type the word done. It feels like anyone reading this blog would know what I meant. The book, INCUBUS DREAMS, is done. Yea! I’ve got a week, or so, of clean-up and final research questions. As always I find that I need at least one complete draft before I know exactly what questions I need to ask my experts. Though you do have to have enough earlier research to write that draft or two, before hand. Always a fine balance, research.
I did a marathon session on Friday night that finished around 10:30 at night. Thirty-one pages at a shot. Good pages. I was pumped when I went to bed. Phyiscally tired, but pumped. At four A. M. I woke and realized that the thirty-one pages was crap. To try and make my plot work out as planned I had made the villian be stupid and Anita be less then her usual competent kick-ass self. One of Hamilton’s rules of writing is, “Though shalt not make your hero stupid to further your plot. Rewrite the plot not the character.” Another rule is, “Your villian has to be more than just mean, sadistic and stupid. He’s got to have his own motives that make sense to him.” So that glorious rush of pages had to be thrown out, completely. No saves.
But getting all those pages out of the way, unstuck something. As if that false trail were some kind of boulder stuck in the way of the water of creativity, or whatever less poetic phrase you like. I got up bright and earlier next morning, since I’d been awake since four A. M. though I didn’t get out of bed ’til about six or seven. But by the time I got out of bed, I’d made my notes, and thought it through. By around noon on Saturday I was done. Done, gloriously done. We celebrated by going out to lunch and contacting our friend, Richard. (He had earlier called and requested that if we had time this weekend to call him.) And no, this Richard has nothing to do with the Richard in the books. I did not even meet our friend Richard until years after the character exisited. Sorry to all those who wish to make more coallaries between the books and my life than actually exisit. And sorry for all those who wish the men in the books were real, I sort of understand that part. Anyway, we did dinner and a movie. We saw LadyKillers with Tom Hanks. It is the first movie I’ve seen in a year or so, that was totally guilt free. I was done. I earned that movie.
The movie was wonderful. Funny, dark humor, wonderful acting all the way around, great cimetography, costumes, and a sure hand at the directing, that left nothing to chance, and yet, was only heavy handed when it was funny and worked for the film. The writing was brilliant, and I’d love to know how much of the dialogue was ad-lib, and how much was scripted. The three of us had nothing but praise for the film. The three is my husband, Jonathon, Richard, and myself. We wanted to see the movie before we took Trinity to it. I’m not sure the kiddo would enjoy it. I’m not sure she’s old enough to get the jokes. The violence is mostly benign and hilariously. I haven’t seen this many people die, and laughed this hard in years. Maybe ever.
We took the entire rest of the weekend off, and it was wonderful. I was pumped. That euphoric rush that always follows the end of a book. It lasts for around two to three days, then comes the two to three days of moping. Moping around the house like a lost soul, because I’ve spent months and months knowing exactly what I had to do every day, and now suddenly, it’s gone, over, finished. There’s always a certain amount of unsettledness to the completian of a big project for me.
Added to my usual mood swings after a book, there is the fact that it’s not really finished. I have to print it off and reread it. God, I do not want to do that, but I’ve already found a few things that were in my head but never made it to paper, in just a quick run through on the computer. Most writers miss more things if they write too fast, I miss stuff if I write too slow. I think this book took longer than any other Anita book ever. Well, it is the longest one I’ve ever written that’s part of it, but also, well, enough of that. I’ll give stuff away if I don’t shut up. Let’s just say that the next book will be the test to see if certain themes slow me down every time or if this was just something about this book. But as always when I’m slow at a book, I don’t seem to hold it all in my head as completely, so I have to reread just to be certain what choices I made outside of the main mystery plot, and main character action. It’s always the small stuff that will come back and bite you on the ass. Throw away lines are notorious for catching you out in a series of books. You make one line somewhere in some book, no note about it to yourself, because it’s just a throw away line, not important. Then three or four books later you’ve forgotten you wrote that one line, and you write an entire book that contradicts it. I haven’t done that yet, but I know some fine writers that have. But I’m a fan of their work, so I’ve reread the book with the line, so I knew that they’d forgotten it when the other book came out. Writers don’t reread their own stuff, mainly because once it leaves the house for that final, final time, you’re so sick of it that you never want to see it again. You try rereading your own words over and over, while you and about a half dozen other people edit them. The best test for me whether a book works is do I get so caught up in my own writing that I forget that I’m supposed to be editing. If I do, then I know that I’ve done good.
Well, got to go. I’ve got to sort through my sticky notes. The ones I’ve used get thrown away. The ones, a growing mass, for future books get moved to a wall space that is not above my computer. I’ve got so many future Anita sticky notes that I’m going to have to rearrange my office walls, so that Anita has a bigger permenet chunk of wall away from the computer like Merry does. I am running out of walls, which is one of the reasons that we’re building on new offices. Though don’t get me started on that. I think I’ll move the sticky notes that don’t have to do with either current series out into the hall just before the door of my office, and put Anita where those were. Merry has the biggest wall in the back, because I knew from the first book what the last book would be about. Though, no I do not know who will be her king or how she will get to that final climax. No pun intended.
I am going to finish putting INCUBUS DREAMS to bed, then I’m taking some time off. A couple of weeks. With my schedule I’ve finished one book and started the next one within a day or two. I need a break, and everyone is okay with me getting one. Cool.
I need a few days to sit around and do nothing for a change. Not spend the week frantcially doing errands, and catching up on stuff, but actually taking some time off. I think I’ve forgotten how to do that. I need to relearn. Recreation means to re-create yourself. We all need time for that.
On one of the days I was most frantic and most convinced this book would never die, two little birds came to the tree outside my window. Warblers. For all you birders out there you’ll understand that I grabbed my binoculars and my bird books and tried to look at the warblers while I was talking on the telephone to New York. I am a cautious birder, so I would not say what birds they were though, I’d narrowed down both to two or three possibilities. Warblers are tiny, smaller than most sparrows, and fast. They seem to always be moving, especially if you want them to hold still. Many of them are also very nearly identical to eachother.
I had never seen warblers in my trees before. I had forgotten how excited I used to get with the spring migration. It’s been years since I went birding. The allergy shots are helping. I might acutally be able to go out in the woods without being sick for hours afterwards.
Walking Pippin, our big puppy, I saw one of the little birds again, and this time it held still. A Bell’s Viero, not exactly a warbler at all. And the other little bird came back to my tree and let me have another chance at him. A yellow-rumped warbler. They are both new birds to me, never seen them before.
I took their coming as a sign, that I need to remember how to enjoy myself. I need to rediscover the things that helped me re-create myself, outside of books and writing. I think so many of us get so caught up in our work, and just surviving from one family activity to another that we forget ourselves. Forget who we are as individuals, because the real world swallows us up. I finished the book weeks ahead of where I’d pessimisticly aimed. I finished in time to take a pair of binoculars, some books, a back pack, and go out and see the spring mirgration before it all goes away for another year. I think it’s a message that I need to look up more, out more, and remember that life is not narrow, but very wide.