one more draft…

okay, so yesterday i said the sun came out. which it did. then it went away. then it came back. then it went away. then it came back and it was so hot i was sweating just standing there. which was fine, since we were working on a deck project (screening part of it in away from the blood-sucking mosquitoes).

then we had to go get some more supplies, which was also fine, to enjoy a sunny drive, except when we came out of the store, big huge massive terrifyingly movie-apocalypse-like dark clouds came out of nowhere. we tried to race them home, as we had left laundry on the line, and we almost made it, but as we turned up our road, someone up there turned the spigot on. full. and as we pulled into the garage, we got this:

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and yes, my first impulse when we got back was to get the camera, not the clothes or any of the open windows in the house. bad bill.

to be honest, this is the first genuine hail storm i can remember being in, so that was cool. about twenty minutes later, after it went back to pouring rain, it turned sunny again. then dark, then sunny, then dark, then absolutely brilliantly clear at about dinner time, and the rest of the night was perfect. especially for these:

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oh, and i wrote a few more pages this morning, which are very exciting and the end is rushing near (a point for tomorrow, i think), but since yesterday seems to have scrubbed our sky clean and it’s gorgeous out, there probably won’t be much more, today.

hey, if you don’t enjoy what you have, when you have it, there’s no point.

NOTE: of course, it took me over an hour to get these videos posted. there has to be a better way. now i have to get away from the pc before my wife kicks my -

no joke! it’s really out!

or, well, it was when i started typing this; now it’s drifted behind a cloud, but it looks like we might actually have a day of genuine sun, so i can’t in good conscience (or vitamin D deficiency) spend any more time inside than is necessary.

as for this morning’s writing…well, let’s put it this way: kelly is pissed.

happy fourth, everyone! well, those of you in the US, anyway. for the rest of you, happy saturday and may the weather be good where you are, too!

last night, kelly found herself stranded in a place that wasn’t very hospitable, with a companion who wasn’t very communicative, and a goal that was getting less and less clear. this morning, things are starting to clarify, but i’m afraid of the cost to the reader.

so last night i wrote 3 more pages, plus another 5 this morning. all very good, except for the concern above.

last night’s writing consisted of a fair amount of bizarre craziness that kelly was forced through, and while it is necessary to the story and makes sense, i grew steadily more afraid that i was crossing the line from bizarre and scary to cartoony and ridiculous. it’s a hard thing for me, sometimes, to walk that line. it’s easy to go too far in the bizarre direction, but very quickly all sense of balance, empathy, and relatability can disappear*, leaving me with several pages of nonsense that have to be thrown away.

i wasn’t certain this was the case, yet, but i was having my doubts as i neared the end of the scene. however, just as i got there, i realized that a character who had been essentially sitting out the events i’d been describing – and not on purpose but mainly because i couldn’t see him having anything to offer in the context of what was going on – suddenly explained himself in a way that i had not in any way prepared for.

yet it worked, and very well, i might add. his silence, the bizarre events, the resulting end; they all came together when i realized that he wasn’t just sitting things out.**

so, the night ended very well, leaving kelly in a lull to catch her breath and get some ’splaining.

which is where today’s problem lies: exposition. there’s a fairly sizable chunk of information that she’s about to get, which i’m at a loss as to how to make more dynamic than a straightforward conversation, albeit largely one-sided. these things can work***, but more often than not they read like INSERT EXPLANATION OF CURSE AND PROPHECY HERE. it’s clunky and heavy and slows things down, but it’s ‘necessary’ and then we can move on to the interesting stuff again.

and, obviously, i don’t want that, but i don’t know how to mix it up. on the other hand, there’s been so much upheaval and chaos for kelly lately, i wonder if it would actually be a good thing to slow things down like this. it’s hard to be sure about the pacing at this point, not having the whole piece in place. it’s also hard to know if i’m being honest with myself about the ‘necessity’ of this information. revision usually has a signficant hand in changing my perceptions of what is and isn’t necessary.

for now, then, to keep myself moving and actually get to the point where i can see if it works or not in the pacing, i’ll leave it as is. HEAVY-HANDED EXPOSITION, HERE I COME!

* this is one of the main problems i have with some stories i’ve read, such as when the david and goliath idea is taken to a simply un-believable extreme, or when the enjoyment of the description over-reaches the scope or control of the story.

** once again, i wish i could say i planned all this stuff, but i can’t. what i can say, though is that i’m listening.

*** i quickly imagine two warriors seated by a campfire after a hard day’s fight against an unexpected enemy. exhausted, but knowing themselves safe at least for the night, the grizzled elder shares a bit of backstory about this new foe, and the ‘unexpected’ connection to the younger warrior’s family. or something like that, anyway.

7 pages this morning, which was less than i hoped, but i had to troubleshoot our DSL with the phone company.*

nonetheless, this morning some very, um, spirited writing, which has led to a rather extreme change of scenery for kelly and friends.** it was a lot of fun putting this down on the page, exploring these new areas, and making them as compelling and engaging as possible.

actually, i don’t think that part was too hard. the hard part will be maintaining a viable balance between the environment and the story. this is kind of connected to the statement i made yesterday about choosing between levels of detail. i want the scenes to be realistic and tangible to the reader, but i don’t want to bog down what should be a fast-moving part of the story.

this is where it’s hard to decide between movies/tv and books. by themselves, neither one can surpass what the other does best. it simply doesn’t work that way. however, the audience (watching or reading) can cross that gap, if they’re willing, and make a movie as nuanced as a book, or a book as stunning as a movie.

thoughts?

* which is still not fully resolved. yay.

** and enemies, if i’m honest.

not sure what the weather’s like where you’re reading this, but it’s been a wet couple of months here in Maine. this is our front deck, where more than a couple of these little guys have started to take root.* and the forecast? yep. rain.

and yes, the deck is in serious need of some attention of its own.

mother nature filling in the cracks

* i’m kind of partial to the little spiral one on the side, myself.

swept the first floor, brought the garbage to the dump, AND wrote 9 pages this morning!

this morning’s writing had a number of really cool scenes in it, which i hope i’m able to describe as powerfully visually as i’m imagining them. i don’t want to overdo them, though, either, which is a tough spot. brings up an interesting conversation point (for some other time) about the two basic methods of description: A) high detail, and B) minimal detail. paint the picture or let the reader?*

today’s writing also ended with a surprisingly emotional and distinctly unsettling (for me, anyway) relationship conflict for kelly. i’d planned for something along these lines, but not to this level. however, it proved a great challenge for me to write effectively, and i think i managed it. this provides a level of complexity i hadn’t fully intended, but which rings solidly true to both kelly and the situation.

now, i just have to figure out how she’s going to deal with it.

after work, of course.

* of course, the best answer to such questions is usually somewhere in the middle, but fantasy, as a genre, tends to spend a lot of time in the A column, in my experience, with some notable exceptions.

quickly, because i’m almost late for work, but i got another 4+ pages done this morning. a bit less than expected, but i was teaching myself a bit of PHP, which i’ve been telling myself i should do for a while and finally got an excuse to do so.

but that’s neither here nor there. today’s writing got kelly out of a particular physical location where she’s been for what may end up being too long. i’m still uncertain about that, but we’re leaving it for now. anyway, now, she’s on the move, and she’s not alone, and there’s a big reveal coming in the next 3-5 pages, which i’m a little wary of, because i want it to be powerful, but not heavy-handed.

i’m also thrilled to be able to use the world she lives in in more ways than one. or, more specifically, to flesh out the world she lives in by approaching recurring places with additional information. these are things that i’ve been hoping to do, particularly with the groundwork i laid in NGD, but to see it start to happen is very exciting. again, though, i hope it doesn’t seem heavy-handed or contrived.

now, to work.*

* i cannot wait to get back to writing this evening!

today, i finally got to have lunch with some friends i haven’t seen in more than a year, which was very nice. we’ve been trying to make this work for almost this whole time, and while not everyone was able to make it, it was lovely to see folks again and to catch up. it also made me again realize how much i miss daily interaction with real people (as opposed to email, etc.), particularly people i very much enjoy spending time with and talking to. thanks, folks!

of course, meeting people for lunch is also good because i get to eat foods i don’t tend to otherwise have, like yummy reubens.*

anyway, i sequestered myself above the garage this evening and got another 7+ pages done. things are really picking up speed now. the kitchen timer went off at 9 o’clock, but i was not having any of it.

this evening’s work was the end of that perhaps tortuously long chapter**, which knocked down the first domino of the next third of the book, and it’s hard to stop when i get into it all like this. i also identified some key phrasing to be inserted in earlier parts of the book to provide some lovely bits of understated foreshadowing.

i love it when this happens, and it’s one of the great joys of revising. i get to see the whole creature in its full form, and then i find ways to tighten it and strengthen it and seed it with these little bits of intrigue or insight. i try to identify as much of this as possible ahead of time, but i accept that there will always be more.*** sometimes these new pieces are genuine surprises to me, but sometimes they are conscious choices – craft, if you will – and these are the moments that really inspire.

* that said, it’s probably good this doesn’t happen more often, particularly when i didn’t bike this morning (because i got an early start at the computer job. really!)

** which, in fact, should not have been a single chapter, if i’d referred back to my outline more often (but i was in a writing groove!)

*** particularly when i start wandering off the map/outline

well, today was mostly a distraction day*, but i was able to get 5 more pages done.* i wavered on the edge of literary quicksand for a while there, but finally managed to get back on track.

the arrival of a new character certainly helped this. the arrival itself was planned for, but the execution of the scene went drastically differently than i’d anticipated. different in a powerfully exciting way, though.

i hope, anyway. the twist caught me by surprise, so i hope i can carry that over to the reader. on the other hand, i didn’t see the ending to The Sixth Sense coming, so read what you will from that.

* raining. again. spent way too much time fiddling with WordPress, only to switch it all back at the last minute.

** milestone note: today’s work puts me just past one third of the way to the estimated total. three weeks and 35,000 words. it was a little bit of a slow start, but i’ve got the momentum, now, and hope to see an increase to the weekly output i’ve had so far, as long as i can keep myself focused.

i managed about 5 pages, today, which is just fine for a sunny summer saturday.* i also got another 3 pages last night before bed, bringing the current total to 98 handwritten pages.

i think i mentioned that i was uncertain about forcing the scene, yesterday, and that was exactly what was happening. i may still be making this mistake, but i’m taking heart in the fact that i’m at least identifying these situations earlier on. knowing this, and getting a few pages past it also helped make today a lot of fun.

i got a page and a half after my bike ride this morning and this set the stage for the rest of the pages this evening. why? becuase another particular scene i’ve been looking forward to was in the offing. or was it?

i had written up to that scene pretty much as i’d intended it**, but just as i was finishing to go have breakfast, it occurred to me that another character’s situation was not quite as straightforward as i’d thought. this realization came out of an unexpected thought that kelly had, regarding that person. at first, when i wrote it, i thought i was forcing things again, and it was out of place in the current context anyway, so i scribbled it out and went to breakfast.

by the time i got back to it after dinner, though, i realized it was a very realistic possibility. when i started writing, it became clear that it was, in fact, an absolute necessity. and now, with that scene just wrapped tonight, i’m again surprised by those parts of my writing that are not consciously intentional, as well as excited by what this does to kelly’s situation, both short and long term.

* thanks again for all your help, dad! the doorways look great!

** though probably in far more detail than will reach the final draft – i could backtrack a bit further, to mention that the current chapter, which i expected to take up a few pages, tops, when i wrote it into the outline, has reached page 21 as of tonight and has at least a few more to go. there are two reasons for this: 1) as mentioned above, there’s a lot more detail in this than will likely remain in the end, but 2) much of that additional detail is the result of actually writing the scene and seeing what actually works/has to happen/makes sense/is realistic, compared to what i’d sketched in my head and in the outline. i imagine it’s like this for movie directors. a scene on the page must often look drastically different than the one on the screen. anyway (to drag this footnote out a little longer), this seeming diversion into nuanced detail has also opened up some potential comedic and dramatic poignancy i hadn’t intended, and which i’m very grateful for. in the end, this chapter is drastically different than the original intent, but it achieves the same results, and then some, so i’ll probably just be cutting it into a few smaller pieces, for flow, and whittling it down for intensity.