Reading Slush

When originally approached to read slush for Static Movement, I remember thinking, oh, that's going to be tedious. Boy, was I wrong. It's fascinating. It's frustrating. It's a huge learning lesson, because boy, oh boy, you see writers making the same mistakes over and over in their submissions. I'll start talking about those over the next few weeks, the recurring patterns I see -- the inability to spell, the unneeded exposition, the dialog that fails to move a story forward, the difference between what sounds like a nifty idea and a story (and they ain't the same thing, folks).

But the coolest thing about reading slush is that excitement I feel whenever I start reading a new story. Is this the one? I'll wonder. Is this the one that's going to knock my socks off? One I won't be able to put down, that'll give me great characters and a strong story and an ending that makes me sit back and go "woah!" It's worth wading through all the rest just to get to that one story that blows me away. I want more of those. I want every story to be a homerun. And when I find one that's so close, but it fails because of something simple, I want to cry. That's the worst part of this job. Rejecting the "almosts."

Confluence, Fate, and there's no such thing as coincidence

The rest of my novel fell into place tonight and I have a new short story idea called "The Graveside Devil."

And this is why I continually have to remind myself not to stress over 1) perceived lack of new ideas, and 2) plotting issues. Now, mind you, it doesn't particularly help to remind myself that it will all work out eventually, that I can point to my own damned journal and show myself, time and time again, how it all works out in the end when the pieces are ready to come together. What can I say? I'm an impatient soul and I get frustrated when my creative world gets scrambled and stays that way. It doesn't matter that it will right itself at some future date, I want it set right NOW.

(And this is precisely why I recently wrote about refusing to ask my muses for assistance. I'd be getting that smug "I told you so" right about now instead of satisfied silence.)

Book reading

Finished reading "The Florentine Dagger" by Ben Hecht, written in 1923. Interesting book. Starts out as a rather simple mystery and gets rather complex by the end. A strange obsessed narrator/hero who doubts his own sanity adds to the spice. The first murder had this guy knifed and a crucifix laid on his chest and a candle lit by his head. Now me, I'm a huge lover of Italian opera, and so I read that and exclaimed outloud, "Tosca!" Cuz after Tosca knifes Scarpia, that's what she does, sets a crucifix on his chest and a candle (or two) at his head. Then, as the novel progressed, a mysterious lady named Floria appears. Tosca's first name is Floria. I'm thinking, hm, what an odd coincidence, is there supposed to be a connection here? And as it turns out, yes, there was a deliberate connection and the ending has everything to do with Tosca. Which I dig to pieces, of course, Tosca being my favorite opera.

Which made me wonder how such a book works for someone who doesn't have this background? Does it work better or worse? Would it simply be a much more straight-forward mystery story to someone unfamiliar with Tosca? Would the end then catch them by surprise, since the foreshadowing would be meaningless? Since this book was written in 1923, the audience of that time had a much bigger chance of being familiar either with the opera or Sardou's play than anyone reading this book today. There's also a whole subplot regarding the Medici family and their violent history. None of it is explained, it's taken for granted that readers know who they were. So, does a book still satisfy when your readers are no longer conversant with things that were once more commonly known? Such questions fascinate me.


I liked this section:

"I've a lot of speeches I've always wanted to include as a part of my first and last proposal. We'll get into a cab and I'll propose."
He hailed a taxi and they entered.
"Drive," he smiled at the chauffeur, "slowly and carefully, anywhere you want."
The man nodded, grinned, and pocketed a bill.
They were silent as the cab moved away.
"Well," said Florence at last, "you may begin."
De Medici looked at her. "I love you," he whispered. "Will you marry me?"
"You promised speeches," she laughed.
"I've changed my mind," he said, staring at her. "I can't think of anything to say."

Moving ahead again

Well, the backplotting seems to have worked. Got a nice easy 2100 words yesterday evening and that was with revising two scenes, not even writing anything new. Tonight's the new stuff.

And behind the curtain...

Engaged in a hefty bit of backplotting. Well, that's what I call it, anyway. It's where you write down what happens in your story from the bad guy's perspective. What's going on behind the scenes while the heroes do their thing in front. I sort of always have what's going on off scene in the back of my head, but sometimes that's not clear enough. Particularly on mysteries, I'm finding. If you know where your bad guys are every step of the way, then it becomes much easier to see where you have to place your hero to thwart them. I did a ton of backplotting on my last story, "Blood Games," when I got stuck. I actually had the same problem on that story that I do on this novel: too many different ways the story could go. I had so many variants I couldn't keep them all straight. And each one had something going for it, something I really liked, so I couldn't rule them out off the top of my head. Until I looked at it from the bad guy's point of view. Then all the myriad endings dropped away and only one was left. That's the one I wrote.

So with all the problems I've been having on the novel, this was the only logical step left for me to take to work things out. And once again, it seems to have worked beautifully. All the myriad possibilities have dropped away just by knowing when one bad guy places a call to another, when one arrives from out of town, when an arrest order goes out. You'll never read those scenes in the novel, but they're happening nonetheless. You'll just see the results.

I know what happens now in the next two chapters. And I know how I have to revise the last two chapters first before I can move forward.

And this thrills me no end.

Novel maze

I've never had a novel come up on its finish with so many possible ways it could go. This is still amazing me. It's been pretty much straight-line the whole way, and then WHAM! I hit the delta and a hundred river branchings. And each of those has branches. It's a maze of possibilities. I've tried to stop thinking about it, but it still astounds me that I have so many different ways the story could go. Usually there's only one logical outcome. Everything leads up to that. Wild.

Too much thinking

Well, in the interest of preserving sanity, I've opted to stop asking questions about what happens next and am back to just writing. This whole book was written by the proverbial seat of my pants, why should I stop now and do some logical plotting? Screw it. I'll get back to letting the characters steer themselves. They've done a fine job up. Why should they let me down now? Gotta find me some faith, that's all.

Brick wall downgraded to roadblock

Okay, ask the question enough times in enough ways and... I got half the answer I needed. Half. The easier half. Not the part I really really need. This is normally the point where, in sheer frustration, I turn to my muses and ask for assistance. Except I've been here done that and know the response I would get. If he even bothered to respond at all, #2 would just tell me I already have all the info I need, so stop wasting his time and figure it out already. And so I don't ask because I'm as stubborn as he is, and I refuse to give him the satisfaction of saying I told you so later. Again.

I do have everything I need. I know that. I just can't seem to jam the puzzle pieces together in the correct order, and I don't see why a nudge in the right direction would be out of order. Hmph.

Time to find yet another way to phrase the burning question.

But I like pickaxs

Breaking down the brick wall turns out require more construction, not deconstruction. Argh. This is what I get for diving into this novel last Nov 1st without doing the proper world building first. Oh, it's been there vaguely in my head the whole time: geography, political climate, etc. But that's not good enough. Now I need the details, the history, the whys and wherefores that I sort of relegated to the back burner in the rush of putting words to paper for Nano.

Not that I mind this kind of thing, quite the contrary. I love it. I could make up worlds and their histories forever. It's as exciting as coming up with an entertaining twisting plot. Same "wow" factor. What I do mind is that it's interfering with my need to finish the first draft.

Today, I drew maps, named the other city-states, started recording their histories, political, military, economical... Time-consuming, but necessary. Without a clear understanding of the city-state relationships, there's no conflict, without conflict, no motive, without motive -- no story. Understanding the motives on a visceral level is not the same thing as having them in black and white. Or white on blue, LOL!

Brick wall

Not a concrete one, just bricks with crumbling mortar. That's what I smacked into on novel. It's simply a matter of figuring out one last thing. One simple little thing is all that's between me and the end of the book. Three and a half pages of new notes and I'm no closer. These are the kind of notes that are open conversations, asking questions, seeking unexpected answers, free-writing, exploring the remaining plot hoping something will click and the solution will appear.

In other words, finding fifteen different ways of asking the same question and still getting no answer.

However, I did get one action sequence out of all that note-making that I hadn't anticipated. One of those satisfaction-guaranteed "I believe we have some unfinished business" scenes between two characters. Heh-heh. It's something, at least.

The end is in sight

I passed 80,000 words! WOO! That was my goal for the day and I made it before the new year.

And I finally-- finally -- got to write the scene that started this entire novel's concept. It ended up being a far more emotional scene than I expected, and far harder to write because of it.

Writing is always a surprise

Passed 75,000 tonight, and the night is still young.

And James Newton Howard's score to "King Kong" is surprisingly effective music for the scenes I'm currently writing. I would not have thought that, but it's just the right mix of anguished emotion and action.