Another Muse

Wrote a scene today where a character's backstory is turned into a legendary tale. It was appallingly easy.

I know: it's all fiction. What's true is only true because I say it's true, and what's legend is legend because I say that, too.

Still. It should not be so easy. Not in fiction. Not in life.

Finding copywork more useful than expected, happily. Hemingway was a good choice; I forgot how spare his language is, even when sentence structure can be complex. I was going to jump from author to author, but I think I'll stay here for a bit.

Also, I need to spend more time (re)reading classics.

Seeing copywork mentioned everywhere for some reason. Figured I might as well try it. Why not?

Realizing belatedly that, as someone who likes long, convoluted sentences and really needs to be more comfortable with shorter, snappier exchanges... perhaps I should not have started with Hemmingway.

For the first time in *cough* years, I've submitted for publication. And this time it's fiction, not poetry.

I'm hopeful (of course -- why submit otherwise?) but I also know how this works.

So now the waiting game begins.

From a Steve Almond workshop: "I don't go to fiction to make friends. I go to fiction to find out who is alive."

Have been thinking about that a lot lately. In the face of [all the things], why do my characters keep going?

I know, I know. What do they want? What do they need? Basic stuff.

Still.

After never-mind-how-many years, I am polishing a story to submit to a journal.

This last revision was particularly brutal, but it's a better piece for it.

I'd forgotten what it was like to try to find that spot between too much revision & not enough.

I think I'm close, though.

After four weeks of writing mostly junk -- junk not even worth calling backstory -- a few things finally crystalized today.

I know how to fill some plot holes and I finally see the shape of the second section. Hopefully this jump starts some usable drafts.

An unexpected (but in hindsight predictable) benefit is that while going through old material and consolidating it, I've clarified a few things on character backgrounds and motivations, especially on my supporting characters. This feels helpful; hopefully it improves the next drafts/revisions I do.

I have been doing some virtual spring cleaning & restructuring my CMS so I can pull all my writing into a single platform and better handle things like character sheets, research, workshop feedback, exercises, etc., on large projects. It feels good to have SOMETHING organized in life right now.

The poet runs untrammeled across the meadow. The translator dances in shackles.

- RF Kuang, Babel

I feel like my research into wooden sailing ships would be more effective if I, you know, went sailing on a wooden ship.

However, given [waves hand at the world in general], I suspect my practical research efforts are going to be more along the lines of Failing at Farming 101.

At any rate, I'm going to leverage my sudden nostalgia and try a sort of reverse #napowrimo in April: each day write a brief scene, bit of worldbuilding, or bit of character backstory using one of the very, very bad poems I wrote in high school as the inspiration point. This should be fun.

Every time I find the poems I wrote in high school I am amazed. I don't think I could sit down and write something that bad if I tried. Which is good... but also sad. I lost something over the years, something that would have made me charge forward with a complete abandon of... everything.

I have hated the words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right.

- Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

She was the book thief without the words.

Trust me, though, the words were on their way, and when they arrived, Liesel would hold them in her hands like the clouds, and she would wring them out like the rain.

- The Book Thief, Markus Zusak

At any rate -- I'm enjoying Kaner's Godkiller. I'm not far enough along to know where it's going, but the ride is enjoyable.

If you have recommendations on similar books (especially spec fiction), please let me know.

It all seems so much more... immediate... lately than it did when I started imagining this story.

It could be a kid rebelling against their parents. Plebians against the elite. A society against itself. A society against the world. A world against the gods.

In part, it's because I'm not just thinking (or not entirely thinking) about gods. I keep going back to power structures in general, and what happens when they fall out of balance and one side or the other rejects the relationship entirely.

As an agnostic, I feel like I have been spending more time lately thinking about people abandoning gods and gods abandoning people than is probably good for me. It ended up as one of the central themes of what I am writing, which both feels exceptionally odd and, also, exceptionally right.

"People don't need wild gods any more when they're fat and rich and comfortable. Gods don't take kindly to being forgotten."

- Hannah Kaner, Godkiller.

The answer, of course, is to shove the chapter in a drawer for six months and come back to it later.

Hopefully I'll have enough distance to better understand the feedback they were trying to give (or not give). Or enough distance to be my own critic. Or both.

One hopes.

To be clear: I appreciate the feedback I received, even if it wasn't what I expected. It was also not the areas I thought would get highlighted, which was interesting.

My issue is that I know how to interpret feedback from a cutthroat workshop.

I don't know how to interpret (relative) silence.

Walked out of my last workshop utterly confused. This chapter is either close to done or is a trainwreck not worth salvaging, and I can't tell which.

All I really know is that it got minimal engagement in class and most people did not send written comments after.

Advice in a workshop: Trust your narrator.

Me: ...

Me: ...

Me: I trust him not to be trustworthy. Does that count?

A friend asked me if I had read Terry Pratchett before.

Long story short, all my extra paperbacks are heading his way. He gets almost half the books in one go, I get shelf space. Win-win.

And now I feel like I need to re-read them all. It's been a hot minute.

Officially off Kindle and on Kobo. Liking the new reader from what I've seen with it so far, and I'm excited to close the door on Amazon. Kobo customer support has been great (delivery to my location is weird; they were very helpful). Wish I'd switched sooner, but better late than never.

So: where someone else might journal, I have this novel I'm not writing, or that I am writing, or that I'm trying to write and failing to do well. Which is how making sense of and moving through the world feels like these days, if we're being honest. Self indulgent? Lifeline to sanity? Maybe both.

In light of current political events, I've considered letting it sit again. Aside from feeling inadequate as a writer, I don't know how to proceed in the fact of everything. On the other hand, whether or not the novel amounts to anything, working through the themes is... helpful? ish?

Twenty years ago, I had a vision of a world and certain characters. I've called it "the novel I'm not writing" and let it sit in the back of my mind. Now that I'm writing it, I'm realizing how monstrously complex the drivers are -- and how far beyond my abilities they may be.