Tension and Magic
March 14, 2011
Nervous tension...in preparing for a writing class I facilitate, I came across a comment from Dwight Swain, that writing creates nervous tension. I don't know if actual writing does, but I've been on a research quest, and I've found myself so antsy that I could hardly bear it. Then I remembered Swain's words and realized it was the story bubbling in me, stirring up whatever it stirs. That made me feel better. If only I would walk instead of eat my tension away. Someone took a very nice author photo of me for Before Versailles. I look at my nicest and nothing pose-y about it....just me, all my flaws, but somehow nice. Very comforting. Anyway, I'm one tense girl right now because I'm gathering the background of the story, and I'm not writing. Amazing how I despair about writing, but how much it grounds me.....I understand nothing about being a writer....nothing. Reread Ray Bradbury's memoir of being a writer. How much he accepts and coasts on the magic unknowing of it. How much he accepts that he may experience something but wait ten years for it to bubble out.....
Off Balance
March 4, 2011
I'm completely off balance right now. I took a trip to NY and didn't keep up with the new story that's forming. It's like turning off the heat under a pot that hasn't boiled yet. I've been a little sick, and things keep coming in to do about Before Versailles, much more fun than creating something new and unformed as yet.
I did have a little flash of excitement about beginning the book in a different place, not with Alice and Richard married, but before their marriage, with the marriage as part of the plot. Again, ground that is the novel to be keeps shifting under me, and all I can do is follow my instinct.
Tomorrow I teach a class around novels and the drafts of them. As I always say, you can't teach writing, you can only facilitate. But I will be saying things that I need to hear. I have to get back up upon the wobbly bicycle that is the next book, never minding the falls, but feeling guilty that it was put aside.
Day to Day
January 10, 2011
Smashing plates of prose everywhere as I lurch blindly into this story. Time has taught me not to dwell too long on poor prose, to just keep punching keys and get something down. Seem to be thinking in scenes. A little spark or two of story in off time floating into brain cells. Otherwise, I do my time in the office and keep my head down to the quality of my writing. Beginning any big project is not for sissies, and I have sissy in me. Alice is feeling vibrant. That's always nice in a character.
Again
January 3, 2011
I've broken the ice on not writing on another novel today. Just dived in and began in a new place. My goal while I write the draft of the next book is not to take myself too seriously. Since I make my living off my work, and I'm my sole support, I have a tendency to get dramatic at every stall.
Much to do: organizing my awful office; getting ready to the classes I'll teach this spring. But mainly, I must write, courageously and as if I knew what I was doing, on this next book.
I used Ken Achity's trick today of thinking of the first line I'll write tomorrow. He says the unconscious will work on it all night. I hope something in me is working.
Happy new year, anyone.....
Morning
December 6, 2010
Viewed which winter daffodils were open. Read a poem. What a way to begin the day.....
Page Proofs
December 5, 2010
Well....a deep subject that.....one of my favorite jokes. I probably repeat it in every novel. I'm in the midst of reading page proofs for Before Versailles. At first, I liked the novel. Now, I'm not so certain. Is it lively enough? Is it just that I've spent so much time on the rewrites of this novel? I have no accurate gauge inside. I do know too much editing can trim a novel down but take away its soul. I pray that hasn't been done. I'll check back in when I've finished the page proofs.
What are page proofs? I thought you'd never ask. They're the pages of the actual book, only now sewn together. And there's a cover. I'll post it very soon. A week more of Louis XIV, and then he goes to the bindery, to galleys to be sent out so that someone famous may say something nice we can put on the cover, to others to see if anyone wants to host me or hear from me or have a book signing. I'm a summer book, ready for 4th of July holiday readers.....
Restless
November 12, 2010
Well, I hate to confess how little I've done....got distracted by Before Versailles, in production. I always hate beginning a book, the well I have to leap in seems too deep with no bottom, and there's such a contrast with the heft and weight of the just finished book.....characters all realized, story in place....versus the ghost that is the new.
Here are the random thoughts.....what if I combined an Alice and Barbara story....now Barbara, flashbacks Alice....because each of these stories seems so thin right now....don't get excited....all of this is so subject to change....it's just process, a sidewinding snake.....also thought about doing Alice at 12. I have to be excited by something, some little spark of thought that keeps enough electricity in me to get me through beginning. Then, it's like being caught in the mouth of the whale....do I struggle out or let him swallow me.....much going on in real life that is distracting, but any writer knows we look for any distraction when we're restless and unsettled.....
Set up
October 6, 2010
The copyedited version of Before Versailles is with me. I'm spending a lot of energy trying to get the prologue, which is the set up to the story, into leaner shape. In doing revisions, I bogged it down, and now I think there is too much information there....yet I have to set up as simply as possible what was, in its time, a complicated situation.
That's the problem with a historical....you have to lay the backstory without boring the reader......Urg!!!!!! And reading myself one more time is not joyful. I feel so numb to myself, particularly because I have reworked this book so many times trying to focus the story. However, at times, I glide through the story, and I think that means it's slick and well done. I'm trying to get more slick without sacrificing color.
As for the new novel, it's out the window right now. This one has all my energy. It's such an interesting story, but the prologue isn't interesting enough yet.....wish me luck, wish me luck, wish me luck......
Alice or Barbara
September 27, 2010
An interesting thing is happening. I thought I was all set for beginning on my next book. I thought it was a story about Alice and Richard, set in 1670s, their early marriage years. There is a piece of the Louis XIV story that I want to include....except that little thought snippets keep coming up about Barbara. Is Barbara next rather than her grandmother, Alice?
I don't know.....interesting, the dreamy cobweb that is the beginning of story....
Story
September 17, 2010
It comes up for me again, how we love story in our life. Our own lives are too long a novel with too many dull and hard parts. But good story outside ourselves grabs us by the throat, sweeps us up into its strong arms, and carries us over a threshold to catharsis. We're suspended from this long, unresolved drama of our lives and put into intense moments when something must be resolved, when the best and worst of human nature must be resolved. How satisfying. Story, story, story.....that's all there is.....
(This comes from watching the TV series West Wing, which I never saw, and getting so involved with the individual characters. Do I love Toby or Josh best?)
