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I'm not writing as much as I'd planned, but I also haven't run shrieking into the night. Okay, so 7k words is not that much progress towards what feels like a novel, but it's the point where I usually stall and either start futzing with what I've written or stick it into a drawer. I'm refraining from both, and trying instead to just keep going forward.
I don't know what's going on in this story, and this is a sign of progress compared to my usual forecast-the-plot-until-it-breaks tack. I'm figuring out the people, and trying not to judge them as either too strange or too dull. I'm actively releasing my death grip on hyper-reality, in favor of letting in some air space for oddity and whimsy and sex.
There's sex in this story, and so far I've never been able to face it head on, for two reasons. I feel like I haven't earned the right to tell any kind of plot punchline without first telling the set-up; and I feel like it's pasted in for jollies. As well as being mutually exclusive rationales, I've figured out they're both wrong. It's obviously not just for jollies if I can't even look it in the eye ("Nine Lives of John Crichton" was for jollies, and that sprung from my forehead Zeus-style in a few days). And if loving Arrested Development has taught me anything, it's that the whole set-up/punchline/call-back triad is not always linear or chronological, even if it ends up that way on the page the first time through.
There's immense value in seeing someone break a rule, especially when that rule is a self-imposed taboo one deduced from a restricted environment.
It's okay to have takes on things. It's good when characters surprise you. It's not essential to know everyone's story beforehand. The Id will supply a deep meaning you didn't even know you were thinking about. Once you've wrestled the squid onto the paper you can always go back and refine those writhing tentacles into calamari and delicate washes of ink. But hunting the squid is not shameful, it's simply the first step in the process:
I don't know what's going on in this story, and this is a sign of progress compared to my usual forecast-the-plot-until-it-breaks tack. I'm figuring out the people, and trying not to judge them as either too strange or too dull. I'm actively releasing my death grip on hyper-reality, in favor of letting in some air space for oddity and whimsy and sex.
There's sex in this story, and so far I've never been able to face it head on, for two reasons. I feel like I haven't earned the right to tell any kind of plot punchline without first telling the set-up; and I feel like it's pasted in for jollies. As well as being mutually exclusive rationales, I've figured out they're both wrong. It's obviously not just for jollies if I can't even look it in the eye ("Nine Lives of John Crichton" was for jollies, and that sprung from my forehead Zeus-style in a few days). And if loving Arrested Development has taught me anything, it's that the whole set-up/punchline/call-back triad is not always linear or chronological, even if it ends up that way on the page the first time through.
There's immense value in seeing someone break a rule, especially when that rule is a self-imposed taboo one deduced from a restricted environment.
It's okay to have takes on things. It's good when characters surprise you. It's not essential to know everyone's story beforehand. The Id will supply a deep meaning you didn't even know you were thinking about. Once you've wrestled the squid onto the paper you can always go back and refine those writhing tentacles into calamari and delicate washes of ink. But hunting the squid is not shameful, it's simply the first step in the process:
"I saw it misspelled, in mauve Krylon, on the side of a dumpster, and it haunted me." --William Gibson
