dinner with Lois and talking book shop
Jun. 23rd, 2004 11:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pegkerrI went over to Lois McMaster Bujold's for dinner tonight, where she served salad with strawberries and chicken chili soup, and we talked about my comments on The Hallowed Hunt. Then we retired to the living room with our glasses of Reisling, where I told her about the ice palace book so far. She thought of one key piece: she figured out Rolf's backstory, where he came from, when I told her about a certain historical figure in the history of the making of ice palaces, and she said, That's Rolf, that's where he came from." Oh. Oh, wow. Oh, yeah. She was right.
She agreed with me that I was missing a key piece: the exact nature of the relationship between Rolf and Jack. What does each think they're getting from the other? Why are they working together when the book starts? I have a sense of why Jack turns away from Rolf to Solveig, but why was he allied with Rolf in the first place?
But after I had burbled to her for forty-five minutes or so with plot points and thematic stuff I've been chewing over, Lois agreed that it's a real book, which of course, really means something coming from Lois McMaster Bujold.
I mentioned that I've been thinking about the book again recently. Not writing yet, but thinking, trying to find the few pieces that are still missing so I can slot them into place and start writing again. I was listening to Lowen & Navarro's album Pendulum. Mulling over song lyrics is a favorite technique I use to chew on theme when I'm writing. A song on that album "Crossing Over" snagged my attention, and as usual when I get obsessed with a song, I listened to it about forty times yesterday as I thought about it (using headphones so that my cubicle mate did not kill me).
But I'm thinking about Solveig, and what that means to her. She became an architect partly because she wanted to build something that lasts--her father's accidental death is an underlying causal trauma that led to her choosing that career path. She has a child, which is another kind of immortality, but that isn't enough to satisfy that craving to make her mark on the world. Death is a boundary, like the ice on the lake that Solveig's father fell through, and she doesn't know what is on the other side. Rolf's evil stems from the fact that he does something terrible (cannabalizing his own children's lives, magically) to avoid crossing that line. I have thought that another hesitation I've had about starting writing is that I don't know how it ends. I have a sense that Rolf has been trying to escape from death, and so to right the scales, we have to have a death. But whose? Ingrid, the child? (Noooooo!!!!! Mustn't kill off the cute ickle child!!!!) But isn't that upsetting of the natural order, that the parent must die before the child, something that gives the book a bigger emotional wallop? Why not Agnes the mother? What am I saying there? That she's old and so she'd damned well better get along with the process of dying and get out of the way? Really, Peg! What about Solveig herself (probably the least expected choice.) Why should I want to kill off my protagonist? I've played with all three possibilities, and the problem is, I don't know which way feels most true. And then I get furious with myself and think, what the hell are you doing? Wasn't this supposed to be a light and fluffy fun book to help you recover from all the deaths you put your characters through in The Wild Swans? What is the point of insisting that someone has to die at the end of the story? Is the only way I can think of to give a book gravitas is to insist that someone get killed off? Goddammit, Peg, you need to fine tune your tools a bit and learn to use a scalpel instead of a sledgehammer all the time.
As Pat Wrede says, a hack writes about sex and violence. A great writer writes about love and death.
I know this book has a lot to say about love. It has to do with the love that is possible if you have a heart of flesh instead of a heart of stone (which is why Jack rejects Rolf and learns to love Solveig in the end). It has to do with the love of a parent for a child, and the love of a child for a parent.
Does it have to be about death, too? Lois had Cordelia say in Barrayar that when a woman gives birth, she brings one life and one death into the world (because, of course, her child will eventually die), and so each mother is simultaneously a creater and destroyer. If you'll remember, I said in the afterward to Swans that I start writing when something haunts me, and that one's been haunting me. Perhaps that's why death keeps trying to weasel into this book. It was that comment of Lois' that made me think how, when a woman gives birth, she is deliberately brushing up close to death--both because of the danger of childbirth and because she's bringing a new death into the world.
Whew. I'm sorry, everyone. That's probably too much information, but that's what I've been thinking of. Make of it what you will.
She agreed with me that I was missing a key piece: the exact nature of the relationship between Rolf and Jack. What does each think they're getting from the other? Why are they working together when the book starts? I have a sense of why Jack turns away from Rolf to Solveig, but why was he allied with Rolf in the first place?
But after I had burbled to her for forty-five minutes or so with plot points and thematic stuff I've been chewing over, Lois agreed that it's a real book, which of course, really means something coming from Lois McMaster Bujold.
I mentioned that I've been thinking about the book again recently. Not writing yet, but thinking, trying to find the few pieces that are still missing so I can slot them into place and start writing again. I was listening to Lowen & Navarro's album Pendulum. Mulling over song lyrics is a favorite technique I use to chew on theme when I'm writing. A song on that album "Crossing Over" snagged my attention, and as usual when I get obsessed with a song, I listened to it about forty times yesterday as I thought about it (using headphones so that my cubicle mate did not kill me).
As you close your eyesThis reminded me strongly of my father-in-law's death last November. And it reminded me of the high school church youth group meeting where our youth pastor sat us down and said, "Tonight, I want you to think, really think, about the fact that you are going to die some day. One day you will cease to be alive. And there is nothing you can do to escape that fact." And oddly enough, it really was the first time I had ever really thought about it.
What will be waiting for you
on the other side?
Is it dark and empty?
Is it warm and light?
And can you see us from there?
Wish I was anywhere
but watching you go
Wish I could cry hard enough
to make it not so.
But it's not being without you
that frightens me most
But the thought of you being alone.
Crossing over the line that runs forever
and I know that someday it will find me, too.
Crossing over, don't know what I'm going to do
But when I get there, I'll be looking out for you.
You were so prepared
You said, Please try not to cry.
No, I am not scared.
I have made my peace
Let me memorize your eyes
Till the next time.
Crossing over the line that runs forever
and I know that someday it will find me, too.
Crossing over, don't know what I'm going to do
But when I get there, I'll be looking out for you.
This is not goodbye.
It's just farewell to the "you" I recognize
I've got a long, long time to learn
How to feel you in a new way.
Crossing over the line that runs forever
and I know that someday it will find me, too.
Crossing over, don't know what I'm going to do
But when I get there, I'll be looking out for you.
But I'm thinking about Solveig, and what that means to her. She became an architect partly because she wanted to build something that lasts--her father's accidental death is an underlying causal trauma that led to her choosing that career path. She has a child, which is another kind of immortality, but that isn't enough to satisfy that craving to make her mark on the world. Death is a boundary, like the ice on the lake that Solveig's father fell through, and she doesn't know what is on the other side. Rolf's evil stems from the fact that he does something terrible (cannabalizing his own children's lives, magically) to avoid crossing that line. I have thought that another hesitation I've had about starting writing is that I don't know how it ends. I have a sense that Rolf has been trying to escape from death, and so to right the scales, we have to have a death. But whose? Ingrid, the child? (Noooooo!!!!! Mustn't kill off the cute ickle child!!!!) But isn't that upsetting of the natural order, that the parent must die before the child, something that gives the book a bigger emotional wallop? Why not Agnes the mother? What am I saying there? That she's old and so she'd damned well better get along with the process of dying and get out of the way? Really, Peg! What about Solveig herself (probably the least expected choice.) Why should I want to kill off my protagonist? I've played with all three possibilities, and the problem is, I don't know which way feels most true. And then I get furious with myself and think, what the hell are you doing? Wasn't this supposed to be a light and fluffy fun book to help you recover from all the deaths you put your characters through in The Wild Swans? What is the point of insisting that someone has to die at the end of the story? Is the only way I can think of to give a book gravitas is to insist that someone get killed off? Goddammit, Peg, you need to fine tune your tools a bit and learn to use a scalpel instead of a sledgehammer all the time.
As Pat Wrede says, a hack writes about sex and violence. A great writer writes about love and death.
I know this book has a lot to say about love. It has to do with the love that is possible if you have a heart of flesh instead of a heart of stone (which is why Jack rejects Rolf and learns to love Solveig in the end). It has to do with the love of a parent for a child, and the love of a child for a parent.
Does it have to be about death, too? Lois had Cordelia say in Barrayar that when a woman gives birth, she brings one life and one death into the world (because, of course, her child will eventually die), and so each mother is simultaneously a creater and destroyer. If you'll remember, I said in the afterward to Swans that I start writing when something haunts me, and that one's been haunting me. Perhaps that's why death keeps trying to weasel into this book. It was that comment of Lois' that made me think how, when a woman gives birth, she is deliberately brushing up close to death--both because of the danger of childbirth and because she's bringing a new death into the world.
Whew. I'm sorry, everyone. That's probably too much information, but that's what I've been thinking of. Make of it what you will.