Nov. 20th, 2004

pegkerr: (Default)
Hurrah! [livejournal.com profile] ellen_kushner is now on LiveJournal!
pegkerr: (Default)
I answered these questions on [livejournal.com profile] cruisedirector's LJ, so I sorta feel obligated to ask them in my own; turnabout is fair play. (I usually do a variation on this when my friends list pops up another hundred or so. So I'm early this time. Humor me.)

1. When did you first "friend" me? [Actually, you can find out the exact date by clicking here]
2. Why did you first "friend" me?
3. What posts of mine do you like to read the best?
4. What would you like me to write about that I don't?
5. Do you think we would be friends in real life?
6. How often do you read my journal?
7. What do we have in common?
8. Will you post this in your journal so I can answer?
9. Is there anything you want to ask me that you think you should know about me to avoid the impersonality of the internet that I have not already covered in some TMI post or other?
Feel free to answer as many or as few as you like.

(Of course, you may also feel free to answer none at all.)
pegkerr: (Default)
Word count: Unknown. I wrote a bit more than usual today, but it was all longhand and I haven't transferred it to the computer yet, so I don't have a word count. I will try to do that tomorrow.

Notes: There are bits of the scene I don't know what happens (yes, the old problem: what is it exactly that the fish have to say?). I am trying to ignore that inconvenient fact for the moment and write all around it. Perhaps it was that fact, that I knew I was writing a scene where I didn't know a crucial bit, that made me try a rather different technique with this writing session: ordinarily, I write sentence by sentence, crafting and recrafting, trying to get each one as close to right as I can get it before going on. Lately, I've had the feeling that none of it is right, on the sentence level, I mean (and I'm talking about just about every single sentence I've written in the book so far). I have this sensation that the language should be more beautiful, flow better, include more sensory detail, and yet at the same time the style should be perfectly transparent, not get in the way. I know, I know, I know, I want the moon. Yet, when I look at what I've actually typed, I feel as though I am describing the characters movements as if they are clumsy wooden puppets, rather than flesh and blood people. And I'm viewing them through a cloudy and scratched lens smeared with Vaseline. It doesn't feel real yet because I'm, ack, I'm a talentless hack who can't get across what I'm trying to say, clearly and beautifully. I feel as though I've taken each sentence up to about 75% of where it should go, but I lack the vision (or the talent or chops or something) to take up all the way to be a beautiful sentence that is exactly right.

Anyway, this time, instead of getting it to the 75% point and getting stuck, feeling I can't possibly get it any better although it needs to be better, I wrote each sentence down and moved on if it was only at about the 40% mark. The near miss method. This-is-sort-of-what-I'll-say-here method. Just laying track, I've heard it called (can't remember which writer I picked that image up from). Another thing I did was to skip over "beats" in the scene where the language wasn't coming right away. I threw in a sentence, sort of taking a stab at the idea I wanted to get across, and then next wrote down something else that wasn't the next thing that happened, but it would happen in the scene somewhere. It was like taking a lot of quick candid photographs; I will try to assemble a collage from them. Many of them were quite out of focus. But as I said, more words today than I've had in a single writing session in a long time.

I will have to make a peculiar experiment this weekend. I must take a marshmallow and find out what happens if you drip a drop of blood on it. I mean, does it soak in, or does it just slither off the surface or what? Yes, these are the weird things that writers need to know.

Mood: cautiously pleased. More words than usual. This is good. We hope the momentum keeps up. Of course, I don't think they're the right words yet, either, but we can work on that, too.
pegkerr: (I told no lies and of the truth all I co)
The motto of my journal is now:
Queen of the Ice Weasels
I told no lies, and of the truth all I could
You begin to see with a keen eye

Sola plura verba hic liber requiret.

It's my Latin motto, and the (rough) translation is a phrase that we constantly used in my writing group: the only thing this book needs is more words.

The critical thing is, in the past I have used this as an e-mail sig file when I was working on a book. A real book, a book I intended to finish. And this book, I believe, has finally reached that stage, which is an important emotional stage. You may be surprised to hear it, because after all, I've been messing around with this thing for over two years now. But yeah, I'm working more or less regularly on it now. And I do think now that I am going to finish it. God knows when. I am going to finish it.

All this book needs is more words.
pegkerr: (Default)
Words: Today 741. These are all words I wrote yesterday, that I am transferring to my computer file.

Notes: I feel a little better about the scene.
Stopping because: I haven't yet run out of the material I wrote yesterday, but I'm tired, and I want to keep some for work I'll do tomorrow.
pegkerr: (Default)
I had a nice phone call with Powers today. I'd sent him a copy of The Unstrung Harp which he'd never read before, and so he was calling to thank me, and we got to talking about our respective books. I told him that mine was finally moving, albeit slowly, and I was trying to keep my spirits up, even though my daily word count seemed so pitiful. "Although when I've done my daily session and I have only 100 words to show for it," I said ruefully, "if feels like I'm trying to bail the ocean out with a thimble."

"Nah," he said. "It's not that bad. It's just like trying to bail out a swimming pool with a thimble."

Wow, I guess that makes it seem better. Sorta.

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