pegkerr | What do the fish have to say?

Our phone line went dead for about a day, but after much gnashing of teeth and several calls to the phone company, we're connected again.

I talked with

kijjohnson night before last, and we were discussing process again. My last two books, I more or less wrote straight through, beginning to end. It was very difficult to write anything if I didn't know what I wanted to say--and in fact, I couldn't do it. Which is probably why I haven't written anything much the last four years.

kijjohnson has always used quite a different method: she writes to discover. This means that she writes many little scenes, with no idea of where they belong, or whether she will even use them. Writing a book for her is rather like assembling a patchwork quilt.

These past several weeks, brainstorming up this new book with the help of this LiveJournal, have been a rather astounding leap of creativity for me, and I'm willing to experiment a bit. I was discussing with

kijjohnson that under my old method, I didn't feel I had figured enough out to start writing. But why not try something new? For example, to take just one problem: the fish are winter's magical creatures. Ice fishing, for someone who understands winter magic, means calling the fish up to the surface, through a hole in the ice, to ask them questions when they are particularly potent with winter magic . . . but what, exactly, do the fish have to say as their winter magic waxes? This has to do with the exact nature of winter magic. Instead of trying to puzzle it out by just mulling it over and perhaps doing more research about magical fish in fairy and folk tales (my old method), why not try (

kijjohnson suggested) maybe three pages of automatic writing, on a piece of paper that says at the top, "This is what the fish have to say")

So I tried it tonight. It felt peculiar, but I was pleased to do it. One discovery: the fish think of the ice itself as the physical manifestation of magic in the winter.

Must get to bed. I have been slacking off on my exercise program because it's soooooo hard to get up at 5:15 a.m. when I haven't gotten enough sleep. Won't get enough sleep tonight, but I'm determined to get up to exercise tomorrow anyway. I promise you all. Hold me to it.

Cheers,
Peg