Marginalia (7), or Molding the Mud of the Swamp

[netpositive]

Nothing you write, if you hope to be any good,
will ever come out as you first hoped.
-Lillian Hellman

Characters are starting to show up in chapters.

This is a good thing.

Not just the characters who are supposed to be there,
or I'd planned to be there, but characters who say,
"I would be there too, and this is what I would say
and do."

It's a chapter. It's a chapter late in my outline,
because at the moment I'm just trying to accomplish
chapters, or scenes, or whatever, without worrying
about how the final result might hold together until
there's a first draft of everything I've planned out.

When I used to catalog books [CDs, online resources,
etc.] I used to joke that I carved away everything
from the cataloging record that _wasn't_ the book.

I wasn't actually joking. The problem with writing
like this is that first, one must produce one's own
clay, stone, metal, or material, before ever pulling
out a chisel and hammer in order to get what's there.

Take 3 pages worth of historical bibliography, put it
in a blender of a brain, puree, slap it on an armature,
let it congeal, and then start shaping to find its form.

My process is not your process.... See you in about
five hundred pages.
-Seanan McGuire

Nonetheless, this feels right. I'm perfectionistic;
I wish I could write prose that would be correct as is,
an initial copy clean enough to eat off of. How I long
to be efficient! At present, I'm settling for productive.
Maybe with practice I will come closer to some ideal, but
I'm ten-plus years rusty and twenty-five years without
any novel-length effort. So that slack I'll cut myself --
for the time being. (Ask me again in three years. I may
laugh at my naivete, cry at my wasted time, or shrug and
point to my finished work. I know which one I'd rather do.)

The outline is helping. Even if I bend it, or break it,
I can see some boundaries to what I'm trying to create,
and it's becoming less daunting than exhilarating. Yes,
I'm prepared to write this backwards, forwards, and I'm
sure there will even be some upside down at some point.

Because my characters are starting to talk to me.

And that's a good thing.

Don't let the fear of the time it will take
to accomplish something stand in the way of your
doing it. The time will pass anyway; we might
just as well put that passing time to the best
possible use.
-Earl Nightingale

Comments

[netpositive.livejournal.com]

Appreciate that last quote on so many levels these days. Thanks for putting it up.

Dear heart, I read your entries and am so often in awe of how much you accomplish. You amaze me in the best possible way. *hug*

Miss you! And Caleb (along with Tigger) say *Squirm*

Miss you guys too! Glad Caleb is still enjoying Tigger (since it is the destiny of stuffed toys to be squished and stretched and sat on and chewed upon, I do hope Tigger is enjoying Caleb as well ;) ). How is winterizing his wardrobe going? Anything that would be a good and useful first holiday gift for him?

Assuming this writing project continues (which is certainly my intention -- I love feeling inadequate by only producing 1500 words or so per day *rolls eyes*) I suspect I will need to come up to Boston at some point in the next year to spend some days in the Harvard archives and Mass. Historical Society. If so I will certainly give you all plenty of advance notice...