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Jul. 16th, 2008 11:00 pmI still have that dratted virus and those dratted allergies. You nearly had two paragraphs explaining this in great detail, but I thought better of it and deleted it. What I couldn't do today (despite having electricity after all) was write.
Does this put back my novel? Yes and no.
It's already been majorly delayed because my system is still dealing with being put way out of kilter earlier in the year. Constant allergies don't just have cute symptoms, they also leave me constantly tired, very simply. That's the 'yes' bit, and why my health comes up so much in my blog right now.
I'm not actually wasting time, but my novel is advancing very, very slowly.
The 'no' bit is because I was missing some key narrative tension for one of the major characters. It was bugging me, too. This was a worry, when the narrative tension is showing weaknesses and you're only 15% in.
Yesterday, while I was writing, a really eerie guy suddenly appeared. I don't know enough about him yet to write any more. I need to sort him out. He is totally the solution to previously-absent narrative tension at key points. He even explains two major decisions. I just can't quite get over how he suddenly appeared and scared the life out of me and two of my characters. At midnight. No, this is not a vampire novel. I have no idea what he is, but he's not a vampire.
I shall be writing tomorrow, but that will mainly be menus and dinner parties and most of it will probably disappear later on. I need to work with my structure to fathom the new character and how he fits in, and I decided from very early on that my underlying structure would be a series of dinner parties.
This is the stuff that holds it together for me, you understand, not the stuff that holds it together for the reader.* I have a perfectly normal plotline going on in the foreground, but I needed a way of reminding myself exactly which character needed to be in focus and why and a way of bringing them back together so that the changing relationships weren't too impossible to follow. Dinner parties seemed good for that. There's some yummy food in them, too.
If anyone wants, I can give you a post a month with a menu and recipes, since all you wildly enthusiastic beta readers cannot be happy with me right now. (Resort to bribes? Gillian? Constantly.)
If I can't write (because typing really is hard work today - getting this post up has taken way longer than usual) then I can research my new character tonight and tomorrow I can do recipes and menus and fit him properly into the plot. Then I'm going to inform my legs and my virus that the first shall be healed and the second entirely gone and lo, I shall write significant quantites before teaching begins. I still want to finish it before October. October is going to be super-ultra busy.
* Some people use really cool computer programs - I use really cool menus. This time, anyhow.
Does this put back my novel? Yes and no.
It's already been majorly delayed because my system is still dealing with being put way out of kilter earlier in the year. Constant allergies don't just have cute symptoms, they also leave me constantly tired, very simply. That's the 'yes' bit, and why my health comes up so much in my blog right now.
I'm not actually wasting time, but my novel is advancing very, very slowly.
The 'no' bit is because I was missing some key narrative tension for one of the major characters. It was bugging me, too. This was a worry, when the narrative tension is showing weaknesses and you're only 15% in.
Yesterday, while I was writing, a really eerie guy suddenly appeared. I don't know enough about him yet to write any more. I need to sort him out. He is totally the solution to previously-absent narrative tension at key points. He even explains two major decisions. I just can't quite get over how he suddenly appeared and scared the life out of me and two of my characters. At midnight. No, this is not a vampire novel. I have no idea what he is, but he's not a vampire.
I shall be writing tomorrow, but that will mainly be menus and dinner parties and most of it will probably disappear later on. I need to work with my structure to fathom the new character and how he fits in, and I decided from very early on that my underlying structure would be a series of dinner parties.
This is the stuff that holds it together for me, you understand, not the stuff that holds it together for the reader.* I have a perfectly normal plotline going on in the foreground, but I needed a way of reminding myself exactly which character needed to be in focus and why and a way of bringing them back together so that the changing relationships weren't too impossible to follow. Dinner parties seemed good for that. There's some yummy food in them, too.
If anyone wants, I can give you a post a month with a menu and recipes, since all you wildly enthusiastic beta readers cannot be happy with me right now. (Resort to bribes? Gillian? Constantly.)
If I can't write (because typing really is hard work today - getting this post up has taken way longer than usual) then I can research my new character tonight and tomorrow I can do recipes and menus and fit him properly into the plot. Then I'm going to inform my legs and my virus that the first shall be healed and the second entirely gone and lo, I shall write significant quantites before teaching begins. I still want to finish it before October. October is going to be super-ultra busy.
* Some people use really cool computer programs - I use really cool menus. This time, anyhow.