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Oct. 19th, 2009 11:04 amThe good news is that I had a bad night last ight. Why is this good news? I know now how to make things easier and more fun for my workshop on worldbuilding without diluting the intellectual content one jot.
Oct. 19th, 2009
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Oct. 19th, 2009 02:55 pmToday is all about editing. I have today and tomorrow to get my ghost novel under control, before things get too busy on the teaching front. I'm two-thirds through a close reading and it's not nearly as much of a mess as I expected. If I work hard from now till 5 pm tomorrow it might be almost respectable.
One thing I keep noticing is how my teenage beta reader was 100% right: it's not a young adult novel. This isn't a matter of themes or even the shape of the narrative. It's where the focus lies and how problems are addressed. The narrator is very much an adult in terms of where she's writing from, even though she's writing about her teen years.
I've always wondered what would happen if one wrote a novel in a truly impossible year, with illness and death filling one's life. This is quite obviously that novel. Oddly, it's not uncheerful. Not happy and merry, but I don't condemn the universe to a cold death and lonely post-death in desolate hells or anything. Bad years are strange beasties - they never do to you quite what you expect.
I've navel-gazed long enough - time to get back to work.
One thing I keep noticing is how my teenage beta reader was 100% right: it's not a young adult novel. This isn't a matter of themes or even the shape of the narrative. It's where the focus lies and how problems are addressed. The narrator is very much an adult in terms of where she's writing from, even though she's writing about her teen years.
I've always wondered what would happen if one wrote a novel in a truly impossible year, with illness and death filling one's life. This is quite obviously that novel. Oddly, it's not uncheerful. Not happy and merry, but I don't condemn the universe to a cold death and lonely post-death in desolate hells or anything. Bad years are strange beasties - they never do to you quite what you expect.
I've navel-gazed long enough - time to get back to work.