Much ado about tools
It’s been like an episode of the as-of-yet-nonexistent reality show “Device Swap” around here this weekend! Jake graciously bestowed his laptop upon me, saying that while he’d love to keep it, I need it right now between starting up my consulting side business and writing so much. So now, with this beautiful Apple keyboard that truly compels me to type, I’m starting my editing of A God Grown Old. Slowly but surely I’m replacing all of the spots where I’d gotten lazy or couldn’t find an old reference and had to put questions marks in brackets, and going through my “Rough Draft 1” copy on my Kindle to find the highlights I’d made for awkward phrasing or concepts I need to look at again.
And seriously, this computer is awesome. I can type so fast on it. Between this generous gift and the inspiration that Bioshock Infinite has been, I should be producing volumes of work in no time…
Four weeks
tomorrow marks four weeks since I finished A God Grown Old. couple that with the fact that there are significant chunks of the novel I can’t recall offhand, and I think it’s time to start reading it on my Kindle.
on the advice of Jill, my writing partner in 50 Unexplainable Stories and Other Tales, I’m going to read it once through just as a reader. I may jot down some notes, but for the most part I’m just concentrating on how the story feels. (not the feels. those do exist though. I did cry writing at least two of the scenes.) thank goodness for Kindle, or else I would be so tempted to make wording changes…
Softly sighing
well, my lovelies, it’s happened. on Saturday (December 29), I finished the first draft of A God Grown Old. I immediately saved it as a PDF and converted it for my Kindle, then left it alone.
because this phase is about resting.
this phase is about falling asleep on an idea. about softly sighing into the dark about the inconsistencies and listening for the answers in your imagination. about making peace with your flaws and your novel’s flaws. this phase is for finding the joyous spark of research and brainstorming again, for seeking out those first readers, for facing the reality of what comes next.
I don’t know how I’ll do, chopping up my baby. she’s short already (just over 65k words) and in my heart, she’s complete. but she’s not. A God Grown Old has much growing to do before it has aged into something I can proudly show the world.
for now, I rest.
(and by rest I mean start brainstorming and researching the next novel! which is as of yet untitled but will appeal to fans of science fiction, smut, and philosophy.)
When what’s left is much less than what’s come before
I spent about an hour in the car yesterday (and believe me, no complaints here, it’s in my shiny new Mercedes-Benz C230…okay stop me or I’ll start going on and on about her) with my laptop, trying to crank through one of the more emotional scenes in A God Grown Old. without giving anything away, it’s the darkness before the dawn scene; the two closest characters are realizing they may not live to see the next day and trying to grapple with that. despite not being in a particularly emotional mood, I broke down crying as I was speaking the dialogue aloud to myself. I was empathizing a little too much, I s’pose.
very rarely do I write things that make me cry. even more rarely do I write things that make me cry when I read them later. I haven’t tried going back to this scene yet. I’m kind of afraid to, because I’m at work right now, and I don’t need to be all teary, not when I’ve been in such a good mood all day. but I wonder: will others cry at it? am I just so connected to the characters because I know what’s going on in their heads, all that stuff that doesn’t make it to the page? it’s one of the most intriguing parts of being a writer for me – making my reader emotional. my poetry has reportedly squeezed out some tears in the past, but I don’t know about my prose. I know I’ve written many emotional sex scenes that have made me cry, but it’s usually because they’re personal and related to loss or goodbyes.
anyway. as to the title of this post – I am almost there. mere chapters away. three, I think, and then the epilogue. but these are the scenes that I’ve been working towards, and I’ve stuttered to a halt because, well, I’m afraid I won’t do them justice.
a silly fear? yes and no. yes because if I don’t write them at all, I’ve done them even less justice than if I put something on the page. no because I never will. ask any writer, even ones who write magnificently epic scenes over and over again. it never comes out quite right.
curse of the writer, I guess!