I dreamt all day of catching butterflies, of holding them on my tongue. I saw purple meadows, and lilac bridges, sang laments for the dead child who the buried in me. For seventeen years, the window sat alone, frosted even in springtime. The child sat and waited for the summer to come, to lift her out of the house. She waited for the sounds of the bees, for the honey to seep through her pores. She waited for the ice-cream rush of happiness, the part that felt like butter melting in her belly, for the kisses that would never be hers. For the sun to toast her evenly, to fill in all the parts of her that had been hollowed by time, so she could seep through with the joy of a worriless day.
I dreamt of the penniless theatre-goer, who sat in the shadows and cried for humanity. She had dark hair, and dark eyes that were sunken and wise.
"I had a life once," she said, "But I dreamt it away."
"I had a love once," she said, "But he was a dream."
She was wearing far too many necklaces, and all of her skin was in shadows. Her fingernails were long and her dress was black like the feathers of a crow, dusty with too many travels. I knew she was looking for home.
I dreamt of the sailor with his eyes on the shore. It was misty with fog and his tears. It was green and silver, full of trees and towers, gleaming and vying for a place in the sky. The shore seemed impossibly worn, like a lover who had seen too much of herself in the mirror.
We're all beaten down until we're just the dust of our minds. We're hysterical for something familiar. We want to be reminded of the wholeness we'd had, but we're sifting and shifting, and it's all mixed up. I'm nothing more than a mix of me and the world, and the world is nothing more than a mix of itself and me.
I just want a little bit to keep of the world. The red of my carpet in the June sun, at 4 o'clock, when it would shine right through my window. I want the lilac of the sky on the easter morning in the year I can't remember, and the too-sweet taste of candy that was so good after hours of church. I want to lock your every word in my soul, to remember every toss of your hair. Today, you wore it long and free. I want the exact color brown of your skin, I want a word to name it. I want to put all my little joys in a locket, and to keep them always mine.
After death, after time, after physics has collapsed, I want my quiet little life, and the warble of your voice. I'll have the taste of rasberry jelly buttered toast on Christmas morning, the quiet, silver light of winter, the bells and lights and burning snow, the warmth of the Chinese restaraunt where I shared the last happy moments with my family. I read The Kitchen God's Wife on the bus ride home, and I quitely cried for the love that ate me hollow, and imagined I could smell him in the pages. I thought of the days we spent together in museums, when the world seemed open and full of possibility, even in the face of all that death. Even in the tombs of all those fantastic hopes, he was so funny and alive, I thought that such a joy needed to live forever. When I laughed with him, all unhappiness seemed like a lie.
It seems strange that after all those years of love, I should find myself so completely fallen. My body fleshy and weak, my face pallid and drooping, and my will to care. The more I try to act like I'm happy, the weaker I've become. I don't know this woman, she is not me.
Thursday, November 6, 2008
An Exercise in Straying Off Topic... you'll see
So... today my assignment is to write about my obsessions. This seemed fairly easy yesterday, but now, when I am far from being in "writing mode" the idea just seems depressing. Oh well, a writer's life is full of misery! So I must forge onward! Perseverance! Fortitude! Condoms!
So... what am I obsessed with?
Teachers
I still don't know why. I just find this profession to be as sexy as all hell. I think about my teachers constantly. I romanticize them, speculate about what they are like outside of the classroom, analyze and enshrine every word they say, and look at their existence with a very peculiar kind of affection. People who I probably would not like or notice in any other situation become objects of my attention and scrutiny. Even if I do not like or approve of them, I cannot help but feel a certain kind of fondness for them. Maybe it's because I'm a suck-up, show-off bitch. I'm eager for adult approval and affection, because I didn't receive it from my parents. I need someone to look up to and idolize. Or I'm a whore. Or both. Either way.
I don't really think that this started happening consciously until high school. I always had liked school, and liked doing impressive, elaborate projects that impressed my teachers, whoring myself in general. But I don't remember ever wanting them to like me for any other reason than the fact that it meant that I was going to get a good grade, and that I wouldn't have to deal with them bitching at me. Not that I was a goody-goody or anything. I didn't aim to be a teacher's pet; not really. I got written up loads of times in my younger years for disrespect, talking in class, sarcastic comments, and emotional outbursts. I liked being appreciated for my brains and creativity, not for my subservience. Probably the reason that I didn't really like my teachers when I was younger was that they were too focused on what I saw as stupid, arbitrary rules.
But when I went to high school, that pretty much changed. Suddenly, teachers had senses of humor. They confessed to being human, they laughed at their mistakes and their laziness. They encouraged us to voice our opinions in class, and didn't expect us to be "on our best behavior." They wanted us to be individuals, not robots. And they all had personality. And they like me, even though I was a giant loser.
It was all downhill from there.
I feel so weird and stupid writing this. My obsession with Jansen, Parks, Hein, Cataneo, McClain, Holinko, Leone, and all the others is simply embarrassing. The degree to which I took this isn't really frightening-- I didn't stalk them or really act creepy in any way. I just thought about them. A lot. I found their personalities fascinating, and hilarious. They were the subjects of constant jokes between my friends and I. House of Orange actually originated from an inside joke between me, Sam, Fallon, and Rikki about how Mr. Jansen and Ms. Cataneo would make a great couple, and how it would be awesome if they could raise a kid together. His name would be Glenore, I decided. Later, that was extended to Lord Glenore Horation C'tansen. I blended this with the theory we had once purported, freshman year, that Jansen and Hein were gay lovers. I added our extreme dislike for our valedictorian (we shall call her Dandy Candy, to protect the not-that-innocent) with a dash of the insanity and Napoleon Complex of Mr. Leone, and my everlasting love for Theodore Roosevelt (I used to eat Teddy Grams in class, and liken them to the Great Bull Moose... my friend Yelena and I even made up a song for them!) and the result was Glenore, the play that would form the basis of House of Orange. The writing of this play was a very public affair, and I showed it to my friends, who made requests to have characters based on themselves added into the mix. The result was that soon the plot became too burdensome to be contained in one play. I decided to make it into a novel.
Okay, while we're on the subject, I guess I will do my best to explain the plot of House of Orange. I was talking to Professor Conway today (more on that later) about my paper, and he asked the question I've always dreaded hearing: "What exactly is this book about?"
"Uhhh..." I said stupidly, "There's a reason I didn't include that in the paper. It's super complicated. Like, twenty different story lines and character arcs intersecting and crashing into one giant climax."
"Yeah, well you're going to need to be able to pitch that to editors in a concise way."
No shit, Sherlock, thought evil Mei. Nice Mei said ever-so-carefully, "Yeah, I know it's a problem. I've got to find the heart of the story, and get rid of the unnecessary stuff."
"Yeah," says Conway, stroking his red little beard-thing pathetically. "450 pages is too long to get published."
Evil Mei was thoroughly ticked. Did he even read this paper??? (I always get this sinking feeling that teachers don't really read my papers. It might be paranoia. Then again... they always seem to miss fairly evident passages. Like the two paragraphs I spent talking about how editors aren't going to want a book this long!!! Actually, the whole damn essay was about the shortcomings of my manuscript, and how to get it up to snuff to make it viable for publication. I felt like he was just re-posing all the questions I asked myself in the fucking thing. Jeeze. Paranoia, you say? I'll post the paper later. You tell me what you think. Paranoia my ass.) Nice Mei said, ever so tenderly, so as not to hurt Conway's soft, pink professor feelings,"I did try to address that issue in my paper. From what I read in all my research, a slightly longer novel is acceptable in Historical Fiction and Fantasy genres. And my story is a blend of the two. But it does need work. That's why I wrote this paper." I kept the bitch to a minimum.
"Yeah," Conway asserted weakly, "You won't have much luck publishing something of that length as literary fiction."
"As I concluded in my paper."
"Yeah."
"Yeah." Then I laughed, this stupid little half-nervous, half-frustrated laugh. I fidgeted with my sleeves. They were green. Green sleeves. Haha. Henry the Eighth was fat. And red. Like Professor Conway. I gave another short little grunt/chuckle.
"What?" he asked, looking vexed. And pink. So very pink and red. Like a flaming, embarrassed pumpkin drenched in the blood of a ginger kid. All these shades of red.
"I don't know," I said. It was true. I didn't. I had no idea what was going on. I was babbling. Kind of like now.
So yes. As red and oblivious as Professor Conway might be, he embarrassed me into facing reality. Even though I had already told myself that my book was not publishable for all the reasons listed above, having him say it kind of drove home that fact. In a very uncomfortable way that made me squirm under his bored, laconic gaze.
So, I figure I'll practice explaining the cumbersome plot of my not-so-magnum-opus to you peeps. Because you care. Oh so much.
This post is too long. I'll start a new one. Especially since we're going on to a very important topic that merits its very own Grand Post of Postage.
See you on the other side.
So... what am I obsessed with?
Teachers
I still don't know why. I just find this profession to be as sexy as all hell. I think about my teachers constantly. I romanticize them, speculate about what they are like outside of the classroom, analyze and enshrine every word they say, and look at their existence with a very peculiar kind of affection. People who I probably would not like or notice in any other situation become objects of my attention and scrutiny. Even if I do not like or approve of them, I cannot help but feel a certain kind of fondness for them. Maybe it's because I'm a suck-up, show-off bitch. I'm eager for adult approval and affection, because I didn't receive it from my parents. I need someone to look up to and idolize. Or I'm a whore. Or both. Either way.
I don't really think that this started happening consciously until high school. I always had liked school, and liked doing impressive, elaborate projects that impressed my teachers, whoring myself in general. But I don't remember ever wanting them to like me for any other reason than the fact that it meant that I was going to get a good grade, and that I wouldn't have to deal with them bitching at me. Not that I was a goody-goody or anything. I didn't aim to be a teacher's pet; not really. I got written up loads of times in my younger years for disrespect, talking in class, sarcastic comments, and emotional outbursts. I liked being appreciated for my brains and creativity, not for my subservience. Probably the reason that I didn't really like my teachers when I was younger was that they were too focused on what I saw as stupid, arbitrary rules.
But when I went to high school, that pretty much changed. Suddenly, teachers had senses of humor. They confessed to being human, they laughed at their mistakes and their laziness. They encouraged us to voice our opinions in class, and didn't expect us to be "on our best behavior." They wanted us to be individuals, not robots. And they all had personality. And they like me, even though I was a giant loser.
It was all downhill from there.
I feel so weird and stupid writing this. My obsession with Jansen, Parks, Hein, Cataneo, McClain, Holinko, Leone, and all the others is simply embarrassing. The degree to which I took this isn't really frightening-- I didn't stalk them or really act creepy in any way. I just thought about them. A lot. I found their personalities fascinating, and hilarious. They were the subjects of constant jokes between my friends and I. House of Orange actually originated from an inside joke between me, Sam, Fallon, and Rikki about how Mr. Jansen and Ms. Cataneo would make a great couple, and how it would be awesome if they could raise a kid together. His name would be Glenore, I decided. Later, that was extended to Lord Glenore Horation C'tansen. I blended this with the theory we had once purported, freshman year, that Jansen and Hein were gay lovers. I added our extreme dislike for our valedictorian (we shall call her Dandy Candy, to protect the not-that-innocent) with a dash of the insanity and Napoleon Complex of Mr. Leone, and my everlasting love for Theodore Roosevelt (I used to eat Teddy Grams in class, and liken them to the Great Bull Moose... my friend Yelena and I even made up a song for them!) and the result was Glenore, the play that would form the basis of House of Orange. The writing of this play was a very public affair, and I showed it to my friends, who made requests to have characters based on themselves added into the mix. The result was that soon the plot became too burdensome to be contained in one play. I decided to make it into a novel.
Okay, while we're on the subject, I guess I will do my best to explain the plot of House of Orange. I was talking to Professor Conway today (more on that later) about my paper, and he asked the question I've always dreaded hearing: "What exactly is this book about?"
"Uhhh..." I said stupidly, "There's a reason I didn't include that in the paper. It's super complicated. Like, twenty different story lines and character arcs intersecting and crashing into one giant climax."
"Yeah, well you're going to need to be able to pitch that to editors in a concise way."
No shit, Sherlock, thought evil Mei. Nice Mei said ever-so-carefully, "Yeah, I know it's a problem. I've got to find the heart of the story, and get rid of the unnecessary stuff."
"Yeah," says Conway, stroking his red little beard-thing pathetically. "450 pages is too long to get published."
Evil Mei was thoroughly ticked. Did he even read this paper??? (I always get this sinking feeling that teachers don't really read my papers. It might be paranoia. Then again... they always seem to miss fairly evident passages. Like the two paragraphs I spent talking about how editors aren't going to want a book this long!!! Actually, the whole damn essay was about the shortcomings of my manuscript, and how to get it up to snuff to make it viable for publication. I felt like he was just re-posing all the questions I asked myself in the fucking thing. Jeeze. Paranoia, you say? I'll post the paper later. You tell me what you think. Paranoia my ass.) Nice Mei said, ever so tenderly, so as not to hurt Conway's soft, pink professor feelings,"I did try to address that issue in my paper. From what I read in all my research, a slightly longer novel is acceptable in Historical Fiction and Fantasy genres. And my story is a blend of the two. But it does need work. That's why I wrote this paper." I kept the bitch to a minimum.
"Yeah," Conway asserted weakly, "You won't have much luck publishing something of that length as literary fiction."
"As I concluded in my paper."
"Yeah."
"Yeah." Then I laughed, this stupid little half-nervous, half-frustrated laugh. I fidgeted with my sleeves. They were green. Green sleeves. Haha. Henry the Eighth was fat. And red. Like Professor Conway. I gave another short little grunt/chuckle.
"What?" he asked, looking vexed. And pink. So very pink and red. Like a flaming, embarrassed pumpkin drenched in the blood of a ginger kid. All these shades of red.
"I don't know," I said. It was true. I didn't. I had no idea what was going on. I was babbling. Kind of like now.
So yes. As red and oblivious as Professor Conway might be, he embarrassed me into facing reality. Even though I had already told myself that my book was not publishable for all the reasons listed above, having him say it kind of drove home that fact. In a very uncomfortable way that made me squirm under his bored, laconic gaze.
So, I figure I'll practice explaining the cumbersome plot of my not-so-magnum-opus to you peeps. Because you care. Oh so much.
This post is too long. I'll start a new one. Especially since we're going on to a very important topic that merits its very own Grand Post of Postage.
See you on the other side.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Lots of Trouble, A Few Solutions
So, as I sat reading my How to Write and Not Suck books the other day, I got the urge to sit down and start doing something, dammit. This always happens when I read books about writing, buy stationary paper and pens, or see someone else writing. I won't necessarily say that they inspire me, because that sounds a little to grand. They just incite jealously. They make me think, "Oh, wouldn't it be nice if I could be that cool? If I could sit down and write pretty little letters on pretty little pages, and have them come to life? Create a world of my own on paper?" I don't think this qualifies as inspiration, because nothing ever comes of it. Maybe I'll sit down to write, but nothing ever comes out. I still haven't mastered the act of writing. I'm awful good at thinking about it, though. I think the main problem with me is that I am too abstract. Just look at this blog. Look at what I'm writing now! I live in a world of thoughts, not actions. I imagine the things I would like my characters to feel. I find it hard to write, in any detail, the events that bring about that feeling. I dwell so much on the internal reactions of the person whose perspective I am writing from, that I never really have scenes. I have monologues. Streams of consciousness. Everything is too loose and wordy. This might, might be okay if I could write a little better. But, somehow, even when I'm dallying, everything feels rushed, because I always feel like I'm just writing through this part to get to the next scene. This is often how I live my life, too. I'm always looking ahead, anticipating. I usually can't live in the moment until I shut off my thoughts completely. And I can only do that by doing something completely inane that I can lose myself in. Watching TV, watching my friends play video games, playing DDR, or reading an easy book.
Whatever. I'm rambling. Maybe this isn't why I have that problem with writing. Maybe I'm rushing because I want to get to some kind of climactic scene, something I've actually been looking forward to writing. And I'm so slow in getting started that I usually give up before I can actually get there. I know I need to just get through the beginning, but self-discipline has never been my thing. Other people would say that if I find a scene boring to write, that I should not include it, and certainly not have it in the opening. The book should grab the reader from the very first sentence and not let them down until the very last. I don't necessarily agree. An
Ocean Between is at least partially an adventure story, that is true enough, but I don't really think of it as a page turner. It's more of a psychological study of the main character, Bernard, and the people he encounters. It's a commentary on society. It's a satire that sometimes (too often, I think) sounds like a farce. It's a mystery and a tragedy. It's... hard to pin down, but not a page turner in the sense that there is some kind of action going on all the time. I like to take my time (yet I always sound rushed?... it's days like this that I feel hopeless...) I don't know, dammit. I've just always liked books that start out in a kind of provincial setting, with small problems that get left behind when the main character leaves for bigger and not-always-better things. In this way, I think that Bernard's story, at least the first half, fits nicely in the the bildungsroman genre. Then a wrench is thrown into things when the Miranda is shipwrecked.
I'm sorry that my thoughts are going all over the place here, but this is how I think. And therefore write. Which I don't think is necessarily a good thing. There is an underlying structure and patter to my thoughts. There is. I just don't know if anybody but myself can see it. We often think that we are making sense, because we fill in our logical gaps and see the tenuous connections between our thoughts when we really are jumping all over the place, at least in the eyes of others. I know I have this problem. I just have a really hard time fixing it. On the one hand, I don't want to completely lose my way of thinking, because I think it can be really interesting as long as people are following it. But I just can't tell when my stuff is going to lose people. I'm always surprised to find that my readers have lost me in a section where it never even crossed my mind that I was being obscure. Ugh.
Having been sidetracked again, I will now make the point that I was apologizing before when I said I was jumping all over the place. The prologue, yeah. I've always conceived of An Ocean Between starting with a prologue that takes place after the main action of the story, showing Bernard in the depressed state he reaches after the sinking of the Miranda, falling in love with her, bla bla bla. I liked this idea, because I've always been keen on keeping this portion of the story connected with the main part of House of Orange, and the prologue takes place during the action of Glenore, the third portion of the trilogy and the book where Bernard makes his appearance. I've read several successful books that have been written like this, with the reader seeing the main character first at their lowest point, and then being reintroduced in the first chapter to a person very much unlike the one in the prologue-- happy, if a little naive. The reader wonders, What happened to this person to transform them into the one that we just met in the prologue? It's a different kind of suspense, and I think it works well in tragedies and character studies. Yet, despite these advantages, there are setbacks to this structure, which is why I'm considering ditching it. Even if I gain the kind of suspense I described above, the fact remains that I am giving away the ending. This changes the kinds of feelings that the audience experiences when reading the story, and I'm not sure whether I want that or not. Plus, I feel like my own prologue is weak, a combination of what I feel is bad writing, and the fact that I don't want to give too much away, either about the endings of An Ocean Between or House of Orange.
I seem to have an attraction to these kinds of beginnings. Why? To a certain degree, it puts the reader in the main character's mind. The are introduced to him in the "present" and are allowed to look back in time with him, remembering all the things that went wrong. It gives the book a bittersweet quality, heavy on the bitter. When characters are on the ship with Bernard, when he thinks about his budding romances with Doll and Faina, we are reminded of the tragedy that awaits them all. It gives more weight to even the seemingly unimportant interactions, and the lighter moments in the book. Readers wonder if there is any way that their favorites will survive; if they can leave the ship before it reaches the end. They also are forced to look at Bernard with a critical eye and wonder, "What is it about him that leads him to crash his ship in a way that makes him blame himself? Is it really his fault, or is he self-loathing?" They pay attention to Bernard's character. Same with any other character that is introduced in this way. The more I think about it the more I think that the "flash forward" prologue is the best way to approach this story. It fits. But I don't like the one that I have now. I think the best thing to do is start from Chapter 1, write logically until the conclusion, write an epilogue, and then stick that epilogue onto the beginning and make it the prologue. That way I will know the full extent of what Bernard's journey has done to him psychologically, and be able to write the thing more accurately. It's worth the risk of giving away some information. Just the same as this entire book risks giving away surprises about the first two portions of House of Orange.
This book is to the trilogy as The Hobbit was to The Lord of the Rings. It's coming out before the trilogy, serving as an introduction to the world, in a more digestible form than the trilogy itself. But The Hobbit took place before The Lord of the Rings not towards the end of it, like my book. It didn't risk giving too much away concerning the plot twists of the main book. It gave Bilbo's back story, introduced the audience to some important locations and characters, and set up the mystery about the ring. That's about it. An Ocean Between is inevitably going to do much more. To a certain degree, this is good, because it will let readers have some "Aha!" moments, when they realize the significance of certain events in the first book. On the other hand, I could easily give too much away and spoil the surprises of the trilogy. I walk a fine line.
Going back to my problems with getting the ball rolling with the first chapter. Some people would say that if I don't feel like writing this part now, I should skip to one that I do feel like writing and start from there. Write that scene that's been dancing around in my head. Put it on paper. Get something solid done. Something I'll like. I do think this is good advice, and I wish I could take it. That's just not they way I work, unfortunately. I have concepts of scenes, of characters, and problems I would like them to have. Unfortunately, I think only in shadows. I have clear glimpses of maybe one line I would like to write, one tender, blazing glance shared between lovers, the heartbreaking childhood of a villain. But they lack detail or reason, because I don't know how I arrived at this scene. The rest of the writing is supposed to fill in the blanks. I can't just skip to the scenes and write them, because I don't know how they got there in any specific terms. I'd be left with something like my prologue. Okay, but missing something. I need to start from the beginning, because I'm all about building. Taking a situation and a couple of characters, and piling on the complications. Every event, every conversation, has an effect on how each character behaves and thinks, so I can't just skip ahead and write something without knowing everything that lead up to it.
Okay, I think that's enough mush-mush for today. You see now why I need organization and structure. Otherwise, I just go off willy-nilly saying anything.
So, in the spirit of discipline and organization, I am going to make a tentative agenda for myself. Tomorrow, I am going to write about my obsessions. I've been reading Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Something (I'll look up her last name later). A lot of what she says in that book resonates with me, and I'll be doing exercises from that book here, because she has a lot of cool ideas. One that I really thought would help in organizing my thoughts for blogging and novel-writing is to write about my obsessions. I'd get a concrete idea of what I value and what I like to think and write about, so I could maybe identify some important themes for my book-- like Bernard's fatal flaw, important for any tragedy. I'm thinking indecisiveness for now. That sounds like him. Very Hamlet. Very cool-- and just things to include or focus on that will make writing more enjoyable and Natural! (the thing that's hardest for me).
After that, I am going to write down everything I know about An Ocean Between so far, and nothing more. Just my vague thoughts about what's happening with each of the characters, their motivations, etc. The structure of the plot. It's probably going to be very confusing, and very poorly conceived. So, when I'm finished, I'm going to identify the gaps I need to fill in. Those will be the subjects of my blogs in the future, one blog per gap. I'm not going to get super-detailed, I just want to have a good idea, when I'm writing, the next major event that I'm building towards, so I can keep the pacing good. I need a sense of direction, otherwise I go in circles. I'm also going to make a list of major and minor characters. I will dedicate one post each to the backgrounds of each of the major characters, and their roles in the book. I'll get an idea of their arch. For the more minor characters, I might blog about two or three per post. I vow to write every day. That's another suggestion from Natalie, and one I desperately need to take. You see how I am. I get enthusiastic, write in gushes, get discouraged/lazy, and setting back into my laconic state. I will not do this anymore. If I do, barring some major emergency, please: slap me.
I have my mission. Now all that's left is to do it!
Yours in Death,
The Incorrigible Mei-Mei
Whatever. I'm rambling. Maybe this isn't why I have that problem with writing. Maybe I'm rushing because I want to get to some kind of climactic scene, something I've actually been looking forward to writing. And I'm so slow in getting started that I usually give up before I can actually get there. I know I need to just get through the beginning, but self-discipline has never been my thing. Other people would say that if I find a scene boring to write, that I should not include it, and certainly not have it in the opening. The book should grab the reader from the very first sentence and not let them down until the very last. I don't necessarily agree. An
Ocean Between is at least partially an adventure story, that is true enough, but I don't really think of it as a page turner. It's more of a psychological study of the main character, Bernard, and the people he encounters. It's a commentary on society. It's a satire that sometimes (too often, I think) sounds like a farce. It's a mystery and a tragedy. It's... hard to pin down, but not a page turner in the sense that there is some kind of action going on all the time. I like to take my time (yet I always sound rushed?... it's days like this that I feel hopeless...) I don't know, dammit. I've just always liked books that start out in a kind of provincial setting, with small problems that get left behind when the main character leaves for bigger and not-always-better things. In this way, I think that Bernard's story, at least the first half, fits nicely in the the bildungsroman genre. Then a wrench is thrown into things when the Miranda is shipwrecked.
I'm sorry that my thoughts are going all over the place here, but this is how I think. And therefore write. Which I don't think is necessarily a good thing. There is an underlying structure and patter to my thoughts. There is. I just don't know if anybody but myself can see it. We often think that we are making sense, because we fill in our logical gaps and see the tenuous connections between our thoughts when we really are jumping all over the place, at least in the eyes of others. I know I have this problem. I just have a really hard time fixing it. On the one hand, I don't want to completely lose my way of thinking, because I think it can be really interesting as long as people are following it. But I just can't tell when my stuff is going to lose people. I'm always surprised to find that my readers have lost me in a section where it never even crossed my mind that I was being obscure. Ugh.
Having been sidetracked again, I will now make the point that I was apologizing before when I said I was jumping all over the place. The prologue, yeah. I've always conceived of An Ocean Between starting with a prologue that takes place after the main action of the story, showing Bernard in the depressed state he reaches after the sinking of the Miranda, falling in love with her, bla bla bla. I liked this idea, because I've always been keen on keeping this portion of the story connected with the main part of House of Orange, and the prologue takes place during the action of Glenore, the third portion of the trilogy and the book where Bernard makes his appearance. I've read several successful books that have been written like this, with the reader seeing the main character first at their lowest point, and then being reintroduced in the first chapter to a person very much unlike the one in the prologue-- happy, if a little naive. The reader wonders, What happened to this person to transform them into the one that we just met in the prologue? It's a different kind of suspense, and I think it works well in tragedies and character studies. Yet, despite these advantages, there are setbacks to this structure, which is why I'm considering ditching it. Even if I gain the kind of suspense I described above, the fact remains that I am giving away the ending. This changes the kinds of feelings that the audience experiences when reading the story, and I'm not sure whether I want that or not. Plus, I feel like my own prologue is weak, a combination of what I feel is bad writing, and the fact that I don't want to give too much away, either about the endings of An Ocean Between or House of Orange.
I seem to have an attraction to these kinds of beginnings. Why? To a certain degree, it puts the reader in the main character's mind. The are introduced to him in the "present" and are allowed to look back in time with him, remembering all the things that went wrong. It gives the book a bittersweet quality, heavy on the bitter. When characters are on the ship with Bernard, when he thinks about his budding romances with Doll and Faina, we are reminded of the tragedy that awaits them all. It gives more weight to even the seemingly unimportant interactions, and the lighter moments in the book. Readers wonder if there is any way that their favorites will survive; if they can leave the ship before it reaches the end. They also are forced to look at Bernard with a critical eye and wonder, "What is it about him that leads him to crash his ship in a way that makes him blame himself? Is it really his fault, or is he self-loathing?" They pay attention to Bernard's character. Same with any other character that is introduced in this way. The more I think about it the more I think that the "flash forward" prologue is the best way to approach this story. It fits. But I don't like the one that I have now. I think the best thing to do is start from Chapter 1, write logically until the conclusion, write an epilogue, and then stick that epilogue onto the beginning and make it the prologue. That way I will know the full extent of what Bernard's journey has done to him psychologically, and be able to write the thing more accurately. It's worth the risk of giving away some information. Just the same as this entire book risks giving away surprises about the first two portions of House of Orange.
This book is to the trilogy as The Hobbit was to The Lord of the Rings. It's coming out before the trilogy, serving as an introduction to the world, in a more digestible form than the trilogy itself. But The Hobbit took place before The Lord of the Rings not towards the end of it, like my book. It didn't risk giving too much away concerning the plot twists of the main book. It gave Bilbo's back story, introduced the audience to some important locations and characters, and set up the mystery about the ring. That's about it. An Ocean Between is inevitably going to do much more. To a certain degree, this is good, because it will let readers have some "Aha!" moments, when they realize the significance of certain events in the first book. On the other hand, I could easily give too much away and spoil the surprises of the trilogy. I walk a fine line.
Going back to my problems with getting the ball rolling with the first chapter. Some people would say that if I don't feel like writing this part now, I should skip to one that I do feel like writing and start from there. Write that scene that's been dancing around in my head. Put it on paper. Get something solid done. Something I'll like. I do think this is good advice, and I wish I could take it. That's just not they way I work, unfortunately. I have concepts of scenes, of characters, and problems I would like them to have. Unfortunately, I think only in shadows. I have clear glimpses of maybe one line I would like to write, one tender, blazing glance shared between lovers, the heartbreaking childhood of a villain. But they lack detail or reason, because I don't know how I arrived at this scene. The rest of the writing is supposed to fill in the blanks. I can't just skip to the scenes and write them, because I don't know how they got there in any specific terms. I'd be left with something like my prologue. Okay, but missing something. I need to start from the beginning, because I'm all about building. Taking a situation and a couple of characters, and piling on the complications. Every event, every conversation, has an effect on how each character behaves and thinks, so I can't just skip ahead and write something without knowing everything that lead up to it.
Okay, I think that's enough mush-mush for today. You see now why I need organization and structure. Otherwise, I just go off willy-nilly saying anything.
So, in the spirit of discipline and organization, I am going to make a tentative agenda for myself. Tomorrow, I am going to write about my obsessions. I've been reading Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Something (I'll look up her last name later). A lot of what she says in that book resonates with me, and I'll be doing exercises from that book here, because she has a lot of cool ideas. One that I really thought would help in organizing my thoughts for blogging and novel-writing is to write about my obsessions. I'd get a concrete idea of what I value and what I like to think and write about, so I could maybe identify some important themes for my book-- like Bernard's fatal flaw, important for any tragedy. I'm thinking indecisiveness for now. That sounds like him. Very Hamlet. Very cool-- and just things to include or focus on that will make writing more enjoyable and Natural! (the thing that's hardest for me).
After that, I am going to write down everything I know about An Ocean Between so far, and nothing more. Just my vague thoughts about what's happening with each of the characters, their motivations, etc. The structure of the plot. It's probably going to be very confusing, and very poorly conceived. So, when I'm finished, I'm going to identify the gaps I need to fill in. Those will be the subjects of my blogs in the future, one blog per gap. I'm not going to get super-detailed, I just want to have a good idea, when I'm writing, the next major event that I'm building towards, so I can keep the pacing good. I need a sense of direction, otherwise I go in circles. I'm also going to make a list of major and minor characters. I will dedicate one post each to the backgrounds of each of the major characters, and their roles in the book. I'll get an idea of their arch. For the more minor characters, I might blog about two or three per post. I vow to write every day. That's another suggestion from Natalie, and one I desperately need to take. You see how I am. I get enthusiastic, write in gushes, get discouraged/lazy, and setting back into my laconic state. I will not do this anymore. If I do, barring some major emergency, please: slap me.
I have my mission. Now all that's left is to do it!
Yours in Death,
The Incorrigible Mei-Mei
Monday, November 3, 2008
No More Neglect
I seem to be slipping back into my old habits. I was writing splendidly when I was prepping for my I-Search Paper, writing about everything but what I should have been writing about. Typical. But at least I was generating some words on paper... that hasn't happened in a while.
Then I turned in my essay. God, was I relieved. I did that thing completely at the last minute, and I was completely drained and exhausted. I gave myself a day off from working on my writing. After all, I deseved it, right? Right? RIGHT???
So, here I am, about half a week later, and I haven't written anything since I turned in my I-Search paper. Because I have been sleeping practically this whole time. I managed to sqeeze in some time to read about writing. One of my greatest talents is absorbing all these shitty how-to books, imagining all the great stuff I could create and not doing a damn thing! I downloaded this free software off the internet that is supposed to help me organize my plot. I started drawing a map of Verloren. But that's about it.
Shoot. Me.
Please.
Then I turned in my essay. God, was I relieved. I did that thing completely at the last minute, and I was completely drained and exhausted. I gave myself a day off from working on my writing. After all, I deseved it, right? Right? RIGHT???
So, here I am, about half a week later, and I haven't written anything since I turned in my I-Search paper. Because I have been sleeping practically this whole time. I managed to sqeeze in some time to read about writing. One of my greatest talents is absorbing all these shitty how-to books, imagining all the great stuff I could create and not doing a damn thing! I downloaded this free software off the internet that is supposed to help me organize my plot. I started drawing a map of Verloren. But that's about it.
Shoot. Me.
Please.
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