writer-angst
Sep. 22nd, 2004 10:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyI suppose I should post about why I'm not working on Chapter 9.
I'm going to do this as a list. I like lists. They're soothing and I don't have to pretend there's any logical connection between one item and the next.
So.
Why I'm Not Working on Chapter 9
1. Since the marathon insomnia the night after I finished Chapter 8, I haven't been sleeping well.
2. Menstrual cramps.
3. The natural perversity of the human brain, which is only interested in something as long as it's not supposed to be doing it.
4. Performance anxiety.
5. Chapter 9 is the last chapter of kudzu-like sprawl and entanglement before things streamline back down towards the endgame. Which means that all the loose ends and unresolved complications that I've been saying from chapter to chapter, Oh, I'll deal with that later, have just run out of later.
6. Also, I am suffering fallout from the badness and sketchiness of the original ms, because there are three secondary characters who just got kind of dropped for a while until I wanted them again. And that's not how this works. I need things for them to be doing, and dude I got nothing.
7. Somehow it all got so fucking complicated. I don't know how that happened.
8. My brain has achieved gridlock. I try to think about Chapter 9 and have instant mental traffic jam.
9. I also can't figure out how to get from the first scene, which is written (639 words), to the rest of the chapter.
10. I mentioned the performance anxiety, right?
11. I have this terrible fear I'm forgetting something. Like I'm juggling alligators and I don't know how many of them there are. Keeping all one's alligators in the air is hard enough without wondering all the time whether there are nine or ten of the little bastards.
12. Also having a slight crisis of confidence about my ability to put words together on paper in such a way that they form a story. Usually short stories help with that, but of my last two starts, one came down in an embarrassing tangle of legs three-quarters of the way around the track and the other, while it finished, definitely did not place. I am clinging to Bear's maxim that this means my backbrain is figuring something out, like a drowning person clings to a large, friendly, inflatable duck.
13. Also? I'm tired.
I'm going to do this as a list. I like lists. They're soothing and I don't have to pretend there's any logical connection between one item and the next.
So.
Why I'm Not Working on Chapter 9
1. Since the marathon insomnia the night after I finished Chapter 8, I haven't been sleeping well.
2. Menstrual cramps.
BRIGITTE: Are you sure it's just cramps?
GINGER: Just so you know, the words 'just' and 'cramps'? They don't go together.
3. The natural perversity of the human brain, which is only interested in something as long as it's not supposed to be doing it.
4. Performance anxiety.
5. Chapter 9 is the last chapter of kudzu-like sprawl and entanglement before things streamline back down towards the endgame. Which means that all the loose ends and unresolved complications that I've been saying from chapter to chapter, Oh, I'll deal with that later, have just run out of later.
6. Also, I am suffering fallout from the badness and sketchiness of the original ms, because there are three secondary characters who just got kind of dropped for a while until I wanted them again. And that's not how this works. I need things for them to be doing, and dude I got nothing.
7. Somehow it all got so fucking complicated. I don't know how that happened.
8. My brain has achieved gridlock. I try to think about Chapter 9 and have instant mental traffic jam.
9. I also can't figure out how to get from the first scene, which is written (639 words), to the rest of the chapter.
10. I mentioned the performance anxiety, right?
11. I have this terrible fear I'm forgetting something. Like I'm juggling alligators and I don't know how many of them there are. Keeping all one's alligators in the air is hard enough without wondering all the time whether there are nine or ten of the little bastards.
12. Also having a slight crisis of confidence about my ability to put words together on paper in such a way that they form a story. Usually short stories help with that, but of my last two starts, one came down in an embarrassing tangle of legs three-quarters of the way around the track and the other, while it finished, definitely did not place. I am clinging to Bear's maxim that this means my backbrain is figuring something out, like a drowning person clings to a large, friendly, inflatable duck.
13. Also? I'm tired.
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no subject
Date: 2004-09-22 09:03 am (UTC)I know it's no consolation, but thank you for putting into words the reason why I've not been back to my novel.
no subject
Date: 2004-09-22 09:22 am (UTC)Oh, amen.
There is a skillset to metaphorically throwing a lot of balls up in the air in good order, and another one to keeping them moving in pretty patterns, and yet another to taking them down and putting them away again neatly without the whole thing going crash; and it seems to me that very few people have said anything useful about that last, which even allowing for the difficult in talking about an ending without having the story to that point to hand, I would have hoped there would be more on.
no subject
Date: 2004-09-22 09:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-22 09:24 am (UTC)Can you work on something else today? Or just take a day off?
If not, maybe rereading earlier parts will help?
no subject
Date: 2004-09-22 09:58 am (UTC)Beginnings are fun.
Middles *suck* the thing that does not need sucking. On a hairy Tuesday.
Truepenny, it's just the dreaded middle of the book. Breathe through it. *g* You will prevail.
no subject
Date: 2004-09-22 10:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-22 10:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-22 10:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-22 10:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-22 10:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-22 10:14 am (UTC)Bear crafts good ducks.
I was going to try to make suggestions, but then I realized they were not going to helpful, so I will settle for offering sympathy & hugs.
no subject
Date: 2004-09-22 11:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-22 11:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-22 11:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-22 11:46 am (UTC)[Wayne and Garth]
We're not worthy! We're not worthy!
[/W&G]
Honestly, I am filled with admiration and worshipful awe. That's just beautiful.
no subject
Date: 2004-09-22 11:56 am (UTC)Pamela
no subject
Date: 2004-09-22 12:04 pm (UTC)This difference may explain a few things.
---L.
no subject
Date: 2004-09-22 12:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-22 01:05 pm (UTC)And somewhere at the end of the middle you actually have to be holding almost all the book in your head. Heads are not meant to hold entire books. Especially not if you also have to hold chunks of future books of a series in there too.
::pats:: but suddenly things will slide around and fit together, thus making room.
Or as a last resort -- an electric drill, and the home-trepanning web-page. ::grins::