::eeyore::
Apr. 5th, 2006 09:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennySo today has sort of basically sucked. For a number of reasons.
1. Menstrual cramps.
2. Rejection letter #1.
3. Rejection letter #2.
4. The lowering--and we're talking sub-basement kind of lowering here--realization that the Queen of Liverpool story is broken. Broken like a thing that does not work. And I know why it's broken, but I do not seem to be able, for the life of me, to fix the fucking thing.
Science fiction seems to be where my brain goes when it has something it doesn't know how to do. "Sundered" was like that--four drafts? five drafts? "No Man's Land" was like that--three drafts, the first of which bore no resemblance to anything that followed. (I can't sell them, either, which leads to tne uneasy suspicion that I may still not have gotten them right, but we'll leave that alone for now.) And now this story, which has had three drafts of varying brokenness, and I realized last night (with an assist from my husband) that I'd managed, in writing the thing, to completely MISS THE POINT of my original idea.
This happens. It happens in fiction; it happens in nonfiction. You get distracted; it's easier to go another way; the thing you wanted to do is so nebulous and vague that you can't keep hold of it.
So I burned it down, metaphorically, and am trying to start over. And I realize why I veered off-target in the first place, because the thing I want the story to be about is hard. It's hard and I don't know how to do it and--the real reason that today has sucked like a souped-up Electrolux--I'm beginning to think maybe it's a stupid thing to try to do anyway. The line between profound and banal is sometimes about as thick as a hairline crack.
::beats dead horse some more::
1. Menstrual cramps.
2. Rejection letter #1.
3. Rejection letter #2.
4. The lowering--and we're talking sub-basement kind of lowering here--realization that the Queen of Liverpool story is broken. Broken like a thing that does not work. And I know why it's broken, but I do not seem to be able, for the life of me, to fix the fucking thing.
Science fiction seems to be where my brain goes when it has something it doesn't know how to do. "Sundered" was like that--four drafts? five drafts? "No Man's Land" was like that--three drafts, the first of which bore no resemblance to anything that followed. (I can't sell them, either, which leads to tne uneasy suspicion that I may still not have gotten them right, but we'll leave that alone for now.) And now this story, which has had three drafts of varying brokenness, and I realized last night (with an assist from my husband) that I'd managed, in writing the thing, to completely MISS THE POINT of my original idea.
This happens. It happens in fiction; it happens in nonfiction. You get distracted; it's easier to go another way; the thing you wanted to do is so nebulous and vague that you can't keep hold of it.
So I burned it down, metaphorically, and am trying to start over. And I realize why I veered off-target in the first place, because the thing I want the story to be about is hard. It's hard and I don't know how to do it and--the real reason that today has sucked like a souped-up Electrolux--I'm beginning to think maybe it's a stupid thing to try to do anyway. The line between profound and banal is sometimes about as thick as a hairline crack.
::beats dead horse some more::
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no subject
Date: 2006-04-06 05:06 pm (UTC)