Portrait of the artist as a very startled goose

[truepenny]

icetome reviews Mélusine and The Virtu and generally thinks I don't know what I'm doing.

Lighthearted Librarian has some advice about reading The Doctrine of Labyrinths.

jess_ka thinks Bear and I together are greater than the sum of our parts (A Companion to Wolves).

2ce also likes the wolf book. (Favorite line from the review: "you need to show up to the party prepared for the viking gang bang.")

---

I know, I promised to shut up, didn't I? But, see, something happened* this morning, and I need to give it time to settle.

"It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards," the Queen remarked.

I've had the experience more than once while writing these books of putting something in, basically because it seemed like a good idea at the time, and only much later, like a book or two later, finding out what it was for. Today that happened with something in the first book. In the first fifty pages of the first book, no less.

Yeah. Three books later, I know why I did that and what it means.

This is a completely unnerving thing to have happen, even while at the same time it is tremendously cool and shiny. Because it gives me the heebie-jeebies. What if I'd taken that thing in book one out? (I almost did take out something in book one that turned out to be incredibly important in book three and is going to come back again in book four. I needed to cut a hell of a lot of words, and my editor said, "This scene doesn't seem to be doing anything." And I stood my ground, even though at the time, she was completely right.) What about all the things I did take out (because they didn't seem to be doing anything)? In other words, this is a part of the creative process that not only does my rational mind not control, it doesn't even know about it except as a fait accompli.

I'm not at all a fan of mysticizing creativity--in fact, quite the reverse. I don't think the Romantics did any of us any favors in trying to divorce art from craft, or in suggesting that artists are like geese who lay golden eggs and any attempt on their part to examine what they do or think critically about how they do it will only kill the goose. But, honest to Pete, as far as I'm concerned, my mind has just done a magic trick. I don't know how it works. I don't know what just happened.

But here it is, a golden egg and a very startled goose.

And now that I know what I'm doing, I need to pause and think about how to do it better.


---
*Events that take place entirely in thought also "happen," even if it feels weird to describe them as such.

Comments

[michaeldthomas.livejournal.com]

Hah! That's what you get for being brilliant. :)

For what it's worth, it also makes me both thankful and uneasy when stuff like that happens.

[irismoonlight.livejournal.com]

But, honest to Pete, as far as I'm concerned, my mind has just done a magic trick. I don't know how it works. I don't know what just happened.

But here it is, a golden egg and a very startled goose.

And now that I know what I'm doing, I need to pause and think about how to do it better.

*bounces*
I'm NOT crazy! Excellent!
Not that I have your depth of experience to pull from, but...I LOVE it when such things happen. It brings the writing alive for me. Well, that, and the three-year-old in me just gets a huge kick out of watching the rabbit pop out of the baseball cap.

[fidelioscabinet.livejournal.com]

truepenny's right hand: "Hey! I had no idea you were doing that. What the hell do you think you're up to anyway?"

truepenny's left hand: "Like you tell me anything about what you're up to--I just thought I'd return the favor, y'know?"

[panjianlien.livejournal.com]

The sound of something you didn't know was a key going "click" into its lock is unsettling. It happens to me with research quite a bit. Read and read and read and think and think and think and then get frustrated and start plowing ahead anyway and then.... six, eight, ten months later, or more.... "oh, that's what that handle is for!" And I always feel so thick for not having seen it sooner.

Here's hoping that what is on the other side of the lock is worth the getting to it!

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

Message from your right-brain, sir. *G* It says it did that on purpose. Stop messing with it!

(Seriously, when I have that experience, I know the narrative is working. AHA! That's what that's there for! Like Erik. Why is he there? Well, he'll be important later. Who knew?)

[renatus.livejournal.com]

I love those scary-cool moments when stuff I put into a maunscript early on suddenly all comes together. I imagine it's much more rattling when it happens over the course of a series.

I don't think it's (entirely) one's brain pulling a magic trick. I think it has to do as much with craft as the rest of writing--the more one consciously makes an effort to weave in details and scenes that become very important later, the more trained one's brain is to go and do the work behind the scene, so epiphanies seem to pop up out of nowhere.

[frostedelves.livejournal.com]

Yay! Congratulations!

I've had similar experiences running years-long tabletop roleplaying games (online, these days, but it's still a table. With a computer on it). For the game that's been running off and on for seven years now, things I put in at the beginning and did not pursue further have ended up being exactly what I need several years, many odd player decisions, and a bad guy that the party absolutely refused to kill later. It makes it look like I had much, much more of a devious and detailed master plan than I honestly did at the time. Sometimes you just know it needs to have these bits and go that way without being able to back it up logically yet.

It's so nifty to read about an author I enjoy having a similar kind of long-running story experience. It's also bizarrely reassuring.

Thanks for sharing, and yay Corambis!

[cleverthylacine]

It makes it look like I had much, much more of a devious and detailed master plan than I honestly did at the time.

I love that when that happens. All the time, in my main collaborative project. Sadly, all the people who are writing it with me now know that this is just how my brain works and I'm not actually that consciously devious.

[rutemple.livejournal.com]

Um, congratulations, and can hardly wait to read the golden egg and see the connections go *click*.
Why on earth have I not yet read Wolves? I will correct that lack post haste. If I like each of your writings this much (damn you for doing such difficult subjects as are in Mélusine and Virtu so well, or just wow or something like that), then if as happens your synergy with Bear is bigger than each, I'm going there.

Those startled goose moments aren't anything one can plan for, but ye ghods and little fishies, aren't they fun?

[britmandelo.livejournal.com]

It is unnerving, isn't it? Just a moment where you get to sit back and go, "huh, look at that." I've never managed it with three books inbetween, that's pretty impressive, but it's always interesting when a scene in the beginning that you thought had no real purpose crops back up again, perfectly, in the ending.

[cleverthylacine]

I do that all the time, which is why I'm terrified of people whose approach to editing is to cut cut cut.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

Does snarking at dumb reviews of other people's work count as bad in the same way as it does for dumb reviews of one's own work ?

Because really, someone who objects to not having the meaning of any unfamiliar proper nouns spoon-fed to them straight away is... well, the kindest way I can think of putting it is, not a target audience for anything I am ever likely to write, in ways for which I am, on the whole, thankful.

[ginny-t.livejournal.com]

At the risk of sounding sycophantic, hear hear!

[woodburner.livejournal.com]

Well, I feel that piling on too many right away is generally not a good idea, and it'll often irritate me when a novel does it. However, I experienced no such irritation when I read Melusine, so I don't think it went overboard on the proper noun throwing. I don't expect the setting to be explained straight away, just that you don't bombard me with so many unfamiliar names that it starts becoming gibberish.

[woodburner.livejournal.com]

That happens to me all the time. It does give me the heebie jeebies. Fortunately, I generally like the heebie jeebies.

("You need to show up to the party prepared for the viking gang bang"? And why, pray tell, would anyone be at any party if not for the Viking gang bang?)

[minerva710.livejournal.com]

"And why, pray tell, would anyone be at any party if not for the Viking gang bang?"

Amen!

I also love your icon. That is all. :)

[woodburner.livejournal.com]

haha, thanks! Those things were in my bushes summer before last. They looked like tiny lavos babies. It was creepy.

[roadrunnertwice]

Some people show up for the Elizabethan gang bang! I just want to ensure appropriate costume decisions.

[woodburner.livejournal.com]

Touché.

[kateelliott.livejournal.com]

I love this post. I put a piece of dumb-bad fantasy-bog-standard poetry-kine thing in book one; left it in because -- I dunno -- I just left it in. In book four it turned out to be crucial.

[1trackmind.livejournal.com]

That's always very cool when it happens.

May I ask why you decided to do the different measurements of time in the Doctrine series? I know it's a class based difference I'm just curious what prompted it. I'm sorry if this is a question you've already been asked upteen times.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

It amused me to give the French Revolutionary calendar to the ancien regime. The indictions counted in groups of seven is actually a feature of Byzantine time-keeping; I just extrapolated--what would be the cultural effects of a religion that encouraged thinking in base-7--as a thought experiment.

The even simpler reason is that when I started writing these books in college, I was writing them just for me, so there was no reason not to throw in all the wild and crazy stuff I could find. And it never occurred to me that it would cause readers as much difficulty as apparently it does.

[hlglne.livejournal.com]

Muses get mystical upon close examination, which of course also tends to make them distant..... You left it and it was lovely and golden and seemingly incidental like a gall bladder? YES!

[1trackmind.livejournal.com]

Very interesting! I had no idea it had such a history. It makes more sense now and is very cool! Thanks for answering.

[minerva710.livejournal.com]

Personally I like the time, even if it does drive me crazy sometimes, just like the little mentions of old stories and historical figures (though I'm always sad when I reread Melusine and Mildmay still doesn't actually tell the story he tells the little Badgers- makes me jealous!). It makes it a more seemless, real world and culture- I've described Melusine herself as the third main character of the first book.

And it's awesome that your brain did that. It's like when I order from BPAL and have totally forgotten it by the time it comes. My past self got me a present, yay! Except better. Wish I knew which scene it was!

Good luck with your retreat. ::Goes back to lurking in dark corner...waiting for Corambis::

[davidlevine]

That happens to me All The Time. My analysis of the situation (being who I am, I must analyze it) is that it's my subconscious nibbling on the existing facts after writing the whatever, rather than my subconscious putting in the whatever knowing that it will be needed later. Putting together patterns from sometimes-apparently-unconnected information is what we do, we ape-derived sophonts, and writer-types tend to be better at that than most (so do scientists and detectives). Why should we not be surprised when our mystery-solving brains manage to solve a mystery, even if all of the pieces were provided by that same brain and we didn't even know that it was a mystery until the solution appeared?

That Felix/Mildmay 'thing'

[(Anonymous)]

Clearly the UST is a wide draw (partly because of the squick factor? or we're all pervy hobbit fanciers?), and I hope that their falling in love (which they seem to have done, however you slice it) turns out to be an intrinsic part of the final resolution. Zaf

Re: That Felix/Mildmay 'thing'

[1trackmind.livejournal.com]

Seconded. Plus, I imagine Ms. Monette has many fans who are into slash and there are at least a few shows on right now that seem to encourage the incestuous slash. (Supernatural, Numb3rs, I'm looking at you).

[(Anonymous)]

* whispering * that's Doctor Monette....

[1trackmind.livejournal.com]

Sorry! My humblest apologies. Dr. Monette.

[roadrunnertwice]

Hey, thanks for the linkback!