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.")

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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.


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

Comments

[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::