A Writer's Notebook, Day Ninety-One

I wish that I felt better writing this book.  I keep getting my word count, and am quite ecstatic to say that after today I am officially on track for Nanowrimo, 28,500 words total so far.  Keeping at my current pace of 2000 or more words a day, that will mean that the book is probably going to come in with a first draft of between 55 and 60 thousand words.  Of course, that assumes that I don't slow down, or speed up very much, either of which can, of course happen.

Don't get me wrong, I am very proud of the work I am doing, but there is a feeling about the book that I have, which is probably due to the very things that I wanted to achieve within it.  The book is made of trivial events, disconnected except by the connection to the character.  It is not a story in the traditional sense, perhaps, or is a fairly basic one, at most.

The thing is that is very difficult to achieve.  My mind wants there to be more to the book, in some ways, and I need to keep the focus on what matters most.  In some ways there are things that I wish I could do, times when a dramatic possibility is present, but the actual tension is in the refusal of the character to enter that action.  He becomes an observer, largely, though more and more has taken action in the book.

As well, there are emotional changes and movements that are coming through.  I don't quite know how they will work yet, but they are necessary and I know some of what this entails.  In writing today, certain things occurred that are definitely setting up themes and foreshadowing, as well as offering small flashes of the changes that are to come in the character. 

Those changes are, of course, all connected to the issue of mortality, and I am not yet aware of how it will all work.  It is about the acceptance of death, and as a person who hasn't really faced death on that level for myself,  It becomes necessary to develop an emotional understanding, an empathy for the character which will allow for the possibility of change but still remains very subtle and focused.  A lot of the action in this book is sub-textual, and I am not sure that I know most of it at this point, since I am inside the character and not reading the book.

The bottom line is, though, that I am doing the work.  I need to keep pushing myself to do it, but I know that it will be completed.  That is the only thing that I can really judge  right now, and on that merit, today was a very successful one as far as that goes.  The content was not what I had expected, but I feel good about it.  Indeed, I think that I am just getting at myself because the writing is going slow.  I am still getting the writing done, however, which seems to me to be the real point.  In the end, if I keep working, I will get there.  

That is really all that there is to it.  People will ask a writer about how a book gets written, where the ideas come from, and all sorts of other such questions, and the bottom line of it is that it gets written because the writer sat down and did the work.  It is from writing that the work gets done, and that is the key, really. It may be a bit like pulling teeth at times, but I know that I can get the work done, and I will, even if tomorrow is another difficult writing day.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Poem: Neighborhood Inhabitants

Neighborhood Inhabitants There was a fox once, and another time, otters, and now a peacock that we think got lost during one of the storms. She stays down on the other end of the street, though, does not visit us. We have a racoon family that stays in our tree some nights, and there is a baby lizard, a brown basilisk, who we have seen several times. It is not supposed to be here, is invasive and troublesome to the local ecosystem, as are the duck.  I hear there are giant snails now who eat stucco or concrete or something of that sort. I have not seen one, though, I just heard they are here and big as my fist.
Read more

A Writer's Notebook, One-Thousand-Eight-Hundred-And-Seventy-Three

I am still finding it difficult to get back to a more productive work schedule at the moment.  In part, I am sure it is that I gave myself permission to slack off a bit, and it is difficult to walk that back, especially because I am still writing and being productive, even if not to the same degree. I know it would be good to get back to doing more writing, but I also know that I am still meeting my core obligations, even if at a more minimal level.  Really, I just need to make the choice and force myself to stick to it.  To that end, I am planning to at least get back to work on my longer projects again tomorrow, even if I don't increase the poetry output right away.
Read more

A Writer's Notebook, Day One-Thousand-One-Hundred-And-Thirty-Three

I received my acceptance to attend workshop at the Palm Beach Poetry Festival next year and am very excited to be working with Matthew Olzmann, a poet whose work I have admired for some time.  He has a rare capacity for being simultaneously absurd and serious in ways that are hysterical, but with devastating insights underneath.  I feel quite fortunate to have the PBPF, and can say, honestly, that each workshop I have attended there has been incredible.  As a person who has taken many workshops in my life, and who often finds them wanting, I am always astounded at the caliber of the classes at the festival, both in the instruction and in the community of poets I have encountered.  I only wish it could be more than just one week out of the year.
Read more