A Writer's Notebook, Day Ninety-Two
So, after a bit of sleep this evening, I got up and feeling a lot better, thankfully, and was able to get back to work. I didn't make it to my 2,000 words tonight, but did keep on track for the daily word count, and feel that is good under the circumstances.
I do think that it was flowing a little more, and that I am getting out of that slow period as I approach the final stretch of the book. It's still a long ways, but I am over 30,000 words now, and that feels like a big thing. I still don't know if the book works, or if it even is necessary for it to, but I understand more about it now than I did before. A certain set of incidents that occurred in the passages that I wrote today helped to show me what is happening, placing emphasis on a certain tension in the story.
Now, that is not to say that I am sure of the book in any sense. I still feel very much that it is likely to be something that may only ever be for myself, but I also sense it is a far more important and personal book in many ways. It is about things that I have been dealing with for a long while, in terms of my own personal life, even if they are not directly revealed in the book, and as such is a very important thing for me to write, I feel, even if only for myself.
Now, it might well be that all the things I am worried about are working. The depression of the character may already be coming through, and there might be moments in the book that feel very different to a reader than they do to me while writing. In many ways, I need to be deep inside the experience, and don't always see what else is being communicated. To me, that is a good thing in the first draft at least. In real life, people often communicate much that they do not intend, and that is much of what I am speaking about.
Their are certain things in it that feel very heavy, in terms of imagery, for me, for example, and I don't understand all of the reasons for that, but these things do make sense, when I think about them more deeply. For example, this book has a lot of food in it. Some meals are elaborate and overdone, while others are more simple, and in most cases, something goes wrong in a way with the meal. I hadn't really thought about this on a larger scale before, in terms of why that is needed in this book, and part of me felt that it might not be, really.
However, now, as I think about it, in a book about a person facing death, the idea of sustenance seems very much like it can fit, and the meals all have certain qualities that make them uncomfortable at a point. This is also something that has largely escalate as the book has progressed. In the first case, it was an ornate and elaborate gourmet dinner, but with food that was unusual and unfamiliar, and made using scientific techniques. While other meals do not share that aspect, they do all feel uncomfortable in some way. In one case, the character orders too much of an item and dislikes it as a result. In another, the food itself is spoiled and causes the character to feel ill. Today, there was a scene where the character gets up from his meal to confront a stranger on the street. and admonish them for smoking. It is his own frustration at dying coming up to cause that action, and that would work in other contexts, but the symbolic through line seems right to me.
The thing is that I never made any of those choices in a way that involved considering the symbolism or even thinking of them as closely connected. In each case, it was just what happened to the character while I was writing. There was no outline to draw upon, and so the book is an improvisation at the moment. Yet, it does feel very much that their is a cohesiveness to these elements.
Essentially, I am at the point now where many of those ideas will need to be discussed and addressed more directly, and that will have to connect back to the symbolism as well. The two are merged and so a change in one side will need to be reflected by changes in the other. If the character confronts his impending death and accepts it, that change will need to be reflected back in the way that the meals, for example, are depicted, since those meals are a symbolic reflection.
So, while I do have doubts about the book, I am feeling that it is an important piece for me to be writing now. The personal aspects feel significant to me, as though I am dealing with a number of things that might be important to resolve in some way. In addition, the book has required me to think in new ways about how to tell the story, and about what the story is made of. In this case, so much is internal and symbolic, that I can't help but feel that I will walk away from this, at the end, with a many new tools and insights. So, even if this is a book that no one ever reads, it is an important book for me to finish.
I do think that it was flowing a little more, and that I am getting out of that slow period as I approach the final stretch of the book. It's still a long ways, but I am over 30,000 words now, and that feels like a big thing. I still don't know if the book works, or if it even is necessary for it to, but I understand more about it now than I did before. A certain set of incidents that occurred in the passages that I wrote today helped to show me what is happening, placing emphasis on a certain tension in the story.
Now, that is not to say that I am sure of the book in any sense. I still feel very much that it is likely to be something that may only ever be for myself, but I also sense it is a far more important and personal book in many ways. It is about things that I have been dealing with for a long while, in terms of my own personal life, even if they are not directly revealed in the book, and as such is a very important thing for me to write, I feel, even if only for myself.
Now, it might well be that all the things I am worried about are working. The depression of the character may already be coming through, and there might be moments in the book that feel very different to a reader than they do to me while writing. In many ways, I need to be deep inside the experience, and don't always see what else is being communicated. To me, that is a good thing in the first draft at least. In real life, people often communicate much that they do not intend, and that is much of what I am speaking about.
Their are certain things in it that feel very heavy, in terms of imagery, for me, for example, and I don't understand all of the reasons for that, but these things do make sense, when I think about them more deeply. For example, this book has a lot of food in it. Some meals are elaborate and overdone, while others are more simple, and in most cases, something goes wrong in a way with the meal. I hadn't really thought about this on a larger scale before, in terms of why that is needed in this book, and part of me felt that it might not be, really.
However, now, as I think about it, in a book about a person facing death, the idea of sustenance seems very much like it can fit, and the meals all have certain qualities that make them uncomfortable at a point. This is also something that has largely escalate as the book has progressed. In the first case, it was an ornate and elaborate gourmet dinner, but with food that was unusual and unfamiliar, and made using scientific techniques. While other meals do not share that aspect, they do all feel uncomfortable in some way. In one case, the character orders too much of an item and dislikes it as a result. In another, the food itself is spoiled and causes the character to feel ill. Today, there was a scene where the character gets up from his meal to confront a stranger on the street. and admonish them for smoking. It is his own frustration at dying coming up to cause that action, and that would work in other contexts, but the symbolic through line seems right to me.
The thing is that I never made any of those choices in a way that involved considering the symbolism or even thinking of them as closely connected. In each case, it was just what happened to the character while I was writing. There was no outline to draw upon, and so the book is an improvisation at the moment. Yet, it does feel very much that their is a cohesiveness to these elements.
Essentially, I am at the point now where many of those ideas will need to be discussed and addressed more directly, and that will have to connect back to the symbolism as well. The two are merged and so a change in one side will need to be reflected by changes in the other. If the character confronts his impending death and accepts it, that change will need to be reflected back in the way that the meals, for example, are depicted, since those meals are a symbolic reflection.
So, while I do have doubts about the book, I am feeling that it is an important piece for me to be writing now. The personal aspects feel significant to me, as though I am dealing with a number of things that might be important to resolve in some way. In addition, the book has required me to think in new ways about how to tell the story, and about what the story is made of. In this case, so much is internal and symbolic, that I can't help but feel that I will walk away from this, at the end, with a many new tools and insights. So, even if this is a book that no one ever reads, it is an important book for me to finish.
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