Paksworld

Book III is once more regarding me with indifference.   Book III doesn’t care that  Book I was getting its launch, and Book II needed  its editorial revisions completed…books, once out of the gate, are selfish to the nth degree and care only about themselves.  They want the writer’s full attention, thank you.  So I’m setting serious daily goals for it, and dragging it along, one difficult sentence after another.   This is the part of writing that is Not Fun–something that every writer faces sooner or later, and often repeatedly.

Eventually (and boy, do I hope it’s soon!!!) Book III will sigh, shrug its shoulders, say “Oh, well…” and get on with its job of pouring story into my head, instead of me having to dig around in the mud trying to find the trickle of story-water that should be filling the well.

Part of what’s going on is that while I wasn’t first-drafting in Book III, the critical/editorial brain went over what had been written and started trying to plan.   How much Story would Book III cover?   Oh, look, this bit needs to be fixed, because it’s impossible.   What if this happens and so-and-so reacts like this–would he or she?  And maybe it needs to be aimed this direction?

All of which annoys the Plot Daemon no end, but is hard to shut up when I’m not actually writing on the book.  The Plot Daemon, in revenge, is perfectly willing to let me write pages and pages that later will prove to be useless, rather than turn the Story spigot back on.

I think I’ll go pick some salad greens.