{"id":1292,"date":"2011-08-01T21:01:11","date_gmt":"2011-08-02T03:01:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/?p=1292"},"modified":"2011-08-01T21:01:11","modified_gmt":"2011-08-02T03:01:11","slug":"thoughts-not-words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/?p=1292","title":{"rendered":"Thoughts, Not Words"},"content":{"rendered":"

The page proofs of Echoes of Betrayal<\/em> arrived Friday, right after I got R- home from the hospital.\u00a0\u00a0 I haven’t looked at them yet, but I want to read Echoes<\/em> in proof and do some serious thinking about the flow from the last half of Echoes<\/em> through this book and into the last one.\u00a0\u00a0 Being a bit ahead allows me time to do that.<\/p>\n

One thing I already know is that this book has a soft spot (like a soft spot in a potato or fruit) that will need to a) be firmed up (impossible with potatoes but quite possible with books sometimes) or b) excised.\u00a0\u00a0 I just don’t know where it is.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I hope it’s not the chapter about Mumblety, because I think that one’s going to surprise, upset, and then ultimately satisfy readers.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 However, my fondness for that chapter is a danger sign.<\/p>\n

There’s a lot of time to be covered, to leave room in the last book for all that will happen there, so this book will have to compress those weeks\/months\/years in which plot-significant Stuff isn’t happening.\u00a0\u00a0 Unfortunately, I don’t always (!) know what the plot-significant Stuff is, esp. when a book has been interrupted by real life Stuff.<\/p>\n

I messed about in the Ideas file today, mostly to no avail…it was talking to myself, and also getting back into the book after almost a full week away (I did get a little writing done last week but not much.)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 “Let’s see, where were we…well, Arcolin is here, and Kieri is there, and Dorrin…where the heck did I leave off with Dorrin???”<\/p>\n

For those midnight hours when the click beetles have waked me up AGAIN and I can’t sleep, I’ve been re-reading some of the Lee & Miller Liaden space operas (last night was Plan B<\/em> and I Dare<\/em>)\u00a0 because they clean my mind out–good writing, interesting characters, page-turners.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I’d also been re-reading (because R- had asked for them in the hospital) Tony Hillerman’s\u00a0 Lt. Leaphorn and Jim Chee mysteries.\u00a0 Again, good quality writing but nothing at all like what I’m doing, so no fear of overlap.<\/p>\n

Where I would make different choices (as a writer),\u00a0 it’s educational: why did she or he choose that approach to the technical problem?\u00a0\u00a0 Is it something I use, but differently, or is it a new tool I can learn?\u00a0 This<\/em> passage keeps me coming back to it…that<\/em> one I skid past.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0\u00a0 Is it the writing or the content?\u00a0\u00a0 Both?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The passages I want to read over and over deserve just as much careful thought as the others.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This is nothing like the analysis we were taught in English lit…just as studying art history isn’t like doing art.\u00a0\u00a0 What I’m looking for, when I stop and think about someone else’s writing, is purely technical, and of use to my writer-mind, not reader-mind.\u00a0\u00a0 (For pure pleasure, not 3 am reading, I zip past all that and just devour the book.\u00a0 But if I’ve got to be awake at 3 am, then I’m going to profit by it.)<\/p>\n

At any rate, today was a thinking day, not an actual writing day, as far as the new book was concerned.\u00a0\u00a0 Tomorrow I’ll probably start reading the page proofs of Echoes and make notes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The page proofs of Echoes of Betrayal arrived Friday, right after I got R- home from the hospital.\u00a0\u00a0 I haven’t looked at them yet, but I want to read Echoes in proof and do some serious thinking about the flow from the last half of Echoes through this book and into the last one.\u00a0\u00a0 Being […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[107],"class_list":["post-1292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-writing-life","tag-the-writing-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1292"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1292"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1292\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1294,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1292\/revisions\/1294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}