Leaving aside the concussion problems (and I would LOVE to leave them aside forever but apparently…that’s not on my Bingo card),\u00a0 the times I’ve run headlong into a serious problem with a book–a book-stopping problem–it’s been because I didn’t think things through enough.\u00a0 A lot of writing happens internally (for me, anyway)\u00a0 and sometimes–just like missing your turn when you’re driving somewhere because you were thinking about something else–I’m writing merrily along talking on the mental device and fail to notice when I’ve missed the exit and need to look at the map.\u00a0 What map? you ask, knowing that there is no actual map for a discovery writer like me.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Ah…but there is a sekrit, sekrit, unknowable map you have to take on trust, I say, when you set out to sail the perilous seas of fiction writing.<\/p>\n
Going wrong gives you a chance to rethink, add thinking to a period of distracted un-thinking, and think better.\u00a0 The tangle I found between “Bank Transfer” and Horngard II included multiple opportunities, and I’m glad sit here on a rainy morning, with chili being reduced on the stove to the correct thickness (the big kitchen spoon stands upright in it), the horses munching hay in their stalls, and a feeling of deep satisfaction because I went out at midnight, sniffed the wind, and shut the barn door off of the stall that has one.\u00a0 (The wind smelled wet and tropical.\u00a0 The rain source is that dying tropical storm of the Pacific coast of Mexico.\u00a0 The wind had been humid, as if there was water up there somewhere, but smelling local–undertone of dry and autumnal.\u00a0 The shift was very noticeable at midnight and so were the big fat wet clouds blowing across the moon.)\u00a0 The smell of warm oceanic “wet” air masses is something you learn from many sniffs.<\/p>\n
Day before yesterday, conferring with Rancherfriend E-, I decided that one change to grease the knotted ropes of the two stories would be a change in character.\u00a0 Tried it out Sunday night, and yeah, it worked, in theory.\u00a0 Then I went from blocking (jotting ideas down) to first drafting a new version.\u00a0 Suddenly this character I’d never used as\u00a0 a POV before took off down the trail like a rocket, trailing clouds of spent plot\u00a0 and many words behind him.\u00a0 VERY different from the guy he replaced or the guy who replaced him.\u00a0\u00a0 Didn’t need a nudge, or for the writer to suggest what he should do…he just tore off and did his thing and it was RIGHT.\u00a0 There’s one tiger who’s not going to return to being “minor” again, I’ll bet. \u00a0 Getting into the right person’s head–letting that person carry the story–really works.\u00a0 Sometimes you have to step out, but it slows the story, makes it less immediate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Leaving aside the concussion problems (and I would LOVE to leave them aside forever but apparently…that’s not on my Bingo card),\u00a0 the times I’ve run headlong into a serious problem with a book–a book-stopping problem–it’s been because I didn’t think things through enough.\u00a0 A lot of writing happens internally (for me, anyway)\u00a0 and sometimes–just like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[129,61,128,53,5],"tags":[22,112,107],"class_list":["post-3044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-characters","category-craft","category-horngard","category-life-beyond-writing","category-the-writing-life","tag-characters","tag-life-beyond-writing","tag-the-writing-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3044"}],"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=3044"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3044\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3045,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3044\/revisions\/3045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}