I knew re-entry to the book itself might be tricky, as despite brief spurts\u00a0 it’s been on hold while the map got done.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The spurts, never very long, had gone well, though, and I was hoping that Book would keep in mind that it had not been locked in a closet forgotten.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 However, Book has its own ideas of how long is too long, and when today I sat down to get back to work on it for a several hour stretch, it ignored me.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Hmmm, I thought, and opened this file and that (at this point, in a multi-viewpoint work, the viewpoints are separate files), trying to find a character who was awake,\u00a0 coherent,\u00a0 and doing more than staring into space with a mind full of vague somethings.<\/p>\n
Even Arvid was staring at a wall trying to think what next, with his mind running in little tiny circles of the same three thoughts over and over.\u00a0\u00a0 Snap out of it, I said.\u00a0\u00a0 He ignored me.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I had left something unfinished\u00a0 down in Andressat (on purpose–an “in the middle” situation that I thought might be useful later when I needed an easy insertion to writing) and did manage to finish the conversation (but abruptly) and then get one of the participants out of the building, onto a horse, and going somewhere with another person who needed to make a surprising revelation.\u00a0\u00a0 The revelation made (and I was thinking “Oh, goody, we’re cookin’ now!”) the\u00a0 two looked at each other and fell silent, and it was a long way to anything likely to happen.<\/p>\n
At these moments, the temptation to spend all one’s facing-the-computer time on other projects grows and grows…it’s like needing to blink.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I stared at the last few sentences.\u00a0 They stared back.\u00a0\u00a0 I scrolled up to the last whole paragraph–to the previous page.\u00a0 Somewhere in there was the little thread that would become more story if only I could find it.\u00a0 Unless this was a dead end.\u00a0 Was it a dead end?<\/p>\n
I backed up to the beginning of that chapter.\u00a0\u00a0 It’s odd when I read stuff I’ve written but not finished–sometimes, but not always–it’s as if the important characters and events\u00a0 sort of glow, or raise up off the page or show up in colored print.\u00a0 As I re-read the chapter, four secondary characters who had been of almost equal importance (I thought) suddenly changed.\u00a0 Two shrank and flattened,\u00a0 one acquired a mild glow, and one flared.<\/p>\n
The mild glow was the non-POV character in the conversation with the revelation in it.\u00a0 The POV character in that conversation certainly glowed–you met him in Oath<\/em>, and will see him again in Kings<\/em> and he has more story to come…definitely has a story thread in him and is worth following.<\/p>\n But the flaring-bright character wasn’t there (could not be there) and I remembered that he had marked himself as a story-pusher even earlier.\u00a0 His backstory had come easily.\u00a0\u00a0 I could see him doing thus-and-so, which would be of use to other parts of the plot, and had semi-planned to go that route.\u00a0\u00a0 But it wasn’t yet time or didn’t feel right, and when I had tried to think how he would go about thus-and-so, it never quite developed.<\/p>\n So I contemplated, staring at the screen, the flaring-bright character.\u00a0\u00a0 He wasn’t with the POV character.\u00a0 Could he be another POV character? \u00a0 But I’m trying to be economical and not have too many this time.\u00a0\u00a0 I slid into his head.\u00a0 He was angry, hurt, knew he shouldn’t be that angry, was angry anyway, and in a tangle of temper with which I’m only too familiar, was heading off to Do His Duty in the kind of clench-jawed, resentful, I’ll-show-you determination that leads to falling flat on your face when you\u00a0 trip over your shoelace.\u00a0\u00a0 Not, however, worth a POV segment.<\/p>\n Who knew where he’d gone?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Did he just storm off without letting anyone know where he was going?\u00a0\u00a0 He’s married–would he tell his wife?\u00a0\u00a0 He’s on horseback–did he tell the groom who brought the horse out, saddled?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 He left a note, I think.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But there are two possibilities, which I haven’t yet chosen between…though I’m leaning toward one of them.<\/p>\n All this isn’t typed up yet, but when I realized I’d been sitting staring at the screen without touching the keyboard or moving for so long I was almost frozen in place and had a fierce headache…I was hit with a sleep spell, clambered up and into the bedroom, and took a nap.\u00a0 But I remember the plot thread and am about to write it (yes, it’s after midnight.\u00a0 But I had that nap.)\u00a0\u00a0 Book needs me.\u00a0 I need Book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I knew re-entry to the book itself might be tricky, as despite brief spurts\u00a0 it’s been on hold while the map got done.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The spurts, never very long, had gone well, though, and I was hoping that Book would keep in mind that it had not been locked in a closet forgotten.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 However, Book has […]<\/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":[22,107],"class_list":["post-820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-writing-life","tag-characters","tag-the-writing-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820"}],"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=820"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":821,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820\/revisions\/821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}