Stilo super stilus

3/9/2009::A very interested agent
Tonight I plan to dive into a serious revision of the novel. I know: I just revised it for the third time, but here I am again. The reason? I am now working with a literary agent who has made some very good suggestions about the book, and I have promised to take his suggestions and--by the end of May--work the novel into something much better. It's solid now, but I can see that what he suggests will improve the book, deepen the reader's experience and make the characters come alive. When the agent first told me that he thought the book "could use some work," I was afraid he meant that I should add zombies. I'm not Jane Austen, I thought. But luckily, no zombies are involved. Nor has my agent given me specific or draconian instructions: he's told me that I need to push the characters further into their emotions, especially the somewhat emotionally-distant protagonist, and has left it to me how I'll go about it. Which is a nice statement about his faith in my craft. I've already written copious notes and sketched out a new scene or two, and I begin to believe that not only will this be a possible task, it will be one that I'm going to enjoy. Hard work is ahead, but I know the book will be better than good when I'm done. Hell, it might even be great. Fingers crossed.

2/25/2009::An interested agent
The first 106 pages of my manuscript are currently in the hands of a literary agent. I am hoping that he'll ask to see the complete novel, while attempting not to get too excited. My conviction remains that I've written a good book, a book I'd buy and read, and I think some day it will be published. One lesson I've gained from this is that a writer looking for an agent should do as much research into the agent he's going to query before sending off the letter, and tailor the query to that specific agent, rather than having a generic pitch. The pitch I used for this agent follows:

"So Honest A Man" is a completed 80,000-word novel, a skewed retelling of
Shakespeare's "Hamlet" through the eyes of Horatio, a bright but poor student
at the University of Wittenberg, Germany, in the late 16th century. Marginalized
for his Catholicism and foreign ancestry, Horatio sees little opportunity in Wittenberg
to feed his ambitions after graduation. When prince Hamlet of Denmark comes to
the university and befriends him, Horatio uses his association with the prince to
improve his own station, traveling to Denmark with Hamlet and ingratiating himself
at the royal court of Elsinore.

But when Hamlet disgraces himself in battle and is removed from the line of succession,
Horatio can no longer depend on his friendship with the prince to open doors to a court
appointment. As Horatio's own plans fall apart, he becomes involved with a plot to
overthrow the king. A bloodbath is coming to Denmark; a great number heads will be
struck from necks. Horatio is determined that his will not to be one of them.

Hm. I see that I could tighten that up a bit. Well, not just now.

While I wait to see what the agent decides, I'm taking a break from query hell. I've got a couple queries out to other agents, but I've given the agent who's reading my partial a 4-week exclusive with the material. I'm using this time to write a detailed outline of my next project, which looks to be a sort of supernatural morality tale set in Baltimore, Maryland, around 1900. The central question I'll ask in it is: in a world where evil runs riot and determines the course of history, do you still have an obligation to fight against it even if you think it's essentially a losing battle? Or something like that, in a colorful mix of high comedy and terror. In other words, my usual sort of stuff.

2/18/2009::More query letter hell
I've spent much of the last week fretting over my oh-so-inadequate query letter, and have decided that my previous version (see below) didn't capture the drama of the story, so I've tried again to rewrite the pitch. Here's the new idea:

Horatio Andersmann is a bright but poor scholarship student at the
University of Wittenberg, Germany, in the late 16th century. Marginalized
for his Catholicism and foreign ancestry, Horatio sees little opportunity
in Wittenberg to feed his ambitions after graduation. When prince Hamlet
of Denmark comes to the university and befriends him, Horatio begins
using his association with the prince to improve his own station,
traveling to Denmark with Hamlet and ingratiating himself at the royal
court of Elsinore.

But when Hamlet disgraces himself in battle and is removed from the line
of succession, Horatio can no longer depend on his friendship with the
prince to open doors to a court appointment. As Horatio's own plans fall
apart, he becomes involved with a company of mercenaries who were hired to train
the Danish army but instead have begun plotting a coup d'etat. Sowing
seeds of distrust among the members of the court, pushing the already-unstable
Hamlet further into madness and blackmailing members of the royal family,
Horatio maneuvers to be a power behind the throne if the sitting king loses his
crown. A bloodbath is coming to Denmark; a great number heads will be struck
from men's necks. Horatio is determined that his will not to be one of them.


Is it better? I have no idea. It's longer, and that may be a good thing, or a bad thing. I have, as I say, no idea. It all gives me a headache.

2/10/2009::Query letter hell
I have spent a great deal of my evening working on my query letter, that pitch to lure an agent into reading a chapter or the entire ms, and it's given me a headache. While I can give the bones of the story in a couple of sentences, it doesn't seem to capture the flavor, the essence, of the story, so I am unsatisfied with the result of my labors. Certainly the current version is better than what I've been knocking around since last November, but as I say, it doesn't quite do what I'd like it to do. Here, for the curious, is the pitch portion of my current query:

Horatio Andersmann is a bright but poor university student in Wittenberg,
Germany, in the late 16th century. Marginalized for his Catholicism and
foreign ancestry, Horatio sees little opportunity in Wittenberg to feed his
ambitions after graduation.

When prince Hamlet of Denmark comes to the university and befriends him,
Horatio begins using his association with the prince to improve his own
station, traveling to Denmark with Hamlet and ingratiating himself at the
royal court.

But when Hamlet disgraces himself in battle and is removed from the line of
succession, Horatio's access to the powerful ends. In the name of ambition,
he risks his life by aligning himself with conspirators who would seize the
throne. If he survives the plots to usurp the crown, Horatio might have a
place with whichever faction rules Denmark in the end.

As I say, it's far from brilliant, but the thing is, I've yet to see a query letter or, frankly, jacket copy that adequately describes a novel. One of the agents I queried allows you to paste the first chapter of your novel into the body of the query letter, and hopefully that will make up for the clear shortcomings of my pitch. It's all quite vexing, and some harder than actually writing a novel. Worse yet, I still have to sit myself down and write a two-page synopsis of the book. But I have a plan: I am going to go through the ms and pick out the oddest and most interesting things in each chapter, and build my synopsis around those things, rather than just running through plot points and that sort of thing. We'll see how that works out for me.

2/9/2009::Novel update
My current work-in-progress is, at long last, revised for the third time. Finished word count: 79,800 or something close to that. I've broken the seven long chapters into about 20 shorter chapters, which I think makes it easier on the reader, and the chapter breaks seem to make sense. Thank heavens I wrote in scenes. My next task for this project is to write a 2-page synopsis, update my query letter, and begin to annoy agents from coast to coast. Fingers crossed. I shall attempt to have the synopsis finished by the end of this week.

While the process of revisions has been exhausting, it's resulted in a much better book. I spent six months on the first draft, seven months on two subsequent drafts, and about a month at the outset making notes for the book. So at this point in time, I've got a year and two months into So Honest a Man, which is not much time at all. Still, I am happy to have done with the revisions, because I would like very much to start on one of my other ideas for a new book. Most likely, I'll begin scribbling away at Chapter One of the supernatural morality tale (working title: The Bell-Curve Factory), possibly as early as this weekend. We'll see.

2/04/2009::Third-round revisions finished
Last night, at about 11:05 PST, I finished the third round of revisions on the novel. Now I need to type all of my changes in the electronic version, type in all of Emma's suggested edits, and that'll be that. This will free me to write a 2-page synopsis and work on my query letter. I was beginning to think I'd never see the last page of the manuscript, being instead forever caught somewhere in the middle of the penultimate chapter. This final round of revisions and line edits has been exhausting and took much longer than I'd originally planned, but I'm pretty sure the efforts will have been worthwhile. I finally worked in the bit about Muppets and the English ambassador, too.

Now I have to start gathering my notes for the next book, which notes are unfortunately written in at least three different notebooks, intermixed with notes for yet another book. I really need to find a better way of organizing my materials.

10/15/2008::Well, that's done
I have today sent out one (1) query letter to a literary agent, seeking representation for my completed novel. I've had the letter written for about a week, but I've been, frankly, terrified of sending it off because the odds are it will only generate a rejection reply. But, one must begin sometime, so that's today for me. I am also starting to think seriously about the next book; I can't decide if that's good news, bad news, or no news.

UPDATE: Received a reply already from the agent-in-question: I regret to say that I don't feel that I'm the most appropriate agent for your work. It's a relief to get the first rejection out of the way. I am however disappointed that, in these days of email, I don't have an actual rejection slip to show for my efforts. If I delete the email trail, did anything really happen?

10/07/2008::Not my job
I am sitting at the front desk of my office suite, directing traffic, sort of. Why? Because we are short-staffed and the front desk person must have her lunch, so I was drafted to fill in for an hour. I am, frankly, ill-suited for this work, but I bravely do my best. Front desk people have to know all sorts of things that I don't know, like who everyone is in this office (and the surrounding offices) and what everyone does. I can barely transfer a phone call, even. But, you know, I'm all about teamwork.

However, because I'm not at my desk with all my files and my dual-monitor setup, I can't actually do any of my own tasks. But I must do something between people wandering by and the phone ringing, so I am working on a literary agent query letter for my novel. It's hard to boil the what's cool about the book down into two paragraphs of three/four sentences each. Wisely, I have not used the word Bildungsroman. But I digress. The point is, I'm working on my marketing letter and marketing is something at which I've never been good, but I persevere because querying agents is the next step to publication, and I really want the book to be published. Besides, working on the query letter beats working my real job.

10/03/2008::Revisions: very nearly almost completely done, sort of
Revisions on the book are at long last finished, though I now have two (2) versions of the last big scene and the denouement, and I've got to compare them and figure out which bits from which version I like best, and then type all of my changes/additions/cuts into the master Word(tm) document. But still, I do believe I am done with the actual having-to-think-about-it part of the revisions. Yay, me! Next step, after updating the master document: ignore the whole thing for a month or so and then, yes, read it once more for line editing issues. After that I start mailing out agent queries.

I had hoped that I'd get a nice break from all things writing when I'd reached this point, but yesterday the first chapter of my next book just popped into my head. So now I've got this new book percolating around in my brain, and I will likely begin working on it while I'm in the process of ignoring the current project for a month. No wonder I sleep so little. And yes, I know: this entry is so poorly written and all a-jumble that you should scarce believe I consider myself a writer; my language skills are still asleep and comfortably in bed today, while my body wanders the earth wondering what is going on.

10/01/2008::Revisions update
My original plan called for the revisions to be finished by...oh let's call it midnight last night. Alas, I forgot that Chapter Six was ever so long, and I spent some evenings having a real life, so the final chapter remains to be revised. Still, it's fairly short and has a lot of action and I could likely do it in just one or two nights. Not nights this week, very likely, but by next Wednesday, say, the long longed-for Second Draft should be complete.

The revision process has been highly educational. While it took nowhere as long as actually writing the first draft, of course, I possibly learned more about writing a novel-length work from revising than by writing the first draft. Big picture, all of that. I wonder how this experience will affect how I go about drafting my next book. No way to tell at this point, though I have some ideas about what I'm calling for now a "chain of need" linking all the events to the climax. Whatever.

As predicted, the revisions made the book a bit longer, and now it's sitting at around 80,000 words. I've had terrifying mood swings about the quality of the work, alternating between "god, this is shite" to "hey, this is a real page-turner" and happily I am of the mind that, while it's not brilliant, it's a pretty good tale well written. I can live with that. Next time, though, I will not combine a content edit with a line edit, because when you're working on dialog and pacing, it's too much of a distraction when you realize that you can no longer tell "there" from "their" or "rode" from "road" or "its" from "it's" or parse the dreaded "lie/lay/lain/laid" set of verb forms. My eyes, they cross.

In other news: It's October. How did that happen?

9/15/2008::Revisions, revised
Revisions are, to put it bluntly, fucking with my head. I'm reworking a novel, and try as I might, I cannot keep the entirety of the book in my head all at the same time, so when I make changes anywhere at all, I can never be sure that I'm not creating internal conflicts elsewhere in the story. Didn't I talk about this in Chapter Five as well? I ask myself. I look in Chapter Five, see nothing, move on and then stumble across something I should've changed in some other chapter. No, my copious notes do not help. Except the notes about food; those are good notes and have come in handy. But then there's the whole thing about forgetting what the story is supposed to be in the first place, and the words themselves, words I've written down with my own hands, words I've read countless times in other books, no longer make sense. The whole thing could be in Martian, for all I can tell. My knowledge of spelling and grammar has become unpinned, I can't tell "witch" from "which" or "die" from "dye" and who/whom/whose/who's are baffling little objects that only serve to piss me off. It's like stumbling around in a strange house filled with my furniture: What's that doing over there? Should the chair be in the kitchen--no, that's not right; didn't I make a blueprint or something like? It makes me dizzy. And yet I am certain that somehow, amid all of this sudden confusion and disorder, I am making progress. Certain, I tell you.

9/10/2008::revisions diary continued
I am learning that the old saw about how real writing is done during revisions is true. My first draft was pretty good, but the second draft will be so much better; I now see the whole of the story in terms of patterns and character development, and my metaphors and symbols are much more clear to me than they were when I wrote the first draft. I had thought that the beginning of the book, a fair mess of static exposition, would be impossible to remake into something with forward motion that draws the reader into the story, but happily I was wrong. I'm well pleased with my near-total rewrite of Chapter One. I have found, I think, the feel the book should have, and hopefully I can work that same rhythm and texture for the length of the novel. So, like, yay me. I still hope to be done with the second draft by the end of September. Fingers crossed, though the manuscript grows longer every day and, even though I constantly prune back a lot of the new growth, I have to watch myself lest this thing get too awfully fat and lose its dramatic pace. Apologies for the mixed metaphor. Writing is interesting in that it presents the writer with myriad problems to solve, and I like those sorts of puzzles.

9/30/2008::Revision update
Last night I spent a few hours working on rewrites, going through a lot of the notes I made during my initial read-through after letting the ms sit for a month. It's exhausting work, I tell you, and I must do a better job of taking notes when I get to that stage on future novels. But still, I did good work, I think. I had a lot of notes about little details ("change 'wife' to 'queen' in play scene" or "delete H's reference to number of visits to E in CH 1") to clean up, and some bits of dialog to change around because the protagonist's story arc required it, but really nothing in the way of large changes. I still haven't finished the major overhaul of Chapter One, but today, at least, all the necessary work doesn't seem quite so daunting as it originally did. Possibly that's because I've written most of the new material already, and just need to work it into the chapter, and cut a bunch of stuff that isn't working, or is mere exposition that adds nothing. Happily, there aren't a lot of structural problems to be fixed. Much harder will be the process of going through all the dialog (and there's a lot of it) and slowing it down. Too much of it has a breakneck pace and some of the conversations simply exhaust me as a reader, because I haven't given any room in the scenes for anyone to take a breath. But that's do-able, as the kids say. Do the kids say "do-able?" Tonight I'm going to take a good whack at that pesky Chapter One, though, and see what sort of a mess still remains. I worry that I'm being too unsubtle in establishing my protagonist's motivations, but there's an easy solution to that: cut, cut, and cut some more.

8/29/2008::Last night's fun
That is to say: revisions!

Chapter One is going to be the most work, but I am pleased that (after a couple of hours spent doing admittedly little but looking askance at the pages) it seems to be coming along nicely after all. Earlier this evening I had a crisis of confidence, telling myself that it was simply impossible. Happily, I seem to have been mistaken.

Tired. Bed now.

8/20/2008::Kill your darlings
The subject line refers to advice I've read in numerous places about revising a novel. "Kill your darlings" means that your very favorite, most poetical and perfect bits of prose, if they don't move the story forward, must be cut. Which, while very sound advice, annoys me because one of the bestest bits of word-slinging in my manuscript has to go, and I know it has to go, but I don't want to delete it. I just don't. But, you know, I will.

All of which tells you that I have begun, over lunch today, to revise the novel at long last. Some general observations:

1. I'll need to rewrite great gobs of dialog.
2. I'll need to pay better attention to the weather in the story. I make much of the weather, but some scenes have internal conflicts as to what it's doing that day.
3. All those notes I've been making about new scenes? Now I have to write the fucking scenes and integrate them into the story. One of these scenes, which I am convinced is integral (it goes to character/motivation), doesn't seem to have a place waiting for it in the manuscript. Which annoys. Now I have to think, and I'm not in the mood for thinking. But the Scenes Won't Write Themselves, damn it.
4. I need to remember to stop rewriting when I'm Done Fixing the Story. Someone I know has a novel she's been working on for over a decade, and she won't let it go because, as she confesses, she's fallen in love with the characters and setting and keeps adding more and more stuff. She's up to something like 250,000 words. Years ago, at about 90,000 words, she had an agent interested in selling the book for her, but she backed out to spend more time with the manuscript. That's just crazee. I predict she'll never submit the novel again, spending the rest of her life fiddling with it.
5. It's good to be writing again, no matter how much I complain.
6. It's nice that I've set the novel aside for a month or more, because I don't remember it word-for-word now, and some of the things I read are surprising me. In a good way, mostly.
7. There is no number seven.

7/17/2008::another pointless writing note
I've finished the first draft of the novel, and while I've been pretty good about Not Looking At It Right Now (I want to let it alone until next month at the earliest, and in the meanwhile forget everything I know about the story, Shakespeare, and everything else Hamletesque), I cannot stop thinking about the story, and I've realized that while it's a good first draft, I think, sort of getting the bones of the tale in place and likely most of what I've written will stay, I completely mistook who the story is about. That is, I thought the narrator (Horatio) was a foil character who meddles in the protagonist's life, but actually Horatio is the protagonist; it's his story, and the person (Hamlet, that is) whom I took for the protagonist is actually the foil character, the B plot, which means I've got some work to do. But not until next month at the earliest. Still, while I was having lunch at my desk, I started making some notes about what I'll need to change, mostly a lot of expansion and ideas about foreshadowing and imagery and character development, I came to see that the book's going to need about (wait for it) 20,000-30,000 more words to make it into the proper story it wants to be. I base that figure on not only a general feel of how I write and how this book is at this stage, but also on the fact that my hastily written notes alone come to around 2,000 words. But that extra prose is really only another couple of chapters worth of stuff, which isn't onerous at all. In fact, it sort of pleases me; as a Virgo, I like to have a project. But I repeat: I'm not doing anything with it until August, or until I finish reading Little Women, whichever comes latest.

7/10/2008::What I'm not doing
What am I not doing, aside from working, that is? I'm not writing the first draft of a novel. Why am I not writing the first draft of a novel? Because I finished the first draft last night, around 10:00. I wrote gobs of possibly-less-than-inspired prose, like 5000 more words, so the hated word count is now over 72,000. I expect that when I do the rewrite in a month (because I refuse to look at it again until August), I'll expand some things and it'll get even longer; I completely forgot to work in the bit about eels.

7/8/2008::Almost there...
Last night after work, I decided to forgo everything but eating, laundry, and writing. I did not go to the grocers though I have not much food in my larder, I did not go ride my gawcy new bike, nor did I go running, nor did I practice the violin (I'm working on the C# major scale this week and the Bach Partita in D minor; you?). No, I sat me down at my writing table and went round to work, and have very nearly almost entirely completely finished the first draft of the novel, whose working title I think I've finally replaced with a provisional title (don't ask me what the difference is). Tonight after work, I will forgo all pleasures but those of writing, and finish this book. I've got but two scenes to write, and one of them already lies half-written in a notebook, so it should go quickly. The other scene will be tricky to structure, but it's not a long scene; I also have the last couple of pages (the very last words of the book) already scratched down in the aforementioned notebook. So, like, this time tomorrow, I'll be done with the first draft. Current word count: 67,167, so my original prediction of 70,000 words in seven chapters looks like it will hold.

6/25/2008::Writing, et cet
I am very nearly done with the hated Chapter Six; just the end of the current scene and one more scene to go. Another character gets offed at the end of this chapter, and while I am very fond of that particular character, it's curtains anyway because I must be heartless in my role as omnipotent author. My bad, as the kids say. After that, the penultimate chapter should be quick enough to write, and I've already got the final chapter scrawled in a notebook somewhere. Hopefully I'll be done with the first draft in two weeks or so. Of course, I am also rewriting the opening chapter, so maybe I shouldn't count my chicks before they are hatchlings. Still, the end in sight and all that. What I need is a week away from the office, a nice hot bottomless pot of tea, an unending supply of toast and jam, and continuous Beethoven string quartets; I could hammer out the rest of this book straightaway under those conditions. But alas, I have this job-type thing eating up all my valuable time. Whose idea was that?

Note to my biographer: length is roughly 59,000 words at this point. Which is what? 150 pages? Is that all? Huh.

6/10/2008::because I'm nothing if not dull
I'm deep into Chapter Six of the novel, of which novel I've written about 52,000 words so far. (You'd think I'd have run out of words at this rate, yet here I am, typing loads more of them.) If all goes well, my original goal of "First Draft By End of June" will hold. Yay! The next scene I write will be all about eels and flowers, I think. And maybe there'll be a funeral; I haven't decided. To my surprise, there's a ghost scene in this chapter. I had no idea it was that sort of book.

6/3/2008::
Last night I finished Chapter Five. Yay! I killed off one of the main characters! Yay! I'll miss him, of course, but he had to go sometime. Now I have but two (2) chapters to write, or about (quick burst of mathematics) 28% of the first draft to go. Chapter Five is shorter than the previous four chapters, being only around 8,000 words, which puts the current word count at about 48,000 or so, not counting the additional stuff I've written for the first chapter but not yet typed into the ever-expanding master copy. I continue to believe that this is going to be a good book, and I tell myself I'm not just telling myself that.

5/13/2008::boring writing update
I finished Chapter Four last night, finally. Runs good, needs work, as they say. But still, done and I can now move onto the hated Chapter Five. Three more chapters to write, plus a bit of stuff to tack onto the start of Chapter One, and I think the first draft will be written. Word count, because it's what I do: 39,184. I am taking a break before I make the usual extensive notes for the next chapter in order to read some of the poems in Seamus Heaney's Opened Ground. That man writes better than I ever will, but I think it's healthy for writers to be humbled by the prowess of other writers, so I don't so much mind.

5/7/2008::Another late-night writing update
One last scene in Chapter Four to go, and it should be quick enough to write. Estimated word count thus far: 37,000. I am, I think, still shy of the halfway mark. At this rate, I'll be finished with the first draft in something like November, which is a disappointing thought. I'd planned to have it written by the end of June, damn it. Still, writing, and that's something.

5/1/2008::Chapter Four update
Halfway through Chapter Four: two scenes done, two more to go. Word count: 33,807. Tired now. Sleep.

4/18/2008::Writing (continued)
I've begun Chapter Four, finally. I spent days just making notes, and a few nights ago I covered half my coffee table with post-its trying to find the structure of this chapter, and then, finally, I wrote out the first scene. It's a bit rough around the edges, but most of what I want is there. Special thanks to long-suffering Emma for the metaphor that inspired this scene. So I've only got two more scenes (both very long and increasingly emotional) for this chapter, but the point is: writing! Word count, I say for benefit of my future biographer, is around 31,600 right now. When I've finished this chapter, I should be about halfway through the novel. I should note also that last night, quite too late indeed, I wrote what I think is the last (very short) chapter in the book.

4/9/2008::Chapter Three finished!
A couple of weeks ago, I thought I had finished Chapter Three of The Work In Progress, but I was wrong. Tonight, however, I know I've got it. There I was writing an exhausting scene, and suddenly I was through it and the chapter done and gosh, but that's a relief. So, on to Chapter Four, which won't be as hard; Chapter Three was a bit rough on one of my favorite characters but I think she gets a sort of respite in the next one.

Word count, because I'm halfway using LJ to track my progress: just under 30,000.

All hail the power of freshly baked scones and Irish breakfast tea!

3/18/2008::Chapter Three done (I think)
I believe I have finished Chapter Three of the novel. I think. It was late when I finished writing, and I've not looked over the pages of miserable scrawls I produced ever so very late in the wee smas, but I really think I've finished what was an awful fucking bitch of a chapter. And, though as I say I've not read over it, I think it's about what I want, possibly even bordering on good writing. Possibly. Tired now.

[Hours later...] Having read over last night's writing during lunch today, I have come to two conclusions: First, I should write more often between the hours of one and three in the ayem, because what I scribbled down last night works a treat. Secondly, I see that I'm not done with Chapter Three yet, as there are at least two (2) more scenes that must happen before Chapter Four starts. But at least now I know what those scenes are, and who's in them, and a general idea of how to transition into those scenes from what I've already got down on paper.

Also: Shakespeare is still The Greatest Writer In The English Language, I tell you. He's been dead 400 years and he can still kick the crap out of your favorite writer. Clearly, I'm punchy and I need some sleep. But still. Shakespeare. He wasn't bad at all.

2/22/2008::Writing, still
Words: 15,222.
Still in Chapter Two.
Tired now. Must sleep.

2/8/2008::Writing about writing
I continue to work on the novel, and it's become, frankly, work. I've written a load of words--I don't know how many at this point, but a lot of them--and I think most of them work in the order I've put them on the page. I am very close to the point in any writing project when what I've written will stop making any sense to me; I read back over the first chapter, for example, and it may as well be in Martian for all the sense I can make of it. I worked on a scene over lunch and while it will require some re-writing at some point, I think it does what it's supposed to do. Which remark ("It does what it's supposed to do") is becoming more my writing mantra than "wow, this is good stuff". Sigh.

Yet the plot, the back story, the setting, and the characters all continue to grow on me and I continue to believe that, when all is said and done, I'll have a dandy story. I worry at this point about structural and stylistic matters, likely worrying too much since I've got probably 40,000 more words to write before the first draft is finished. But as I've been living with writing this story for months now, it's the scheduled time for doubts to creep up on me. Do I depend too much on dialog? Should the action be written in shorter, more declarative sentences? Does any of it make any sense at all? I don't really know; I just keep writing scenes that seem to follow each other, and everything I've got so far seems to lead up to the places it should lead, and while I still can't quite describe to anyone what I'm trying to do with this material, it all feels more-or-less right. Which is something.

1/24/2008::Writing are fun
On the bus ride home last night, I began writing Chapter Two of the novel. To the alarm of my seatmate, I scribbled away furiously all the way home. After dinner I wrote for two more hours without even noticing that so much time had passed. Maybe it's just that my novel and I are still in the romantic "getting to know you" phase, but the writing goes very well and I'm in love with every aspect of this work (including even all the damned historical research). Everything is somehow falling into place with surprising ease, new scenes appear under my pen as if by magic, and the dialog all pleases me. The characters develop in surprising ways; last night my protagonist decided to read a letter not addressed to him and then have a chat with the intended recipient of the letter. I didn't see that coming. Nor was I aware that there would be a thunderstorm and a dozen unhappy Swiss lancers soaked to the skin, or a flock of gulls eating shellfish on a beach at low tide. Yet these things keep appearing on the page, and I like them all. Writing are fun. For those who care about such things, the word count is a bit above 8000, which I tell myself means I'm around 13% of the way through the first draft. Though very likely this will turn out to be longer than I now intend, if the writing keeps surprising me with new scenes.

1/16/2008::
I have a writing project about which I am ever so happy. It very nearly writes itself, this thing does. I am happy to be writing again, and I find I am working on it every day even if that work is just making notes for later actual prose. I'm in love with the story, the setting, and especially the characters (even the villainous ones). I write on the bus, at work, and everyfuckingwhere, which is the real advantage of being a Luddite who writes longhand. Did I mention that I'm happy to be writing again? Because I'm happy to be writing again.

1/3/2008::Who's there?
For reasons not importing Denmark's health, nor England's neither, I'm on my third reading of Hamlet in the last two months. This is a play in which characters are constantly asking questions, constantly trying to determine who the other characters are and what they're up to (for reasons certainly importing Denmark's health). The very first line of the play is "Who's there?" My main question as I read this play is also, "Who's there? Who are these people?" And it's not clear at all. I've been reading a lot of critical essays about Hamlet and I find that there is no consensus, no universally-accepted interpretation of anything in the play. Was Hamlet a hero or a zero? Was he mad or wasn't he? Did he fail to act, or was he plotting and working behind the scenes the whole time? Was Polonius a "doddering old fool" or a Machiavellian statesman? Was Ophelia a tragic suicide ill-used by Hamlet, or was she the daughter of a Machiavellian statesman who, like her father, got her just rewards? And why, when he is one of the best-spoken and most clever persons in Elsinore, did Hamlet pen such a dreadfully bad love letter to Ophelia? Does Shakespeare approve of or condemn revenge, given that there are not one but three sons in the play who are set on avenging the murders of their fathers? Who are these people? I intend to find out.