word cloud of FLIGHT

apartment around asked away body burn didn don eyes face felt going hair hands head held joe knew laughed life looked love maria mccellen mind moment night people pulled question really rebecca room sam something songs sound sure think thought took trey tried turned voice wanted wasn watched words work

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on racoons and hallways

In a guest post on Nathan Bransford's priceless blog, Bryan Rusell wrote today about revisions through the metaphor of building and then renovating a house. It's a pretty post, more interested in its own metaphor than in saying anything terribly real about the revising and editing process. But I had to post this quote, which I think is the apex of his metaphor:

"Hallways seem to go in the wrong direction. One of them ends inside a broom closet without a light, an albino raccoon hissing at you feverishly in the dimness. Where did that come from? It seemed so inspirational at the time."

working on a new story

I finished Outer Dark, left honestly underwhelmed. Maybe that was bound to happen after The Road. But it took me only two days to devour Sara Gruen's Water for Elephants. I just got sucked so completely into the world she created. Great book. I recommend.

I've also started a new story. The earlier (something borrowed) story idea is on hold. While I still like the idea and hope to go back to me, it just wasn't getting me jazzed. I wasn't sneaking time to write whenever possible.

Earlier this week, a new idea came to me. It came as a response to me pondering a conflict facing two characters in one of the books I recently read. (And since you know all of the books I've recently read, I'll let you figure it out.) The conflict really spoke to me and I imagined a different story in which a single person might be faced with the same struggle, instead of two with differing priorities. The story outline formed immediately in my head and I've been writing all week.

Part of me is nervous that I have pulled an idea from another book, but I suppose this happens often enough. Where do authors get their ideas? Where does inspiration come from? Not new questions. In any case, I am glad to be writing again.

I know, I know, I need to get with the writing

Ok, I'll admit... I have not been so much with the writing lately. It's been an incredibly busy and mentally draining month. But I have been with the reading:

Bite Me by Christopher Moore
The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner by Stephenie Meyer
The Sandman Papers edited by Joe Sanders
By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept by Paulo Coelho

Paulo Coelho is one of the strangest authors that I read. I can't get my head around him and constantly vacillate between loving his work and finding it to cloying. I've previously read Brida, The Alchemist, The Witch of Portobello, and Veronika Decides to Die. Each is a small gem, combining beautiful language and spiritual sensibilities that, while I do not share, I can appreciate. Yet when I look at all of these works together, I want to groan a little. It becomes almost pedantic.

I just started reading Cormac McCarthy's Outer Dark this morning. Man, but his voice is the most distinct of any author I've read. You can pick any sentence out of context and say, "Yup, that's McCarthy."

The only other of his books that I have read is The Road. Brilliant, of course, but also problematic for me. And here is my problem: I read the road well over a year and a half ago and while it blew me away, I haven't picked up another McCarthy book since. Why? Because it fucked me up. Big time. And while it takes an incredible author to get into a reader's psyche so completely, it also does the author and reader a disservice. I've been scared to go through such a dark, intense experience again.

An unintended thread running through all of the books I have recently read is they influence of one book upon another: within the same series (as with Moore and Meyer), those which it comments on (Sanders), and other books by the same author (McCarthy and Coelho). We do not read any individual book in a vacuum and they are each in dialogue with that which we have already read or will read. (My college mise en scene professor will be proud of that I've written that.)

Not sure what implications this thought will have on my own writing, but it is an observation that I will try not to forget.