After a pleasant visit in Eastern New York (avoiding the 212 and Miss Snark at all cost) I'm getting ready to pack the car back up and get out of here!It's been a good week travel-wise. We went up to Canada (we walked over the bridge rather than riding because traffic was horrendous!). We visited Old Fort Niagara and several other historic sights along the lake shore. We even made it up to a lovely old lighthouse.
I love the scenary here. Somehow I need to fit crumbling forts, ancient wood beams, and lighthouses into a story.
On the writing front.... not so good. I've been fighting with the same scene all weekend. I write and delete and write again and delete again. I don't know if I'm being hypercritical because I'm furious about doing so many drafts or if I really just don't know how to frame the scene in words.
Part of it, I know, is the not-quite-human reaction of the MC. It's one of the pitfalls of writing any society but your own. When you write far-future, or ancient past, or alien societies of any kind you need to balance the characters reactions between what they actually are and what the readers can relate to. The natural reaction for you and me is not always the instinctive reaction of an alien character.
Which means that you have to explain that in-text or make the character so very alien that a blind clam could understand the motivation. The blind clam approach does not work on nearly-human characters though.
So, once the car is loaded and I'm on the road again I'll be making notes and trying to work through this snarl. The story is shaping up well and I don't want to push it to the back-burner, but I will if I can't work through these problems.
Does anyone else ever have days like this?
I think we all have days like that, Just_me. :P
ReplyDeleteWhy are you deleting? *looks stern* You save non-working scenes and don't completely delete! Tsk tsk. %-) Never know when you'll want to salvage something.
Anyway, take a break, make some notes, consider working on the scenes past the tangled one until you get home and have a chance to wind down a little. ;) A little break might help clear it up!
Ta,
~Merc
I love crumbling old forts and plan to fit them in a story, also! We hit a couple along the Potomac back in July.
ReplyDeleteGreat luck with the writing!
Great picture! Keep working at it and you'll get there. What might help is to make a practice scene where your character is in a similar situation, but not related to your book. Just taking the pressure off of not having to create stellar writing for sake of the novel might be what helps you get through this block.
ReplyDeleteWe hit a traffic jam this morning, the kids were coloring, and I had nothing better to do than type away on my lap-top!
ReplyDeleteIt needs editing (of course) but it's down and now I can rearrange scenes and make things fit.
:o)
P.S. I'll try to get some pictures up later this week.