2005-04-03 - 11:02 a.m.

today is a grey rainy day. jim is still sleeping. he's been sick lately, and also, it's just now daylight savings time, so we've just lost an hour.
i've been crabby lately, for a multitude of reasons.
the biggest, i think, has been that i've received, via kate yet another editor's comments. this one said that i was a "strong writer, with a strong sense of narrative pacing." i don't even think i know what narrative pacing is. oh yeah, the ol' NP, as my friends charlotte and paul refer to it.
anyway. it's very frustrating, because see, i can tell a story like nobody's business. i can spin a yarn that'll captivate a group of my friends. i can tell a tale so engaging that if you don't already empathize with the story's characters, you want to, so badly, because it seems so utterly important to you.
the funny thing is, i don't seem to be able to tell it on paper.
oh, the irony. ohhh the irony!!!!
or is it just bad luck? i think maybe i'd better just chalk it up to bad irony.
anyway. i've been thinking a lot about my first book. the thing is, i think that maybe i told that story not so much because i felt so deeply the story i was writing about, or because i cared so much for the person i thought i was writing about, but more because i was determined to prove to myself that i had indeed gone through the bulk of what had happened.
i needed to see it written down, that i had done this thing, and i wanted the rest of the world to know what it felt like.
in short, i was preaching, and i think that's probably the worst reason to write a book.
the other thing is, i wanted to tell someone in the book that i understood them--that i condoned their behavior--when the truth is, i'll never undersatnd it, and i sure as hellfire won't condone it. i mean, never.
the final, damned thing is, i gotta remember who the important person in the story is. it's not the guy, who does the bad thing. it's the girl. the girl is what i know. the funny, twisted thing about this whole bit is the fact that i wrote the story from her point of view, but i don't show an ounce of forgivenesss for the way she conducts herself. i don't explain it, i don't allow that.
all of which, i think, manifests itself in the fact that the story may have a fine sense of [cough] NP, but it's lacking in heart.
ouch. gotta put this thing away for awhile.
fortunately i have another book to work on.
and now that i've written that, i'm pooped as hell, and am going for a run.
blarrrrrgh.

 

 

previous - next - archives - contact me