Love in Dark Settings

"The trouble is. . . that too many historical writers have been more in love with history than with writing. They are so fascinated by their discoveries (how well I know the danger!) that they are tempted to put them all in. So, as their knowledge increases, the story gets bogged down in detail. They describe and explain where they should be content to indicate. There is a good deal to be said for writing historical fiction in the depths of the Indian jungle. . . . But the more courageous way is to face your reference-books squarely across the table, and convinced yourself that you, not they, are going to write the story."

--Geoffrey Trease: Tales Out of School.

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*** 14 October 2009. Home and Writing: Wellness clinic; plus, steaming ahead with Prison City.

"I went to a wellness clinic today," I told my friend Katharine when she visited yesterday.

"Oh? How was it?"

"I keeled over."

Me and my stupid body. The first time this sort of thing happened was in high school biology class. We were supposed to prick our fingers and use the blood to test our blood types. I'd just pricked my finger and was staring in fascination at the blood. Oh, how interesting, I thought.

*Clunk.*

I honestly thought my body had outgrown its tendency to faint at the sight of needles, or I'd have asked Doug to accompany me when I had my flu shot. As it is, I made a bit of a spectacle. I wasn't terribly panicky, because I'd gone through all this before, but of course the nurses who gave the flu shots didn't know that I wasn't having a severe reaction to the shot.

Fortunately, I didn't pass out entirely, and equally fortunately, within sixty seconds, one of the nurses had thought to ask me the right question: "Has this happened to you before?" They were both very nice about me ending up flat on the floor next to their table, even though they had to fend off questions from concerned bystanders.

Between that and Katharine's visit, I didn't get any writing done yesterday, though I spent the evening giving the Hoopers Island chapter a thorough edit. Today, my Muse delivered to me, not the requested shantyboat scene, but the steamer scene. Good enough, especially since my eyes have been cranky over the change to cool weather.

Doug's gone off to visit his family for a few days. I suppose that means I should try to do a bit of housework while he's gone.

*** 16 October 2009. Writing: Slow progress with Prison City.

I haven't been reading enough fiction recently, so my Muse has slowed to a crawl. I managed to squeeze out from him two thousand words today, mainly of exposition, which I can do in my sleep. But if I'm to get any more, I need to crank up the fiction reading.

Thanks to the weather - it's been in the forties - I've reached the point in the year when I get a headache after reading standard-sized print for only a couple of minutes. My eyes may revive somewhat next week, when the weather is due to warm to the fifties, but in any case I'm trying to finish up the last of the research that requires me to read handwritten notes.

I also need to do some research online - my list of planned Web tasks has been lengthening - but no sooner than the end of this month, I've promised myself. Exactly when I go online will depend on my Muse; having some knowledge of his cycle, I'm guessing that he's going to get very excited toward the end of the month. No way will I break into that excitement in order to go online. But once that peak is well over, I'll visit the Internet.

I finished rereading Randall S. Peffer's Watermen, and got into one of those "What on earth can I read after that?" moods. (Not to mention one of my "When am I ever going to be able to speak to a waterman?" moods, but there's no cure for that. There just ain't no waterman hang-outs in D.C.) So now I'm reading William W. Warner's Beautiful Swimmers: Watermen, Crabs and the Chesapeake Bay, which I only skimmed for the oyster bits before. I prefer Mr. Peffer's book, which has more of the human drama, but Beautiful Swimmers won a Pulitzer prize, so it's likely to be worth a careful reading.

*** 17 October 2009. Writing: Inspiration and perspiration, or How I write stories.

I'm concerned by the fact that my composing season began three weeks ago, yet I've only written 12,000 words so far. Last year, I wrote 31,000 words during the first three weeks of my composing season.

Well, all I can do is keep reading fiction as much as possible, exercise as much as possible, and stay offline and away from other distractions. The rest is up to my Muse.

"I know writers who write only when inspiration comes. How would Isaac Stern play if he played the violin only when he felt like it? He would be lousy." --Madeleine L'Engle.

I wish I had one of those writing skills that could just churn out the wordage, regardless as to whether my Muse was around. I can certainly nudge my Muse by sitting down and forcing myself to write when I don't feel like it. But when I say that I'm "waiting for my Muse," what I actually mean is that I'm awaiting for the ability to translate the stories that are in my mind into scenes on paper. Inspiration I don't lack, ever. I have two zillion stories in my mind, queueing up to be written down. What I lack is description. All that the stories consist of, in my mind, is dialogue and vague images. For the rest - for the concrete descriptions of scenery and activity that are necessary for prose fiction - I need to ingest large amounts of other people's fiction and hope that their descriptive abilities rub off on my Muse.

If my Muse hasn't reached the point of being able to do description, then I can write down the stories, but the results are poor. To give you some idea of what my stories are like without those descriptive passages, here's a raw scene from "Rebirth 2: Love and Betrayal" (with major spoilers for "Rebirth 1"). This is what my scenes look like when I draft them in my head.

o--o--o

(Scene: Layle and Elsdon in the High Seeker's cell.)

Elsdon: "He was a sadist. That's the only word I can use describe him."

Layle: "Do you use the word 'sadist' in its restricted sense?"

Elsdon: "You mean, do I think my father derived sexual pleasure from beating me? I couldn't say. I suppose it wouldn't surprise me if he had. He was that sort of man - cruel beyond words, and always convincing himself that his cruelty was a form of love."

Layle: "If your father had found someone with whom he could direct his violent impulses in a manner that brought happiness to the other person, would that have made a difference to you?"

Elsdon: "Do you mean, would I think more kindly toward him if he'd only beaten masochists? No, to tell the truth, I'd have despised him more if he'd corrupted anyone into enjoying his sickening pleasure."

(There is a knock at the door.)

Layle: "Excuse me."

o--o--o

Obviously I should have been a playwright. If you compare that inner draft with the final version of the scene, you'll see the parts I had to sweat to achieve. In particular, I created a whole sipping-from-the-cup section at the typing-up stage, in order to add action to the scene (and also to permit a little darkly humorous foreshadowing of the revelation about Layle's nature). In the original draft, Elsdon and Layle simply talked about Elsdon's father until they were interrupted by a knock at the door. I couldn't even have told you whether they were sitting or standing. I certainly couldn't have told you what their surroundings looked like.

The only way I was able to eke out those descriptive passages was by immersing myself in the fiction of authors who actually know how to write description, till I reached the point where my Muse would write in that manner.

So my equivalent of the writer's usual exercise in self-discipline ("Just get it down on paper") is to read, read, read other people's fiction. While that might sound easy, I've reached the stage in life where reading fiction is harder for me than reading nonfiction. So that's where the self-discipline comes in.

Later:

While we're on the subject of how I create, I happened across one of my old scene outlines tonight. I'd used it as a bookmark, which shows how ephemeral my outlines are.

This is the outline for a scene in the third volume of The Eternal Dungeon. No need for spoiler notices here; as you can see, the outline is comprehensible only to me.

o--o--o

Bad week
Became torturer for fun
Lying thru truth
Diviner tale
L: T has honesty & some loyalty
T: Loyalty!
L: Right to search T
T: Get nothing but the truth from me
L: You've lied
Punishment

o--o--o

My story outlines are just as bad. This is a bit of an outline of an upcoming Three Lands novel; again, I have no fears of spoilering anyone here.

o--o--o

Talk with the Lieutenant on patrol
The Lieutenant arriving at the Commander's hut
The Lieutenant arriving back at tent
Talk with Captain about the Lieutenant
Imminent attack
Visit to the Blue Tent
Sleep
Talk with Captain
Offering the cup
Talk with Captain

o--o--o

I pity anyone who tries to reconstruct my unfinished stories from my outlines.

I don't write down outlines for every story, much less every scene. I only scribble down outlines when the plotline/dialogue has become so complex that I can no longer keep track in my head of what goes where. Or if I'm not sure whether any needed scenes are missing (since I usually plot scenes out of order). Or if I want to give myself encouragement by ticking off each scene as I write it.

One story that I didn't write down an outline for is Twenty Thousand Gold Stars. The reason that novel has no written outline is that I wrote the novel three months after I became partially sighted. At the time, I couldn't read anything, no matter how large the print. I didn't yet have text-to-speech software, nor did I yet know braille. So I typed up the novel with the computer screen off, keeping track of every blinkin' part of that novel in my head. Every scene, every piece of dialogue. There was no way to do rewrites either; if I thought of a better way in which to write a sentence, I had to type up the better version in a separate revisions file and pray that I would someday be able make revisions to the original file.

At the time - April 2001 - the ophthamologists weren't offering any promises that I would ever get my reading eyesight back, and I hadn't yet learned about the various forms of accessible technology that would allow me to make revisions. So writing "Twenty Thousand Gold Stars" - and Mystery, which I wrote in the previous month - was an act of faith.

"Twenty Thousand Gold Stars" had the best first draft I ever wrote. The knowledge that, at best, I might only get one chance to rewrite the novel made me pick each and every word with care. When it came time to rewrite the novel, I barely had to make any changes. (Well, except for correcting my many spelling errors. I'm not that great a typist.)

I wish I could return to that purity of writing - that ability to pour my heart into every single sentence, making it as perfect as I possibly can.

*** 19 October 2009. Reading: Recommendation of Evangeline Walton's The Cross and the Sword.

Evangeline Walton: The Cross and the Sword. In the eleventh century, a Viking warrior is caught in a bloody struggle between Norsemen and Englishmen over the fate of England. ¶ Heterosexual fiction, male friendship fiction, class/rank themes, family relationship themes, historical fiction (Middle Ages), love stories, military fiction, prisoner fiction, race/ethnicity themes, spirituality themes. ¶ Fiction books. ¶ References to topics of sexuality. On-screen violence. ¶ Archive of my reviews.

1956 was a good year for the Vikings. While Mary Renault dazzled the literary world with her first novel about Ancient Greece, other historical novelists turned their attention to Norsemen: Rosemary Sutcliff with The Shield Ring, Henry Treece with Viking's Dawn, and Evangeline Walton with The Cross and the Sword (published in Britain as Son of Darkness).

Walton's lyrical Mabinogian Tetralogy has been much praised, so it's a wonder to me that her 1956 historical novel has received so little attention. The reason for this, I fear, is that medieval fantasy is a favorite genre among today's readers, while the readership for medieval historical fiction has largely fallen by the wayside. The Cross and the Sword deserves more readers than it has received.

It is the tale of a boy turned warrior, outcast from his Viking family because his foreign-captive mother was considered a beguiling witch. His exile takes him overseas, where he finds himself caught between two cultures: the heathen Norsemen who plunder England out of greed, and the Christian English who maim and torture in the name of their God. Nowhere, it seems, is goodness to be found; yet Sweyn longs for something he believes cannot exist.

Past noon it must have been when, sometimes staggering, sometimes crawling on hands and knees, I came to a meadow where horses grazed. Wolf-like I crouched under a bush, a stone in my hand, until I had a chance to come up behind the horse-herder. I killed him then, strong as trapped rats are strong. I laughed when his blood and brains spattered the stones and me. Good it was to get my hands upon an Englishman; I told myself that he would be the first of many.

So it goes. Many wrongs the English had to avenge upon us; lifetimes of murders and rapes, of burnings and robberies. Not human did we Sea-Folk seem to them. I doubt if any man ever kills another who seems to him human like himself. Even to the robber, the man he slays may seem a menacing wolf, self-defense a threat. . . . So we keep the wheel turning wrong for wrong, and then fresh wrong to avenge that wrong.

*** 22 October 2009. Writing: Status report on how my stories are going.

Because I had to leave the house to deal with health matters, I missed prime writing time this morning. (I produced five thousand words yesterday.) But it was a nice day to be outside - in the mid-seventies - and I got a lot done during my tasks run. I visited the dentist (it's either a cracked crown or gum disease; we're going to assume for now that it's gum disease), and I re-ordered my glasses (the prescription got screwed up the last time because nobody at my opthamologist told me that it was a prescription for progressives, which I'd never worn before).

Meanwhile, here's how my stories stand at the moment. The "done" figure includes scenes written before this season. (In the case of "Law Links," we're talking about a novel I started writing fourteen years ago.)

o--o--o

Master and Servant 1 (Prison City): 13 scenes done, 9 to go.

Master and Servant 3 (Prison City): 14-1/2 scenes done, 2-1/2 scenes to go.

Law Links (The Three Lands): The novel's all finished except for two half-scenes.

o--o--o

I haven't worked on anything else yet. I'm particularly concerned about finishing The Unanswered Question (The Eternal Dungeon), since I want to post that as my holiday gift fic. But "Master and Servant" and "Law Links" are higher priority, since they're due to be published next spring. I need to leave extra time for beta reading, so I'm rushing to get as much written as I can before the end of the year.

If I only get "Master and Servant" and "Law Links" done, plus edit the novels and short fiction that are awaiting editing, I'll have enough material to go forward with publication next year. "Master and Servant" is going to end up very long; it's already 100,000 words (including "Master and Servant 2: The True Master," which is online now). The three Three Lands novels I'll be publishing will add up to about 430,000 words. The short fiction I've tentatively scheduled (from both the Main Bookshelf and the High Bookshelf) add up to 70,000. So we're talking about a total of 600,000+. I'll be offering, in one fell swoop, more than six novels' worth of wordage.

But I'm not only concerned about giving my readers their money's worth; I'm also concerned about getting series finished. Ideally, I'd like to get a novel or two finished in either the Eternal Dungeon series or the Life Prison series. In both those series, I have half-finished novels awaiting my attention. Even if I couldn't get those novels betaed in time for spring 2010 publication, at least I'd have a head start on the 2011 publishing season.

Everything depends on my Muse, who hasn't shown himself to be very cooperative so far. But he hasn't reached his peak point in his cycle yet; once he does, he may begin rolling out the wordage.

(Doug has been grilling me on why my Muse is male rather than female. I told him, "My Muse is a daimon.")

In other news, I had to go online for a half hour yesterday in order to deal with a dental insurance matter . . . but I was well-behaved and didn't download e-mail, because I knew that I wouldn't be able to resist reading the e-mail right away. As a result, I managed to wrest two thousand words out of my Muse that evening. My Muse is good about rewarding virtue.

*** 23 October 2009. Writing: My Muse continues to stutter out scenes.

Two scenes left to go in "Master and Servant 3: Unmarked." They're both complex scenes, but it would be nice to get them done by the end of the month, so that I could have a sense of accomplishment (to make up for the fact that my Muse has only delivered one-third of my monthly quota so far this month).

I'm pleased with how "Unmarked" has turned out, neat and orderly. I wasn't sure whether it would; it was one of those stories that I wrote with the scenes out of order, which always raises the risk of chaos. Let's hope that "Master and Servant 1: The Abolitionist" ends up as tidy.

*** 25 October 2009. Simplicity: Gearing up to go online.

Sheesh, I'm beginning to figure out how I've managed to spend so much time away from fiction writing during the past twelve years. Since my Muse seems to be stuck again, and since I have a horrendous number of research tasks building up on my Web tasks list, I downloaded my e-mail yesterday in preparation to going on the Web. Two hundred e-mails, but most of them were spam. There were only two e-mails and three blog threads that I spent any large amount of time replying to.

Took me twelve hours to prepare the replies. I just have no self-control where writing e-mail and posts is concerned. I write and rewrite and rewrite, till I've spent more time on a single post than I would on a short story.

The only positive news is that, this time through, I managed to make the final draft of one of my post comments shorter than the original draft. That sort of restraint requires tremendous self-discipline from me.

I'm wincing at the length of my current Web tasks list: 100 items. And that's not counting the research items in my Prison City notes file. Plus, some of the items are wonderfully open-ended tasks, such as "Search for 1910s first aid books at Google Books and the Internet Archive."

However, unlike my late-September Web tasks list, there's no immediate deadline for the items on this list. (Well, except to see whether there's a free version available of a medical test I need to take.) So I can concentrate my attention on journal updates and Prison City research, and let any other lengthy tasks slide over to my next trip onto the Web.

Because you know what? I'd really rather be spending time with my Muse than checking the current status of the tags at my blogs.