I'm having a bit of a crisis of confidence. After attending the Writers Digest conference this past weekend and thinking about the amount of time, money, and effort that I'm going to be spending on my first story, I have to give some serious thought to whether Ivan is worth it.
I'm going to say, for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month, November), that yes, Ivan is worth the effort. I might get a lot wrong and he might never see the light of day, but I think it's still worth it to at least put Ivan at the center of my 50,000 word goal for November and sort out what I need to work on more carefully as I polish him up in 2013.
Here are a couple of things that need to be worked out:
1. The historical Ivan is not a terribly sympathetic character. But it's going to be one slog of a novel if I can't find a chink in his armor of awfulness that makes somebody like something about him (that somebody being me).
2. I've got to find some humor somewhere, because a) I don't want to get too hung up on myself and b) Ivan is so awful that if I can't find a way to lighten the whole thing up it's going to read too much like a Russian novel -- and I hate Russian novels.
3. Supporting cast. This is actually only an obstacle to my starting writing before November 1st, because I've got to take the time to figure out who the supporting cast is and write them all out, figure out more of a plot arc than what I've got, etc. I need to decide if I'm going to use The Plot Whisperer Workbook or 30 Days to your Novel or The Nighttime Novelist to frame my to-do list, but clearly I'm going to need some outside help on planning the thing if I'm going to write 50,000 words in a 30 day month that includes Thanksgiving.
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Incubation
From The Daily Writer. This is a long term assignment about revision. Not where I need to be.
I have 16 pages/4200 words of Ivan written at this time. Every time I put him down I have a hard time taking him back up again. I have to write EVERY SINGLE MORNING in order ot have more productive days. My consistency rate is not where I want it to be at the moment.
But it's not just Ivan I'm struggling with; I am having a hard time buckling down to everything today. I'm frustrated at how much work I have to do and how far behind I am in all the pockets of my life, but I'm having a difficult time focusing on making those things right. I know what to do next on Ivan -- it's part revision (moving that bit of the story out of the first draft into its proper place in the current draft) and then walk him down the street while he talks to Rasputin. I need to get them to reveal themselves to one another and to move them along 1917 London, which I don't know nearly well enough, until they get down to Nell and the East End. And somehow Rasputin has to make Ivan angry enough, and be unusable enough, to make Ivan OK with killing Rasputin. But before that happens I have to raise the stakes some... This is tricky. Sigh.
Well, the good news is how much I got done, and that figuring out the next bits is just a matter of buckling down. But I also have to deal with the IndieGoGo bit, Duncan's recipe book, my regular blog post, order my business cards (yikes!!) put together my work binder so I'm a little better organized, update the WOM financials... I wasn't kidding when I said I can be fit & thin OR I can be productive but probably not both. I actually had the alarm set for 6:00 this morning, and my clothes set out and everything, and then I was too soundly asleep to get up. Crazy dreams I've been having...
I have 16 pages/4200 words of Ivan written at this time. Every time I put him down I have a hard time taking him back up again. I have to write EVERY SINGLE MORNING in order ot have more productive days. My consistency rate is not where I want it to be at the moment.
But it's not just Ivan I'm struggling with; I am having a hard time buckling down to everything today. I'm frustrated at how much work I have to do and how far behind I am in all the pockets of my life, but I'm having a difficult time focusing on making those things right. I know what to do next on Ivan -- it's part revision (moving that bit of the story out of the first draft into its proper place in the current draft) and then walk him down the street while he talks to Rasputin. I need to get them to reveal themselves to one another and to move them along 1917 London, which I don't know nearly well enough, until they get down to Nell and the East End. And somehow Rasputin has to make Ivan angry enough, and be unusable enough, to make Ivan OK with killing Rasputin. But before that happens I have to raise the stakes some... This is tricky. Sigh.
Well, the good news is how much I got done, and that figuring out the next bits is just a matter of buckling down. But I also have to deal with the IndieGoGo bit, Duncan's recipe book, my regular blog post, order my business cards (yikes!!) put together my work binder so I'm a little better organized, update the WOM financials... I wasn't kidding when I said I can be fit & thin OR I can be productive but probably not both. I actually had the alarm set for 6:00 this morning, and my clothes set out and everything, and then I was too soundly asleep to get up. Crazy dreams I've been having...
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
Masked Woman in a Wheelchair
The assignment from The Daily Writer is to write about all the different masks I wear in my different life roles, or to write a short story about a man who wears a mask as a woman to a Halloween party.
I don't want to do either of those assignments.
The problem I'm having today is how to reconcile the serial killer-czar Ivan the Terrible with the decrepit, non-functioning crazy guy in Darker Jewels by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, with the guy who has been a vampire for 330 years and trying to get his throne back (which would incidentally save Russia from the Bolsheviks but that's not really his concern).
So how do I do that? Who is this guy I've created?
Or am I worrying too much about details that no one will ever appreciate but me? I do not have a tribe that can answer that question for me. Need to get on that.
So... who is this crazy Ivan? How does he work in my story?
The Troyat biography made it pretty clear that he was a coward and a criminal, not a fighter. He liked the sound of his own voice (need to make my story reflect that much more clearly). He wasn't much of a fighter -- unlike Henry VIII who loved to joust and show his manliness. He was cool with causing pain from an early age, but not at all cool with feeling it. He was a self-serving religious fanatic. He was a hothead. He had no sense of proportion. He was intelligent but not wise. He was paranoid. He was short-sighted.
So in my story, Ivan has acted in character in fishing Rasputin out of the river and reviving him to use him as a tool. It is in character for him to think he can take the throne back and to have no concept of the people in Russia or the forces moving it at that time. It is in character for him to think he can bully Rasputin into doing whatever he wants just because he is czar. It is in character for him to have no concept that Rasputin might not believe that he was the czar, or to care about what he used to be.
Is it in character for him to join the Savile club? I think so -- I think he would have seen the English club, generally, as a sort of sanctuary for influential Englishmen. He would not have needed to take this course in life, but there are lots of instances where he beat a "strategic retreat." I think he would have a certain contempt for the club but he would have recognized its advantages, and 330 years of cobbling together survival tactics as a vampire would change his value system slightly. It beats living in a cave, and I think it would beat living in Liverpool as far as he is concerned, too.
Also in coming to London I think Ivan is sort of acting on that agreement he tried to get Elizabeth to come to (she did eventually offer a one-sided version of it that made him mad) so that's totally reasonable.
Ivan has never done a brave or difficult thing in all his days. Saving Rasputin is his greatest achievement, partly because it was hard and required some effort, partly because he did it entirely on his own; none of the rest of his efforts ever required that amount of organized thought. So it's all downhill for Ivan from there.
Which begs the question: In a power struggle between Ivan and Rasputin, who will win? My story as it stands requires that Ivan wins. But there is no reason to assume he would. It could easily be Rasputin.
Back to the drawing board.
I don't want to do either of those assignments.
The problem I'm having today is how to reconcile the serial killer-czar Ivan the Terrible with the decrepit, non-functioning crazy guy in Darker Jewels by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, with the guy who has been a vampire for 330 years and trying to get his throne back (which would incidentally save Russia from the Bolsheviks but that's not really his concern).
So how do I do that? Who is this guy I've created?
Or am I worrying too much about details that no one will ever appreciate but me? I do not have a tribe that can answer that question for me. Need to get on that.
So... who is this crazy Ivan? How does he work in my story?
The Troyat biography made it pretty clear that he was a coward and a criminal, not a fighter. He liked the sound of his own voice (need to make my story reflect that much more clearly). He wasn't much of a fighter -- unlike Henry VIII who loved to joust and show his manliness. He was cool with causing pain from an early age, but not at all cool with feeling it. He was a self-serving religious fanatic. He was a hothead. He had no sense of proportion. He was intelligent but not wise. He was paranoid. He was short-sighted.
So in my story, Ivan has acted in character in fishing Rasputin out of the river and reviving him to use him as a tool. It is in character for him to think he can take the throne back and to have no concept of the people in Russia or the forces moving it at that time. It is in character for him to think he can bully Rasputin into doing whatever he wants just because he is czar. It is in character for him to have no concept that Rasputin might not believe that he was the czar, or to care about what he used to be.
Is it in character for him to join the Savile club? I think so -- I think he would have seen the English club, generally, as a sort of sanctuary for influential Englishmen. He would not have needed to take this course in life, but there are lots of instances where he beat a "strategic retreat." I think he would have a certain contempt for the club but he would have recognized its advantages, and 330 years of cobbling together survival tactics as a vampire would change his value system slightly. It beats living in a cave, and I think it would beat living in Liverpool as far as he is concerned, too.
Also in coming to London I think Ivan is sort of acting on that agreement he tried to get Elizabeth to come to (she did eventually offer a one-sided version of it that made him mad) so that's totally reasonable.
Ivan has never done a brave or difficult thing in all his days. Saving Rasputin is his greatest achievement, partly because it was hard and required some effort, partly because he did it entirely on his own; none of the rest of his efforts ever required that amount of organized thought. So it's all downhill for Ivan from there.
Which begs the question: In a power struggle between Ivan and Rasputin, who will win? My story as it stands requires that Ivan wins. But there is no reason to assume he would. It could easily be Rasputin.
Back to the drawing board.
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