Finding the strength now to punish the length

I keep intending to write about writing, but when writing is going well I keep doing it until it's time for bed, and when writing is going badly I am more inclined to sulk and glower and kick things than discuss it. Then I wake up, and the minutiae of the day drive it from my mind, and I never post. But writing went well tonight, and I made an awesome dock icon on Sunday when writing was going badly (see above), so I figured I'd better post now.

I set down the first words on the Saturday after the election (I didn't manage to find time before, somehow), and I've written 2500 more since, which tells me I write with about 1/10 the speed of a successful NaNoWriMo writer. Doh. Well, I am not speedy; I used to boggle at the anecdote that Flaubert spent hours composing a single sentence—what could he possibly spend that time doing?—but it's all too easy to do. This does tend to result in sentences I'm happy with, at least this time around, so I'm not pushing myself to greater speed. Sometimes it's fast all by itself.

What I'm working on is The Slow Palace, the novel I had the idea for on a bus to Woods Hole in 2000-ish and wrote 200 pages of a few years later. It's going a lot better this time than it did last time, and I have guesses as to why, but I'm going to be coy about them for the moment.

One specific problem I'm trying to fix with this draft/rewrite/re-attempting is the in media res beginning I started with last time. I'm very stingy with scenes (yet profligate with words), obsessed with story efficiency, so that suited me well, but the plot is kick-started by two major violations of the reader's expectations, and I was having a hell of a time establishing those expectations before they got shot to hell. It was a bit like starting out with Dorothy in Oz; there was no sepia-tinted Kansas to set up the Technicolor.

So, I pushed the beginning back a little bit, giving myself some room to establish the conventions. I'm still getting to the action by page 10, which seems fair, and there is the beginning of conflict in the opening to draw the reader in; it's just not "Holy crap, Munchkins!" immediately.

A lot of things seem obvious now that didn't before. In the previous draft, I had one huge event happening off-screen and its pale reflection happening on-screen; I've found a tidy way to make the huge event happen in full view of my protagonist, thereby eliminating one weak scene and replacing it with a strong scene that used to be an iffy monologue.

I find myself looking forward to writing—when I'm not sitting at the computer with sweaty palms and panic in my breast, utterly convinced that I'm a talentless hack—but, as I say, looking forward to getting upstairs and trying things out. I generally ponder a scene or a plot point in the coffee shop, doodling in my Moleskine with the energy of people around me, then write what I've pondered over the next couple of days; when it's all written, I go back for more mochas. It seems to work, so I'll keep doing it.

(N.B.: I'm not doing any privacy-locking yet; I expect I will if I decide to post specifics.)

Taking a Trip to Phan

We concluded a very successful Thanksgiving dinner about an hour ago, just the two of us. The lack of crescent rolls did not mar the occasion (the Price Chopper PA system lied about their Thanksgiving closing time!), nor the accidental tripling of the white wine content of the gravy (which I cannot blame on Price Choppery). We had

• a roast chicken, admirably trussed with twine (my first time trussing!);


• stuffing, with a higher proportion of inside-the-bird stuffing than usual thanks to my innovative "chipmunk cheeks" stuffing method;


• mashed potatoes, yellow due to being made from delicious butterball potatoes;


• roasted brussels sprouts; and


• cranberry sauce with slivered almonds.

Homemade pumpkin pie waits for us in the refrigerator, ready to be slathered with Cool Whip. There were pie crust cookies yesterday, which demonstrated the crust to be buttery and flaky and crisp. Half were topped with cinnamon and sugar, half filled with jam, which was a new twist I believe I got from sinsofthedove.

Apart from good food, I have a lot to be thankful for. My sweetie, my fiercely supportive friends, my excitingly angular and airy apartment, the cutest cat in the world (who is asleep in a puddle downstairs). The 2006 election results. White chocolate mochas. Stalk-eyed flies. Sufjan Stevens.

And pie. Mm, pie.