On characters and characterization

To use myself as an example:

I am a human, a wife, an ex-wife, a step-wife, a parent, a child, an artist, a game person, a shy person, a leader in some circumstances, a brave person, a frightened person. I am kind-hearted and mean. I am honest and sneaky, law-abiding and rebellious.

But that's not enough to be interesting. The interesting thing is the loyalties and conflicts in loyalties, the goals and conflicts between goals. I am a wife. I have a partner to whom I'm responsible and for whom I'm responsible. But I'm an ex-wife and co-parent -- and sometimes co-parent goals and wife goals can seem or actually BE in conflict. My ex's wife is my friend, and I have responsibilities -- as a friend -- to her. Her children are not my children, but they are in my family and I love them. What if Christopher's needs conflict with mine or Curie's or John's or Daniel's? It's not as easy as saying, well, one's spouse's needs come before one's ex's stepchildren's needs, because needs are not equivalent. What if John needs soup and Christopher needs a kidney? Okay, so those are all "easy". What if John needs soup and Christopher needs a walk with me to talk about something? What if Greg is antsy about Em missing school next week and John and I reaaaaallly don't want to travel after Sunday?

It's a juggling act, and it is always a juggling act for any human who has a relationship with more than one person.

That's what characterization is, to me. A novel can't encompass all of a character's relationships, any more than it can cover every single action of the character's day. But it doesn't need to. I have to pick the important relationships, the important conflicts, and make those choices the driving forces in the novel. They certainly are in real life.

Writing update:

Ack.

To be fair to myself, which I do not wish to be, the first part of the week was fairly taken up with the blasted migraine/24-hour brain tumor/what-have-you. But I didn't get a lot of writing done this week until today. I won't even post a word count.

The structure of "Edison" is starting to take a real shape. The biggest challenge I am having is the setting; it's set in the late 1800s/early 1900s, and I keep butting up against setting questions. If I just leave a blank, which ordinarily works fine, the whole PAGE ends up being a pattern of words and blank underlines. So I've decided not to use the "leave a blank" method. The outline is kinda sorta firming up. I would call it a bendy willow kind of outline: I have the trunk, but it moves around a lot, and the branches are more numerous than any other outline I've worked with. (I could really overuse this analogy, but I am refraining.)

I also came up with some new approaches for "Manassas", but I haven't yet decided whether they will work.

Manassas and Edison are my big humongous projects.

I have to finish (haha, doesn't that imply I have done a ton?) a critique of one of my fellow Odyssey alums' novel. The overall critique was last month and went fine. This one is the so-called detailed critique, which feels like more of a line edit, to be honest. It's a big chunk of time. She's a talented writer, thank goodness. And young as snot.

600 words at this point today, although that's a little deceptive. It's actually about 1,800, but that's a rewrite, so I'm only counting it as 1/3. I am estimating that I'm cutting about a quarter and adding about a third. So it's really hard to calculate word count.

Word count is about the least useful indicator of amount of work EVER. Productivity can't be measured that way. However, it gives me something to indicate to myself that I've parked in the chair and done something. (Precise words, neh? You can tell I'm a writer.) Really, that's the most important thing I can do as a writer. Pick up the pen, turn the page, put some words there.

How many? Doesn't matter.

How good? Probably abysmal on the first write, but no one will see those words. They are the playdough version of the model of the real thing. Pink playdough, most likely. But they are the most necessary ones, because they are the ones that I turn into the real thing.

Sometimes I cross them all out and start again, but the second version is much better for having written the "wrong" words.

So. How do I measure it?

600 words at this point today.

I follow links to anything that looks remotely interesting. You never know when you'll find something way cool, you know?

So I followed an (uncool) link to the story of the girl who went missing from her parents' holiday apartment this past summer. The link led to a blog which happened to have something I haven't seen on many blogs, a little chat widget. People could live chat with one another about their theories or their worries about "poor wee Maddie" and so forth. I admit it, I read some of the chat stuff. And it had a history! Pages and pages and pages and pages of this live chat history. In the beginning, there were a lot of theories and arguments about theories.

Then as the pages came closer to the present, I noticed something happening: people were not just talking about "dear Maddie" any more. There were lines like: "sorry I'm late tonight, any new news?" "No, nothing. How's Lindsay? Is she still running that fever?" "No, she's feeling better -- she's into everything again! LOL." The people in the chat weren't strangers anymore. "Where's Suz? Has anyone seen Suz?"

Like life, communities WILL happen. Drop a rock into a pond, or a chat widget onto a blog, and around it will grow more and more complex life forms until the essential miracle happens.

I will experiment with posting writing updates.

Despite oversleeping (gah!) and subsequently having NO time available before driving Em to school and despite being crabby as all get out as a result: 1361 words. Research time: approximately one hour. Fritter around on the internet time: approximately 45 minutes. One mile walk, not brisk. My ideal writing day has at least three miles, brisk, at least some of which should be solo.

I'm sure this is fascinating.

Critique group this morning. We only had one story up, and it was actually one I have critiqued from this author from the "informal" critique group, so my duties were light. It was a productive session for me, although I wonder how productive my critique is for him. We are rather different types of writers. He describes everything -- poetically, beautifully, accurately. I don't. So I think that often we read each other's pieces in a sort of bemusement.

I think this is a good thing! When I read his work, I can get frustrated. "Why is he describing the getaway car when the guy has a gun to his head??" (That's pretty much a verbatim comment from this morning's session, except the details are different.) But next time I write a getaway scene -- and this is the big important part for me -- I remember Scott's efforts, so different from mine, and I think through my own process. The guy might not notice the make model size gas gauge color material of upholstery, but he would notice SOMETHING. What is that thing he would notice? The things that matter when he is fighting for his life, of course. And so I write that in the margins of his story, but I also write it in the margins of my story.

Madeleine L'Engle

Thanks for giving me tessering and Charles Wallace, for teaching me how dangerous Camazotz is, even if it looks peaceful and lovely, for introducing me to Mrs. Whatsit.

It was a dark and stormy night. Rest in peace now.

We were discussing a certain Popular and Anticipated Series-Closing Book last week. My two sisters, my nephew, and me, sitting around late at night while little nieces fell asleep in the next room. I was pontificating, as I can do, about a "fact" that I have noticed: most of the male readers that I have discussed this with have hated or at least disliked the epilogue. Most of the female readers have liked or tolerated it, and a couple have loved it. This is not a statistical study, so please don't get all alarmed. It is just a tidbit. I suggested that maybe it was more uncomfortable for males to not know what the characters ended up doing — career-wise — with their lives. I dunno, it was just a suggestion.*

"Like, did so-and-so become an auror?" I said. "Maybe it just bugs people not to know."

My nephew sat up straight. "Well, no, he couldn't have; remember the potions grade problem?"

(We discussed and refreshed his memory of the potions grade implications, don't worry.)

But it was so fascinating to me that he JUMPED on that subject. Is it something that is more on the surface for some of us, the notion that a person's career is who they are? What I do — that's the thing that makes me me? (If so, I'm a real jumble of a human, let me tell you.)

*It's funny how much I feel like I need to qualify every single sentence in this post with "I don't think gender roles are blah blah blah." I'm attempting to refrain from doing so.

I'm still really unsure about the role of the critique group in my writing life... but I'm going to go to the Odyssey critique group on Saturday morning. I'm considering -- just considering! -- taking part in the novel critique section, which would require both a lot of reading and a lot of writing over the next few months. This could be biting off more than I can chew, but I tend to do more the more that is required of me, so ... I dunno. I'm so decisive.

All I know is in six months I will either have this novel finished or I won't. Mark your calendars. November 3.

It's time for a sabbatical from the critique group, I think. I will probably stick with the local group, oddly enough, because I feel like my role there is fairly vital. But the Odyssey alumni group, while VERY valuable and very enjoyable and very wonderful -- I'm not sure how to explain it, but it seems to "draw" all my forces. Like I concentrate my creative efforts on getting stories ready for the group, on getting critiques done, and then I don't take the stories further -- almost as if the group itself is the final goal.

I am not sure I'm making any sense, even to myself. All I know is that when I think about taking a sabbatical from it and concentrating purely on the writing, I feel a sense of rightness.

After the apocalypse, there will be all these dazed people wandering around saying: "where's the reagents vendor??"

Dark stories these days, and I'm happier than I have ever been.

I dunno. I think I see the world out of the corner of my eye and through greasy windowpanes and under blood-soaked bandaids, over the hill and to your right, sir. There are saints and sinners lurking under pretty haircuts and suit jackets. Watch out for the guy with the scythe.

One of my critiquers this weekend says that often things don't come together in my stories until they fall apart, which he didn't mean at all negatively. I think.