Shut up, Fathead!
I have been feeling inordinately uninspired lately. Working on Shades feels like slogging through mud. In fact, anything that requires me to be creative feels like slogging through mud. Next week will be a little busy, as I’ll be preparing for next weekend.
On Saturday evening, I’m going to be participating in a zombie walk in downtown Melbourne. Which means I have to put together a zombie costume in the next week…which I’ve never done. Zombies don’t appeal to me much, on the whole, but the experience sounds like fun. The idea of being among a herd of 400+ zombies invading the Melbourne Steak n’ Shake is something I’m particularly looking forward to. Then, on Sunday, I will be heading to Gainsville to participate in a rally protesting the presence of Westboro. (Yeah, they’re coming to FL. *groan*). I’ve bought the foam-board to make a sign, and I know what I want it to say. I just need to design it, and get it done.
Side one:
“I find hope and it gives me rest
I find hope in a beating chest
I find hope in what eyes don’t see
I find hope in your hate for me
Side two:
“Have no fear when the waters rise
We can conquer this great divide.”
Ngi Ne Themba
(which means “I have hope” or “I find hope”)
It’s from:
Hanson - Great Divide
I was sitting around trying to figure out what I’d write on a protest sign, and this song was playing in my headphones. I turned my attention to it and realized it was perfect. Been trying to get some fellow Fansons together for this thing in Gainsville, but I don’t know if any of them will actually be able to make it. Oh well. I’ll go it alone if I must. Westboro is just that annoying to me…I can’t stand the idea of them being in MY state and me doing nothing. Even if all our counter-protesting doesn’t work, it’s…something.
I think all this is distracting me from my usual creativity. Politics do. That’s part of the reason I usually avoid them.
I know what’s slowing me down with Shades. It’s that damn portal spell that I’m weaving into the plot…it’s an interesting part of what’s going on, and has a lot of worldbuilding information, but it’s just not any fun to write. It’s highly technical, magical theory, ergo it has to be internally logical and consistent. I also have to keep track of where Saeli is in the form with all the other crud going on, and when I lose my writing momentum, that means going back through the previous chapter and picking out the form bits to remind myself of where I am. And it’s also frustrating because I had all that DONE in the chapter I lost. The form was basically done. I can rewrite all the interaction between Yuril and Raphel and Saeli and Brendan easily, because it’s a highly emotional scene for all of them. But that form? I don’t like having to rewrite that. Ugh.
Rewriting the lost chapter and writing the next chapter in tandem is only working so well. I can’t get any momentum generated on the next chapter because I can’t go back and look at what I’ve already written. I hadn’t realized how much I depend on being able to do that. It’s not usually a problem, because I write my chapters in order (as opposed to when I have a good idea for a scene, etc.). One chapter builds from the next, often in ways I can’t anticipate. Things fall together in ways that just don’t happen when I try writing a random scene. It’s like the magic doesn’t happen unless I know where the characters were five minutes earlier, or five years earlier. Brendan and Raphel are about to fight to the death, for pity’s sake, and I still can’t seem to generate any emotional response from myself.
Part of this has to do with my inner critic, who has been giving me trouble lately. “This scene is taking too long to get going…this scene has too much dialogue…the scene is too slow…Saeli isn’t scared/concerned enough…blah, blah, blah”. I feel like yelling, “Shut up, Fathead!”…though if I did that in the middle of Books-a-Million, I might get some concerned looks.
Maybe that will be my mental theme for the week. Shut up, Fathead, and let me write!
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