Derry, Northern Ireland

Derry, Northern Ireland
A book I'm working on is set in this town.

Monday, February 8, 2010

The joy of screwing with your own mind

Since that's really what I'm doing when my characters start having fun with me...and I haven't decided if this is good fun or just something to be tolerated, like what you do with kids who're trying to tell a complicated story...and I can see from the gleam in a few eyes I'm being warned, "Of course you know, this means war!" (That is supposedly an infamously bad line from some Hollywood movie of the 30's but I've never been able to figure out which movie or who said it...but when it's parodied in a couple of "Bugs Bunny" cartoons, you know it HAD to be infamous...and why I'm drifting down this nonsense is beyond me.)

ANYway -- I did the bad thing, yesterday, and wrote way too long on RIHC6v2 but got Antony's storyline back on track and leading up to what I hope will be a low-key, suspenseful, very intense confrontation with the man he thinks is behind this whole conspiracy that segues into yet another double-double-cross (with one more massive sexual encounter along the way, of course) and a denouement that leaves everyone happy. So I'm feeling good. I'm now up to 145 pages and figure I have less than a hundred to go. So what if I was up till 2:30 and needed to be awake by 9? I could see the rest of the story playing out, and Antony, Jake and Matt seemed satisfied with it all. But how do I get repaid for all my work and subjugation of my brain to their needs? Just as I was about to drift into slumber, my "three Musketeers" flip the ending on me, changing nearly EVERYTHING, and I wasn't able to shut my brain down till almost 4am. And now they're eyeing me, sweetly, from the safety of my inner core, wondering if there was a problem with doing that. The little shits.

No...there was no problem...because I like the new ending. Dammit.

The problem stems from me noticing Brendan's been watching the antics of these three and is beginning to think that's the best way to handle me writing HIS story. THAT makes me nervous, because he's a real taskmaster.

Man...I need to win the lottery so I don't have to go back to work on a scheduled job and can just focus on my writing at whatever hours it wants me to. That or inherit a million dollars (I could live for 20 years on that). But having the luck I do, that's not an option.


Now off to do errands and run my brother around to look for a job. I'll face the lions of my literary liberty tonight.


Penman said...

There was an article in the Sunday edition of the Los Angeles Times on writing. Basically it said that you have a better chance winning the lottery than making it big in writing. Being poor all my life has helped me fit into the lifestyle demanded of a writer. My first money making adventure in writing was love letters for my friends in school. Five bucks each.
I'm making about the same now. My first critical review was a mother ticked off that her son paid me the five bucks, said I must have copied it from a book.
That's a critic for you. You can't possibly write well, you're too poor to write letters let alone your name.

JamTheCat said...

Dude, are you stealing from my history? (Though I made my money from sketching nude females for boys I knew.) Meaning this is SOOOOOOOO perfect.