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How\u2019s your writing coming?<\/p>\nHow\u2019s your writing coming?<\/p>\n
Oh, just fine, more or less, in a savage kind of way.<\/p>\n
I know it doesn\u2019t make much sense to talk about writing the sequel to The Vault of Dreamers<\/em> when the first book isn\u2019t even published yet, but such is the timetable of publishing that I am now writing the first draft of Book 2, and it reminds me so much of the first draft of Book 1 that I\u2019ll use that as my excuse for bringing it up.<\/p>\n First drafts for me are ridiculous. They\u2019re daunting, far-fetched messes of ideas that make little sense, and I plunge onward writing pages even as I know that the pages will almost certainly get cut. It\u2019s an exercise in the absurd, like mowing grass backwards, or spreading peanut butter on a roof. Making myself work this way while my logical mind revolts is maddening. It doesn\u2019t feel creative or fun or fruitful at all. It\u2019s idiocy. Characters show up for a few pages and then disappear. Scenes materialize complete with toxic smells and then are replaced by elevator rides or fountains. I gather that I need to move a character to another country, but to get her there I have to imagine an airport and a jet and a pilot, all of which have their tangential problems. I look up one definition, and it takes me to how twin marmosets swap genes before they\u2019re born. And this matters. This marmoset fact is relevant info I need to understand and use.<\/p>\n Torturous and circuitous as this process sounds, it serves as the first discovery stage of my novel. Wrong directions are a necessary part of the project, so I give myself permission to follow them. I remind myself that I didn\u2019t discover key conflicts in Prized<\/em> until draft 8. The Vault of Dreamers<\/em> went through 16 drafts before it became right. The point is, I have to accept the way I generate ideas. I don\u2019t have to like it. I certainly don\u2019t have to recommend it. But I have to accept that this confusing, shoddy morass is normal for me. It\u2019s not a final draft: it\u2019s a beginning, and it deserves my tender care.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" How\u2019s your writing coming? Oh, just fine, more or less, in a savage kind of way. I know it doesn\u2019t make much sense to talk about writing the sequel to The Vault of Dreamers when the first book isn\u2019t even published yet, but such is the timetable of publishing that I am now writing the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3546,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[450,37],"class_list":["post-3544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-vault-of-dreamers","tag-the-vault-of-dreamers-2","tag-writing-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3544"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3544\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3548,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3544\/revisions\/3548"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}