I haven't made entries the last couple of days because there's precious little to say. I've been trying to write. On Sunday, I wrote a couple hundred words, and yesterday I threw them all away. This is not a novel that demands great prose. Cherry Bomb is only meant to be an enjoyable story, and all it needs is serviceable prose. Which is probably why I'm having so much trouble writing it. It relies on plot, that fucking tyrant, that play-school bully. I'm lodged somewhere between the last few pages of Chapter Four and the first few of Chapter Five. It doesn't help that plot bores me to tears. call it story, if you prefer. That particular artifice. It's by far the least interesting aspect of fiction. Regardless, I've fallen back on this being a 70k-word novel, not 100k. There just isn't time to write the extra thirty thousand. I'm going to have to make it work at the original length. Yesterday, on Facebook, I said,
I vow, if I survive the writing of Cherry Bomb, I will never again subject myself to a novel that relies on the artifices and contrivances of PLOT instead of on all those things I'm actually good at doing. Fuck plot. To quote Margaret Atwood, "A plot is just one thing after another, a what and a what and a what.” And who the shit wants to waste their time with that? Not me.
There is a hellish aloneness to writing, which far greater writers than I have spoken to, eloquently and at length. But it hits me the worst when I'm completely stuck like this. And there's no one anywhere who can solve the problem but me. There's not even really anyone who can help me solve this problem. There's me and this machine. And this manuscript, which seems to be going backwards, growing shorter the longer I work on it. I'm not writing, I'm winnowing.
Yesterday, a copy of Alabaster: Pale Horse reached me. I think the postmen are using reindeer. Or mammoths. There was a photo-op in front of Ye Olde Cabinet of Curiosities:
The book's release date is February 25th, but I'm not sure when Amazon will begin shipping. Probably sooner.
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And I've broken another tooth. Upper left premolar 1. There's not much pain yet, but there's going to have to be an eBay auction now to try and cover what will, which the inevitable crown, likely run to one thousand or twelve hundred dollars.
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Nothing else really worth mentioning. That's never stopped me before. We had a little more snow night before last. Mostly, there's ~ watching the Olympics, RP in The Secret World, feeling old and sickly, listening to Belly and the Breeders, and bitching about the Yankee winter. Rinse and repeat. Thank you. Drive around, please.
Out the Window Backwards,
Aunt Beast
All photographs Copyright © 2014 by Caitlín R. Kiernan and Kathryn A. Pollnac.
