11/9: 8:20pm.
My eyes are rolling in my head. Perhaps rolling isn't quite accurate. I think they just might be spinning independently of each other: one to the right and one to the left like one of those googly thingies, or they are swinging from side to side in unison, totally of their own volition. I don't know, because I can't see crapola right now. My baby blue orbs just aren't adjusting from the eyeball grip I've had on my monitor these last however many hours of straight typing. I'm really, really monster hungry, my fingers hurt, my butt is dead from sitting so long and then there's my eyes...well, you already know about them - but in spite of all that, I feel exhilarated. Honestly, I really do. I did a lot of writing today and I feel good about where my novel is and the quality of work I'm producing. I'm a smart cookie. I realize that I'll have a lot of editing to do when this first draft is finished. However, I'm satisfied that I have really good bones in this novel to begin with so I'll be able to go back to the beginning for the first of many edits and with the luxury of not working under a word count deadline, flesh out all the scenes and give them that added punch that elevates a writer's work from a collection of mere words artfully strung together to a richly satisfying, living, breathing story.
Once the NaNo website is back up (routine maintenance is being performed right now), I'm going to go into one of the forums and ask about what I'm experiencing as a writer. I feel myself growing in personal surety, in soul strength, in womanly wisdom and in confidence of my ability to write. I don't know if I'm having a bad case of NaNo ego, or if I'm really going through some sort of metamorphasis. I'll ask the group if any of them have noticed changes when they are in the grips of their writing. If nothing else, it will lead to an interesting series of discussion threads!
11/10/09: 8:38am Am I Off Course?
What happened to my brain overnight? I woke up this morning marveling at how I’ve veered off course in my novel. I’m going down a dark and dirty path; my book is developing a creepy tone that actually makes me hesitate at times to continue writing. My lighthearted murder romp, my little cozy mystery, is turning into a twisted look inside the mind of a man who is fixated on prostitutes in general and one in particular who wears her physical wounds like a badge of honor: “Nia was, to him, a beautiful girl; he didn’t really care about her physical scars as he thought they only highlighted the beauty of her lush, young breasts carefully exposed to show the most skin. He didn’t realize, didn't even care to think about or know that her mental injuries were much deeper, much fresher and much more potent than the long wide line of puckered flesh that ran from under her left arm over the artificial swell of her breast to the center of her stomach. No, to him her brandings just begged for his knife to follow along her body path and open her up again. He do anything to woo Nia away from whoever had the paper on her. He’d pay any price. She needed him. She needed him as a lover, as a protector. She may not say it but he knew it. He excited him that she wasn’t of his kind; it wasn’t like he was going to marry her. He mouth went dry at the thought of dressing her up in a Madonna-like wedding gown costume, lifting her bridal veil and seeing the fresh wounds he’d just scraped into her cheeks. He have to remember that one. It made his hands shake with excitement just thinking about it. Nia would do that, she’d let him play however he wanted and never make a sound. She’d just watch him with those glittery eyes that never gave anything away. He liked that all he had to pay was a little of the money from selling a diamond here, a diamond there; he liked that that was all it took for the pleasure of playing with her. Diamonds were plentiful and he didn’t even have to do any work for the pleasure of playing. All the wickedly delightful things he’d done in the past with the other gals paled in comparison to the plan he had for Nia. The money from that last big diamond would pay off her pimp and then, then at long last she was his. His to carve with one long, slow cut at a time, from her pubic bone up to her sternum, each ribbon of red lying side by side until she looked more like a red seersucker pillow than a cut up prostitute. His to brand over and over, rejoicing in the long red strips that looked like bloody welts from a belt – he’d watch her life flow into a pool the color of red velvet cake and at just the final perfect moment when her life ebbed, he’d strip off his clothes, lay down in the ruby puddle and wallow in her life, rubbing her essence all over his body.”
See what I mean? I have to hold myself back from really going with the gore.
I have what I call pretty passages as well as some scenes that would be perfect in a Harlequin. But my killer, he’s really getting weird on me. I’ve got the detective at his house now and he’s noticed all the new things that aren’t in keeping with a single wide trailer built in the 1970’s. My killer is mad at the detective for questioning him about the day Calvin died. To my bad guy, Calvin simply had something he wanted – no more, no less – something that would finance his wonderful game with Nia. If someone else had found a diamond that size, Mr. Psycho would have taken it however he could. Whores were like the lottery – you gotta pay to play. He had a special playdate in mind for his new gal and needed the money to pay off her pimp. He’d do anything to play with Nia. She was the one.
Arrrggghhh, I can’t stop. Where is all this gunk coming from? More importantly, where is it going? Is it central to my story? Is it important to anyone that they know the depths of my killer’s depravity? The lows to which he willingly sinks to indulge in his rapidly growing obsession with mutilating prostitutes? Once I’ve made that clear to my readers, is it gratuitous to describe any further acts? I’ve heard that you never know what your characters are going to do once they come alive on the page and from what I wrote yesterday, I can attest that that rumor is true. So how far is too far? When do I say, Self, you are not going to write that! I am against censorship on principle: freedom of speech is one of our country’s founding precepts. So what’s a writer to do?
I have a few choices to make here to correct my course, and none of them are easy. First, I can go back and re-write the character of my bad guy. I can make him the poor, misguided not-really-bad-at-heart one-dimensional character we’ve come to expect in novels. Secondly, I can scale way back on the depravity factor. Thinking about it, doing that may leave holes in the story line that would be hard to stitch together without having all the threads previously in place. Third, I can just go for it. Let my mind go overboard and darkly illustrate my killer’s foibles. All the personal darkness so concentrated in this one character is counter-balanced by the normalcy of the rest of the characters.
Wait a minute, who says this direction hasn’t been my course all along? What’s wrong with going for the gusto? Who says I have to write nice, write pretty? I’m a strong woman who’s just broken free of the bonds from her old life. Why should I cling to the idea of something that exemplifies what I once was: safe, bland, boring….vanilla. I truly do not want to put myself back in that box. I find I’m really liking being out on this limb of discovery.
No, I will no longer be silent. I will no longer squelch my voice, my intelligence, my talent. I’m not going to self-edit before I even see where this is going. I will just write it as I need to tell it. I’ll trust myself. I feel it again – the rightness of a decision made from self-truth. I will honor myself and when I feel this certainty in the pit of my stomach, I will follow it. I. am. a. writer. I have a story to tell. I don’t know if it will be savory or sweet, pretty or ugly, or perhaps (hopefully?) a conglomeration of all sorts of contrasts. I don’t know how it will end up but I can guarantee one thing. It will be a doozy!
“Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It’s the one and only thing you have to offer.” - Barbara Kingsolver
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