This finishing-a-novel thing
I went bell ringing tonight because I am an irresponsible halfwit. Well, I rang an unexpectedly reputable touch of Grandsire doubles at service ring yesterday morning* and one of the yardsticks both of how bad a mood the ME is in and how thoroughly some learning process has been gouged into my flesh is whether body memory will take over when my brains are running out my ears: yes my thumbs hit the long-extending-hellhound-lead brakes on first sight of frelling cat or frelling pheasant, before any higher faculty has translated what my optic nerve is reporting; yes I can still make long thirds in Grandsire when the frelling conductor says ‘single’ and I’m in the wrong place at the wrong time. And yes there’s an upper limit to the amount of your own company you can stand when you’re trying to finish a novel.** Creating havoc*** in a local tower is sometimes the best option.
This finishing-a-novel thing is a ratbag. This isn’t news—even to me—but I tend to forget between times. † And CHALICE was at least short. Finishing DRAGONHAVEN, however, was a major ratbag. I remember it all too well.††
PEGASUS has been around one way or another for a while. I told you it began life as an AIR ELEMENTALS story, yes? ††† The basic ‘because she was a princess she had a pegasus’ premise is pretty old. One of the reasons I haven’t got on with it any sooner is because I know even less about the ending than usual . . . or maybe I should say that there is a Big Climax on or near the end‡ which could go radically one of two ways . . . and I don’t know which way. Not knowing something this important makes me nervous. But PEGASUS has come up in the story queue and I can like it and shut up. Or not like it and shut up. Keep writing and shut up.
I finished page thirty of the second draft today. I write in single space—to get more on a computer screen—so this would be page sixty of a standard double-space print-out. I’m on page forty of the third draft. Eeeeeep. This rate of exponential explosion had better slow the frell down or I’m looking at a trilogy.
* * *
* Even more unexpected and more reputable than merely getting through the beggar, which is enough on Sunday mornings. But depending on which bell you’re on and on how the touch is called, you may have a fairly easy time—when you’re first learning a method the conductor will make a point of giving you a quote easy cough cough unquote time—or you may have to do something unspeakable every call. I was on the unspeakable bell for that touch. And I still did it. Yaay me. Sunday morning and everything. Of course that was it for the day. I walked out into the sunlight^ afterward, took a deep breath and thought, or ‘thought’, this would be a good day to . . . sit down.
. . . . In front of a computer screen, and get on with PEGASUS. Sigh.
^ Yes. Sunlight. Summer in England and sunlight. Far too frelling much sunlight, in fact: I am TIRED of watering. I want some RAIN.
** Husband and hellhounds don’t count, unfortunately. The presence of husband and hellhounds, while much to be preferred to the absence of husband and hellhounds, still does not prevent the wearying shrieks of fury and despair, both creative and technological, which are the author’s daily lot.^
^Generally speaking I win hands down in the shrieking category, but Peter has been known to expatiate on the crimes of computers in quite an energetic manner. He coulda been a contender.
*** And I didn’t. They were glad to see me.
† Like childbirth, I believe. I’ve been told by several mothers that the old cliché that if women really remembered what childbirth was like no one would ever have a second child^ is true even in this era of pharma-cornucopia and prescheduled Caesareans. Which doesn’t even address the life sentence following. Baby books often get their progenitors out of bed in the small hours^^ with long wailing cries of The second chapter suuuuuuuucks! And what are you going to do about the confrontation between the oracular axolotl and the evil magician? You need it for the plot but it doesn’t woooooooooork! However, once they’ve grown up and left home books rarely ring you up from unknown villages in East Timor or Gash-Barka saying that they’ve just run out of money and could you wire some right now because they’re hungry and it’s getting dark? Or steal all your original Kingston Trio LPs when they go off to college because you don’t appreciate them and didn’t you know that they’re so painfully retro they’re cool?^^^
^ Maybe something could be done about twins and triplets before the race died out?
^^ Sometimes said progenitors haven’t been in bed yet
^^^ No.
††And I will never forget that bats^ fell out in the 1,000,000th rewrite and their absence was not queried by any of the regiment of copyeditors and proofreaders^^ nor noted by the oatmeal-brained author who had managed to cut them in the first place with the result that they do not appear in the hardback edition of DRAGONHAVEN and I might have had to kill myself only I still have 5,978 books to write on the contract I signed to get enough advance money to buy Third House. I may still have to kill myself after I finish the 5,978th book. But by then I’ll probably want to kill myself. I’ll probably have run up several more literary atrocities on the kill-yourself tab by then anyway.
^ ie other critters besides dragons that fly
^^ Clearly more blog readers should be hired to read proofs
††† Sigh
‡ I’m a little careful about saying ‘the end’ after my experience writing three more chapters after the ‘end’ of HERO, which I told you about a little while ago.
comments
Please join the discussion at Robin McKinley's Web Forum.