Rats, ratbags, and singing
blondviolinist wrote:
‘You say you know a lot about your characters but you haven’t a story yet. Please write down this information and arrange to have it published posthumously so we the readers can have some closure and we can’t bug you for more.’
Not that it’s any of my business, but I *really* hope you don’t do this. The times I’ve seen this done, the results have reminded me of the leftover heap in Dr. Frankenstein’s workroom: plot ankle sticking out here, characterization arm hanging out there….
I said the answer is no. The answer is NO. The answer is NOOOOOOOO. Among other things . . . when am I supposed to do this? We’re talking about writing time. If a good/bad fairy came along when I’m, oh, 108 or something, and says, you have six months left: Tidy up now—do you think I’m going to spend my last six months organising a lot of notes that I’m never going to be able to use? Wrong. I’m going to be eyeing Story in Progress* and wondering if I have a final sprint left in me to get it done. And how am I going to organise this stuff—I who have never organised anything in my entire life? By virtual 3×5 cards?** Venn diagram?*** And even supposing I did this thing†, just how much joy is anyone going to get out of the stark information that Harry’s daughter travelled to the Homeland to see where her mum grew up and fell in love with a banker?†† Or that the Overlord, out for revenge, managed to open a really big crack in the earth of Willowlands, and Marisol falls in and finds herself in a fish and chip shop in Bournemouth (still clutching her chalice)?†††
The only reason anyone wants to know what happens next is because the plot ankle and the characterisation arm were joined up with a body and a mind and some adventures. What happens next as a kind of schematic . . . is no more inherently interesting than a plan of your house wiring: and anybody out there who still secretly thinks you’d find them interesting, I venture to say that they’d be one hell of a let down. A Mars bar when you’re devoted to Green & Black’s is not going to satisfy your chocolate jones: if anything it’s going to make you feel slightly sick.
And I’m tired of the word ‘closure’. For the friends and families of murder victims, yes. For readers wanting sequels or sequel-ettes, frelling spare me.
Megan Doreen
It would be nice to have additional books/short stories about Sunshine or Damar. However, I would rather live with not knowing and dream up my own thoughts and ideas, than have an unfinished amalgamation to sift through. (Tolkien’s posthumous works come to mind. Some are lovely, others are not.)
Personally I think Tolkien is spinning in his grave. I haven’t got Tolkien’s single-mindedness‡ but even I’ve got a lot of stuff in boxes and under beds and taking up valuable bookshelf space and so on that went wrong or I didn’t know what happened next or something, which might make stories if I get back to them. None of this stuff should be published. And in fact it’s in my will that my literary executor is to destroy all unfinished work. When I reach 108 I’ll probably destroy a fair amount of it myself.
baybelletrist
one of the neighbours has been feeding the frellers
I . . . look, I know it’s probably far too girly or something, but on reading this I honest-to-gods flapped my hands in a restrained flail and said GAAAAH.
The only problem I see with this statement is the ‘restrained’. I think a wild, shoulder-dislocating flail is totally appropriate. Screaming is also good.
As for the e-mail:
*headdesk*
Clonk. Yup.
LRK
Is it just me – or does it sound like you’re offered relief from posthumous bugging?!
Yes, I was rather taken with that myself. Die! And we’ll leave you alone!‡‡ —Ah, the subordinate clause, the sentence order, the vivid imagination of the reader of same. She ees a tricky cow, that English grammar.
Krystolla
Feeding the rats on purpose?
Yes. He puts bread out for them, having apparently mistaken them for ducks.‡‡‡ And then I gather he watches them . . . I dunno, gambol? What do rats do? . . . in his garden. My mentally-etched first significant rat encounter was when I had dropped out of my first college and was living in penury in Washington DC. Have I told you this one already? It’s very mentally etched, even in Menopause Mind. You didn’t want to hang around in the alleys in my old DC neighbourhood: never mind the muggers, I’m talking about the rats. When they saw a human, they didn’t run away: they turned around and looked at you. Thoughtfully. And they were cat sized. Possibly small-badger-sized. When about six of the things backed out of whatever they were doing and turned to stare at you . . . It was a good idea to take your garbage out before dark.
Mrs Redboots
there is a convenience store not too far away from us, and the owners insist on feeding the local pigeons, which are flying rats. Yeurch.
Yes. And (grey) squirrels are rats with fluffy tails. Walking through one of the big central London parks you pretty much have to knock the people feeding the squirrels out of your way. I want to knock their heads together.
* * *
Meanwhile, anyone who is dementedly keeping track might be wondering about my Second Voice Lesson. Yes. Today. Whee. I like young Mr Blondel. I think he’ll do. I hope he’s thinking the same about me. I feel that we’re getting over the sheer implausibility of the thing § and beginning just to get on with it. I’ve spent the week trying to learn the frelling tune of both Sebben Crudele and Panis Thingummy§§—slightly complicated by the fact that in an all-too-typical way I started the week by singing too much, woke up hoarse with a sore throat on Thursday or so, and . . . spent a couple of days learning the tunes silently, just picking them out on the piano. With I have to say mixed results. Gah. It’s very like . . . well, it’s very like being a beginner at anything, I dare say: it reminds me vividly of being a beginner bell ringer, especially the moment when you’ve about got the theory of the thing and you’re trying to ring your first method and suddenly the bells are all flying at you at once and you can’t see (or hear) anything. He taught me some new exercises, which went not too badly: if I’m creating one note at a time, I can almost do it—sometimes, although even then as soon as I’m thinking about making a noise I forget about the breathing, and . . . And as soon as I was trying to sing a whole song, everything started flying at me at once and . . .
And now he’s on holiday next week and I will be utterly without musical guidance since Oisin is gone for three weeks. What will I do with myself? Oh, compose something, I suppose, and keep trying to sing. . . .
* * *
* Of course there’s a Story in Progress.
** Does Sunshine’s dad come under Sunshine, Onyx, or Blaise? You don’t think I’m going to write an index too, do you?
*** That is going to be soooome diagram.
† I can’t tell you how much I DON’T/WOULDN’T WANT TO! I’d be sitting there drowning in tears and misery because here is all this lovely story stuff I’m not going to be able to use!^
^ I wonder if you can put in a special request to come back again as another writer? Yeep. Maybe I’m Charles Dickens, doing penance for all those Little Nells and Doras and Esthers and so on.
†† I’m either lying, or they kidnap her and hire one of those anti-brainwashing experts to deprogramme her. It’s okay. Don’t worry.
††† See previous footnote. +
+ I am lying, but I could do something with this. . . .
‡ He was even English and he didn’t ring bells.
‡‡ Sure, right away. About half a century right away. I’ve got a lot of sequels not to write first.
‡‡‡ I keep wondering why our wild fowl always look so healthy. The ducks on our streamlet^ eat such vast quantities of the dreckiest flour-improvered, chemically enhanced, bleached-white mattress bread all their feathers ought to fall out . . . not to mention that they are so dadblattedly tame that they come waddling up to you, even if you have two red-eyed, drooling-jawed hellhounds on short leads—Will you get in the frelling river before my arms come off at the shoulders, dranglefab you?
^ I’ve done my rant on the British concept of ‘river’, haven’t I? If it runs at least six hours a year with enough water to get a Labrador retriever wet to the ankles, it’s a river.
§ You’re what? You want to do what? You want to do what why?
§§ Which does also have translated-into-English lyrics, which are dire. I told Blondel I wanted to sing it in the Latin.
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