Paksworld

Since I already let this kitten roll out of the bag somewhere else, it’s loose here as well.    It’s spoiler-ish, but not a true spoiler, and it’s insight into how my mind functions on “deep logic” issues.  It’s slightly (but only slightly and not in essence) different from the version on the other venue.   However, if you fear even the faintest tinge of spoilerishness, maybe better skip this one.

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A productive day is a day on which at least 2000 words pile up.    I’ve been dealing with 1000 word days, 850 word days, 1600 word days, even 1854 word days…but the clear-sailing ahead 2000 word days have been thin on the calendar.   Today was one of them, plus some.

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Tuesday and Wednesday were both 2000+ word days, and though today is moving much slower (there was writing-related business to do this morning, which also involved a trip to town to the post office),  Book V seems to be over its “You ignored me–I’ll ignore you” snit.    I’ve written out almost all of one of early-Tuesday-morning’s plot-bombs, and have the other still to do (notes made at the time, of course.)    I think it’s not quite as “big” in terms of wordage, but that doesn’t matter.  It’s an important chunk of plot, to be sure.

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Evidently Book V is over its snit.   I did not sleep much last night (memory of the previous night’s scorpion sting meant that any noise in the house translated into “There’s a scorpion” and so did any “feeling” on my skin) but the reward for insomnia was a massive download of intuitive stuff for Book V.

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Ritual disclaimer: nobody gets through a long writing career without some mistakes.  You will sometimes trust the wrong research source (even if it’s someone who should have the knowledge you’re looking for–say a fire department veteran you’ve asked about a procedural point in managing a multi-alarm fire…and no, this isn’t a problem I’ve had.)    No writer knows everything, and every writer must, at some point, trust a map, or a reference book, or a person who seems to have first-hand knowledge.

But there’s a huge difference between occasionally  trusting the wrong source and not looking something up at all.   Writers should look things up in the best source they can find or beg/borrow/get via Interlibrary Loan before they plan a book or a chapter–and should let the facts dictate how the story goes, rather than ignoring the facts because they already have a fantasy-version in mind.

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I spend the “awake but not up” portion of the very early morning thinking about an idea I had yesterday for Book V.    All along I’ve had a particular vision of what happens when Mmmph and Ummph meet.  It’s been stable through the other books, but I had a bright idea.   What if Rrrmph and Mmmph were connected?  What if Rrrmph wanted to do A and Mmmph wanted to do B, and then Ummph never met Mmmph in the same circumstances…???

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My UK editor wants an essay for their blogsite.  I’m working on it.  I’ve been working on it since it was assigned.   It should’ve been easy; I thought it would be easy.  It’s not.  And it’s even a topic I suggested.   In the weird way that Lifestuff and Writerstuff sometimes intertwine, it got tangled in a discussion here, a discussion elsewhere, and my original thoughts on the matter.

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I was reminded again this weekend of the way death comes seemingly out of nowhere to shatter relationships new and old.   A friend of mine in another state was participating in a serial transport of a rescued dog from the shelter where it was first found to its future home, some two thousand miles away.   The puppy stayed at her house overnight, and the next day she drove it to the next person in the chain.   The person set off…and she and the puppy were killed in a weather-related road accident.  You can read about it on my friend’s blog, which includes a beautiful tribute to the remarkable woman who was killed.  Please do, in fact.

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Vonda N. McIntyre (a writer whose work I hope you’ve read)  has been posting some snarky comments about  the verb “seem.”     It seems that some writers seem to find a reason to seem uncertain about things going on in their books…they seem unable to say what someone felt, only what someone seemed to feel, seemed to think, seemed about to do, etc.   “Seem” has its uses (every word has its uses) but some words seem to fit a writer’s need not to say exactly what he/she means.   Thus, “seem” upholds the banner of “weasel-words.”

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My mother was a terrific knitter (and seamstress, and designer, and needlepointer, and…well just about everything.  Engineer, nurse, built some furniture, designed everything from houses to ranch pens to clothes, carved wood, painted pictures…and made biscuits I will never equal.)    Watching her pull together a knit-in-the-round sweater with no seams (especially one of the patterned ones) was a visual metaphor for what I do writing books (I realized this years later, after she’d died.)    You could talk to her while she was knitting a sleeve.  Often you could talk to her while she was knitting the body.  But when it came to The Joining, when the two sleeve tubes were mated to the body tube at the correct angle , with her signature little cable running up the join,  when there would be enough double-pointed needles in the project for several hours  to make it look like a torture device, there was no talking.    There was silent removal of empty coffee cup and setting down of a filled one.

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