I don’t really think that the holidays are good for productivity.  I’ve gotten nothing done the past three weeks and now that I’m sitting down again, it’s taking me forever to figure out what I’m doing.  I read plenty and did lots of research and made tons of notes, but all that’s gotten me are scraps of paper floating around my desk with no organization whatsoever, and a disjointed idea of making my characters “better”.  I think that comes from a discussion about bad guys in the movies that I had a couple of weekends ago.  My prime example is the emperor in Gladiator.  Not my favorite movie anyway–I don’t really like Russell Crowe.  Or Nicholas Cage either, for some reason, but that’s another story.  I can stomach Cage.  But Crowe?  Icky.

Anyway.  The emperor.  From what I remember, they set up his character really well at the beginning with him trying to please his father and lots of complex character development and all this potential to be really cool and interesting…  Then it all goes to Hades and he ends up as two dimensional as every other Hollywood bad guy.  I mean, Russell Crowe has to have someone to be the foil for his good guy character, right?  Ta da!  Evil Emperor!

I would rather that this didn’t happen with my characters.  I want some really good bad guys.  Some so creepy that they make your skin crawl a bit, and others so good at hiding their evilness that you can’t even tell.  But that’s my problem–I’m afraid that I’ll make them as two-dimensional as the movies do.  So I suppose I should sit down and read a bit more about the evil characters.  I’ve got an excellent character study going for one of my characters in Marguerite of Angoulême (or Navarre, depending on which you prefer.  I like Angoulême better since it defines her as a woman, not as wife…  But that could be argued that it defines her as a daughter…  Hm.  And she did do some of her best work as the Queen of Navarre…  Whatever.  She’s somewhat of a badass.)  Even thinking of renaming my character after her since I like her so much.  Of course, my character is a bit more devoted to her children than Marguerite was.  Marguerite didn’t seem to like her daughter very much.  I think she was hoping for a son, which is really annoying, considering how much a “New Woman” she was supposed to be.  And she had a really disturbing thing for her brother…  Although there’s some debate about that.  But it wouldn’t surprise me.  A lot of incest seemed to go on in the Middle Ages.  Not sure what’s up with that.  Population shortage?  Maybe women were just too sheltered and didn’t really meet/talk with any men other than their fathers and brothers, so they got a little creepy and infatuated.  Whatever.  I think that Marguerite is good for my Catherine character, and I have some good ideas for some other characters as well, so we know what that means…  Yes, that’s right.  More research.  Another biography.  No more time off.

It’s true.  My writing group (of one) read the seven chapters of the “new” book that I had written and the scene where she’s looking at the portrait of her father “actually choked” her up.  Not only that, but she thinks that the new direction is “definitely awesome!”  I’m a little giddy right now, to be honest.  I’ve never choked anyone up before.  Not on purpose, anyway.  I’m sure I’ve caused my mother some tears in the past, but that hardly counts, does it?

But now the pressure is on.  I’ve choked my writing group up and portrayed my character’s vulnerability and strength.  I need to do more of that.  I need to “shed” the character that I started writing back in high school and “embrace” the new character.  Which would be great.  Only I have no idea how I did it in the first place.  I just wrote the scene.  I mean, sure–I thought about what I wanted it to say, but how is it that I managed to do it there, but not in the other places where I’ve tried it?  What was different about that scene and the others?  I know I cut down the drama a bit in the portrait scene–I admit, I was a little over the top in the initial draft.  I’m surprised I didn’t have her gnashing her teeth.  Was that it?  Was that the only trick?  Not trick…that’s not the right word.  Technique.  Technique is so close to trick, though…  Maybe that whole theory about “killing your babies” is true.  But the drama certainly isn’t one of my favorite things to write–even I find it cloying.  Hm…  I suppose I’ll have to consider it more.  And ask my writing group what she meant.  What exactly did it for her?

So after panicking about having 350,000 words in the original draft of the story, I now have the exact opposite problem.  Now that I’ve divided into three novels, the first story is only at 49,000.  And that’s after doing really promising work yesterday (nearly nine hours straight–I had bread pudding for lunch because it was the only thing in the fridge I didn’t have to cook).

Should I worry?  Should I steal more from novel #2 and hope that it can still stand on its own?  Clearly I don’t have a problem coming up with words though…maybe I should just write the thing out and then see where I stand.  I’m always having to “thicken” anyway.  God.  If I had heard that word one more time from my college creative writing professor, I think I may not have lasted through senior year.  How do I “thicken” but not use too many words?  And I know that “thickening” doesn’t mean just sticking in more adjectives and adverbs.  Wow.  And I know how not to thicken–I think that Khalindaine taught us all that very valuable lesson–but I guess I’m not really clear on what I should be doing.  Or how I should be doing it.

I’ve been re-reading favorite authors to see how they manage to provide good descriptions and plot and characters, yet still maintain my interest, but with little positive results.  Problem is, when I’m reading a good book, I never notice the author or what it is they’re doing.  Which is the point. It’s only when I’m reading a poorly written book that I squirm and pray that I don’t do the same thing.  So I suppose the lesson there is to pay more attention to what I’m reading.  I mean, really.  I’m an English major.  I know how to read, don’t I?  So I suppose I just need to work harder at it.  And then I’ll get better at the writing.  I hope.

My writing group (of one) was dismayed by how many useless scenes I had in the first draft, and then how other scenes that she thought were important were dismissed in a paragraph or two.