Bear with me.

[camrogers]

I'm sitting in the graveyard behind Ade and Lucy's house, and I'm working on Fateless. Lucy's just been kind enough to bring me a plate with bread, cheese, strawberries and the little tomatoes they grow in their flower box. And a cup of tea. And a Hobnob. I'm really very lucky. Working on this brick is almost tolerable under these stupidly privileged conditions. Doing this from my room in Melbourne... oy vey.

Ade said something: that it wasn't a stretch to imagine me as some shadow lurking at airports about whom sightings are reported. It's a nice idea. I later pointed out that it wasn't too hard to imagine night fourteen years hence when some hapless village lad drops Bean home from a date to find Dad waiting on the front porch polishing his grimoire.

I need to get this travel writer schtick working. Everything back there moves so slow, like a movie whose developments are telegraphed two acts in advance. I get it, I get it, come on for Chrissakes. Same room, same walls, same small places... someday, maybe, I'll be okay with it. But not right now.

Just ate a tiny tomato and exploded juice across the screen. The best tomato-eating scene is Tim Roth in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Always wanted to eat a tomato like that. I guess I just did.

This book moves too slow. It's an artefact. Wondering if it should remain as such. Want to write something happy, angry and blazing. New York speed. Maybe this is that and I just can't see it. All I know is that this supposedly final markup is littered with notes from myself that amount to ADD MORE STUFF.

If my past self can send notes forward I feel I should be able to send a note back. Just one: THIS IS NOT HOW YOU BUILD A FUCKING BOOK.

That's lunch. Back to work.

Comments

[greylock.livejournal.com]

Lucy's just been kind enough to bring me a plate with bread, cheese, strawberries and the little tomatoes they grow in their flower box. And a cup of tea. And a Hobnob

That almost made me jealous.

Bean home from a date to find Dad waiting on the front porch polishing his grimoire.

I laughed.



I need to get this travel writer schtick working.

For this, or for more? P-cat might have some ideas. And I think you have the knack for it.

[patchworkkid.livejournal.com]

For more. For a life. I think I can spin up enough momentum on the whole travel --> write --> get paid cycle to make this thing largely self-supporting. Just have to get actual novels done.

[sharplittlteeth.livejournal.com]

Sounds you're at the point in the novel where Grant Morrison would have the characters realise they're fictional constructs, hunt down their author, and kick him in the gonads.

You don't have writers block. You have metafiction!

[patchworkkid.livejournal.com]

Christ, don't even start. I'm just going to trust the perspective I had when I did the markup is correct, work to notes, get this draft done, get home and print it out. Then I'll have a week or two to read it, do an absolutely spare-as-hell floorsweeping job and then kick it out the door. All the while hoping I haven't missed something obvious.