author’s note, happy new year January 1, 2007
Posted by jeanne in Author's Note, Characters, Creative Writing, construction news, original fiction.add a comment
well, it’s been months since i’ve done a lick of work writing fiction.
however, i’ve been faithfully cataloging the construction process on this multimillion, multistoreyed commercial / condo building that looms above our neighborhood.
you can see it for blocks, as we walk the dog. it’s visible from the cotton mill, it’s visible from boulevard and memorial, a major currently rundown intersection with loads of potential.
every day, we give thanks that we live in such a quickly changing part of atlanta, because we never get bored, and it’s always fascinating to see new stuff going up. i love a mix. it’s so cool towatch this thoroughly modern construction of steel and cinderbock towering above the one and two storey houses built at the turn of the last century at the edge of grant park. if it weren’t for trees in peoples’ back yards, it would loom.
as it is, with no leaves on the trees, and with them beginning to build back toward us (now that the crane has been moved and they can complete the things they couldn’t before because of the crane’s swing radius), it’s going to take the full summer extent of leafiness to begin to shield us from the huge enormous 7 floors of wall two houses wide in our back yard.
on th other hand, i haven’t had much to do with the fiction writing part of this online novel. i had one after another friend and houseguest in town all during october and november, and then it was the runup to xmas and all those presents i spent two months making down in the studio, and now i’ve got next year’s garden to ready as fast as i can (the wildflower seed is in the fridge while i finish pulling existing plants out of the new field (formerly gravel driveway).
i keep coming back to my story with ideas and revisions. the story with star is gong to be so much more fascinating becauwe of twists and turns in the characters on whom these characters are based. i’m keeping notes on everything, and a closely watched teenagerhood rewards you with many anecdotes and a divine sense of seriousness and crisis, a doom hovering about waiting to crash down.
but like many other things in life, i find i’m stalling about getting back to work. i just can’t seem to finish chapter 4. there are so many things still to be woven in, and i’m getting bored with it, which means it needs to be chopped all to pieces and half of it thrown out. so maybe i’ll tackle that in a little while.
i haven’t forgotten about it, even tho i haven’t looked at the chapter for a month or two. it’s been simmering in my mind, and i’ve been letting it take the back burner.
jeanne
revised plot alert August 20, 2006
Posted by jeanne in Author's Note, Blog project, Characters, Creative Writing, Plotting, construction news, original fiction, synopsis.add a comment
it took about a week of worrying. i printed out my chapter structure, and stared at it for awhile. every time i looked at it, my stomach turned. it was too long. it was boring. i wasn’t sure if i wanted to write about these people. i couldn’t see a way of cutting it down, and i knew i had way too much complexity for my talents. what to do?
turns out i got my mom in town for a week, and couldn’t get near the computer without risking exposure to o’reilly and fox news. so the plot sat there in the back of my mind, and i was too busy being with my mom to think about my story.
so when she left i sat down, took one look at the chapter structure i’d printed out, turned the paper over, and started over with pencil on a blank sheet
first i spread out the construction timeline. it’s a big regularizing factor in otherwise semi-randomly spaced developments.
then i put down the main characters’ events beneath them, ignoring the construction timeline. i went from beginning to end of the events instead.
i had thougt i would try to resolve the two scales later. but now i’m not so sure i have to do that. the construction takes a year. the events unfold in some unknown timespan, and if i juggle it right, i can make them roughly correspond all the way along.
problem is, most of these chapters cover a day, or part of a day, at most a week. i’ve got a year to kill. and twelve chapters to do it in. well, maybe thirteen.
my dillema is that i have a constant ticking background rhythm, and a very synchopated 3-part tune weaving in and out.
to balance the two, i think it is necessary to put the construction process, and representing this, the saga of forman, in its own section of the orchestra. the things that go wrong on a construction site will have a steady, monotonous ring to it, a tenor line, if you will. and round this will shriek and howl and bellow the sopranos, altos and basses.
anyway, i started out with 28 chapters, and now i have 12. yay. cut in half. of course, there’s a lot of stuff to cram into each chapter, so we’ll see if it’s any shorter.
maybe i don’t know how to make it shorter. a bunch of things to tell take their time getting told, and a chapter is that long because it takes that long to tell it.
Braiding the main characters July 3, 2006
Posted by jeanne in Author's Note, Characters, Creative Writing, construction news, synopsis.add a comment
How to weave the three women. That’s the next task. If it’s a duality, then you have to twist each strand against itself before twining it with the other strand. If it’s a triad, then you braid it together, each strand brushing against all others in every combination for the length of the tail. Tale.
In one sense, this story is about the timeless dynamic of youth, adult, and age, but each character has a complete storry at odds with the basic rhythm. And this must be bullshit here because I’ve lost my thread. Pardon.
Because each character sees the world from a particular level, each going thru the same things in their turn. Wisdom sets in after a few cycles – you don’t fall in love at 60 like you did at 22.
Each woman is a facet of the triple goddess, and each is a complete being in herself, the same kind of miracle as the male trinity being one and three. Or the ‘two become one flesh’ trick of holy matrimony.
So, splitting it into threes:
The little girl starts living
The middle aged woman accepts her life
The old woman puts her things in order
Girl learns life is hard
Mom learns it’s a test of strength
Old woman learns how to live without strength
Inappropriate tools
Tools fail one by one
Left with heart brains and courage
Girl gets in trouble ]
Mom gets in trouble ]
Old lady gets in trouble ]
Get in trouble first, spend the rest of the story getting out of it. Antihero, bang then whimper
Get in trouble in the middle, burn out. apocalypse
Get in trouble at the end, work into it until the edge. Hero
Girl gets in trouble, mom tries to rescue her, old lady tries to rescue mom
Who rescues old lady? She forces them all to work to rescue themselves? Solidarity among women? How boring. What’s wrong with a knight in shining armor?
Thing Two rescues the family next door, and the old man and the ex boyfriend lead to the capture of the bad guy and the salvation of the trio of women.
The guys take up the slack when the women get in deep. This is where it becomes a man’s story too. It’s a dance. The women go as far as they can, and then a miracle occurs, and that’s their men, being men and doing what only they can do. And I’m not talking about peeing standing up.. I can do that too.
Maggie Hipje doesn’t get the informer, like I thought before. This is the part that just came to me this morning, bubbling up to solve a bunch of problems with a simple twist. Maggie is too busy burning out to save her own ass.
The ex boyfriend and the old man and the star crossed boy get the bad guys. The informer is working for the developer to empty the houses. Brought in to take out two of the neighbors. He’s developer’s cousin.
Cops come down on neighborhood because of misinformation from informant. Thing 1 or 2 has something to say about informant and dv, he saw something. The old couple see them having sex on the construction site in the moonlight. She wonders if they’re rival magicians, changes her gameplan.
They are really smoking a joint and hitting off a bottle, their bobbing heads reflective if their idle kicking of the dirt like a couple of kids. They see the naked old couple as ghosts in the windows, doing lewd things.
Just like the arborist and the star crossed kids, going to the cops has widespread consequences. Leads to downfall of developer.
