it's not a waste of time per se
Jan. 21st, 2019 10:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7so I have this novel I first started working on circa 2003, that's been through a number of iterations and every few years I go back and poke at it again.
one of the characters in it is sort of kind of a paladin type, i guess, except I never played D&D and never consumed much media that has paladins in it, so when I do, I sometimes think of him and sometimes well... don't. He doesn't quite fit the archetype but he does hit some of the notes.
Anyway, I was thinking of him again, so I went back and reread a bunch of that old novel today, and.
I mean.
Parts of it are quite good but at this point what I could probably do is split it off and make five or six different books out of it, because the problem is that I was Way Too Serious about Writing A Novel and so I delved way too much into every possible choice I could ever make for any of those characters. And I never fucking finished a draft.
No, well-- actually that's not true, there exists one complete draft. It's like 80,000 words long and I reread it today and it's. Well, it's not bad, writing-wise, but there's an awful lot of whiplash in it, like shit springs out of nowhere and wraps itself up neatly and I... don't like it that much.
Anyhow. I was complaining to Dude how I've wasted literally twenty years now writing and rewriting novels and never finishing one. He said, but is finishing them the point? He's spent that time making things he never quite finishes too, and enjoying the making of them. I explained that even if I understand I'll never make a living by writing, I want to share these things I make with people, and I can't if I don't finish them. So he agreed, finishing things is a good goal.
So I'll try to let go of feeling bad about never finishing something, and just go on and finish something.
(Ohh, in 2004 I was So Serious about finishing that novel. I worked literally 100 hours a week on it, tracked by how I had playlists I'd listen to only while working, and iTunes gave me my stats and I added it up and realized I had literally, actually averaged 100 hours of work over several weeks, when I'd been fired from my job and was stuck in that apartment with no prospects of any kind, and I just wrote and wrote and wrote.
I wound up with a completely unusable 300,000 word draft, and then I scrapped the whole thing, rewrote it in first person, and then scrapped it and rewrote it in third again. But my god, I definitely figured out how to do a close third person POV, which had been my goal.)
Someday though I'm going to finish a draft I actually like of that novel, and then it's over for you hoes.
(OK I just like that phrase, I don't know what I mean by that though.)
excerpt
brief context: the first person narrator in this scene is the aforementioned semi-paladin, who isn't a paladin so much as an actual host body for a pair of local protection deities who kind of time-share him, which has humorous moments but it's not a humorous story. at this very moment, his elderly auntie, who is related to the lineage that contains one of the deities [Eroshis], is on her deathbed, and at the same time, his wife, who is in exile, has just given birth to his son, who also has the bloodline the one deity can interact with. but the other deity [Martins] mostly has custody of the protagonist at the moment, for local political and war-related reasons. said semi-paladin is under a lot of stress, badly injured, and coping poorly.
I wrote this draft in 2010, by my notes, so. This is a flashback, I guess.
* * *
I was sitting with her when she died. I'd started drinking already. I knew she wouldn't notice. She hadn't spoken in two days, hadn't swallowed even water in three, hadn't eaten even a little broth in six. We knew it was the end.
"Oh," she said, and we all looked up from our drinks. Her husband was even more fucked-up than me, at this point. I'd been keeping him supplied. "Oh my."
"Mai," he said, his voice rougher than gravel.
"Don't worry," she said. "Martins will take care of it, and if he doesn't, Eroshis will." And then she was dead.
I saw the little flicker. Eroshis had visited her. I reached for him, but he wasn't there. I got up to stumble out and listen for him where it was quiet, but then I had to catch her husband, who was losing it all over the place, and I had to hold him and keep him from hurting himself. It was a while before everything died down, and I was almost too drunk to walk by then.
I went out into the snow and sat on a fence post and stared at nothing in particular. Martins was around, but he never wanted to talk. I poked drunkenly at him, but he, with customary detachment, didn't poke back.
"Eroshis gave me a message," he said after a little while, when I'd given up trying to poke him.
"Did he?" I picked up an ice ball and threw it, badly. I was cold, but drunk enough not to care. My leg hurt like hell and I also was drunk enough not to care, though not so drunk as to not notice.
"He says it's a boy, as he said," Martins said. "Healthy, big, and loud."
"Really," I said, and fell off the fence post. It took me a minute to remember how to move. That hurt. The snow had melted and refrozen and was hard now.
"He's got Callonia's hair," Martins said, "and your eyes. He's enormous, but not so enormous as to injure Callonia. She's fine, and was up and about a little bit the next day already. Eroshis says he helped."
"Good," I said. The ice was slippery. I was probably stuck here for the moment. At least I hadn't spilled all of my drink. I drank more of it. Tricky; much of it went up my nose.
"Eroshis says he also talked to Mai, as she was dying," Martins went on. "She asked if you could name the baby for her dead son. So he's Mats now, Callonia agreed, but only if she could call him Matte."
That was the accepted diminutive nickname for the name, and we’d always called the son by it, even when he was a man grown. "Good," I said, and started crying. Matte had been my comrade. He'd been about ten years older than me. And he'd died defending me, in one of my first real battles. Naming my son for him was perfect.
I-- I had a son.
"Callonia says she's sorry to hear about Mai," Martins said. "Eroshis seemed to find that funny but didn't explain."
"It's not," I said. "He has a terrible sense of humor."
"I don't have one at all," Martins said, "so he has me beat there." It was the closest to human I'd ever heard him sound.
I lay in the former snowdrift and snivelled like an idiot. "I will convey your regards to them," Martins said. "But now I have business of my own to take care of. You can stay in that snowdrift a while longer, if you like, but by dawn you'll need to head out. The Brusjans are going to move tomorrow and they're bypassing your strongholds to strike where the Letts are weak."
"Shit," I said. I couldn't sit up. "We can't take horses out in this."
"I know," Martins said. "So you're going alone."
"Fuck," I said. My leg would never hold me. "Can I be drunk?"
"You're stuck there, aren't you," he said.
"Mmm... yup," I answered. I was now definitely too drunk to walk and the ice was slippery, and I'd landed head downhill.
"Might as well let me take over now, then," he said.
one of the characters in it is sort of kind of a paladin type, i guess, except I never played D&D and never consumed much media that has paladins in it, so when I do, I sometimes think of him and sometimes well... don't. He doesn't quite fit the archetype but he does hit some of the notes.
Anyway, I was thinking of him again, so I went back and reread a bunch of that old novel today, and.
I mean.
Parts of it are quite good but at this point what I could probably do is split it off and make five or six different books out of it, because the problem is that I was Way Too Serious about Writing A Novel and so I delved way too much into every possible choice I could ever make for any of those characters. And I never fucking finished a draft.
No, well-- actually that's not true, there exists one complete draft. It's like 80,000 words long and I reread it today and it's. Well, it's not bad, writing-wise, but there's an awful lot of whiplash in it, like shit springs out of nowhere and wraps itself up neatly and I... don't like it that much.
Anyhow. I was complaining to Dude how I've wasted literally twenty years now writing and rewriting novels and never finishing one. He said, but is finishing them the point? He's spent that time making things he never quite finishes too, and enjoying the making of them. I explained that even if I understand I'll never make a living by writing, I want to share these things I make with people, and I can't if I don't finish them. So he agreed, finishing things is a good goal.
So I'll try to let go of feeling bad about never finishing something, and just go on and finish something.
(Ohh, in 2004 I was So Serious about finishing that novel. I worked literally 100 hours a week on it, tracked by how I had playlists I'd listen to only while working, and iTunes gave me my stats and I added it up and realized I had literally, actually averaged 100 hours of work over several weeks, when I'd been fired from my job and was stuck in that apartment with no prospects of any kind, and I just wrote and wrote and wrote.
I wound up with a completely unusable 300,000 word draft, and then I scrapped the whole thing, rewrote it in first person, and then scrapped it and rewrote it in third again. But my god, I definitely figured out how to do a close third person POV, which had been my goal.)
Someday though I'm going to finish a draft I actually like of that novel, and then it's over for you hoes.
(OK I just like that phrase, I don't know what I mean by that though.)
excerpt
brief context: the first person narrator in this scene is the aforementioned semi-paladin, who isn't a paladin so much as an actual host body for a pair of local protection deities who kind of time-share him, which has humorous moments but it's not a humorous story. at this very moment, his elderly auntie, who is related to the lineage that contains one of the deities [Eroshis], is on her deathbed, and at the same time, his wife, who is in exile, has just given birth to his son, who also has the bloodline the one deity can interact with. but the other deity [Martins] mostly has custody of the protagonist at the moment, for local political and war-related reasons. said semi-paladin is under a lot of stress, badly injured, and coping poorly.
I wrote this draft in 2010, by my notes, so. This is a flashback, I guess.
* * *
I was sitting with her when she died. I'd started drinking already. I knew she wouldn't notice. She hadn't spoken in two days, hadn't swallowed even water in three, hadn't eaten even a little broth in six. We knew it was the end.
"Oh," she said, and we all looked up from our drinks. Her husband was even more fucked-up than me, at this point. I'd been keeping him supplied. "Oh my."
"Mai," he said, his voice rougher than gravel.
"Don't worry," she said. "Martins will take care of it, and if he doesn't, Eroshis will." And then she was dead.
I saw the little flicker. Eroshis had visited her. I reached for him, but he wasn't there. I got up to stumble out and listen for him where it was quiet, but then I had to catch her husband, who was losing it all over the place, and I had to hold him and keep him from hurting himself. It was a while before everything died down, and I was almost too drunk to walk by then.
I went out into the snow and sat on a fence post and stared at nothing in particular. Martins was around, but he never wanted to talk. I poked drunkenly at him, but he, with customary detachment, didn't poke back.
"Eroshis gave me a message," he said after a little while, when I'd given up trying to poke him.
"Did he?" I picked up an ice ball and threw it, badly. I was cold, but drunk enough not to care. My leg hurt like hell and I also was drunk enough not to care, though not so drunk as to not notice.
"He says it's a boy, as he said," Martins said. "Healthy, big, and loud."
"Really," I said, and fell off the fence post. It took me a minute to remember how to move. That hurt. The snow had melted and refrozen and was hard now.
"He's got Callonia's hair," Martins said, "and your eyes. He's enormous, but not so enormous as to injure Callonia. She's fine, and was up and about a little bit the next day already. Eroshis says he helped."
"Good," I said. The ice was slippery. I was probably stuck here for the moment. At least I hadn't spilled all of my drink. I drank more of it. Tricky; much of it went up my nose.
"Eroshis says he also talked to Mai, as she was dying," Martins went on. "She asked if you could name the baby for her dead son. So he's Mats now, Callonia agreed, but only if she could call him Matte."
That was the accepted diminutive nickname for the name, and we’d always called the son by it, even when he was a man grown. "Good," I said, and started crying. Matte had been my comrade. He'd been about ten years older than me. And he'd died defending me, in one of my first real battles. Naming my son for him was perfect.
I-- I had a son.
"Callonia says she's sorry to hear about Mai," Martins said. "Eroshis seemed to find that funny but didn't explain."
"It's not," I said. "He has a terrible sense of humor."
"I don't have one at all," Martins said, "so he has me beat there." It was the closest to human I'd ever heard him sound.
I lay in the former snowdrift and snivelled like an idiot. "I will convey your regards to them," Martins said. "But now I have business of my own to take care of. You can stay in that snowdrift a while longer, if you like, but by dawn you'll need to head out. The Brusjans are going to move tomorrow and they're bypassing your strongholds to strike where the Letts are weak."
"Shit," I said. I couldn't sit up. "We can't take horses out in this."
"I know," Martins said. "So you're going alone."
"Fuck," I said. My leg would never hold me. "Can I be drunk?"
"You're stuck there, aren't you," he said.
"Mmm... yup," I answered. I was now definitely too drunk to walk and the ice was slippery, and I'd landed head downhill.
"Might as well let me take over now, then," he said.
