Tiny Cat Pants

Oh, sure, it’s only October, month of frost, usually. Let’s have the morning glories bloom now. No problem, morning glories. I’m sure this strategy of blooming after all the bugs have given up for the year will work out swell.

I’ve been working some on the Sue Allen project. This is a strange first draft. At least, I think it’s a first draft. It might just be a really dense outline. I can’t yet tell. I was telling the Professor at lunch yesterday that I’ve not yet described any of the characters physically. In my head, I know what they look like so I had been figuring that could wait. Better to get down the stuff I’m unsure of or the stuff I need to see where it goes.

But that means that, when describing a slave society, I don’t yet have any racial markers. Maybelle is just a name, as is Sue. Or the other Sue. And rereading what I’ve written absent these markers gives the book this weird almost sci fi feel, where you’re plunged into a world where people are sorted, somehow, but you don’t yet know the means by which the sorting has occurred.

It’s a weird experience, rereading, because it makes me really aware of some racial baggage. The compulsion to say “and she was black!” or to give a character a more pronounced accent based on her race is really strong. I mean, lord knows I made fun of The Help for giving the black characters Southern accents but not the white. But I have to tell you, I consider myself to be a liberal, open-minded, socially aware person and, at some level, it freaks me out to read something written about the Civil War era without using the excuse of race.

I know this is going to sound really simple and naive, so I apologize ahead of time. I’m just trying to write honestly about this for myself. But the thing is that, if you don’t have the short-hand of the race of a character to help you make sense of how people are where they are in the society, it’s like a little bridge between “what happened?” and “how do I understand it?” is missing. And the bizarreness of the situation is more obvious.

What I’m trying to get at is that there’s a way, I think, that the narrative of slavery and Jim Crow works on a level of “This happened because they/we were black.” But what I’ve found, for me as a reader sitting in this culture at this time, when I don’t have the short-cut of race to constantly rely on, my first thought is not about the usual narrative but instead is “Why are these people doing this to the people who work for them and who seem to be related to them?”

And that shift in focus makes me, as a reader, really uncomfortable.

Which is not something I had intended. Like I said, my goal at this stage is to just work out the plot points and see if and how they fit together. But I’m starting to wonder if it’s not an approach that’s worth keeping. I think that, when I get a couple of drafts in, I’ll ask some people to read it to make sure that it’s not coming across as stripping powerless people of even their identity. But for now, I think I’m sticking with it. If it makes me uncomfortable, it feels like there’s real juice there.

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Yesterday someone said “I cant believe you give this stuff away for free” talking about “The Witch’s Friend.” Frankly–heh–I’m still in shock that someone paid me for “Frank.” Floundering around all summer with “Flock,” trying to figure out what to do with it and how, it was/is, to put it mildly, not easy. I think “Flock” is great. I’ve read other books this summer that I thought “Flock” was as good as.

So, you know, it’s hard. You start to wonder if you’re wrong about your own talent, if you’re right about your talent, but lack the skills to sell it. Or hell, people, you could have talent, mad selling skills, and you still have to luck out and find the person who says “Yep, I love this, too.” It’s like being nearsighted and trying to thread a needle across the room from you.

But mostly, being me, I just think I’m probably not as good a writer as I need to be in order to achieve my goals. And that’s depressing.

So, I joke and say that I give stuff away because I want it to be like crack, that you get some for free, you get hooked, and later you’re willing to pay for it. and you know, on my best days, when I’m metaphorically strutting into the ring like Jerry Lawler, I do feel that way.

But mostly, I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing. I’m floundering, here. Not in a bad way, but just in a “let’s acknowledge it” way. I really like “The Witch’s Friend.” I enjoyed writing it. I like rereading it now (though I go back and forth on the first part, honestly. I think it’s important for thematic reasons, but I don’t know that I like it as much as the other parts.). And we have a tradition here at Octobers.

It didn’t occur to me to try to sell it. I mean, to whom? It’s a novella, basically. S. mentioned that it might be a good fit for a Kindle edition of some sort and I think that may be a good home for it. Later.

I guess what I’m trying to get at here–and doing a bad job–is that my writing has benefited tremendously from blogging. I intend to continue to honor the traditions we have, for as long as they’re not burdensome. I like having readers who are interested in what I write and are happy to read along as I test my wings and try different things.

If there’s a shift to be made to “I should be getting paid,” I haven’t made it in my head yet. In part, because it seems like the world so strongly disagrees about “Flock.” I’m still in the “I would like to be getting paid, maybe someday” mindset.

But even then, even if I do get paid someday to do this–well, not this. But writing fiction. And yes, “Frank” I know. So, if getting paid becomes more regular, I still like sharing with y’all. And I guess I will continue to do that for as long as I like it.

If it’s stupid to not try to convert your audience into paying customers at the same time you’re trying to convert yourself into someone who’s getting paid, then I guess I’m that kind of stupid. Which, you know, doesn’t bode well. Ha ha ha ha ha.

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I’m reading Sandman Slim because I read an excerpt from the third book in the series and thought it sounded interesting, so I’m reading this book. I’m liking it so far, though it somehow feels paced too quickly and not quickly enough. I don’t quite know how to explain it.

I think one of the pacing issues is that it doesn’t have chapters. Which, on the one hand, I think is working really well, since it’s a book that is about a man who has to make a huge leap into a new world that doesn’t stop for him, so your experience reading kind of mirror’s his experience.

But then when do you stop to go to the bathroom or stop for the evening? I tried to stop between scenes but it made me realize that there’s a way in which I just can’t quite settle into the rhythm of the book. Which works fine for this book, but I’m glad in general that books have chapters.

I also have The Sisters Brothers to read which I am excited about based solely on the cover. You can talk yourself into believing that a bad cover doesn’t hurt a book, but when you see a cover that good, it makes you wonder.

And The Night Circus which I am a tad nervous about.

Anyway, chapters. I wonder about even writing a book without chapters. How do you organize it in your own mind? That’s the part I’m really curious about. Not that the Sue Allen project quite has proper chapters yet, but it seems to be organizing itself into chapterlike chunks. On the other hand, I’ve read a lot of books lately with really short chapters. It makes me wonder just what we think a chapter is, other than the moment when it’s safe to move from the couch to the toilet.

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