Stripdown (entry catch-up)

My POV characters are isolated and in position. They've passed through literal rough terrain (inspired in part by the hike Mary and I took in 1998 to the bottom of the Grand Canyon and back up, including the oasis known as Indian Garden, that patch of green about 2/3 of the way up in the photo above). Now they've entered a setting that is at once nightmare and paradise, first mentioned in Covenant and first shown in Book #3. And it's transformed as much as they have.

They have passed out of their various sparring stages and become increasingly comfortable with each other. They no longer try to rip off each other's layers by force. Instead they slowly shed their own, making themselves increasingly vulnerable.

For one of them, a plug of repression spanning the lifetime of the other is about to blow sky high. It will tomorrow if I have the emotional wherewithal to write it.

My title character will have his turn later, in a much different way -- when he finds what he's been looking for all his life, buried in the ruins.

His co-traveler will help him realize his potential and work to free him from his multiple shadows. He will help her come to grips with her long-standing grief. And in Part 4, in the midst of everything else that seems lost, they will take each other home.

Added Friday, July 6: 522 wds. (after Thursday's big chunk of draft and a meeting, and before some sleep catch-up)
Added Saturday, July 7 (drum roll, please): 3,589 wds.

Clinch (entry catch-up)

On April 22-23, 2006, while I was still struggling with writing Book #4, I spent an insomniac night "seeing" the trajectory of Book #5. (My entry at hurricanecountry.blogspot.com/200...html details that night in all its mystical glory and gets a bit into the process-behind-the-process.) Many of the specific details have changed -- they always do -- but the general outline remained, including the heart of the drama.

I am now at that point in the drafting. One scene to move the characters into place, then probably two or three scenes to take them through their cathartic paces. Then a final scene to serve as the bridge into Part 4, which will be an extended denouement that essentially wraps up the lives of the old-generation characters who are left and moves the new generation into place...

... so that they can deal with their own crop of troubles in the final volume.

And, God/dess help me, I've already been hit with an idea for a possible spin-off story. (Duet in my head: "This could be cool!" and, "Oh, shit.") But first things first, including other ideas I've had in the hopper, that are awaiting further development. Once I finish drafting #5 and then get #6 under my belt.

Some day I'll catch up on reading the newspaper, whose pile has been growing in the studio. Mary's been giving me mini updates (rest in peace, "Bubbles" Silverman*), but I haven't even been looking at the funnies. Which means my attention has been seriously claimed.

* Beverly Sills

Added 7/5 into early 7/6: 2,334 wds.

Viewing For Craft (entry catch-up)

Part of the inspiration for some of the confrontations between my two POV characters comes from the movie Good Will Hunting. Because when I was first "seeing" my title character as a troubled youth (and by "first" I mean shortly after I wrote his birth at the end of Book #2), the character of Will Hunting immediately came to mind.

My title character and that one are quite different and in some ways opposite in their backgrounds and experiences, but at certain times they employ similar defense mechanisms. Unlike Will Hunting, my character has loving and somewhat indulgent parents and he is much more experienced in all arenas. He shows his vulnerability much more but he also uses it as a weapon. He resembles Will Hunting in that he has serious self-worth issues.

The sparring dynamics are also different. In Good Will Hunting the sparring occurred between two men. In Book #5 it occurs between a younger man and an older woman. So it also includes sexual tension.

A while back, when Good Will Hunting aired down here, I was ready with my digital recorder. I captured the scenes I wanted to learn from in terms of mood and tempo and their basic choreography. Then I downloaded and transcribed the dialogue. On the 4th, after I wrote the latest confrontational scene (the one that is so far the most Good Will Hunting-ish), I went back to the transcripts, mostly out of curiosity at this point.

One common thread is co-healing from trauma through alternating volleys, where one combatant knocks the other one off-balance and reverses the roles. In GWH, Will gets in his digs at Sean but Sean is the dominant character on balance. The battle between my POV characters takes place on a more equal footing, more a case of the blind healing the blind. They also have some specific issues and people in common, which adds another level of intimacy.

Added Wednesday, July 4: 1,479 wds.

Changing Horses

Due to various developments, I am in the process of changing publishers. I will, however, be working with the same individuals as before. Will update when things become official.

I did this collage using MS Paint and MS Photo Editor, with help from
upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...ng-4.jpg
and
www.rankel.net/petelauren/petehorse.jpg
along with my colored Sharpies and Onyx Rollerball pen.

Beginnings

Today's installment includes a flashback that goes back to before Covenant's time frame, but which that first volume alludes to.

I'd been playing the scene in my head for several days, setting up the visualizations. It sets the stage for my POV characters interacting further down the line, but one of the satisfying aspects for me is also its multiple exposures. Two (actually, three) family generations. Two people (one of them my non-title POV character) presented at different ages, with different perspectives.

It's a slow dance time for my two POV characters, the calm before their final and ultimately healing storm, which is still down the line a ways. They're off on their own, though still under each other's influence. On the far sides of their respective orbits, before circumstances bring them together again, when no one will be there to break up the clutch.

Added 7/2 into early 7/3: 2,661 wds.

Photo note: Dawn on February 24, 2006.

Whoosh!

Late last night a prop, introduced and an important item in Book #4 and mentioned early on in Book #5, popped back up like a big, flashing neon sign and told me You Are Here.

Oh...

*OH!*

Which is why I was up drafting until five this morning.

It's basically allowed me to fold at least three scenes into one, tying them up into a neat little package. Separate and by themselves, those scenes were just too thin and wishy-washy, serving mainly as information delivery systems. They'd had too much padding around the heart of the matter. I'd laid out the ideas in my notes, and as the time approached to write them in I was trying to figure out how to juggle all those verbal packing peanuts.

This new arrangement changes the tone and the pacing from what I'd originally had in mind, but the new way feels better to me. It adds more foreshadowing. And it gives me insight into another thing my two POV characters have in common, that I hadn't fully realized before. Right now I'm not sure how explicit I'm going to make that connection, but at the very least it's a background driving force behind their interactions.

The prop belonged to someone who was alive in my initial notes for the story, and in my initial notes I'd worked out the dynamics and interactions between her and my major characters. Pretty early on I realized she was extraneous and (*cough!*) of better use to me and to the story dead. Any influential role she had to play could be accomplished through other people's memories of her, especially since Book #5 is set about 15 years after Book #4, in which she'd played a major role.

One thing about jumps like that is, it gives me "flex time" to play with. I had the same decision to make about another Book #4 character, whom I first had dying at the end of that story, then had living partway through Book #5, and whom I finally decided would meet his end in-between the time periods of the two volumes because memories of him would be sufficient.

I've also changed the role of a still-living minor character (who's been around since Book #2), paring it down considerably from what I'd laid out in my notes. I'm giving part of her job to a more important character, leaving her to perform a very specific function in my title character's development, in a way that enhances what his chosen path will eventually be.

Because she shows how and why people will resist it.

Added today: 1,660 wds.

Photo note: "You Are Here ... and here ... and here ... " -- This was my 1995 bicycling map, showing in red those routes I'd ridden that year. My first century ride of 131 miles went off the map, up further into New Hampshire. My longest one-day ride of 137 miles was the one to Provincetown. Going toward the lower left-hand corner and off the map was the first Boston-New York AIDS Ride: 261 miles in three days.

Modulations

I'm up to the tricky part in Book #5. The one where I'll probably end up doing the most rewriting.

The pas de deux between my two POV characters is beginning to transform, in a pushme-pullyou kind of way. Their struggle is almost childish one moment, deadly earnest the next, then tender, then volatile. Little by little, their layers are being peeled away. My title character is a young adult who's had to grow up fast but who in some ways is still very much a kid. His "dance partner" is a woman aged before her time, who is beset with her own troubling memories.

It's tough to choreograph.

Sometimes they go off on a tangent and I haven't the foggiest idea where they're taking me. Sometimes the tangent dead-ends and I go back to square one. Sometimes their encounter undergoes a radical mood shift. The lead changes. The manipulation changes. My job is to make it all believable, keeping a handle on the pacing and making sure the right details are in place without adding extraneous padding.

Sloppiness is a first draft's job.

That's what I keep telling myself, especially when I finish a scene and go, "What just happened here?"

The good news is that some time and distance down the line, I can go back to the scene and say, "Oh." Or, "Ugh." And start in with the fixes.

Added Saturday: 1,867 wds.

Photo note: Close-up of the rope knotted around an external faucet wrapping in December 2005.

Cipher

My 1975 Random House College Dictionary gives the following definitions for "cipher":

1. Zero
2. Any Arabic numeral
3. A person or thing of no influence or importance; nonentity
4. A secret method of writing by coded symbols
5. A coded message
6. The key to a secret method of writing
7. A combination of letters, as the initials of a name; monogram
8. To use figures or numerals arithmetically
9. To calculate numerically; figure
10. To write in cipher

I had definition #5 in mind when I used the word to describe one of my characters, whom different people view in different, often contradictory ways because his past isn't just checkered, it's Necker-cubed.

Then I looked it up. Then I smiled.

Numbers are a big part of his life. They're his profession. They've also served as his escape mechanism. In addition to his being a difficult man to "decode," the numbers aspect of the definition fits him perfectly.

Is he a nonentity? Someone of no importance? That gets a bit more complicated. At first glance, no. His expertise is sought out, and he's gone through repeated trauma to finally emerge from it all with a certain bearing, a certain wisdom. In planning his role for Book #5 I wrote in my notes that I needed him to be a stronger character than what he'd been in the past, someone to provide balance and insight to my two POV characters. This is a man who's been tempered into strong, quiet steel, and at the same time he is not afraid to be soft.

In the long run, though, he is dust. And he knows it. He understands the numbers.

Added Friday: 746 words.

Photo note: A hand I've sculpted from discarded office paper that I've pulped and mixed with gesso rests on my computer keyboard.

Menfolk

In addition to his instincts, which have served him for better and for worse, my title character has gotten good guidance and support from some important men in his life. Those men share variously-checkered histories among them, and my title character is important to each of them in different ways. Part of his own maturation will involve choosing one of them as his mentor -- and, in many respects, as the father he never had.

Because his own father, no matter what the love between them, has been a problem.

Looking at the dynamics a few months ago, I had the "aha" realization that on a certain level I was writing a variant on the Biblical story of Jacob and Esau, even down to the body types. Only, my "Esau" has not been robbed of his father's blessing through any trickery on "Jacob"'s part. Instead, my "Jacob" shared a passion with "Isaac" the "Esau" lacked.

And instead of being brothers, the "Jacob" and "Esau" in my story have been best friends since early childhood and continue to be so. And "Jacob," who had lost his own father before "Esau" was born, found in "Isaac" the father *he* never had.

My "Esau"'s blessings lie elsewhere. He is on his journey toward finding them.

Added today: 1,172 wds.
Total for Week 2 since my "210" commitment: 8,990 wds.
Two-week total: 19,339 wds.

Photo note: Tree detail, March 2006.

Tango

"Tango stirs up all the feelings you have inside your soul. You might be happy your job is going well, but at the same time sad because you had a fight with someone you love. You might feel hopeful about the future but feel compassion because someone close to you is ill. Tango will make you feel reverence for life, yearning for something more, nostalgia for the past, regret for the present and hope for the future, all at the same time. It is music that is specifically designed to make you feel -- intimate, romantic, tender, sad, passionate, angry, and peaceful all in one song."
-- "Tango From the Heart," GainesvilleTango.org

"Creator Luis Bravo wants the audience to see how the tango was originally done in dockside bars and whorehouses in Buenos Aires -- it was not like your average prom night. The men dragged the ladies onto the floor; it would probably not be politically correct in today’s American society. However, those ladies of the evening did not seem to mind since they wrapped their bodies around the male torso like a snake wraps around a tree."
-- Richard Connema's review of Forever Tango at TalkinBroadway.com

My two POV characters are tangoing. They're being protagonists and antagonists at the same time. They're both fully aware of their own and the other's sexual tension and they're both trying to be the one in control.

And, on a certain level, they both know that their issues with each other really stem from their feelings toward a third person who lives far away, at the other end of the region.

But that knowledge doesn't help them much. They've got too many buttons to push and be pushed.

Their rather explosive opening salvo has calmed into a mutual tease. He's young and insecure but experienced enough to be cocky. She's old and hardened enough to harbor regrets. And that's just the top, most accessible layer. It's the fun layer, where they test each other's limits and try to knock each other off-balance, before they both succeed and then wish they hadn't.

Added: 536 words on Monday, 1,184 words on Tuesday.

Photo note: Canna lily, photographed on the University of Tampa campus in October 2006.