Jonathan Eaton's Blog - Posts Tagged "michelangelo"
A Horse of a Particular Color
I’m 50K words into my current project, a novel, working title “Seven Texas Tales (a novel).” That puts me at about halfway done, and at the rate I’m going, I should be wrapping up a first rough draft by the end of the year.
For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been struggling with two problems: (1) A scene begging to be written, but with no real significance to the story as a whole, and (2) A plot problem that was resisting all attempts at defenestration. You know where this is going, right? I finally figured out that problem 1 was exactly the trebuchet I needed to rid myself of problem 2.
That’s a good day in novel writing.
Another interesting coincidence: A young man in my novel steals a horse. I decide that he names the horse Moses. Why Moses? I’m not sure—the name just kind of popped into my character’s head. Moses needs a color. I see him in my mind’s eye, but I don’t know enough about horse lingo to know what to call a horse of that color, so I look at a bunch of horses online, and find a “chestnut” horse that looks a whole lot like my Moses. I mean, my character’s Moses.
Next comes trying to describe what it is about Moses that makes my character decide to steal him. Something about the way the morning sun glints off his hide. Glints off his hide like a shiny brass . . . what? So I decide to look at famous things made of brass. What pops up, near, if not at the top of the list? A brass sculpture by Michelangelo . . . of Moses.
So here’s a very quick sketch of a very little bit of that sculpture—sorry man, but I’ve got a novel to write.
Why does bronze Moses have horns? You'll have to ask Mike.
By the way, did I ever tell you, there’s a bunch of free (FREE) short stories and essays by me and my friends available online? You can find them here:
https://coryluspress.com/short-stories/
For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been struggling with two problems: (1) A scene begging to be written, but with no real significance to the story as a whole, and (2) A plot problem that was resisting all attempts at defenestration. You know where this is going, right? I finally figured out that problem 1 was exactly the trebuchet I needed to rid myself of problem 2.
That’s a good day in novel writing.
Another interesting coincidence: A young man in my novel steals a horse. I decide that he names the horse Moses. Why Moses? I’m not sure—the name just kind of popped into my character’s head. Moses needs a color. I see him in my mind’s eye, but I don’t know enough about horse lingo to know what to call a horse of that color, so I look at a bunch of horses online, and find a “chestnut” horse that looks a whole lot like my Moses. I mean, my character’s Moses.
Next comes trying to describe what it is about Moses that makes my character decide to steal him. Something about the way the morning sun glints off his hide. Glints off his hide like a shiny brass . . . what? So I decide to look at famous things made of brass. What pops up, near, if not at the top of the list? A brass sculpture by Michelangelo . . . of Moses.
So here’s a very quick sketch of a very little bit of that sculpture—sorry man, but I’ve got a novel to write.
Why does bronze Moses have horns? You'll have to ask Mike.
By the way, did I ever tell you, there’s a bunch of free (FREE) short stories and essays by me and my friends available online? You can find them here:
https://coryluspress.com/short-stories/
David/2
When I start a new novel, I say to myself, “I wonder where this is going?” When I finish a new novel, I say to myself, “So that’s where that was going!” But when I’m about where I am now on this current project (somewhere around the halfway point) I say to myself “Cheese and Crackers writing a novel is a lot of work!”
But is it, really? Is writing a novel “a lot of work?”
To answer this question, I tried think of something that I could feel in my bones was a whole lot of work, then compare that to writing a novel, to get some idea of how much work it really was. What I thought of was carving a credible likeness of a person out of a chunk of marble. No question in my mind that that would be a whole lot of work. A mess-o-work, for sure.
Extensive research (i.e., reading a Wikipedia article) indicated it took Michelangelo about two years to carve his David—two years for Michelangelo to turn one hefty chunk of marble into Dave the Giant Killer. (Dave is seventeen feet tall and weighs north of six tons, btw.) It's true someone had apparently started on a leg before Michelangelo got the job, but if anything, that probably only made things harder for Michelangelo. In my software developer days, I'd sometimes get a project where my boss would say "Alice got started on a leg but then she left for a better job with Mickey D's, so I'm giving this project to you, and you're already a 'leg up' on it! Aren't you lucky?"
Nope. the last thing you want is a project that's a big block of stone with one crappy leg sticking out of it.
Anyway . . . it takes me about a year to write a novel, and I “chip away” (forgive me) at it pretty steadily during that time. I’m not saying I’m a Michelangelo artistic-wise, but I have no reason to think I’m a slouch when compared to him work-ethic wise.
So how much work is it to write a novel? About this much work:
Now you know.
But is it, really? Is writing a novel “a lot of work?”
To answer this question, I tried think of something that I could feel in my bones was a whole lot of work, then compare that to writing a novel, to get some idea of how much work it really was. What I thought of was carving a credible likeness of a person out of a chunk of marble. No question in my mind that that would be a whole lot of work. A mess-o-work, for sure.
Extensive research (i.e., reading a Wikipedia article) indicated it took Michelangelo about two years to carve his David—two years for Michelangelo to turn one hefty chunk of marble into Dave the Giant Killer. (Dave is seventeen feet tall and weighs north of six tons, btw.) It's true someone had apparently started on a leg before Michelangelo got the job, but if anything, that probably only made things harder for Michelangelo. In my software developer days, I'd sometimes get a project where my boss would say "Alice got started on a leg but then she left for a better job with Mickey D's, so I'm giving this project to you, and you're already a 'leg up' on it! Aren't you lucky?"
Nope. the last thing you want is a project that's a big block of stone with one crappy leg sticking out of it.
Anyway . . . it takes me about a year to write a novel, and I “chip away” (forgive me) at it pretty steadily during that time. I’m not saying I’m a Michelangelo artistic-wise, but I have no reason to think I’m a slouch when compared to him work-ethic wise.
So how much work is it to write a novel? About this much work:
Now you know.
