burrahobbit!

Damn, it's cold out there this morning!  I made the mistake of thinking I could run in shorts and a sweatshirt.  Once I got up the hill my body warmed up but my fingers, clutching phone and car keys respectively, became little yellow icicles in short order.  I cut the run short and now can 'look forward' to finishing later.  With gloves.  Ugh.  I will finish though.  Running is my big gun in the fight against the self-hatred that comes with being out of work.  It is also my random idea generator and all-purpose problem-solver. 

Today I am thinking about improvisation.  I recently read the wonderful and highly-buzzed Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor, and it reminded me to revisit her Not For Robots site that (I think) stephanieburgis  pointed me to a couple of years ago.  This got me thinking about process.  Because in Daughter I felt like I could actually see and feel the way the author had worked with different versions, different layers and angles of her story, and integrated them: there were aspects to the book that had a collage-y feel.  And the approach worked; in fact, it brought a richness out of proportion to the story's actual length.  It didn't work perfectly...there were places where the structure shook a little and one point where it rocked precariously, but recovered.  Being little interested in perfection, I don't intend that as a criticism so much as an observation.  I could readily empathise with Taylor's approach, because it is similar to my own, book after book.  The main thing about me that's different from most people is probably the way I write first drafts in all kinds of crazy order. 

Right now I am having this thing with my current book where I'm going, please will you comply to some kind of grabbable thinginess?  And it is going, Er, actually, no.  When it gets like this I find I can either nail it to a wall and draw diagrams on it and force it into a pose where I can knock out words, or I can go away awhile and let it think about itself.  I'm not really happy with either approach because they both have big down sides that in the words of the Fat Controller cause confusion and delay.

So my intention, for now, is to do some improvisation sessions.  Then I'll nail it to the wall and yell at it.  Then I'll go running.  Again.

I guess this is why people who are close to me compare me to a pit bull.  The thing is, I always feel more like a fume or a wisp. 

Maybe I'm more of a persistent fume...