Random Writing
Thinking about writing may be like dancing about architecture, but I’ve been doing a lot of it lately. Not the cohesive “how do you revise a scene” kind of thinking, although I’ve been doing that, too, but the random stuff that floats to the top when you’re working on one book and thinking about other stories and generally dealing with Stuff. So this is just Stuff I’ve Been Thinking About My Writing. No point will be made. Questions will be asked. A general lack of sophistication and polish will be revealed. Also I’m eating carrot cake so I’ll probably drop out in the middle with a sugar coma. It’s been that kind of day.
It’s been a good day. We went to Newport Aquarium (“we” being Lani, Krissie, and I) to research our newest play project. It’s part of the Fairy Tale Lies world which is getting more and more exciting. We decided we’d all take the same fairy tale and write our own versions of it in short stories or novellas and then compare to see what we got. We picked “The Little Mermaid”– Krissie is Danish so she’s an Andersen fan with reservations–and then we had to invent an entirely new kingdom since it was under the sea. Fortunately we already had a river so we just made it really deep, really wide, and really long. And then we went to the Aquarium to get an approximation of what it was like under there. The Newport Aquarium is one of my favorite places–Krissie bought me the ticket and then Lani upgraded me to the annual whatsis so I can go for free any time, and let’s hear it for generous friends–but it was different looking at it today, thinking that this is what Mel sees every day, this is what she’ll leave if she asks the Sea Witch for the lungs to stay on land (she has legs; we decided the Nixies were human, too, just aquatic mammals). There’s such grace and beauty underwater, although it’s treacherous, too, like the Crown of Thorns sea star that has neurotoxins in its spine (there’s a plot point for you). There were giant Japanese spider crabs that live for a hundred years, which made me think that somebody might etch a map or a code in the shell of a young one and then a hundred years later somebody else would find it . . . And there were cardinal tetras like tiny neon lights. Just amazing.
I also had a minor meltdown at the restaurant we went to afterward (Mitchell’s Fish Market because we are insensitive). I’d gotten stuffed animals for the grandkids and a small stuffed otter for me because I wanted Mel to have a pet, and I kept looking at him in the bag and finally I said, “Mel’s going to have a pet otter. Know what I’m going to name him?” and Lani said, “Lyle,” and I said, “Yes,” and burst into tears. Gee, lunch with Jenny Crusie is sure a good time. I asked Krissie if it would be weird if I put some of Lyle’s ashes in the little stuffed otter and she said, “No,” but then she has some of her sister’s ashes in a locket around her neck, so possibly she was not the person to ask.
The thing about writing your version of a fairy tale is that it has to be new or what’s the point but it has to tie back to the original or what’s the point? So that’s a narrow line to walk. Then add two other people who are writing their own stories to be part of the whole and you have to do some negotiating. We agree on the world, and the name of the people (the Nix) and we’re negotiating the rules–Krissie wants them to be shapeshifters but I think that’s too easy so I suggested that her guy be a shapeshifter, but my girl just has some Riven blood in her (people on land) so her lungs are better developed than most (which leads me to my hero saying, “Nice lungs” but probably not) and I think Lani’s girl is half Riven/half Nixie, so we’re all playing with the norm right off the bat. Krissie wanted them to be blue with scales so tiny you don’t notice them at first, and I’m good with that. And she found some legends she wanted to incorporate so we’re talking about those. But it’s interesting trying to find common ground because the things that make my stories juicy to me don’t have much interest for Krissie, and the things that make stories inrresistable to Krissie I’m not interested in at all. I’m not talking about the things in the actual story, I’m talking about the aspects that haunt us and keep us thinking about the stories we’re going to write.
I’ve fallen into this story world without wanting to–I HAVE to finish Liz–and now it’s all around me. We hit Hobby Lobby and JoAnn’s yesterday because Krissie wanted to go, and I already have pretty much everything I need for the short stories I want to do and the Fairy Tale Lies novel we’re doing but now there’s this new world, and this new heroine who’s older than most fairy tale heroines–in her thirties, I think, although who know how long Nixies live–and she has a career, she’s a weaver and a designer and her designs are very popular on land because fashion is going through a Nixie obsession, the way fashion went Goth for awhile here, and because she weaves and knots the most amazing shawls and tunics, so everywhere I went, I saw the stuff Mel would work with, the colors and the textures, she’s just so alive to me because of what she does, what she touches, what she makes. I bought fabric and grommets and sea glass, and found big cheap chunky glass beads that look like the necklace the Sea Witch gives her, and I was just lost in that world.
It’s both wonderful and awful to be seized by a story like this. It’s wonderful because it’s more exciting than reality, all that beauty and passion and conflict, but it’s awful, too, because there’s so much to research, so much to do, and because I do not have the time to play in this world. I have Liz to finish. But I know how Mel meets her guy, I know what their conflict is, I know the trouble heading their way, not just the Sea Witch and the Nixie in the Woods, but biology and breathing and the problems of putting two people together who are obsessed by their work, work that pushes them apart.
But I love this world. The story possibilities are endless here. Plus I don’t have to worry about being out of date; it doesn’t matter because this is a different world. I just have to do something new and different with very old forms. And make things. And maybe put some ashes in a stuffed otter, although that may be too weird even for me.
I think I’ll just quit for the night –it’s about 1AM which is usually the shank of the evening for me–and dream of Mel and Lyle and the Guy–still trying to find a name for him although Mel calls him ‘Skipper which is short for Mudskipper which is the Nixie equivalent of Yankee in the south–and then get up tomorrow and be practial and work on Liz, which is moving again–she has a concussion because somebody threw a rock at her, following the good advice that if you don’t know what to do next, throw a rock at your heroine–and maybe think straighter for awhile.
Because this random thinking, while amazing and lovely, does not get things done.
