Seriously. With the technology available now, Blogger can't manage "Enter" in HTML ... ???
Some of the closest relationships are the hardest to gauge, which is of course a key reason so many human beings become writers - but, oddly enough, that's not so much my raison d'etre. I'm more interested in pure storytelling; though my first novel concerns the pivotal choice of an early Frankish king to ally with the Catholic Church, its nature isn't theological. Though his queen is a massive influence, his relationship with her plays more on the level of a teleplay than a piece of art with emotional allegory. I think my writing has a great deal of power, but it's not in fact thematic; it is entertainment, not art. I write to communicate a plot, not to address personal issues, nor fantasize, nor even Make a Statement about those things I find important. I write because characters' lives compel me, and because I hope they will compel many, many tens of thousands of others. Ahem.
(Funny, this post was all set to be one thing, and it's gone and hijacked itself. I'll be interested to see how this turns out, because I was all ready to be a passive-aggressive coward and talk about something in my life, and here I am nattering on about writing. Funny thing, the way writing can do that to an author.)
So.
Okay, so relationships are weird things. Given (she says, dragging intention back toward a track she doesn't even really want to be on).
(And then gives up, because blogging personal stuff is a rotten way to get anything "done".)
And writing is weird too.
***
I should be posting this at the Sarcastic Broads Club, now that I'm irrevocably committed (i.e. capitulating to my "muse"), because now this post is all about Process, and we SBs have said we'd each be posting about our process.
I see I can still be cowardly, in this post, though - because now I can point to Kristi A's incredible piece, and say, "No. Really. You're not expecting me to coherently follow THIS act. Are you?" And *nobody's* going to get a load of that organization and find me wanting for being, well, wanting, in terms of my own writing process!
She does, however, inspire me to photography. To wit:
What you are looking at is pretty much the sum total of research I could find, in hard copy, which had enough to do with my period and my place to be of use to me. I had to forgo the $163 texts, and the French (a pity, that, as they actually write about my subject), and several books I still wish I could find, which are out of print or, again, wildly expensive for my purposes.
The second photo includes texts which will serve me for the not-exactly-a-sequel work in progress. Not pictured: the thousands of web pages' worth of dead ends, the dozens of searches' worth of branching link-to-link meticulous threads followed, to learn about horses - about ancient pattern-welding techniques and technology - about bricks, about ancient particulars of the Church, and of Christianities once thriving, now dismissed to history as heretical sects. About contemporary culture. Politics. Historical figures. Husbandry. Butter. Flax. Leggings. Jewelry. Hygeine, sandalwood, decoration in loom-weaving, the history of lace (which doesn't stretch far enough back, in my region, to have yielded me useful information: beware, kids, the fascination of detours from your point!). Naming conventions. Wedding ceremonies. Coronation, and Germanic royal election ceremonies. Law. Law. Law. Society. Gravesites. Archaeology.
I learned what I neeeded, in some cases, as I went along. Authors will tell aspiring ones - first research, then write. Heck with that. I wrote to discover the research I would need. My research guided my writing in real time. I did reach a point when I was no longer researching - but I had no period when I was working purely in research, and then transitioned to pure writing.
For me, the process was one of working a puzzle. When I found gaps, I knew I had to fill them. I learned that task very early. And taking the path to filling one gap, I found information which then nosed its way in and filled spaces I hadn't known were open. Research FORMED my work in a very real way. It guided me. It followed a timeline, and dictated my progress. Research was my box of pieces, and finding bits and bobs all of the right shading, and colors, I found what fit together and put it all in place. The puzzle wasn't static, it was made of mood rings, of randomizing LED screens, of mutable images which told *me* where they needed to be, which found their way. I led where I knew I needed to - but if my own instincts had been the order of the day, I could not have written as much as 100 pages.
This isn't a metaphorical statement. This is the simple truth. I found plugs to put in where power was needed. I put them in their places in text that was blue, and slowly, slowly, blue text became black work. Writing. My writing. Slowly, slowly, I plugged enough energy into the piece for it to reach 168,000 words.
I could not have done that. I could not have synthesized half so much, story alone, research or no research, by any othe method. I had to be shown what I needed, and I had to find where it needed to be. And then put it all in place.
My process was unformed - it was my first "real" novel. My process would be considered undisciplined by many publishing professionals' standards. My process was contumacious. Stubborn. Resistant.
Effective.
My process refused the "rules" of other writers, the advice one "must" follow. The supposedly-necessary path by which, alone, one can manage success in the literary world.
I am a writer. Apparently, I don't take well to rules.
The thing is, though: I am also a secretary. I know from Process. And I know that it's necessary to work in your own way. Other "rules" might be wonderfully effective: for other writers. There is no dead-cert recipe for success in what, after all, is a *creative* field.
***
As research led content, so education maintained my pace. The understanding I gained from increasing understanding of the process and business of writing yielded confidence which impelled me to completion. Working with my creative output as product, rather than art, I am perhaps too pragmatic about the extent to which my emotions - and that ineffable thing, my talent - were engaged in the work. My instinct and my ambition push me perhaps too hard away from the subjective aspects of this creation. I am pragmatic. I seek guidance, critique, and the WORK of ... the work. I resist my own emotional involvement. I resist seeing myself as more than the skillful conduit of something which is more the result of my effort than the fruit of anything deep, about myself.
And then I read it.
And, frankly, I am moved. I am capable of being completely swept up. Recognizing how I formed some parts. Completely surprised by others - unfamiliar - stunned, in the revelation of words I can't remember. Reading the end, I am capable of weeping. Reading even the battle scenes, I am engaged and immersed.
This work, this creation, is both commodity and offspring. I will be proud to sell it, and professional all the way.
Yet I see enormous beauty in this story I told without thematics, without "art" in it. The story alone is magnificent, and I like its rhythm, its tone and texture, its language above all. I *like* it so much - even if I am willing to allow surgery on it; even if I refuse to see every phrase as a precious infant. I'm loath to claim it as art, or something somehow transcending its practical parts. But it's craft enough that I can see it tempered in fire, polished with cutting and grinding. If I don't see it as magic, I see it as the evocation, at least, of something above the concrete.
And I see it as a hell of a good story.
I can't wait for everyone else to read it.
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