It’s been about a month since I’ve sat down with a word document and produced anything. I’m back, and my resolve to finish this book… again… is redoubled. I’ve still got my best draft of my cover sitting on my writing desk, cut to size and folded around my warn copy of “The Two Towers” and every time I see it, it sets me itching to have something other than Tolkien in that book block. I’m sitting on three hundred dollars of hardware and so far all it’s done is print recipies for my wife (not at all a waste, by the way).
Our adventures in the world of surrogate parenthood at the beginnig bled into the holidays for me, and that combined with my brother-in-law staying in my office pretty much chocks up to my excuse for having done nothing on here in a month. But since my absence I’m sporting an extremely tiny USB to Bluetooth adapter in the back of my tower – which now means I’m typing on my shiny apple keyboard – which makes me happy.
On a side note: I write on a PC. In reguards to the Mac/PC wars I am quite willing to admit the relative supremacy of the former. I love my iPhone and you couldn’t pay me to trade it in for a windows phone of equal or greater value. I’m even using an apple keyboard, and I’m loving it, but the sad truth is that apple has yet to creat a word processor to compete with the wonder of Word 2010, and the Mac version of word is laughable. That is all there is to it. Perhaps this should have been in ‘Grinds my Gears’.
On another side note: It IS true what they say – BlueTooth DOES make EVERYTHING better.
Now back to… whatever the heck this was. If you noticed that my illconceived title numbers have progressed to the second act you should know that I had two reasons for doing this. The first is that as I write it has progressed to December the 30th and in 48 hours from now it will be a new year. If this is not enough reason for a second act I have also that I feel my repairing endeavors have moved through something of a transition.
What I mean is this: Up to this point I felt that I understood clearly the changes that needed to be made in Garawain. The story had already been written twice before I got my hands on it… again… and by now I know what I like and what I do not like. But with Gail’s arrival in NaRasch my endeavors become a little less cut and dry. As I recall from this point on my original draft was VERY different from the second (Garawain), and this third rendition is liable to be as different from the second as it was from the first if I am not careful. But though I’ve got some vague idea of what will still do and what must be changed, I come to the solemn realization that I’ve moved into deep water, so to speak, and from here I may have to put in a lot more work per chapter.
I think my chief challenge is in creating back story. It’s bad enough when a reader has a question about some particular that I am unable answer, but I begin to run into problems when I’m not even able to answer my own questions about things. In the past I’ve always given myself back story by writing and rewriting stories (thus this being the third draft of this story). The concept and outline thing that they tried to teach me in highschool never worked well for me. I always ended up making my outlines based on my finished essay.
So perhaps in all of this what I’m saying (what i’m figuring out as I write) is that perhaps what this book needs is some more short stories, concerning other segments of the Fall of NaRasch that will not be in the book but which impact it. Perhaps I should be writing more about the Karbaan, about Gomarden and the Irithol, about that strange king what’s his face, and about Whince Badural, the Barron, The Watch and Shadokoep (Poorake depreciated). Perhaps. In the mean time I’ll wander allong my way. More to follow soon. I think I’ll post whatever drama is to befall Gail in NaRasch when I’ve figured it out. Until then, I’ll be admiring my shiny keyboard and loosing myself in productive rabbit trails.