Here’s a simile for you: A tree is like a thing that nature made out of wood and leaves.
Here’s another one: My mind is like a cracked pitcher, and the ideas are the water. (Ok, so it’s an analogy. Close enough.)
I’ve talked before about my admiration for Tamora Pierce and her ability to create and maintain an entire world in her novels, complete with countries, customs, traditions, history, wars, etc. Obviously she’s not the only author who can do that, and I do admire anyone else who can juggle a great deal of complex ideas while they create a story that leaves me guessing. Which leads me to…
John Dies at the End
There’s no link because I already added it to the Books I Recommend page, complete with link.
David Wong, whose writing I first read on one of my favorite websites – http://www.cracked.com/ – (you may know them from their review of Twilight that I linked to a while back) wrote this book in a way that kept me turning the pages. I was actually reminded of Jim Butcher a little bit, too (See post with Tamora Pierce) even though the subject matter between Wong’s and Butcher’s books differ in a lot of ways. I was reminded of Butcher because Wong’s book had that same quality of not pulling its punches (Scroll down to my cartoon of The Dresden Files and what I wrote underneath for context). It didn’t let me rest. Once it got going, it kept going. And there’s a sequel coming out, too!
Oy vey.
The thing that I’ve been thinking about lately is…I can’t do that. I can’t juggle complex ideas, create worlds…keep things straight in my head. I have to write important dates down immediately or I forget them, and my to-do lists can sometimes comprise just two items.
The analogy I came up with in my head was those kids’ games where the scenes are jumbled up and you have to number them in the order that they happened. Like this:
Having a book idea in my head is often like that, where I have a bunch of scenes in my head, but they feel jumbled up, and it’s hard to figure out which ones to put where. And sometimes it’s not as easy as just filling in the numbers.
I swear sometimes it feels like I’m trying to play this game and get the answers right, except some of the scenes are just missing.
And so I’ve got these scenes in my head, and I know I want them to happen at some point, but I don’t even know how they’re going to connect or what else is going to end up in the book yet. This is a fancy way of saying I have writer’s block, which I have talked about, and linked to, before.
One of my solutions is to just write down what I have, but sometimes, honestly, I’m so bad at organizing my thoughts enough to even do that. Sometimes, tough as it is to admit, you need to know what’s going to come before and after so you know how the scene will logically play out. I guess what I’m saying is that I’d make a really sucky author.
…Why did I choose this life of pain?
Word of the Day: Author (n) – See Masochist.
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