Setting

So. I need to do more research and re-envision this home in 17th century Japan. It's hard (and why I need to re-think this whole chapter) because a lot of the things that we think of today as traditionally Japanese didn't come into being until some point in the Tokugawa/Edo period. And my story takes place in the early Tokugawa period. The time frame is one thing I don't want to change, due to a certain historical personnage that shows up in an early chapter. So I really need to figure out just what is available and plausible for that time period.

Also, I need to think about status. Even if say, there were shoji doors and fusuma doors and genkan in the early Tokugawa period, those were more likely to be found in the homes of samurai and wealthy nobles. My character, K-chan, is not of that class, and yet I had her living in a home suitable for a samurai (I am still so tempted to give her the finer things in life just because they're more "traditionally Japanese" and more known to us, but I need to be more realistic). Perhaps the first thing I need to do is to figure out exactly where she falls, socially, and what that implies for her material world.

It's hard to write about things you don't know. For example, cotton was introduced to Japan in the 14th and 15th centuries, but it didn't become widely used and grown in Japan until the 17th century (IIRC). Before that, people wore clothing made from hemp or ramie. I can look up hemp and ramie all I want online, but what do they feel like? How do they crinkle? How rough are they on the skin? And if you wore that material all your life because you were too poor to afford silk, how much or little discomfort/annoyance would you perceive? And how would your world change when you finally obtained a cotton kimono? ...Thank goodness cotton did become more widely used by the time my story starts. That's one less thing to worry about (and I hope cotton was as widely used by the time my story starts as I'm going to assume it was, or I will have more headaches trying to explain that people back then didn't have bedding; they just slept with their clothing covering them). Oh pre-modern Japan. You are fascinating to no end, but equally frustrating.

I am so paranoid that one day, after this gets published, critics will be cutting it to pieces for taking so many liberties with historical details, and for being historically inaccurate in general. Artistic license is not an excuse for ignorance or laziness.

stuck

I can't write. I've been stuck on page one of Chapter 3 for weeks. Self-imposed deadline for this chapter is in about two weeks. I expect this chapter to be over 20 pages, double spaced. Page two, come to me~

thought for the day

Writing is a way of approaching divinity.

the art of writing

There's great joy in figuring out why something doesn't work. For example, take the following sentence: "She stretched, eyes flying open when pain shot through her right leg." This sentence fails as a narrative sentence. The immediacy of pain is lost. She would stretch, and there would be pain. And then, if you really care, her eyes may fly open at that, but by that point, I think that's the least of her concerns. The sentence must convey the immediacy of the pain, so the order must go from stretch to pain instantly without the padding of an exterior reaction. In any case, it was a good thing to realize, and now that sentence has been scrapped completely. Edit: Actually, I came up with something only marginally better, which I excuse by reducing the importance of pain. Huh.

Which just goes to show that everything I write must be re-written for it to be much good. I was thinking on my drive home that for this thing (novel? novel-thing? I hesitate to call it anything so ambitious while I am only on chapter 3. Maybe I should refer to it as this Thing, capitalized), I've been having to do so much re-writing. And that made me think of all the levels of writing I engage in. Like the lowest level writing is when I don't know what's going on and can't connect with the characters or engage in any semblence of plot or plausible interaction. In that case, the writing is usually a jumble of dialogue from the characters going, "Hey, I want to be more unbalanced, Storygoddess," and "Why don't you give me better lines, Storygoddess?" and so on.

And then the next level up is when I have a vague, general idea of what I want happening, so I sketch out the basic actions and dialogue. It's like a key animator who draws up key frame A and key frame B for a motion sequence, A being where the motion starts and B being where the motion ends. The next level up after that is like me doing the inbetweener work, where I have to draw each motion frame to get from frame A to frame B. This really requires immersion into the story, where as the lower levels didn't. Unfortunately, most of the time the writing on this level is still poor, and the immersion is not quite enough. Things may still be out of character, and even key frames may still be changed.

So then you go up to the highest basic level, which is essentially another immersion into the story. You re-write everything, think of pleasing ways to phrase and depict things, and you're there, right in the story, right in your character's heads, and everything makes sense. You realize that your previous immersion wasn't enough, and you realize, this is it. This is right. Maybe it's like ascending to the director's position and putting everything into place and overseeing the whole thing.

During the whole process, particularly the highest stage, is a lot of head banging as you dissect every sentence and every phrase, every word choice, until you are satisfied. Or tired and apathetic. Or best of all, until your brain has turned to mush from too much abuse and you can't figure out if what you wrote was any good or not. Then you put it aside or send it to someone to read and tell you if you failed magificently or miserably.

Edit: Re-thinking it, I think it goes from total disconnect to director to key animator to inbetweener to everything all at once, which is why the highest basic stage is what it is.

I suppose I will stop procrastinating now and actually go write.

Crazy as in Insane

How do you write a crazy character? I think it's terribly difficult. Dostoevsky wrote his crazy protagonoist in "The Double," which was both discomforting and awesome because you didn't know that he was crazy. You were stuck so close to his consciousness that it was the rest of the world that was going crazy, not him. Actually, I can't remember if he really was crazy, but I think he was, because the rest of the world was probably not crazy.

Anyways. I'm writing from the not-crazy person's viewpoint, so we can see just how terribly strange the other person is. But you can't just randomly write craziness. You really have to know what's going on in her head, understand her complete disregard for social norms, and translate all that into behavior that's incomprehensible to the outsider, but makes total sense for to crazy character. I am going crazy trying to do just that much.

Also, yesterday I ate only chocolate cake. It was my boss's birthday the day before, so I had chocolate cake for lunch at the office and then chocolate cake for dinner before going to marketing class. (I know, this is completely irrelevant, but I impressed myself. Actually, the truth is, I was too lazy and cheap to go buy Arby's food like I was originally planning to do.)

Update: And I just had chocolate cake for lunch today again. Three meals in a row of just chocolate cake. I need something different for dinner.