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mallorys_cameraWent back to the Dax/Bellomont story yesterday.
Very frustrating.
Just a mess of words on a screen. Did not interest me in the slightest. No inner voice urging me deeper into it.
I remember being interested in it at one point earlier in the year, so I have to think my lack of interest now is reflective of the mood I’m in—forlorn, lonely, insecure—rather than any critical evaluation of it as a piece of literature, great, mediocre, or somewhere in between.
Of course, the Big Question is: Why write it at all if you’re not enjoying writing it? It’s not like someone’s holding a gun to your head.
I suppose I want to write it because it’s always a good mental & spiritual practice to finish what you start. And also because if anything makes me exceptional (though the jury’s still out on that one) it’s this.
Plus, it lets me flip my own circumstances: After all, writers fill out lengthy grant applications to attain residencies in scenic places where they can write without interruption for many hours each day. And here I’ve got one for free-ee-eeee! Shouldn’t I be thinking of solitude as a feature, not a bug; a blessing, not a curse? That’s agency, bay-bee!
###
So, what should happen?
We’re on Part 4, the description of Lily’s trip to Bellomont (i.e. the Mills Mansion.)
This is the trip that metamorphoses into The House of Mirth, so there must be parallels between The House of Mirth’s plot and what happens in the story.
In Grand Central Station—not the Grand Central Station that’s there today but the far smaller one, circa 1900 or so—Lily and her husband Teddy have missed the train to Rhinebeck.
Lily sees her old friend Walter Berry (eventually, he will become Lawrence Selden) and begs him to invite the couple back to his apartment for tea.
Wendell Berry refuses: His apartment is not “suitable.”
Lily and Teddy’s marriage is described at length.
Lily and Walter Berry’s relationship is described at length.
What happens next?
###
Well, two things have got to happen:
First, Ogden Mills (eventually, he will become Gus Trenor) makes sexual overtures toward Lily.
And Lily is receptive! She kinda loathes her husband. She knows there’s something called passion out there. Why not try to taste it even if it’s being served in cheap, cracked china?
Except while Ogden Mills is noisily slurping at her (i.e. kissing), Lily sees the ghost of the Chartres priest.
(Of course, in real time, the priest isn’t dead yet, so I suppose during the conversation Dax & Caroline have about ghosts in Part 3, Caroline is gonna have to do an info dump on the peculiar time-jumping properties of ghosts.)
Natch, Lily has to recoil in horror.
Also natch, Ogden Mills has to tell Lily nothing is there while making it perfectly apparent he sees the ghost, too.
###
Second—and this may be just too convoluted and weird—something has to happen to Lily’s boots.
Something that damages them in such a way that she takes them off and hides them in a hole at Bellomont underneath some loose floorboards…
… where Caroline finds them 120 years later and begins wearing them…
…and loans them to Dax who wears them when they play Lily Bart at the Mills Mansion’s fabulous Lily Bart House Party.
So, what happens to the boots?
Does ghost ectoplasm drip on them and burn them?
Less cringe-worthy than the other obvs explanation, which might involve ejaculating and Ogden Mills.
###
Also, I gotta kinda be mindful of word length. Part 4 is already 1,300 words long; I don’t want it to go over 4,000 words. The entire novella will be 20,000 words.
Of course, in a first draft, you can over-write to your leetle heart’s content, knowing it will all come out in the editing.
Still, it does seem like a waste of time to write a whole mess of scenes that end up on the cutting room floor.
Ideally, the scene at Grand Central Station should segue straight into the seduction scene.
I suppose this could be accomplished by inserting some sort of brief Lily-meditates-on-the-nature-of-passion solitiquy into the Grand Central Station scene. (How does one even know if a gentleman is interested in one in that particular way?) And then follow it up by having Ogden Mills at Bellomont display those behaviors. (At dinner, she was seated next to Ogden Mills who very pointedly asked her, “How are you enjoying those oysters?”)
I will need one scene with Ruth Mills, Lily’s social mentor and ostensible friend, in which Ruth Mills notes her husband hasn’t seemed like himself recently.
###
Okay! Muttering to oneself in a quasi-public space is useful!
Very frustrating.
Just a mess of words on a screen. Did not interest me in the slightest. No inner voice urging me deeper into it.
I remember being interested in it at one point earlier in the year, so I have to think my lack of interest now is reflective of the mood I’m in—forlorn, lonely, insecure—rather than any critical evaluation of it as a piece of literature, great, mediocre, or somewhere in between.
Of course, the Big Question is: Why write it at all if you’re not enjoying writing it? It’s not like someone’s holding a gun to your head.
I suppose I want to write it because it’s always a good mental & spiritual practice to finish what you start. And also because if anything makes me exceptional (though the jury’s still out on that one) it’s this.
Plus, it lets me flip my own circumstances: After all, writers fill out lengthy grant applications to attain residencies in scenic places where they can write without interruption for many hours each day. And here I’ve got one for free-ee-eeee! Shouldn’t I be thinking of solitude as a feature, not a bug; a blessing, not a curse? That’s agency, bay-bee!
###
So, what should happen?
We’re on Part 4, the description of Lily’s trip to Bellomont (i.e. the Mills Mansion.)
This is the trip that metamorphoses into The House of Mirth, so there must be parallels between The House of Mirth’s plot and what happens in the story.
In Grand Central Station—not the Grand Central Station that’s there today but the far smaller one, circa 1900 or so—Lily and her husband Teddy have missed the train to Rhinebeck.
Lily sees her old friend Walter Berry (eventually, he will become Lawrence Selden) and begs him to invite the couple back to his apartment for tea.
Wendell Berry refuses: His apartment is not “suitable.”
Lily and Teddy’s marriage is described at length.
Lily and Walter Berry’s relationship is described at length.
What happens next?
###
Well, two things have got to happen:
First, Ogden Mills (eventually, he will become Gus Trenor) makes sexual overtures toward Lily.
And Lily is receptive! She kinda loathes her husband. She knows there’s something called passion out there. Why not try to taste it even if it’s being served in cheap, cracked china?
Except while Ogden Mills is noisily slurping at her (i.e. kissing), Lily sees the ghost of the Chartres priest.
(Of course, in real time, the priest isn’t dead yet, so I suppose during the conversation Dax & Caroline have about ghosts in Part 3, Caroline is gonna have to do an info dump on the peculiar time-jumping properties of ghosts.)
Natch, Lily has to recoil in horror.
Also natch, Ogden Mills has to tell Lily nothing is there while making it perfectly apparent he sees the ghost, too.
###
Second—and this may be just too convoluted and weird—something has to happen to Lily’s boots.
Something that damages them in such a way that she takes them off and hides them in a hole at Bellomont underneath some loose floorboards…
… where Caroline finds them 120 years later and begins wearing them…
…and loans them to Dax who wears them when they play Lily Bart at the Mills Mansion’s fabulous Lily Bart House Party.
So, what happens to the boots?
Does ghost ectoplasm drip on them and burn them?
Less cringe-worthy than the other obvs explanation, which might involve ejaculating and Ogden Mills.
###
Also, I gotta kinda be mindful of word length. Part 4 is already 1,300 words long; I don’t want it to go over 4,000 words. The entire novella will be 20,000 words.
Of course, in a first draft, you can over-write to your leetle heart’s content, knowing it will all come out in the editing.
Still, it does seem like a waste of time to write a whole mess of scenes that end up on the cutting room floor.
Ideally, the scene at Grand Central Station should segue straight into the seduction scene.
I suppose this could be accomplished by inserting some sort of brief Lily-meditates-on-the-nature-of-passion solitiquy into the Grand Central Station scene. (How does one even know if a gentleman is interested in one in that particular way?) And then follow it up by having Ogden Mills at Bellomont display those behaviors. (At dinner, she was seated next to Ogden Mills who very pointedly asked her, “How are you enjoying those oysters?”)
I will need one scene with Ruth Mills, Lily’s social mentor and ostensible friend, in which Ruth Mills notes her husband hasn’t seemed like himself recently.
###
Okay! Muttering to oneself in a quasi-public space is useful!
no subject
Date: 2023-12-15 04:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-12-15 04:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-12-15 06:24 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2023-12-17 08:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-12-17 08:43 pm (UTC)But Magic Eight Ball is often wrong. You may reread it and find out that it is GREAT just the way it is.
no subject
Date: 2023-12-18 06:25 pm (UTC)Hard to know whether the rhythm really is off or whether my feeling is a reflection of general malcontent.
no subject
Date: 2023-12-18 06:49 pm (UTC)