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So-o-o, I had this flash while I was exercising yesterday that I should turn Where You Were When into a YA novel since YA novels actually sell.
It would require extensive redrafting of the 10,000 or so words I’ve already written, and I generally don’t like to rewrite stuff when I’m still working on a first draft.
On the other hand, I’m not really sure that “working” is the operative gerund here since this project hasn’t exactly grabbed me by the throat.
It’s a strong premise; it’s an original premise.
I’m not sure whether I haven’t been working harder on it because it doesn’t really have the juice, or because now that I'm officially old, I prefer to glide through life with as little resistance as possible.
Ybel, my protagonist, is understandably damaged by going back in time so often – particularly since each iteration of the past is subtly or majorly different. This is actually a bit annoying in an adult character. One wants to slap her and say, “Fine! Get a fucking Prozac prescription or something.”
Whereas passive angst works very well in an adolescent character.
Anyway, I may dick around with a YA version this weekend. Today, I’m finishing the business plan for the Breaking Barriers festival – why do I have so much resistance to finishing this damn thing? – and tomorrow I’m driving up to Kinderhook to explore the Knickerbocker country. Columbia County is wondrous strange.
###
Exercising is a kind of half trot/half forced march I do on the forest trails through the old estates around here. Sometimes it’s the forests of the old Roosevelt estate and sometimes it’s the languorous lawns and river views of the Vanderbilt estate.
I don’t really like exercising, but I do like having a body that’s up to the various demands I put on it, so I exercise anyway. Over the past month or so, I’ve built up to the point where I’m no longer gritting my teeth and thinking, I hate this; I hate this, with every step; where I can actually zone off into hyperspace while I’m exercising so that I look up and think: Wait? I’m at the creek already? I thought I was on the hill! So that’s a good thing.
Zoning off is my primary way of reorganizing my mental processes.
The bad thing about exercising outside is that I’m now covered with bug bites – it’s that time of year.
###
Also, last night I dreamed I was choreographing a ballet to the second movement of Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony.
The ballet was about war.
I don’t know anything about musical theory; consequently, although I’m intimately familiar with Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony – I’m playing it in my mind as I type – I can’t really describe the second movement. Violins keep time and woodwinds whirl and do-si-do at the start and then it builds up to this impossible whirlwind of orchestration.
Anyway, in my dream, I had dancers dressed as soldiers come out, do a series of pirouettes, and then throw themselves in a big pyre in the middle of the floor.
As the music progressed, the dancers’ movements evolved, but always they ended up throwing themselves on the pyre, and new dancers would take their place, so at the end of the performance, the pyre was ten feet high.
In my dream, I was having a fight with one of the producers.
“What you want to do is physically impossible,” the producer said. “It cannot be done. It will crush the dancers on the bottom.”
In my best intimidating Sicilian way, I went nose-to-nose with that producer. “Just fucking figure out a way and do it,” I hissed.
And then I woke up.
It would require extensive redrafting of the 10,000 or so words I’ve already written, and I generally don’t like to rewrite stuff when I’m still working on a first draft.
On the other hand, I’m not really sure that “working” is the operative gerund here since this project hasn’t exactly grabbed me by the throat.
It’s a strong premise; it’s an original premise.
I’m not sure whether I haven’t been working harder on it because it doesn’t really have the juice, or because now that I'm officially old, I prefer to glide through life with as little resistance as possible.
Ybel, my protagonist, is understandably damaged by going back in time so often – particularly since each iteration of the past is subtly or majorly different. This is actually a bit annoying in an adult character. One wants to slap her and say, “Fine! Get a fucking Prozac prescription or something.”
Whereas passive angst works very well in an adolescent character.
Anyway, I may dick around with a YA version this weekend. Today, I’m finishing the business plan for the Breaking Barriers festival – why do I have so much resistance to finishing this damn thing? – and tomorrow I’m driving up to Kinderhook to explore the Knickerbocker country. Columbia County is wondrous strange.
###
Exercising is a kind of half trot/half forced march I do on the forest trails through the old estates around here. Sometimes it’s the forests of the old Roosevelt estate and sometimes it’s the languorous lawns and river views of the Vanderbilt estate.
I don’t really like exercising, but I do like having a body that’s up to the various demands I put on it, so I exercise anyway. Over the past month or so, I’ve built up to the point where I’m no longer gritting my teeth and thinking, I hate this; I hate this, with every step; where I can actually zone off into hyperspace while I’m exercising so that I look up and think: Wait? I’m at the creek already? I thought I was on the hill! So that’s a good thing.
Zoning off is my primary way of reorganizing my mental processes.
The bad thing about exercising outside is that I’m now covered with bug bites – it’s that time of year.
###
Also, last night I dreamed I was choreographing a ballet to the second movement of Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony.
The ballet was about war.
I don’t know anything about musical theory; consequently, although I’m intimately familiar with Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony – I’m playing it in my mind as I type – I can’t really describe the second movement. Violins keep time and woodwinds whirl and do-si-do at the start and then it builds up to this impossible whirlwind of orchestration.
Anyway, in my dream, I had dancers dressed as soldiers come out, do a series of pirouettes, and then throw themselves in a big pyre in the middle of the floor.
As the music progressed, the dancers’ movements evolved, but always they ended up throwing themselves on the pyre, and new dancers would take their place, so at the end of the performance, the pyre was ten feet high.
In my dream, I was having a fight with one of the producers.
“What you want to do is physically impossible,” the producer said. “It cannot be done. It will crush the dancers on the bottom.”
In my best intimidating Sicilian way, I went nose-to-nose with that producer. “Just fucking figure out a way and do it,” I hissed.
And then I woke up.
