Frozen in Bensonhurst

[mallorys_camera]

Continuing in my baaaaaaaad mood.

It’s kind of my secret, like a heroin addiction or an obsession with Japanese schoolgirl panties or something, because there’s no reason for me to be in a baaaaaaaaad mood, so I don’t discuss it with anyone, and I try not to take it out on anybody.

Been stuck on a scene between June and her brother for three days now. They’re sitting on the porch. Brother hands her a packet of all the feverish love letters Henry Miller has written her over the course of her four-day absence. Henry and June have just met. Henry is besotted. June is... intrigued.

Brother and sister talk.

What do they say?

Who cares what they say?

Why is this scene even here?

Well, the scene is here: (A) Because it’s connective tissue. (B) Because it’s a good place for more info dump and character exposition. And (C) Because I have to establish a bond between these two characters since at the very end of the book, June abandons New York City and goes off to live with the brother in Phoenix, Arizona, and dies there under a blazing blue sky where the sun never casts any shadow.

I've spent a large part of two days now looking at the scene, pushing around its commas. Inserting dialogue. Taking dialogue out. Muttering to myself.

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Several years ago, Mag – who ghostwrote one of my favorite police procedurals and produced half a dozen worthy novels under his own name – told me that I definitely had what it took to write an entertaining and commercially successful novel. It was just a matter of buckling down to do the actual work. I had the style thing down.

Lucius was always telling me the same thing. He had one piece of additional advice: “You know, you write much better in the first person than you do in the third. If I were you, I’d write all my rough drafts in the first person. It’s easy enough to convert them into third person in subsequent drafts.”

These words are my little magical talismans. You can do it, Patrizia, if you think you can! You are the veritable Little Engine That Could of the Literary Subverse!

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Writing is hard. Sometimes the words flow; just as often, they don’t.

Perseverance furthers.

Choo-choo! Choo-oo-oo-oo-oo!

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I got so frustrated this morning that I decided to download a trial version of a writing software called Scrivener, which facilitates outlining and note-taking, and makes it much easier to look at graphic references. With my first two novels, I kept two documents – the actual novel itself and a kind of log that kept track of the changes I would need to incorporate in subsequent drafts. Thus if Egbert suddenly appears in Chapter 5 as the Heroine’s One True Love, I would write, Foreshadow Egbert in the log but I wouldn’t curb momentum or waste time backtracking to plant those references in the current draft. Scrivener automates that process, which in and of itself is probably worth the $40 price of the shareware.

So, maybe what I’ll do for the rest of the day is just hammer out the outline. Probably a useful exercise since after 1934, the historical June drops off the grid, but we still have 45 years of her life to go in a biographical novel.

What I’d really like Scrivener to do, however, is to write the fucking dialogue between June and her brother for me so that they can get up off that dilapidated stoop in Bensonhurst, circa 1923, and go do something else.

Comments

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Scrivener needs an AI function!!!!! :-)

I only downloaded Scrivener today. I watched the first Help video. The Notes function seems like it might be really useful for me since I typically revise my stuff a lot. I don't want to stop in the middle of a first draft to incorporate the revisions, 'cause then I'll never finish the first draft. Infinite regression! :-)