Writing a Novel

[Heather]

I mentioned starting this thread on Rabelais' thread in the Movies section of the Sandbox titled "House of Cards," which is the Netflix produced series based on the 1990 BBC series of the same name. There I have some comments about the BBC series, among other things -- including the Sopranos -- mostly in the context of psychopathy.

Here's a section of what I wrote on that thread to help introduce things:

.. as to the questions I was asking earlier, perhaps I'll re-post them on a new thread devoted to those sorts of questions. They aren't rhetorical questions, I really would like to learn more through asking them here at this forum. I'm thinking of titling the thread "Writing a Novel" since that could bring up a lot of interesting things to talk about.. especially since I'm really trying to allow my unconscious write the novel. I've noticed that whenever I think I know what I'm doing with it it no longer interests me. It's far more interesting when I'm just barely keeping my head above this quagmire of sorts!

[End: 1st excerpt]

And here are the comments and questions I mention above. Here I've highlighted just the actual questions, which can be looked at on their own, without introduction:

I'm writing a novel right now, and in some ways I'm in an absolute mess with it. One of my key protagonists is in "hell," and I'm grappling with his potential for good as well as evil.

-- actually, objectively speaking, what is "goodness" in the context of a bad soul? I think it's too reductive to simply talk about hypocrisy, which exists, of course, but it's fairly one dimensional. On the other hand, it seems to me that the most interesting characters have within them deep seated contradictions. They may know their own goodness, even, and yet within them it's darkness that gets the upper hand.

.. can this be translated into this choice by either persons with or without souls as concerns STS or STO orientation?

.. could a person without a soul choose an STO orientation, while a person with a soul winds up choosing STS?

If that's true, then this soul/soulless divide is fairly tricky then. Just what is it purporting? Just that the universe needs this polarity for balance? (But then what decides who gets what in the soul department?)

As for the true psychopath, how does that play out in terms of this soul/soulless distinction? Could the psychopath be either?

[just some questions that have been rolling around in my head for some time]

one more question:

My novel also has the theme of mind control, which certainly plays havoc with the idea of free will. How is one "permitting" this sort of manipulation to happen? Or are the manipulators breaking some sort of right of free will?

(Is there any material specifically on this?)

[End: 2nd excerpt]

Here's a bit more I wrote on the novel writing process:

It actually started as a tale of horror (which began as a screenplay I was going to do). But really it's the horror of what we are all living through right now. You open the paper, or go online, and it's that same horror. So, horror is just this vehicle that allows me, in this case, to look at what we are all being presented with. And then there are these internal struggles, as well, as per what I was mentioning earlier.

Anyway, it's slow as molasses, my moving along with this thing. I'm hoping once I do the iodine protocol I can work and read more speedily. Reading, especially, I have a hard time focusing on when I'm feeling scattered. Whereas writing usually tends to focus me, no matter what I'm suffering. I think that's why I write. It really has saved me over the years. But there comes a time when you need to replenish your knowledge base, and that slows me down given this scattered problem. So, hopefully I'll get on top of this. (finally!)

[End: 3rd excerpt]

I thought I'd end this post with a picture of the Christmas wreath I made yesterday from some hemlock and holly from just around my house (where I live with my husband, and cat, and three chickens). I left it a bit wild looking, didn't trim it, or try to make it too symmetrical, and I rather like the results!

.. I haven't been in the best state of mind lately, and certainly world events can be overwhelming as well, so my being inspired to do this yesterday sort of took me by surprise. It might have had to do with my taking this long bike ride to the far lake (as opposed the lake down the road that our house belongs to, which doesn't have a road that goes all the way around it).

.. anyway, the ride seemed to have helped to lift my spirits, and thus the wreath!

Season's Best to all here!

 

[Heather]

Administrator/s:

I realized later that maybe this belongs in the Creative Acts section?

I had "books" on the brain.. so.. it wound up here.

If you think it's more appropriate in the other section then by all means…

Thanks.

 

[Rich]

It actually started as a tale of horror (which began as a screenplay I was going to do). But really it's the horror of what we are all living through right now. You open the paper, or go online, and it's that same horror. So, horror is just this vehicle that allows me, in this case, to look at what we are all being presented with. And then there are these internal struggles, as well, as per what I was mentioning earlier.

Anyway, it's slow as molasses, my moving along with this thing. I'm hoping once I do the iodine protocol I can work and read more speedily. Reading, especially, I have a hard time focusing on when I'm feeling scattered. Whereas writing usually tends to focus me, no matter what I'm suffering. I think that's why I write. It really has saved me over the years. But there comes a time when you need to replenish your knowledge base, and that slows me down given this scattered problem. So, hopefully I'll get on top of this. (finally!)

I think it is fantastic that you've got ideas and are making a start at writing them down. I think you're right about taking time out to replenish. I've had 'writers block' for about two years and only just now am I emerging and today starting adding some words to an idea I'd had on the shelf for some time.

I love your thoughts on internal struggles, think there is lots to interweave into a compelling narrative and can help others who relate to the context.

I found the following quite helpful in motivating me to get started simply:

• Start small. 300 words per day is plenty. John Grisham began his writing career as a lawyer. He got up early every morning and wrote one page. You can do the same.
• Have an outline. Write up a table of contents to guide you. Then break up each chapter into a few sections. Think of your book in terms of beginning, middle, and end. Anything more complicated will get you lost. If you need help, read Do the Work by Steven Pressfield.
• Have a set time to work on your book every day. If you want to take a day or two off per week, schedule that as time off. Don’t just let the deadline pass. And don’t let yourself off the hook.
• Choose a unique place to write. This needs to be different from where you do other activities. The idea is to make this a special space so that when you enter it, you’re ready to work on your project.
Staying accountable
• Have a set word count. Think in terms of 10-thousand work increments and break each chapter into roughly equal lengths:
» 10,000 words: a pamphlet
» 20,000 words: short eBook or print book
» 40,000–50,000 words: good-sized nonfiction book
» 60,000–70,000 words: longer nonfiction book
» 80,000 words–100,000 words: typical novel length
• Give yourself weekly deadlines. It can be a word count, percentage of progress, whatever. Just have something to aim for, and someone who will hold you accountable.
• Get early feedback. Nothing stings worse than writing a book and then having to rewrite it, because you didn’t let anyone look at it. Have a few trusted advisers to help you discern what’s worth writing.
Staying motivated
• Ship. No matter what, finish the book. Send it to the publisher, release it on Amazon, do whatever you need to do to get it in front of people. Just don’t put it in your drawer.
• Embrace failure. Know that this will be hard and you will mess up. Be okay with it. Give yourself grace. That’s what will sustain you, not your high standards of perfection.
• Write another. Most authors are embarrassed of their first book. But without that first, they never would have learned the lessons they did. So put your work out there, fail early, and try again. This is the only way you get good. You practice.
Every writer started somewhere, and most of them started by squeezing their writing into the cracks of their daily lives. The ones who make it are the ones who show up day after day.
_http://goinswriter.com/tips-writing-book/

Hope that helps Heather and look forward to seeing how your writing develops :)

 

[Heather]

Thanks, Theseus!

First, good luck with your writing as well. I'm sure that after that much time away from it a lot of new material is likely to come up for you!

As for me, I've been writing in various capacities my whole life and really do enjoy it, and yet writing a novel is a unique challenge in that it's something of an endurance test. Really it's about finding the thread that's going to sustain you for hundreds of pages, which I was perfectly able to do in screenplay form, but a novel is another manner of beast altogether. And I know that's why lists, such as the one you posted, come about, since often having a system for working is helpful, especially given the marathon aspect of this form.

Perhaps the main reason I started a thread like this is the fact that frequent replenishment is part of the process. I know at various times I'll bump into a question that I have no immediate answer for, such as the ones I posted above, and I'm hoping some here will be inspired to offer their insights, and in so doing perhaps some interesting exchanges can happen, even if they have nothing directly to do with the novel I'm writing. I just thought of free association, since a great deal can happen -- new and unexpected ideas can pop up, seemingly out of nowhere -- when one allows for the unexpected. So, if things begin to percolate here it could be useful in ways we might not have anticipated.

I love your thoughts on internal struggles, think there is lots to interweave into a compelling narrative and can help others who relate to the context.

I guess one hopes that whatever one is writing it's going to be illuminating in some way. And yet I don't feel I can worry about that aspect so much as just let the writing be what it needs to be, and at the end of it all my hope is that it will seem just as new and mysterious to me as it would be to the reader (!)

.. I suppose it's that I'm attempting to let my unconscious sort of run wild with it, which means it's rather like an unwieldy vehicle I'm trying to keep on the road. The hope is that the deeper themes I'm wrangling with will resonate and in that be meaningful. In some ways it's similar to the way that a poem can be meaningful, even if you feel you don't entirely understand it. I think it's that writing can reach this deeper place in us, but to do that it's the problem of getting beyond our conscious selves. The psyche is just so rich, which is why one hopes to mine it as a writer. So, in part it's to be out of control with it, and then there is the "writer as editor" who, in my case, is pretty ruthless, and gets rid of any-and-everything that feels too predictable, or that doesn't stir me in some deeper way. (That's why this is taking me forever to write -- I throw away most of it!)

Thanks again, Theseus, for your interest and encouragement.

Actually, I thought I'd re-post just the questions I had posted above. (For more context, see the first post.)

.. could a person without a soul choose an STO orientation, while a person with a soul winds up choosing STS?

If that's true, then this soul/soulless divide is fairly tricky then. Just what is it purporting? Just that the universe needs this polarity for balance? (But then what decides who gets what in the soul department?)

As for the true psychopath, how does that play out in terms of this soul/soulless distinction? Could the psychopath be either?

My novel also has the theme of mind control, which certainly plays havoc with the idea of free will. How is one "permitting" this sort of manipulation to happen? Or are the manipulators breaking some sort of right of free will?

(Is there any material specifically on this?)

.. actually.. one more thing. I thought I'd post random lines from my manuscript and put them with various images. Lately, I've been really enjoying Francisco Goya's Black Paintings, along with his drawings, since a lot of the subject matter I'm dealing with is rather dark, and you really can't beat late Goya when it comes to darkness. Goya's life span was 1746 - 1828, the Black Paintings were done during the last decade or so of his life.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_Goya


"How true this was those days I felt near death."

 

[Heather]

Given I'm posting lines from my unfinished manuscript they may not all make it into the final draft of the novel. This line I only just wrote today but I rather like it.. (so far)

[pic: my recent iPhone photo of the lake my house is deeded to]

From my novel:

"In fact, I had somehow stumbled across the idea that had we once lost paradise—humankind, I mean—well, then it remained in us to be regained."

 

[Rich]

Given I'm posting lines from my unfinished manuscript they may not all make it into the final draft of the novel. This line I only just wrote today but I rather like it.. (so far)

Let it flow Heather :)

 

[Heather]

Ahh.. thank you!

 

[Solie123]

Hi Heather :)

What use to help me when writing was, reading something along the same lines to inspire me. Although this passage doesn't entirely go along with your theme, I hope you can enjoy it - It's one of my favorites! :) It's dramatic, short, and I absolutely thought her words fit right into the story.


The Story of An Hour

by Kate Chopin

Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband's death.

It was her sister Josephine who told her, in broken sentences; veiled hints that revealed in half concealing. Her husband's friend Richards was there, too, near her. It was he who had been in the newspaper office when intelligence of the railroad disaster was received, with Brently Mallard's name leading the list of "killed." He had only taken the time to assure himself of its truth by a second telegram, and had hastened to forestall any less careful, less tender friend in bearing the sad message.

She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance. She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister's arms. When the storm of grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone. She would have no one follow her.

There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair. Into this she sank, pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul.

She sat with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair, quite motionless, except when a sob came up into her throat and shook her, as a child who has cried itself to sleep continues to sob in its dreams.

She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength. But now there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed away off yonder on one of those patches of blue sky. It was not a glance of reflection, but rather indicated a suspension of intelligent thought.

There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What was it? She did not know; it was too subtle and elusive to name. But she felt it, reaching toward her through the sounds, the scents, the color that filled the air.

Now her bosom rose and fell tumultuously. She was beginning to recognize this thing that was approaching to possess her, and she was striving to beat it back with her will--as powerless as her two white slender hands would have been. When she abandoned herself a little whispered word escaped her slightly parted lips. She said it over and over under the breath: "free, free, free!" The vacant stare and the look of terror that had followed it went from her eyes. They stayed keen and bright. Her pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body.

She did not stop to ask if it were or were not a monstrous joy that held her. A clear and exalted perception enabled her to dismiss the suggestion as trivial. She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that had never looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead. But she saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely. And she opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome.

There would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live for herself. A kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in that brief moment of illumination.

And yet she had loved him--sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in the face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being!

"Free! Body and soul free!" she kept whispering.

Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of her. Spring days, and summer days, and all sorts of days that would be her own. She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long.

She arose at length and opened the door. There was a feverish triumph in her eyes, and she carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of Victory as she descended the stairs. Richards stood waiting at the bottom.

Someone was opening the front door with a latchkey. It was Brently Mallard who entered, a little travel-stained, composedly carrying his grip-sack and umbrella. He had been far from the scene of the accident, and did not even know there had been one. He stood amazed at Josephine's piercing cry; at Richards' quick motion to screen him from the view of his wife.

When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease--of the joy that kills.

If it didn't help xD at least I hope you got some entertainment. :)

 

[Heather]

Hi Solie,

Interesting reversal at the end there!

It has something of a Twilight Zone effect.

Thanks for sharing it.

.. I just looked through my manuscript for something to post. This piece of dialogue ties in with one of the questions I asked earlier:

"Now, this might be a difficult idea for you to accept, but nothing that happens to us in this particular place and time occurs without our permission.”

I heard the words but couldn’t quite grasp their meaning. Only, then I started to contemplate some fairly unsavory ramifications.

“I do understand your reservations,” he thought to add, as if reading my thoughts. “In fact, I’m not sure I entirely accept the idea myself. And yet if we take it as a given, this ‘rule’ of sorts—even detesting its implications—we can then start to see where our weaknesses lie."

It's a provocative idea, this idea of granting permission, when so much that happens to us would seem to be that last thing on earth we would knowingly allow. As I stated earlier, this gets even more confounding when one considers mind control victims -- many are children, even. And so this idea becomes problematic, which is why I was wondering whether there isn't some "cosmic level" cheating going on (!)

.. I do believe so many answers lie deep within the psyche, though. So, perhaps such "permitting" takes place there as well.

[photo: the fish pond at the far lake]

 

[Heather]

.. strange.. I was working on a rather involved post in which I was linking to some Cassiopaea material relevant to some of my previous questions, and then I accidentally pressed the "go to earlier page" arrow at the top of the browser and lost everything!

.. does this mean I was truly getting somewhere and so obstacles are being put in my way?

[bleh]

.. or maybe I just need to get the iodine protocol going so I don't continue to do spaced out things like that!

 

[Heather]

I haven't posted here at the forum for a while, but I've been around. I have also been toiling away at my novel, which I've made some progress on since I last posted here.

I thought I'd post things that are on my mind, even though they could also be placed in other threads. But this way I have a little spot for what I'm thinking about, and for what might have resonance in the novel I'm writing, even if indirectly.


BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
(from Julius Caesar, spoken by Marc Antony)

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answer’d it.
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest–
For Brutus is an honourable man;
So are they all, all honourable men–
Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
He hath brought many captives home to Rome
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
You all did see that on the Lupercal
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And, sure, he is an honourable man.
I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him?
O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
And I must pause till it come back to me.

http://<iframe width="420" height="...P8" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

I know this video has been linked to elsewhere but I've watched this today a number of times, and think it's just wonderful. The look of it, as well as Brando's moving performance. To watch it is to feel the heaviness in his chest and in his heart; and it's no doubt even more moving to me given I've been listening to Laura's two SOTT Radio Network interviews: Unravelling the "Jesus" myth, and Who Was Jesus Really. Now, I haven't yet read this Shakespeare play, and haven't seen this adaptation either, but I'm excited to see what Shakespeare makes of the history, given his breadth of knowledge, his complexity, and artistry.

.. a theme that emerges in this scene (preceded by James Mason's Brutus speech) is the fickleness of the mob. However, given Laura's description of Caesar's death and the abundant grief and mourning that ensued one wonders, if there did exist such fickleness, to what degree did it exist? It certainly helps make for some dramatic scenes but how truthful is this portrayal?

.. as to the SOTT interviews, I have to say, Laura.. (if you happen to read this).. this material, and your in depth discussion of it, including your discussing your thought process around just how you got to this subject is totally enthralling! I feel to have just dipped my toe in these tumultuous waters, and already you've got me hooked (!)

http://<iframe width="560" height="...NU" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

http://<iframe width="420" height="...nI" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

.. so, just to say thank you, Laura, for bringing the listener in on your thinking. And I of course look forward to reading your book, as well as some of the others you cite.


"… the sun will bring you signs of what late evening brings…"

[Virgil]

pic: the far lake at nightfall.