OK so I finished that horrible first draft of Rivers of Stone (roughly 95,000 words), and now I'm adrift. Can't write. Can't think. Maybe I'm stuck in that low place where doubt rules. But I bound the sucker. Sent it to my trusted first reader and should hear something within a week or so . . . though just now I can't bear to look at it.
Any writing? I'm back to Granny Vampire for a few words here and there, mostly stuck in character maps and arcs and plotting bits of scenes and stabs at humor. Wondering why I'm even trying to write this particular story, for no matter my interest in writing a cozy mystery with those 'stabs of humor,' I'm always drawn to the underpinning issues we don't want to talk about/think about: elder abuse, aging and the loss of thought and memory, and, of course, death.
Marketing? Yesterday I met with a small book club at a local assisted living home and was charmed by the ladies. I had been forewarned they might have dementia, so I reviewed some helpful 'how to' tips (mostly, stay calm, talk in nonthreatening ways), changed my bright writer's shirt for something a little calmer, and sallied forth to a pleasant afternoon with mermaid quilts and stories and a poem.
This week outside our apartment window, a young man and his girl were flying kites -- her kite a box of crayons and his, an amazing bird of fire, perhaps a Phoenix bird, rising to challenge the darkness.
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| Summer flight (Camp 2016) |
Oh, I so understand what you're saying about those underpinnings. As I evolve as a writer, I come back to them again and again. In the first of my Kifo Island novels, a twelve year old girl is fighting for her right to stop treatments for her acute leukemia against her parents' wishes. She wants to live and die someplace beautiful, free of the things that chain her to a bed.
ReplyDeleteI think, though, that these things can coexist with humor and lightness. My young Ava isn't morbid; not in the least. She's passionate and funny and secretive sometimes. She makes the same types of poor decisions that many young people just learning about the adult world are prone to (honestly, she's more than a little like a certain almost-twelve year old girl who lives in my house and owns my heart.)
It's the blending that can be tricky. But, if you get it right - think of what you'll have created!
Your afternoon sounds lovely. I just finished another Kifo draft where one of the main characters is dealing with dementia. Some of the connections he made were really surprising!