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Rattling around
Jun. 25th, 2005 10:20 amDistinct lack of ambition in the household this morning. Wife has a migraine but went off to the nature center anyway -- one of the joys of her peculiar work situation, she has the place to herself on weekends. That makes sick days and vacations a moot question without considerable advance planning.
PENDRAGON AUTUMN has not yet started to warm up in my head. The story line involves some things that I had originally stuffed into the hurry-up proposal for WINTER OAK, back when I did proposals. As that turned out, I ended up with a book's worth of story before I reached those particular conflicts. Maybe they seem stale now, after sitting on the shelf for two years or so? Probably I just need to come up with a replacement Ming the Merciless to torment my characters. Good villains are hard to find. Granted, I've kept Fiona on ice, with a plan of how to bust her out of jail, but Maureen has beaten the dark witch twice now....
That becomes a meta-question on character-building in fiction -- if you allow characters to grow in the course of a novel, so that they can solve their problems and save the universe, then you have to invent bigger problems and more deadly threats to the universe when you write the sequel. On the other hand, some characters don't seem to change much through a long and distinguished career. Nero Wolfe seems about the same at the end of Rex Stout's series as the fat man did in the beginning.
Warm enough this morning that my simple walk to get the newspaper raised a sweat -- at 6:30 AM. Bodes ill for any of the aforementioned ambition. Sounds like the afternoon will involve reading a book in front of the air conditioner.
PENDRAGON AUTUMN has not yet started to warm up in my head. The story line involves some things that I had originally stuffed into the hurry-up proposal for WINTER OAK, back when I did proposals. As that turned out, I ended up with a book's worth of story before I reached those particular conflicts. Maybe they seem stale now, after sitting on the shelf for two years or so? Probably I just need to come up with a replacement Ming the Merciless to torment my characters. Good villains are hard to find. Granted, I've kept Fiona on ice, with a plan of how to bust her out of jail, but Maureen has beaten the dark witch twice now....
That becomes a meta-question on character-building in fiction -- if you allow characters to grow in the course of a novel, so that they can solve their problems and save the universe, then you have to invent bigger problems and more deadly threats to the universe when you write the sequel. On the other hand, some characters don't seem to change much through a long and distinguished career. Nero Wolfe seems about the same at the end of Rex Stout's series as the fat man did in the beginning.
Warm enough this morning that my simple walk to get the newspaper raised a sweat -- at 6:30 AM. Bodes ill for any of the aforementioned ambition. Sounds like the afternoon will involve reading a book in front of the air conditioner.
