on writing (IV)

Amanda as a zombie!

My creative prowess comes and goes in spurts. I would liken it metaphorically to the ebb and flow of the tides, but tides themselves can be measured, and the spurts in my creative energies can neither be charted nor anticipated. Let me put it like this: for almost all of December, I haven't touched my zombie serial novel. And then in the past two days, I've written sixty pages. When the switch is turned "ON" I can't stop writing, can't keep my hands from the keyboard. Hours and hours will be spent doing nothing but writing, smoking my pipe in moments of anxiety, and I become completely consumed in this other world. When the switch is turned "OFF", I prefer focusing on more educational and educational projects (like my 1 Peter commentary "thingie", dubbed as such because while it's not a commentary, it's also not a devotional, or bible study, or anything like that: it's the blending of all sorts of things into a sort of compendium of sorts on 1 Peter; but enough about that). The point of all this is that I've been advancing in the zombie story, and I'm liking what I've got so far.

Act II? It's a little shaky at times. Ams has read through most of it so far, and her critiques and concerns largely drive the shape of the story. Some people will tell you that changing up the story in lieu of one person's critiques is a bad idea, and it is. But I respect my sister, she reads a similar style of literature, and she much prefers story-driven tales than character-driven ones. That last part's important, because I want this story to be story-driven rather than character-driven (as you find, for example, in "Dwellers of the Night"; which you can't actually find, because I've discontinued it for a while now). Her critiques have helped shape the work for the better, and if I thought otherwise, I'd stop asking for her input. I'm pretty sure that when it becomes available to the public, she's gonna get one helluva shout-out, probably recognition as partaking in the evolution of the story. That'll be cool. All this aside, she likes Act I more than Act II, and while she couldn't really give me a reason why, my own analysis of the two acts shows what, I think, that reason is: it's a matter of narration.

Act I takes place over a series of a couple days, and Act II takes place over a couple months. The narrative style of Act I (which is about the same length as Act II) is, as I prefer, far more detailed and congruous than Act II. Because it happens in such a short amount of time, I was able to go into as much detail as I wanted without worry about taking up too much room; in Act II, which had so many more different scenes than Act I, I couldn't delve into as much detail or it'd run an extra 50-60 pages, and that wouldn't be cool. Act I is more congruous simply because all the scenes are interconnected over a series of days; Act II is written in an almost kaleidoscopic-snapshot feel, a series of short-&-sweet vignettes. At the foundation of it all, however, is the fact that Act I is more story-driven, because Act II is more about bringing to light the various characters and subplots to be extrapolated in the further acts. Act III is back to the story-driven mode, and I'm so excited about it so far, and anxious to hear what Amanda thinks. I really think she'll like it as much as she liked Act I, if not more. Honestly, I'd love to go back to Act II and fine-tune it for the ninth time; but I can be a narcissistic perfectionist when it comes to writing, and I'll get stuck in a rut and never get out. One of the prime lessons any seasoned writer will tell you is that becoming bogged down in editing and revisions is one of the worst possible things you can do; you'll become consumed by the process, often losing sight of the over-arching story, and the end result is a spiraling story going nowhere. I've forced myself to accept Act II as is and go on to Act III, and I'm thankful I've made that move: I'm trying to get 6-12 books out of this thing, I can't spend half a year on a third of the first one.

One other "writing update": when it comes to the plot-line of the story, while I know most of its skeletal structure, I'm really wrestling with what to do at the end of Act III. The original plan was to not even have the first major zombie outbreak happening until sometime in Act III of the second book (around 450 pages into the story as a whole), because there were lots of things I wanted to do between then and there both to shape the story and open a window to a different perspective than most zombie literature. The end result would be hardly any real zombie action for the first two books, and I don't want readers getting tired of not seeing any zombies in a zombie apocalyptic (I'm hearing Jeff Goldblum's echo: "So, are there are dinosaurs in this, uh, dinosaur park?"). Coupled with all this, the reality is that I can't wait (quite literally) to get into the meat of this zombie story. I want to get to that part of the story, and my blood boils in my anticipation. Through this wrestling, I've been considering revamping the plot, accelerating the zombie outbreak and then opening that different-perspective window in the sixth or seventh book. This would change a lot I've planned out, but it may be a wiser (and more fun) choice overall. 

Rob just made a chemex of some Ethiopian Sidamo, and it's one of the best Sidamo coffees I've ever had. Fruity without an overpowering citrus. I'm on a tight schedule, so I'm not going to look over what I wrote, scanning for grammatical errors and the like. If you find some (and I'm sure you can), just get over it: I'm human, just like you, and pretty stupid most of the time. 

Oh: and Merry Christmas Eve.