Okay. Um, I sent it to Ple and Perkins and I have to send it to sj, because she's the one who asked for it, and to you because it's the dream, and I think you'll like it. I haven't gotten back all the responses, so do you want to hold off hosting until I've got it DONE done?

My whole thing is, I'm a storyteller. It's people, in a story;

jealousy

For me, it's people. And places. Getting a story to happen takes a great deal of medieval-style torture and mountain-moving. My characters are all lazy bums - they'd much rather just lay around talking endlessly.

'morning, Ms. H and Nilly and Rebecca and all.

RL, keep in mind, I started out life first as a musician, then as an actor, then as a director, as a lyricist the entire time, and finally began writing because Nic suggested that every single bit of creating I'd ever done was about telling the story. I was a mediocre actor, because I had to interpret other peoples' stories; telling my own? Far better at it.

And honestly, please don't be suspicious of me. It's just the way I write, is all, words and music together.

This is-- I know of so many people who just write, and by some accident of luck and insane organic talent, it's amazing, the language is technically brilliant, I'm sobbing with envy. And I just don't *get* that model at all. I don't do that. I'm conscious of every single word and how it affects the text as a whole. I can't turn that off, in fact. I'm in awe (and, to be honestly, a little involuntarily suspicious) of skilled writers who don't feel that.

I suspect that they just make it look easy. I've come to the opinion that being a good writer is like being an Olympic athelete. You have to have innate talent, yes, and plenty of it, but you also have to train your ass off and then some. You have to train until it's instinct.

The fact that you're aware of every word is a good thing, honest!

Somebody somewhere said that mastery of writing takes a bit longer than mastery of other art forms. I'm sure there are plenty of exceptions that prove the rule, but I think there's a ring of truth to that.

And good morning all. And Steph, if you're still awake - go to bed!

My characters are all lazy bums - they'd much rather just lay around talking endlessly.

Bwah! Mine do a reasonable amount of talking, certainly, but - well -

OK, Deena has only just read Plainsong. She'll know what I mean here: it began as I was in the middle of writing Fire Queen. I was doing a tense, dreamy bit, in which an incredibly dark characer, amoral by choice, finds himself in a sacred grove and realises that it was deliberately planted (this is all circa first century BC). I was writing away, seeing it, easy as pie, and I read it back, and what I'd written was all about a man in bathrobe, standing in a meadow, painting, with four talking ravens named Matthew, Mark, Luke and John critiquing his work.

So, well, organic. Stories happen.

The one I just wrote started as a dream. I have a seriously prolific subconcious. I used to be terribly jealous of whomever it was who said once that he felt uncomfortable taking credit for his novels because they were just transcriptions of his dreams. Mine were never THAT prolific. I seriously doubt, now, that they were that easy, either, and they were still out of his head. I'm rather more envious now of people like you, Ms. H, who cares about the craft enough to do it even when it doesn't want to be done.

I haven't gotten back all the responses, so do you want to hold off hosting until I've got it DONE done?

Sure.

And honestly, please don't be suspicious of me.

Oh, no! Those are just my issues. It's just so alien to my mind I simply can't understand how it works at all. I'm slightly irrational on this one count-- I can't help but to harbor tiny, secret thoughts along the lines of "I know they must feel the same things I feel, because there's no other sense-making way to live. I'm just not articulating my point well enough. If I keep trying, eventually they'll agree with me...."

The fact that you're aware of every word is a good thing, honest!

I have always thought so....

I suspect that they just make it look easy.

But deb (and many other people I've talked to) say they just do stuff. They actually don't think about it that way.

Believe me-- I think very much most of what I judge to be successful writing comes across as effortless. It's just that, apparently, for some people, it actually is. That doesn't seem to have effect on the actual final product (except in some specialized cases).

I like whoever it was who told Lillian Hellman "Nonsense. A writer writes. Go home and start working. Go home and write now."

She'd had her second play crash and burn on Broadway and hadn't written a word in two years. I want to say it was Benchley, but I think that's wrong.

Heh - sometimes it feels like craft is all I've got. I can't say that I've ever gotten anything useful from a dream. And maybe there's something a little messed up about a kid who never had imaginary friends growing up into someone who has them just walking up to her and talking all the time.

Half the fight is figuring out what you're good at and, more importantly, what you need help with. I wish somebody had told me that in a book years ago...