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...

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

Rebecca, let me clarify this, if I can. You know the kind of people who want to tell you why a piece of music works? "Oh, what the composer did here was to integrate a cunning use of tritone with the descant to the major seventh, and that call-response is specifically designed to provoke that particular emotional response, especially in women..."

I, well, I want to kill these people. Bite me, evil rationalists! Because for me, music is a magic spell; it's purely visceral. There's nothing intellectual or even really cerebral about it, for me. It's straightforward abacadabra, or perhaps nom myoho renge kyo: a mantra.

Magic, mantra, either way, what happens when you deconstruct one of those things? They lose their power.

So I don't. I avoid practicing the craft, or training in it, or considering the word and how it falls, because I'm afraid, if I put too much mind into it, the spirit will fly. When I read it back and change things, it's generally because new bits of the story have come clearer for me, or new bits of what makes the characters who they are. That's all, really. So, I'm a primitive.

Also explains why I am so wide open to input. I won't do it myself.

edit: just realised, that sounds pompous. I swear, it wasn't meant to. But I'm wretchedly tired, and Nic just pulled up. Time for me to say goodnight.

And this has been an insanely nourishing few hours. You know?

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.

I think it was Stephen King who said, "Only God gets things right the first time."

RL, insent with Deb's suggested edits.

Crawling back in (asleep on feet, huzzah for meds) to say, remember the conversation we had awhile back about there being no One True Way?

There aint no One True Way.

(thunk)

sleep now....