All that bitching I was doing about no rain and last night we got what must be a year’s worth, pouring down hard and endlessly and making it look pretty miserable indeed out. I made some facile comment on Facebook about seeing my poor neighbors take their dog for a walk in its midst making me glad I’m a cat person but in fact that’s only a part of what I was grateful for last night. Customarily having little to no nightlife accounts for much of the rest.
So here we are the next morning, rain gone for the moment and the occasional glimpse of sunlight peeking through and the air beautifully clear. Myself I feel a bit washed out; something’s been interfering with my sleep pattern this week and morning after morning I’m just not waking up refreshed. Dreams have been nuts, even more than usual. Maybe it’s the weather, or some cosmic shift I couldn’t even begin to pinpoint, or worry about my family, or whatever; if you have an explanation please don’t offer it. All I want at this point is a good night’s rest.
That aside it’s been a pretty satisfying week. SOPA got shot down (for the time being, anyway), and the protest against it Wednesday went off well. Afterwards I cruised by 6th and Market to see the new Burning Man office and have lunch at Tu Lan, both of which made good use of an afternoon in the city with little else to do. Thursday I stayed home, and Friday I camped out at my favorite coffeehouse to write another 1700 words on The Novel. None of this amounts to anything earthshaking, but like I said: satisfying.
A lot of the time lately I’ve been at home reading: on another of my periodic John Sandford jags, working my way backwards through the Lucas Davenport books in very loose order. I do this every few years and usually in the winter; for me it’s literary comfort food, the equivalent of mashed potatoes. The only difference is this time I’m doing something I should have started a long time ago, which is taking notes on particular turns of phrase I want to imitate or even outright steal.
It’s like this: with the huge volume of words I’m outputting I’ve been running up against my limitations as a writer, one of the foremost being an inadequate vocabulary for human expression. I’ve got plenty of dialogue but describing the way a character delivers it, the tone of voice and facial expression and gestures and all that: I lack range where that’s concerned. Sandford is quite good at it and at characterizations in general – it’s one of the reasons I re-read his books every few years – and I figure if I’m going to steal it might as well be from someone with a Pulitzer.
Also ranking high on my list of limitations is an inadequate understanding of human motivation. There are times when I’m forcibly reminded what a deeply sheltered life I’ve led – still lead – and having to step outside my little bubble of privilege and safety to convincingly depict characters doing things nobody in my own life would ever do, would never want to do let alone have to, is a pretty dependable way to bring such reminders about. I feel like most of what I know (or believe I know) about how people act in crises, and why, comes from authors like Sandford; unfortunately, genuine insight into human behavior is not as easy to steal as a simple turn of phrase.
For this reason I’m glad to be writing an action-oriented book set in chaotic times: there’s less need for subtlety with so much of the plot coming down to simple survival and self-defense. It makes it easier on me, the author, if I don’t have to build out a skill I don’t possess in any great measure – that of representing the intricacies of human desire, of portraying motivation in terms of more than the most basic shades of gray if not stark black and white – in order to tell the tale in a reasonably competent way. I’m OK at subtlety, but not much more than OK. Certainly not like reading someone like Sandford makes me want to be.
That’s one explanation for why I’m writing the book I am, anyway; another is that I honestly don’t think I could write anything else. I’ve never in my life had another story I felt compelled to tell, certainly not to keep plugging at this long. I started this tale in 2-friggin’-000, for chrissake. One good idea, that’s all I’ve ever asked for, and now I’ve had one I can only hope that someday others will think it was a good idea too.
Of course before that someday comes actually finishing what I’ve started. My plan for today is to spew another 2000 words, maybe more. That’ll keep me out of trouble until the afternoon if anything will, as well get a good start to what I hope will be another satisfying week.
The rain’s supposed to let up sometime Monday and if nothing interferes I hope to head out to Point Reyes on Thursday. The ground should be nice and verdant by then, an excellent reason to be glad I waited. Some of the pictures I took there in late December several years ago feature grass a shade of green so bright it’ll knock your eye out and I’d like to see that in real life again. Small things in this person’s life, but crucial ones.
That’s of course if I don’t have to drop everything and go back to work. Haven’t gotten a conclusive response from either of the places where I interviewed recently; one sent me a nice friendly “still deciding” note yesterday, and the other I haven’t heard from at all. My gut tells me nothing’s going to come through before the end of January but it’s been wrong before. I just hope if it is this time I manage to get a little seaside leisure in first.
I’m hoping for other things too that will make the upcoming week satisfying but I’ll write about them later, mostly when I discover what they are. Right now I’m just glad to be out of the rain for a little while.
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