Sunday, December 02, 2001
Today I found the end. It never ceases to amaze me and leave me at a loss for words and it has yet to make me feel good. But there is such a release in the dim and blazing realization of that moment, the simple typing of THE END beneath the final sentence, that there is at least relief. And relief is sometimes all you need. Sometimes I see it coming, and sometimes it takes me entirely by surprise. Like today. I finished a scene, which was to have been the next-to-last scene, and discovered that I'd already written the last scene, and that it was waiting for me at the beginning of the story. So I cut and pasted it onto the end, where I promptly discovered that it didn't work. So I moved it back to the beginning and looked at the next-to-last scene as the last scene, and it looked like it would work. I called Jennifer in to read it, because this is the stage where I have to begin to doubt my own instincts. I've been writing on this damn thing, on and off, since September, and couldn't even pretend objectivity. She thought it worked, so I read through the entire thing, 37 pages, aloud, and, unbelievably (it's always somewhat unbelievable) it was done.
So. I today (well, yesterday if you're here on the eastern coast of North America or points east, until points east become points west) I finished my 50th short story since July 1993. At a little over 11,000 words, it's my second longest work of short fiction today, surpassed only by "Le Fleurs Empoisnnées" (which is just over 12,000 words, I think). It's not quite what you might expect me to do, my first genuine "mythos" story, not merely going for the atmospheres and thematic elements of Lovecraft, but hauling out some of his localities (Innsmouth, Arkham) and beasties (well, you'll see). I've played with Lovecraftian elements before, many times, and openly in stories like "Valentia," "Tears Seven Times Salt," "A Redress for Andromeda," and Threshold, but (and someone please correct me if I'm wrong) this was my first use of Lovecraft's fictional locales and beings by name. Which, I'm told, divides fiction which is merely Lovecraftian from that which constitutes "mythos" tales. When I started it, I'd hoped it would be fun. It wasn't. It was maddening. But it did become a sort of obsession that dragged me kicking and screaming to the finish line. I hope HPL wouldn't be too put off by the somewhat nonlinear, double-tiered narrative, or the profanity. It was written with the utmost respect.
My office is still a wreck of unshelved books and journals. I put them back on the shelves every morning and there's always another pile in the floor by midnight. My room of books. My library, I suppose, made so much larger by the web (which I continue to love and loathe, in equal parts). But maybe this is interesting. Maybe this is the sort of insight into the process that someone reading a writer's journal might be looking to find. The books that I consulted today, dictionaries and such aside, in the space of six hours and about 1,000 words. Here they are:
Rand McNally Road Atlas (greatly augmented by mapquest.com and terraserver)
"The Monsters and the Critics" by J. R. R. Tolkien
Beowulf (translated by Seamus Heaney)
On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
The Uses of Enchantment by Bruno Bettelheim
The Dunwich Horror and Others by H. P. Lovecraft
The Flight of Dragons by Peter Dickinson
Lo! by Charles Fort
The Damned Universe of Charles Fort by Louis Kaplan
The Enigma of Loch Ness by Henry H. Bauer
On the Track of Unknown Animals by Bernard Heuvelmans
Atlantis: The Antediluvian World by Ignatius Donnelly
Early Vertebrates by Phillipe Janvier
All waiting to be set back in their proper places on the shelves, after I get some sleep.
Tomorrow I will do a small bit of polishing, but I polish as I write, edit as I film, so there's never very much of that sort of thing to be done. Looking at that list of books I see one reason I have so much trouble writing away from home (trouble, hell; I just can't do it). This year at Dragon*Con I was on a writing panel with Kevin Anderson and he described dictating into a mini tape recorder as he climbed mountains and hiked across lava flows and I thought, thought I, damn that's cool. That's how I want to write. On my feet, not sitting on my ass. But it hasn't happened yet and I fear that it never will. The tyranny of my fingertips. They make the words and jealously guard the key. They let my tongue do as it pleases, as long as nothing's going down on paper. That's why all but two interviews I've done have been via e-mail. My hands know better than to let my tongue speak for the record.
And I also got in a couple of hours of paleo', a new manuscript describing a new species of mosasaur from Alabama that I need to have finished by the end of the month.
Without coffee I would be but a lowly, sluggish mollusc. But I was good and only had four cups today. At least I don't smoke. And I remembered to take my multi-vitamin, but forgot to leave the apartment today.
Now I'm going to stare at the television for a while until I get sleepy. You folks can wander about the rest of the website for a bit. Jennifer posted happy new pictures of me today (hah, hah, hah).
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