A real writing entry

2002-10-24 - 12:17 a.m.

So here's where the last entry was going before my brain exploded...

One of the reasons why I haven't been writing my novel is because I moved to Toronto. You see, the first four chapters of the nascent book were on my computer back home. I would have saved them to a disk, along with a zillion little short stories, including a few that are pretty darn good, except that my plan was to move and have the computer sent down. Just as my mom promised she wouldn't kill my cat (which she did a month later) she also promised to send the computer (which she still has not and likely will never, ever do).

This is a thing with me. It has happened, on occasion, that I have not made a back-up or hardcopy of something I've written, and then lost it. And I don't know about anyone else but it is the -hardest- -thing- in the -world- to rewrite something. The whole time I'm typing I have this feeling that it is not as good as the first time, will never ever be as good as the first time, that the fact that this isn't the first time is glaringly obvious and I might as well give up and write something different.

In cases where the first copy is forever lost, I have no choice but to write something new, and once or twice the new version has actually been good, maybe even better. In this case, though, the really really amazing first chapter and the following mediocre chapters are just sitting on an untouched harddrive, occasionally menaced by the threat of mom selling the computer or giving it to my brother who will fill it with straight porn. So I'm having some issues with rewriting it, because the first chapter completely sets up the ideas and themes I wanted it to, it had the right edge of creepiness, which is hard to get in what will essentially be a fantasy genre novel, and the protagonist, who could really annoy me, -doesn't- annoy me without losing his essential personality.

So, why not just start writing at where I think chapter 4 ended?

Because there are deeper issues.

The other day, I was thinking about the novel, working out some ideas, developing the world in which it takes place. I was thinking about the themes, one of which will be a crisis of religion, as well as a conflict between two vastly different cultures. The protagonist is meant to be a devout member of a religious order, and he's supposed to be faced with making decisions where he must choose between two heresies. Influenced by my theologian boyfriend a bit? Ya think?

I don't think I've ever suffered much of a crisis of faith. I'm feeling completely not up to the task, unprepared. I don't know what it is to be as blindly devoted as he's required to be at the beginning. There are kind, decent, thoughtful, intelligent people out there with very strong opinions on faith, religion, God, but almost everytime I try to write him he comes off as an asshole.

Is it even possible for me to write an entire novel with a protagonist that I don't like?

And so, in lieu of actually working on the narrative, I have every intention of avoiding the issue. I'm going to write about the world's different cultures, its geography. I'll create elaborate dossiers on each of the secondary characters and antagonists, and keep lots and lots of notes.

Then, when I go home in January, I will copy the first few chapters, as well as the possibly-publishable short fiction, onto a disk, come home, and then force myself to face the protagonist, force myself to like him, even if he -is- an ass.

Cheers,

The Magus

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