July 20, 2003
Feh
Fuck it. "Midsummer" is back out in circulation. I'll keep sending it out until I'm actually ready to start expanding it into a novel. If nothing else, maybe I'll get some helpful comments on it.
I think this is a sickness...
Back on the horse, at least as far as the novel is concerned. Did quite a bit today, including some exciting parts that made me bounce while I was writing them. After last night, this can only be a good thing. Novel word count is now over 15,000. One of my characters, who started out loud and strong and clear, is becoming increasingly murky and difficult to work with. I need to poke him until he tells me what he's up to.
Decided to set aside "Midsummer" for a bit. I have absolute faith in the story I'm trying to tell, I'm just not sure I'm going about it right way at all. It occurred to me this morning that maybe the problem with it is not that it's too long, but that it's too short. There are a lot of ideas and themes I tried to sandwich in there, all important things that I wanted to say, using the selkie myth as the backdrop, but several things got cut or given just a surface run through. So as I was eating breakfast this morning, it came to me: what if it should be a novel too?
Before you roll your eyes at me... it could work. Of course, it would be a completely different sort of novel from any of the others I'm tossing around. I can see it being a very small, thoughtful, dreamlike sort of novel. Maybe even a touch surreal, a la Jeanette Winterson or Toni Morrison. Hell, it's practically that sort of story already, which might explain part of the problem I'm having getting it published. It's a story where the point is not the story, so much as how it's told and what it brings up. And the markets I've been sending it too aren't so much interested in that sort of thing.
So anyway, I'm going to set it aside until I finish the first draft of Alex's story (I HATE the working title at the moment--I think I need a new one) and then see what happens.
