Well, that's that, and I'm glad it's over

[desperance]

...except of course that it is not over, it's never over; but I have finished the first draft of the ghost story, and the relief is inordinate. I've been working on it all day, and hating it all day; which means that this is the only good day's work that I've done all week. It reminds me of nothing so much as a badly-inflated balloon: bloated but soggy and full of empty air, only with one really tight knot on it. The trick now, I suppose, is to twist it and stretch it and work conjuror's magic on it (as opposed to the real thing) until it takes a recognisable shape. Or - abandoning overstretched metaphors - hack and slay and then remake it, until the body of the thing at least approaches its ending. It's eleven thousand words long, which is just about twice what's wanted; so it'll have to lose at least one of its beginnings (it has three), and probably the nested flashbacks, and then just acres and acres of guff. Pretty guff, sometimes, but guff none the less.

And even then, if I can crush it back to a decent length, it'll still be a rotten story for reading aloud, and wholly inappropriate to its audience; the Lit & Phil has an elderly demographic, who will come for the kind of ghost stories they understand, that they grew up with, Kipling and Dickens and James. And I will read them a story that is absolutely all about sex and polymorphic perversity; it's a very Freudian ghost, in a we-hate-Freud sort of way. And they will hate it, and I will hate reading it against their waves of discomfort and disapproval, and all will go ill and all will go ill and all manner of thing shall be ill.

Bleah. At least I don't have to do anything more to it tonight. I have opened a bottle of wine, and I am going straight back into 'River of the World'. Which I can finish in three weeks, if I am good and the world is kind. Now, which of those two do you think is most likely to obtain...?

Comments

[samarcand.livejournal.com]

That's what I like most about you, Chaz. You're carefree attitude and general positive outlook.

I've booked a ticket so there will be at least one person there who will enjoy it.

[devonellington.livejournal.com]

You ARE good and the world better be kind or it will have to answer to ME! :)

Funny -- we're both writing ghost stories. I was commissioned two weeks ago to write "an old-fashioned campfire" ghost story set in the Mogollan Rim area of Arizona. It's due Monday, and I'm almost done with the first draft.

I have to do revisions in and around the Belmont Stakes and the Tony Awards this weekend.

So I guess I'm not sleeping.

[hamadryad11.livejournal.com]

the Lit & Phil has an elderly demographic, who will come for the kind of ghost stories they understand, that they grew up with, Kipling and Dickens and James. And I will read them a story that is absolutely all about sex and polymorphic perversity

Maybe you'll be lucky and get a crowd of pervy old people.

I have opened a bottle of wine

A most excellent plan.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

You have your own demographic, you know, who will come for the kind of stories you write. (We'll be there, too).

Not to mention that the literary and philosophical types will be so hypnotised by your reading, and so seduced by your style, that they won't realise that this was the wrong kind of ghost until it's too late (which is how ghost stories work, anyway).

But clearly you are not your usual buoyant self: indeed, you may be an impostor. Would The Real Chaz ever have written "which of ... two .. is most likely..."?

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Eww. So I did. And I'd barely started drinking...

I could claim word-exhaustion, but I shan't bother. I'll just leave it there, like a badge of shame. Thank you for underlining my humiliation; now, when I find myself reading to an emptying room, I shan't mind so much, because I will have been inured by my sudden loss of LJ readers, as they pack and depart in outrage. Solecisms 'R' Us.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Want to swap? I'll send you mine if you send me yours...