Writing a synopsis
Dec. 30th, 2006 03:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
desperanceHow it works, when I really have no idea where a storyline is going: I get the hell out of here, go for a walk and think about it. Work out something that sounds reasonable for the next stretch, come home and write it down. And repeat. Three or four times a day, to make sensible progress.
Trouble is, I'm still full of cold and very disinclined to go outside. I dragged myself to the supermarket this morning, and that's a walk; came home and wrote two pages of plot, hurrah! Felt cocky. Realised I had run entirely aground again, and didn't want to go out again. Had lunch, gathered together all the dried fruit in the house (actually, I nearly wrote 'dead fruit', but that would be unfair: just that some of it is, well, very dried indeed) and have thrown it into a cake, sooner than throw it out. If the cake's horrible, I'll just throw that out instead; what's it cost me? Three eggs, butter, a bit of flour, a bit of sugar, half an hour's work. It's a very pure cake: no spices, even.
During all this labour - nope, nothing occurred to me about where the book might go next. I said, I have to be walking. All I achieved was to spill dried fruit on the floor and splatter everything in the kitchen with cake-batter. Yup, including Barry. It's his own fault, he shouldn't have been underfoot; I'd already trodden on him once today. Oof, he has a yowl in him. But I was working in the kitchen, which always interests Barry. By then he might have figured out that I was not in fact working to his benefit; but I'd grated my thumb while zesting an orange, so there was blood in the air. Hence, Barry. I keep telling you he is Teh Evil. He wants to suck my blood.
So the kitchen is now full of dirty bowls & stuff, and also besplattered, and I could go down and clean it. Or I could go out and think of story-things. This is how cake-making works, see: it drives me forth despite the weather, despite my sickness, despite everything. I'd even rather write synopsis than clean the kitchen. Or would I...?
Yup. Definitely. 'Bye.
Trouble is, I'm still full of cold and very disinclined to go outside. I dragged myself to the supermarket this morning, and that's a walk; came home and wrote two pages of plot, hurrah! Felt cocky. Realised I had run entirely aground again, and didn't want to go out again. Had lunch, gathered together all the dried fruit in the house (actually, I nearly wrote 'dead fruit', but that would be unfair: just that some of it is, well, very dried indeed) and have thrown it into a cake, sooner than throw it out. If the cake's horrible, I'll just throw that out instead; what's it cost me? Three eggs, butter, a bit of flour, a bit of sugar, half an hour's work. It's a very pure cake: no spices, even.
During all this labour - nope, nothing occurred to me about where the book might go next. I said, I have to be walking. All I achieved was to spill dried fruit on the floor and splatter everything in the kitchen with cake-batter. Yup, including Barry. It's his own fault, he shouldn't have been underfoot; I'd already trodden on him once today. Oof, he has a yowl in him. But I was working in the kitchen, which always interests Barry. By then he might have figured out that I was not in fact working to his benefit; but I'd grated my thumb while zesting an orange, so there was blood in the air. Hence, Barry. I keep telling you he is Teh Evil. He wants to suck my blood.
So the kitchen is now full of dirty bowls & stuff, and also besplattered, and I could go down and clean it. Or I could go out and think of story-things. This is how cake-making works, see: it drives me forth despite the weather, despite my sickness, despite everything. I'd even rather write synopsis than clean the kitchen. Or would I...?
Yup. Definitely. 'Bye.