Oh, the blogging has been light this last week, since I was trapped in the snares of literary endeavor. That is, pounding out chapter 12 of the new book. Some of the chapters come easily, as if they were already written down in my head, and some of them are hauled out inch by inch and word by word. Last week was one of the �hauled out inch by inch� weeks, but the week before I knocked out three chapters. Eh� go figure. I also had a couple of hours to work on Friday at the part-time secretarial-admin job, that between a weekly shift at the radio station, my retiree pension, and the very-slightly-more than paltry income from blogging allows me to stay at home and slave over a hot computer writing this century�s answer to �Gone With the Wind�.
So I am completely uninterested in the hot-news-item do jour, the pitiful life and sad demise of whats-er-fern (Ok, so her and Princess Di- first time tragedy, second time farce, and all that? Are we sure that the late and extravagantly mourned Ms A.N. Smith was not actually some animatronic creation devised by the tabloid industrial complex in order to generate the maximum quantity of tawdry headlines? I mean, inerrantly choosing the maximum tackiest of life choices at every possible opportunity� that goes beyond a gift: that argues a fiendish degree of forethought and planning. Oh, well, at least there is no breath of a whisper that she got it off with anyone really, really important in politics. Yet, anyway. Where was I� oh, yes� creation of semi-competent pop literature. Back on track, sorry for the diversion.)
I did briefly slip the shackles of duty yesterday: my sister Pippy had sent my daughter and I both gift cards for Borders Books, and so we popped down to spend a semi-blissful afternoon picking out the books that we wanted. Blondie went for an illustrated Terry Pratchett, but I had resolved to spend the gift card on some books that I could use for �the book�� ones that I didn�t have to keep returning to the library! I already possessed a good number of books that I needed for the writing of �Truckee�s Trail�, but in writing �Adelsverein� I am starting from scratch, and discovering that there exists a ton of excellent and thoroughly researched non-fiction about the German settlements. Either I can check it out from the library and keep it for about a month and a half at a stretch with renewals, or buy the stuff that I know I will need for longer.
And this book is going to be longer. I�ve already mapped out thirty chapters, and they have a wicked way of expanding, as interesting happenings and characters beg for more attention. Forty years worth of events in the Texas Hill country has an insidious way of becoming totally fascinating. Not to mention the people, of course. I write sometimes with a book open on my lap, to refresh my memory about places, descriptions, events and people. This is our history, and those who came before us; I need to get it all right. How it looked, tasted, smelled, what people in that time would have thought and felt and seen. Details count. I put myself in that place, with a book in my lap, and it all comes clear.
Oh, yes, the people: both the real ones, and the ones that I have totally just� you know� like made up? They take on life of their own, which is exhilarating and kind of scary at the same time. It�s easy and at the same time hard to write about them. For instance: in the next couple of weeks I will have to write about the deaths of three very appealing characters� one of whom is a fairly major hero. Sorry, it just has to be, for such sad events drive the plot, and it has always been so, from the instant that I conceived the whole story arc. (And it really was in an instant. I read something in one of the books� and just knew instantly that that was something which had to be a part of it story. This has happened, over and over. Really.) But still, it will be hard to write about. I was in tears for one whole afternoon, writing about a character in an early chapter who was fairly dispensable and barely seen anyway.
About the only harder thing to do will be about half a chapter on the heroine�s wedding night; something tender and erotic and a bit funny. Knowing that most women of the era were kept in a total state of ignorance about what the marriage bed involved, and that most men had a fairly detailed idea� and that a lot of married women of the era adored their husbands with desperate and operatic devotion (Queen Victoria herself, exhibit 1)� well, really, that argues that a fair number of Victorian-era bridegrooms must have done some fairly effective sex-education, at speed and on the fly, as it were. Otherwise, I presume their wives would have been (a) traumatized incredibly, and (b) loathed their so-called helpmates to really unparalleled degree. I am fairly sure that good properly married Victorians really had about as much fun in bed as any of the rest of us� they just didn�t go on about all the details as much. This proper reticence just makes it harder for the rest of us. I don�t mind, really.
Blondie says she will loan me some of her bodice-ripping romances, in order that I should get into the proper spirit. Yeough; if they dictate that I should have to write a sentence like �she grasped his throbbing man-root and guided it into her turgid flesh� I am so going to put my head in the oven. (For about 15 minutes)
It is an electric oven anyway, but you get the general idea.
