I worked with a bit of observation today. It’s something that I have found essential to writing, thinking about how you can convey, and interpret things to drive the story forward. It’s not driving the story forward, and I may cut it in a later draft as I want the book to breathe, but not sleep.
It’s strange sometimes, to talk about cruelty. It’s something we have all been subject to, in some form. Sometimes a victim, others an aggressor. Writing about it, and it’s the small, lower case form of it, which tends to be rooted in desire, thwarted or otherwise. It denotes a lack of compassion, but lends itself really well to showing, in how you describe the scene. Here, I show how someone is cruel to someone else.
I finished Brood by Chase Novak last night. It’s a lovely bit of writing, has it’s own mythology and it touches, much like the last book, on some primal fears around parenting and adolescence, but tied into body horror and hubris as well. There are a few great literary horror books, some I’ve read and others that I am seeking out all the time. Benjamin Percy’s Red Moon, Justin Cronin’s The Passage and I would include these two books. They probably inspired the mood piece I wrote this morning. I reserve the right to cut it, but sometimes it’s okay to let the piece breathe in the exploratory stage. Sometimes a page yields a line that stays, which is perfectly fine.
Not everything you write will be gold. Sometimes it’s clumsy, like rolling a penny uphill with your nose but you get it done. You keep going because you can find the good in what you did that day when you edit later. You have days where you write the really good stuff, where it feels like, as Rust Cohle said in True Detective, ‘that you’re mainlining the universe.’
Which is kind of an inspiration for the book. I could not get into season 2, but I may get hold of it and see if it works for me this time. However, the first season allowed me to consider how I could follow it. I did not believe I was capable of doing the genre justice. However, I found The Story Grid, and it worked out in a way that gave me the ambition to try. Knowing where the obligatory scenes and conventions need to go gives you a map through the forest. So here I am, putting it together each day until such time as it goes to the agent, and then a publisher. It makes me happy to try, and with each book, I find a fresh burst of courage to go for something different.
So, it’s supposed to rain here but I may venture into town to pick up some library books that serve as research for later on. I don’t like to work with big chunks of exposition, but I try to show some of the flavour. To tell something painful that has happened honestly, even though the story itself is entirely fiction.
Thank you for reading. If you have any questions or comments, please post them below.
MB Blissett 