Some excellent comments from the last post. Thanks to all.
It is tough to leave a story alone for awhile. I tend to want to struggle through the muck, waving knives and swords at anything that moves (or doesn't move), getting in the way of my story. But following Ford's advice, I went back to a story that had fizzled out awhile back. I focused on why one of the characters acts the way he does and several pieces of the puzzle fell into place, not all at once, but little by little, like a trail of clues leading me forward. The story is working and I'm excited about it. Like VanderMeer mentioned, I have a general idea of what's going to happen (or might happen), but I'll be open for any self-discoveries I or my characters might find along the way.
This from Sarah Monette. Advice, help and suggestions you can get from others, for which I'm thankful. But you've gotta do the work. Good stuff, Sarah.
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Watched another Blast from the Past on DVD last night, Let's Scare Jessica to Death from 1971. It's a good example of some of the 70's low-budget horror films that often work better than the stuff being made today.
Everybody have a great weekend -
6 comments:
That movie scared the bejesus out of me when I saw it, which was sometime in the last millennium! Thanks for reminding me of it - I'll have to get that for Halloween!
Me too...I think I was in the (ulp) third grade when it came out. I bought it on-the-cheap at Best Buy. Definitely worth purchasing. (No extras, though.)
Wonder of synchronicity: I saw this DVD at Target the other night. I did not give it a good look, thinking "oh, look, another crappy horror movie from last year that was so bad I didn't even hear about it." So I guess I'll Netflix it. Sometimes being wrong is okay. (Don't tell Lera I wrote that.)
On getting unstuck: I have taken to writing notes to Fred asking for help with specific issues. For example, the novel is coming to a climax, but all of the people who need to butt heads at the end are in different places, and really I have no idea how to get them together in a convincing way. I wrote to Fred asking for his help and am carrying the note around in my pocket, in case I run into him. I'll let you know how that works out.
Let me know how it works with Fred.
Forget about NetFlix - I'll send the movie via Cindy if you want.
Fred got back to me just now. Scrawled in big block letters all over the bottom of the note I sent him. He actually seemed scornfully amused that I had not thought of something so readily apparent. I sent him another note thanking him but reminding him that readily not-so-apparent plot points are his job.
Please send the scary movie. Lera will like that. (No, seriously. She loves scary movies.) Just finished Louisiana Breakdown. The ending was disappointing, but the book was good. I'll send it on back to you.
That's weird. My friend and I saw the box for this movie at the mall this past weekend (both of us are horror fans and had never heard of it before). We were joking around about the title.
Hmmm, maybe I should check it out. Except all these coincidences are strange!
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