Sneak Preview

I've just added a "Sneak Preview" page to my website.  Check there frequently or not so frequently for a taste of what I'm currently obsessing working on. 

Taking dictation can be difficult

Have I ever been this involved with a character?  I think not.  This is twice in the past two weeks that I have written about Adelaide though sobs and tears.  Everything that is happening to her seems to happen to me.  Though I have experienced some of those things in my life I seem to be re-living them all through Adelaide.

When I started this book (working title: The Bishop of Who, that has to change) I had an inkling that I was doing it as a spiritual exercise.  Something to exorcise some of the spiritual demons that have been chasing me around for awhile.  Little did I understand that Adelaide would help me examine my whole life.

She goes where she wants with her story.  Yesterday I reread a description I wrote of the book before I started.  Though the premise remains the same, I wonder that I was so sure what would happen in the story line.  Everything changes.  I guess I have to resolve myself to that with my particular writing style but sometimes its really hard.

Dear Adelaide Wasserstein Brocklehurst...

holding Bishop's Committee meetings in my head at 2AM is just not acceptable.

Signed...your faithful author

by the word, by the day

I am now fully into writing the book that has as a working title The Bishop of Who.  I never before counted the words in a book as I wrote (even during NaNoWriMo) and I find it fascinating to observe that the more I count the faster I write.  I fully expect that in a week or so, unless I run completely dry, I will be setting finger to keyboard at the rate of 4000 words a day.  What causes me to rush so headlong into arranging pixels on page I know not.  I just know that I have to.

Yiddish and thought processes

Spent the afternoon consulting a Yiddish dictionary and the Episcopal Hymnal (1982).  A writer's life.  Two thousand words some of which are not English. 

It is interesting, as you get deeper and deeper into a book, to examine your thought processes .   When I first get an idea it is all intellectual.  The questions are related to who is my protagonist and what is her motivation.  Then, unbidden, a character will begin to talk to me.  Sometimes it is the protagonist who is speaking.  Sometimes it is the person I think is the protagonist but who eventually takes a back seat. [In In Between Goodbyes Ian was supposed to be my protagonist but Hope took over].  Sometimes it is just the dog.

Suddenly, in a rush the narrative and the dialogue all come tumbling out.  People overtalk each other.  Characters explain their motivation.  Then, for a while it is all silence, as if someone yelled "Cut."  I can't get anyone to talk.  But that is necessary for people and narrative to straighten itself out.  I get antsy.

Today everyone started talking at once.  I was compelled to sit and type about Rome, about spiritual directors, about a tiny world that was shaping itself.