The 13% Solution
Just supposing you might be interested in a Writer’s problems:
In reading this Post, por favor ref. my earlier Post titled “Bleep” - where I bemoan the plight of my novel titled MOTHERSHIP - which I exaggeratingly said is 87% done. I’m in the bind I’m in because people said, “You really oughtta.”(write a pre-quel to LOSTINE)
I skipped one of these Post beats a couple of weeks ago, because, without a sandwich or water, I started into yet another attempt to finish MOTHERSHIP.
The problem I have had w/Lostine’s pre-quel is that I seemed to have two separate stories going - two separate action-packed venues and I wasn’t getting just a huge charge out of the way I had tried to connect the “bicuspid” thing together.
In fact, I found out, too, that I wasn’t as pumped about my over-all ending as I remembered I was. The motivations for my characters didn’t seem to be as molten as I knew I needed(seriously, I live in the shadow of LOSTINE. How does a kid function when he gets an A in his first test and he never really did any homework and he wasn’t paying attention all his life anyhow?).
So I’ve got about 75K words written on MOTHERSHIP and I flat LOVE 60K of it and can’t “file it”.
What can I do?
Seems like, in my past, in reading some arcane, self-help article for desperate writers, I heard somebody say that when M/S dissatisfaction descends, one might check back with other actors in one’s Flat-as-Kansas scenes who were not allowed(by bad writing) to speak.
Letting a single muffled character talk in MOTHERSHIP will mean re-writing my last 7-8 chapters. My transformative angel is my “Training Wheel Mother” - a girl the narrator calls Pig Tail. She will get me “through the night.” Pig Tail is part of “Them” - the narrator’s enemy faction from across the gulley. But Pig Tail has a mind of her own. I can feel that in the final hours of the story, my narrator is losing resolve. Pig Tail’s voice will cause him to be somebody. I can see it coming. Just my kina thing.
Is it a play on words to say “I will keep you Posted”?