Monday, February 02, 2009

so, what happens when i see my shadow?

Some mornings, when you get up, the day is so narrow you can hardly squeeze in. —Charles Schulz

I sometimes feel that I have nothing to say and I want to communicate this. —Damien Hirst

Well, I’m feeling restless. Perhaps because our glorious snow is wasting away after several days of fifty degrees. Or because my combined sugar + caffeine rush has long since gone.

Or because the scene I was working on today just fails to impress. And it’s so full of potential! Tension, humor, conflict, unusual setting. Strong characters, plot already rolling. But everything feels flat. I’ve been staring at my sentences, wanting them sharper, stronger. Don’t we read to be carried away? But these sentences have no lift.

Part of me wants to shelve writing for today, and to bury myself in reading someone else’s novel, just to remember how it’s done. How it feels to be a reader again, experiencing a new story sentence by sentence. After finishing Nanowrimo, I loved reading Leif Enger’s So Brave, Young, and Handsome. His sentences are marvelous, and they sound so effortless! Reading that book felt like unwrapping a gift: I desperately want to write that way.

And then characters, oh my poor characters. You could be so great! You all have such crazy pasts, fabulous secrets, wonderful senses of humor. When we were planning this scene together, you said all the right things, and now you’re suddenly silent. Why is this?

I’ve had Inkheart on my brain lately—have you read that book yet, or have you seen the movie? (Book first! No cheating.) I am so jealous of Fenoglio, when he sees Dustfinger for the first time. For that matter, I’m jealous of Cornelia Funke for seeing her creation brought to film (and with such a perfect cast).

(Seriously, if you haven’t read the book yet, stop reading blogs and go check it out. Right now.)

Sigh. Some days, this whole writing-a-novel thing feels so perfect, so exactly what I’d hoped for. And I feel like I’m learning week by week just what to do.

And then other days—today—I’m back in second grade, only with less confidence and no recess.

So tell me. What’s a book to learn from, another story that gets it right, where every page sings? A book that’s carried you away? Alternately, what’s the phone number of a wing manufacturing company? I’ll take either one.—jl

Posted by Jenn Langefeld on 02/02 at 06:14 PM
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