Meanderings: July 13, 1999

Tuesday,
July 13, 1999

I'm a bad, bad girl. Pretty much everybody in my office is on vacation -- the tech writer in the office next to me, our big manager, the two project managers, about 80% of the entire floor -- so I decided to stay home today and work in the yard. I finally got the lawnmower to work and finished off the back yard, then tried to rake it. Yuck. I got a strip of grass raked, then decided to call it a day -- there have got to be better ways of doing that.

And yeah, I know my forebears reaped whole fields by hand, yadda yadda. Of course, they also died in their forties and fifties from overwork and illness, so there may just be something in this technology dodge. Maybe we can convince TBS to pop for a riding mower. . .

I'm still plinking away at "Daughters of Men," and I decided to resurrect a half-finished story I did a few years ago and give it an overhaul. This one is called "The Only Diet You'll Ever Need" and shows what can happen when political extremists get into the weight loss industry. I also need to get my butt in gear and finish the book, but for some reason. . .I dunno. This is going to sound strange, but I'm reluctant to work on it. The original idea I had for the story got transmuted into a time travel thriller (and rightly so -- my first concept was cute, but not really enought for a novel), and I've got all kinds of good stuff to use in the second half. But. . .it also kind of scares me. Does that make sense?

I think the problem is, I'm now dealing with not one but two Victorian characters, one of whom is a very famous historical figure, and they have to be done right -- not just accurately, but right, ringing the proper notes to the reader. To do that, I have to think like a Victorian from the middle upper classes (it's just the way I work -- I don't feel like I've nailed the character until I've emphathized with her/him). And to be perfectly honest, the middle class Victorian culture appalls me somewhat -- the class stratification, the attitudes towards sex, religion, gender equality, etc. feels like a prison for the spirit. Problem is, I have to write two characters who believe that the behavior and mores of that period are normal and proper, which means I have to put myself into a headspace that squicks me. *sigh* I had a similar problem back in college when I had to write a paper on Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivener" and completely froze on it. It took me a while to realize that I couldn't write it because Bartleby reminded me of an ex-boyfriend, and I couldn't handle dealing with that kind of intense, passive-aggressive singlemindedness again. I finally forced some distance and wrote the paper, but it wasn't my best effort. In this case, I've got to see if I can puzzle out my Victorians without losing contact with the story, which I do want to write.

I'm whining, aren't I? I'll shut up now.

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