I know what you mean about
the editing necessary when walking the precipice of reality. Can't afford to
be glib or cheap or easy with our language ,,, the story would enter the realm
where anything seems possible and the tension would evaporate. As to creating much
chaos in your cranium, how could you possibly tell? What degree of bedlam did
you use as a benchmark?
When my teachers said to
embrace my mistakes, they were suggesting I take the hundreds of sheets of
incorrect math equations and carry them to the dumpster. Under all that snow,
Billings Montana was green. As was William Faulkner's mother, Maud, at our
seance yesterday. The agitated woman kept pounding on the table and moaning,
not unlike my math teachers.
My character who talks to
the dead went to the library in Chapter 12. He found out parapsychology is
considered by many to be a psuedo-science. Go figure. I have a nice psuedo
jacket but I have to dry clean it after I eat. Anyway, my character and I were
both surprised. Libraries have a lot of damn nerve with their research books
and big dictionaries. I had a big dictionary the size of a recliner but someone
borrowed it for an unabridged piling.
Research -- that's
an unseen pleasure of fiction writing. You expect research in non-fiction. It's
often behind the scenes in fiction. We have to know the landmarks of our
settings --- sometimes to the extent of checking whether our memory is
accurate. I've been absolutely positive ... and wrong. I've wanted to know more
about a piece of music, or the history of the Anza-Borrego Desert, or the
different departments in county social services, or what did Houndsditch Street
look like in 1888 London? I get curious, immersed in my research education,
and forget I'm writing. So, like we were talking about earlier, we write
what we know about but it doesn't always have to be from our own
experience. Is that so obvious?
My protagonist decided to
go to the library. I hadn't thought of it myself.
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