18 June 2010

There will be a coffee house book...someday.

I promise I'm still working on it. And thinking about it. And worrying that it won't work. But still writing on it.

Writing the sections in first-person POV is hard. I knew that going in. And at first, I thought the difficulty would be capturing the differences in the different characters' voices. The trouble has been in using first-person to tell one aspect of a bigger story.

Until recently, I'd been focused on the big picture of the book's story. I knew what I wanted to happen and how. But now, I have to break that story down into the pieces seen by the characters. For example, Vivi is the manager. She's helping plan the anniversary party, so she has a big hand in what's happening. The wanna-be Regular, on the other hand, only knows that the coffee house will close early the night before and open late the day of. Where Vivi's focus is on the details of the planning, the wanna-be Regular's focus is on getting in with the staff so she can be in on the planning.

The idea is, of course, that once you've read all the sections, you can put all the pieces together, and you know what's gone on from conception to execution for the anniversary party.

Easy for you, not so easy for me.

I know I'm not the only one who's hitting complications in the writing world. What are you struggling with right now? What are you doing to try and fix, or work through, it?

However, in a bit of good news, a friend and fellow writer helped me figure out the details of an installation piece at the coffee house titled "Deadly Seven." One of the characters created it as a senior project. That's all I can tell you. You have to wait and read the rest.

2 comments:

  1. What do you mean, we have to wait?! Don't wanna wait! ;-)

    Trials and tribulations just mean the finished product will mean much more to you. Or at least, you can tell yourself that during the trials and tribulations. Who knows, it might make it a wee bit easier! It seems to me that writing has all too much in common with cat wrangling.

    The only writing-related nonsense I'm dealing with lately, other than a terminal inability to answer my email (but I think of you every day!), is trying to figure out enough about geology to write a semi-intelligent post on it. Research isn't easy! But it's fun, and I wouldn't trade it for anything.

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  2. Yes, you have to wait. But (I hope) the wait will be worth it!

    I agree with you about trials/tribulations when writing. It's those obstacles that writers overcome that give us great satisfaction.

    Speaking of geology, I saw a (phone) wallpaper that was a slab of granite and I thought of you. Your research of geology has me associating it with you!

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Add a little caffeine to my life...