"Freakishly Fast."
Aug. 30th, 2005 09:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsWord of the day: Esquivalience - n. the willful avoidance of one's official responsibilities. Use this word a lot, please.
A friend of mine said once that I wrote "freakishly fast." I don't feel like it these days. Despite the fact that I've plowed through the same 17,500 words now, twice, I'm no closer to finishing Robots of the Deep vs. The Vampire Girl of Fallow Five. There are too many unanswered questions.
My biggest fear is this: "Y'know, if this were a David Weber novel, it would make perfect sense for that station to open fire on the Christine, explanation forthcoming. If this were a S.M. Stirling novel, it would make perfect sense if, at that moment, our very, very female robot to sudden go berserk and start tearing the Christine a new asshole as she tries to kill the girl, now an ex-vampire, on whom she has a desperate crush. But I don't write those kinds novels."
It's got a pace-- a mild combat scene, a perfunctory love scene, a better combat scene, a better love scene-- and now I'm feeling a bit stuck. There are all kinds of questions, like, why did the Sinox attack five thousand years ago, and why is Cheyenne in her combat body, why did the Christine's AI know that the Robot Recovery Trust Fund would pay "absolutely anything" to bring Cheyenne into the fold, and what does the mysterious M know about vampires anyway?
I hate being the author and not knowing the answers. I've got to figure out how to write "those kinds of novels." With magnificent language to boot.
A friend of mine said once that I wrote "freakishly fast." I don't feel like it these days. Despite the fact that I've plowed through the same 17,500 words now, twice, I'm no closer to finishing Robots of the Deep vs. The Vampire Girl of Fallow Five. There are too many unanswered questions.
My biggest fear is this: "Y'know, if this were a David Weber novel, it would make perfect sense for that station to open fire on the Christine, explanation forthcoming. If this were a S.M. Stirling novel, it would make perfect sense if, at that moment, our very, very female robot to sudden go berserk and start tearing the Christine a new asshole as she tries to kill the girl, now an ex-vampire, on whom she has a desperate crush. But I don't write those kinds novels."
It's got a pace-- a mild combat scene, a perfunctory love scene, a better combat scene, a better love scene-- and now I'm feeling a bit stuck. There are all kinds of questions, like, why did the Sinox attack five thousand years ago, and why is Cheyenne in her combat body, why did the Christine's AI know that the Robot Recovery Trust Fund would pay "absolutely anything" to bring Cheyenne into the fold, and what does the mysterious M know about vampires anyway?
I hate being the author and not knowing the answers. I've got to figure out how to write "those kinds of novels." With magnificent language to boot.
"Those kinds of novels"
Date: 2005-08-31 02:33 pm (UTC)I hate to tell you this, but you do write those kinds of novels. Look at Travellogue, Reunion, Geographic, and Planetfall... Even P'nyssa's Child is a novelette in that kind of way. I've been reading your stuff for a while (the first one I recall reading was Kathy and the Sphere - then I went back during one of your semi-regular dumps on a.s.stories and got everything I could!) and the stories hang together and weave a real universe. These characters are people - some of whom we think of as our own friends or acquaintances - so their stories matter. That's what causes us to look at Pendor and say "what's ** doing today?"
Answering deep historical questions and trying to discern the motives of everyone in your universe is hard - and usually instructional too.
Joshua Sasmor
http://sasmor.setonhill.info