‘m up, but I’m not attem.
I woke up this morning at the very definition of oh-dark-thirty. After lying in bed for a while, I gave it up and got up. Then I had to find my glasses. You would think, after wearing them for thirty years now, I’d have learned to never put them anywhere but one designated spot. If you thought that, you were wrong. Of course, it is harder when you are trying not to wake up the sleeping half. Some time later, with eyeballs adjusted, and coffee started, I contemplated the internet.
It’s amazing, how we have the veritable fount of information at our fingertips, and yet nothing catches our attention, isn’t it? Oh, I read and contemplated my daily drug development blog (I found Derek Lowe’s blog through Things I Won’t Work With and stayed because I wound up in a similar field, plus I really appreciate his clarity of writing on the topic). Peter’s blog hadn’t updated yet this morning, and that’s good. Means he’s getting some sleep. Or he’s got it scheduled. Which is what I ought to do. I used to, back in the heady days of daily posts and having a buffer. Hah. Ah, those were the days. Funny how I was doing school full time, plus working, and somehow had more time than I have now?
I could read a book, but the brain is doing that thing where it crosses it’s arms, looks away, and says ‘uh uh.’ Focus and concentration? Nope. Reading comprehension? Yeah, also no. Writing? Bwahahashaa! Wait. You were serious? Art? In the dark? Ok, that I could do at the kitchen table. But donwanna. Need to grab some books and sketch horse bones. Then I can start to go on with the Nettles illustrations I started sketching yesterday. Because my muse is evil.
I have come to the conclusion I’m pathologically unable to write a sequel. I’m not sure what’s the matter with my muse, other than it’s busted (anyone want a muse? Used? Cheap? Anyone!?) or defective. I have several WIP and instead, a pony story. Talk about one’s childhood bubbling up in weird ways. I’m enjoying it, though. It’s certainly not my childhood, or any ponies I knew. But it’s fun, and my sister is helping me by reading as I write. Which is… I’ve done this now with my mother and my sister, working on different stories. I have the ability (wonders of the internet, again) to create in real time with someone watching over my shoulder, as it were. Personally, I suspect it would be as interesting as watching paint dry but on my end? I’m a needy little writer. Having affirmation that someone likes it well enough to read the words hot off the page just makes me write faster. Which you would think would help with the whole sequel thing, because I have fans who want more, ask for more, and yet… my brain acts like a toddler that needs a nap.
I’d write more, but it’s still pre-dawn and the Jr. Mad Scientist needs a ride to work. Maybe I can coax my brain into something productive now that I have indulged it in some free-writing. Adulting! Some days it’s harder than others.
Comments
8 responses to “Title Goes Here”
Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, H G Wells, Jules Verne–none of them ever wrote a sequel, and they did okay. It could be argued that Huckleberry Finn was a sequel to Tom Sawyer (weakly, I think), and Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories are–in a sense–sequels and his Professor Challenger novels definately are. Charles Dickens’ novels were serialized, so if one wanted to push the definition you could say he wrote sequels that were later collected into single volumes. C K Chesterton’s Club Of Queer Trades and Man Who Knew Too Much were originally published as individual stories and later collected.
But in general the whole idea of a sequential novels didn’t exist until the middle of the 20th Century. It was something found in children’s fiction–The Oz books, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Adventures of Mary Poppins–but not a trick that any serious author would stoop to. The Lord Of The Rings was written as one very long novel–it was the publisher’s decision to print it as three volumes.
Mystery writers wrote multiple novels about the same detective, for low-brow, direct to paperback market, but with rare exceptions they were not structured as sequels. You don’t need to have read The Big Sleep to understand what’s going on in The High Window.
The idea that an author must follow up one novel with a sequel and then another gradually spread through genre fiction, true enough, but wasn’t taken seriously for literary fiction until very recently. I am sure that John Irving’s agent didn’t ever ask, “Hey, John, when are you going to write The Hotel New Hampshire II, huh?”
I take your point and like it. However, I did write a couple of books explicitly as part of series – and those, I need to follow through on the implicit promise of more (Tanager, Witchward).
I presume that then there is a difference, at least in mental outlook if no other, between ‘planned series’ or trilogy or suchlike and sequels. With sequels being “Well, THAT worked. Let’s try it again.”
I’m not sure I really buy the idea of a planned series. Does anyone really plot out in advance a story that needs a half-million or so words to tell?
I’ve not done a half-million words, but my Pixie series was a planned trilogy. Tanager is also a planned trilogy. Far too many plot arcs for one book, but a big over-arc.
I beg to differ sir, Verne wrote several sequels.
I stand corrected.
Looking for your glasses?
It happened to me.
What’s really “fun” is that I recently had Cataract Surgery with the result that I only need reading glasses.
However, since then I’ve woke up and “felt for my glasses”. 😆