Patricia's blog

[Joy Beeson]

Can't sleep, catching up with Patricia's blog; when I got to
https://pcwrede.com/pcw-wp/rolling-along/
this comment caught my eye:


> I have to be careful with lost interest. . . . . when writing,
> it generally means I think the next scene will be hard to write,
> and I’m shirking.

Which reminded me that Vorjack has been sitting on his bed with one
shoe on for decades because the next scene is well above my pay grade,
for two reasons. This is the chapter in which he realizes that the
teen-aged flibbertygibbet is more than she lets on, and characters are
my weakest point. And I really, really need to know at least a little
bit about nineteenth-century farming before I describe the witches'
model farm. I know just enough about farming to know how ignorant I
am. (Which is more than I can say for some published writers!)

It doesn't help that I know how the story comes out; I even summarized
it in a cinquenta.

And it *really* doesn't help that I've discovered that I'm really a
non-fiction writer.

https://pcwrede.com/pcw-wp/plot-situation-and-incident-event/

and its comments are, among other things, about how world-building and
situations and events and characters all cause each other, which
reminded me that I created an entire planet by having the protagonist
of "Manstealers" wonder how his kidnappers had learned as much
"Theralithian" as they had without learning that the Theralithian
settlers still spoke North Lanxtrian Vulgate.

I'm sure published fiction writers also find single words and phrases
dragging in a long tail of worldbuilding.

--
Joy Beeson
joy beeson at centurylink dot net
http://wlweather.net/PAGEJOY/

[Joy Beeson]

I don't know whether I wrote this last Monday or the Monday before:


I'm between washloads this time. One of the comments at

https://pcwrede.com/pcw-wp/showing-off-vs-showing-up/

is:
> Oh, I think we would all like to hear our stories
> are the most wonderful thing ever.

Well, that depends on the context.

I have a story about two prisoners of war, each of whom
has been injured so badly as to have no hope of escape.

One of them is tall, strong, and physically healthy,
but disminded himself to avoid an even-worse fate.
He is not so much guarded as baby-sat.

The other is mentally undamaged, but was small to start
with, and stress has caused failure to thrive. In addition,
she has just given birth.

They join forces.

--------------

One beta reader was delighted by my wonderful critique of the
Ante-bellum American south.