but you're no messiah, you think more like a spider
Well, that was unexpected.
I can't really remember what the point of that conversation was going to be, what Cary was going to tell Sean about her encounter. I knew there would be something about her mother's notion of family, the principle she had passed onto Cary. And I suppose that came out of some thought I had about addressing why Cary and Sean seemed to exist in this vacuum of relatives.
Mind you, then that raised a bit of a dilemma for me because I wasn't sure if that concern came out of my own very Indian sense of family. I mean, we do grow up in big families, big networks of aunts and uncles and cousins and cousins of cousins and so forth. Like Friday night I was talking to a couple of the work people at work drinks and I said: "So my cousin's cousin's fiance's sister is doing the Ghan at the moment ---" and stopped cos one of the work people's eyes had glazed, face frozen with the effort of working it out. But then the ops guy sitting next to me grinned and said: "Yeah, I get it." I looked at him, he's Asian, and I beamed and said: "Well, yeah, you would, wouldn't you?" Heh.
So yeah, I'm always very conscious about that being a possible difference between the Indian experience and an Anglo-Saxon experience. And both Cary and Sean are very white. It'd be too damned complicated to make either one of them Indian and I'm not sure I want to go there yet. I did have some plans of making the new version of Mike and Lindsey a whole exploration of the Indian migrant in Australia experience but I don't know. My nerve seems to have failed me again. Doesn't matter, anyway. Cross that bridge when I come to it.
What? Right, yes. Vacuum. I mean, Trudy has family. Rob has family. They clearly have their network and I thought it seemed a little unbalanced that Sean and Cary seem to be totally unique in this respect. And then I thought some more about the nuclear white families I know and well, the reality of white Australian Anglo-Saxon families --- those who don't have the big networks --- does seem to be the thing of having relatives in other states, cousins and aunts they barely speak to, that they've only seen as children or like ten years ago.
And well, I tried that. And woah, hey, god the stuff that came out! I mean, not big huge revelations of family secrets. So didn't want to go that way and hello, plenty already. I don't need crap like that turning up in this almost the final act of the novel. Discipline! She says about a novel that was meant to be 50,000 words and is now --- *goes to add today's writing to the master document* --- just short of 150,000 words.
God, it made me tear up again just now. Good sign, I suppose and say again.
But I did like how it suddenly tied into Sean's own situation with his father. And this great sense of colour suddenly developed into a rather nice little line at the end with Sean lying in bed and looking up at the ceiling.
Funny how the writing mind can work on so many levels, of setting out the scene, trying to make it somewhat interesting in terms of visual and then following all the threads coming out, pulling in the real life stuff that could make it authentic and powerful, and then this quiet sly voice that murmurs underneath all this activity: "Good. This is moving him towards that point. Good. It's all working well. Mwahahaha."
Argh, I just scared myself.
Bit irritated I ran out of words just before tonight's goal. I haven't written for the past two, possibly three days so I lost my lead and had two thousand words to make it tonight. One thousand nine hundred is what I got. *grinds teeth*
But no, it's good I stopped then. And no, I'm not padding, that only annoys me. Especially when I know that I'll make that up quite easily when I resume tomorrow and get into the new scene. But no point starting it now cos it needs time and distance and a whole new mood and I still feel a little raw from tonight's writing.
Jesus, this novel. Every novel is a new lesson in how to write.
Camp NaNo wordcount: 14,250
Pages: 45.
Whole novel wordcount: 149,783
Pages: 476.
And yay, the Camp NaNo stats are finally working! Oh bliss. Oh ruthless motivation. Oh the defiance of "Grrr, I want that bar to be higher than the dotted line! Make it so, brain and hands! Make it, you puny human!"
Do better!
*lols at self, has some chocolate, and goes to watch a good old black and white fillum*
One of these days, I will do a non-writing post. I promise.
I can't really remember what the point of that conversation was going to be, what Cary was going to tell Sean about her encounter. I knew there would be something about her mother's notion of family, the principle she had passed onto Cary. And I suppose that came out of some thought I had about addressing why Cary and Sean seemed to exist in this vacuum of relatives.
Mind you, then that raised a bit of a dilemma for me because I wasn't sure if that concern came out of my own very Indian sense of family. I mean, we do grow up in big families, big networks of aunts and uncles and cousins and cousins of cousins and so forth. Like Friday night I was talking to a couple of the work people at work drinks and I said: "So my cousin's cousin's fiance's sister is doing the Ghan at the moment ---" and stopped cos one of the work people's eyes had glazed, face frozen with the effort of working it out. But then the ops guy sitting next to me grinned and said: "Yeah, I get it." I looked at him, he's Asian, and I beamed and said: "Well, yeah, you would, wouldn't you?" Heh.
So yeah, I'm always very conscious about that being a possible difference between the Indian experience and an Anglo-Saxon experience. And both Cary and Sean are very white. It'd be too damned complicated to make either one of them Indian and I'm not sure I want to go there yet. I did have some plans of making the new version of Mike and Lindsey a whole exploration of the Indian migrant in Australia experience but I don't know. My nerve seems to have failed me again. Doesn't matter, anyway. Cross that bridge when I come to it.
What? Right, yes. Vacuum. I mean, Trudy has family. Rob has family. They clearly have their network and I thought it seemed a little unbalanced that Sean and Cary seem to be totally unique in this respect. And then I thought some more about the nuclear white families I know and well, the reality of white Australian Anglo-Saxon families --- those who don't have the big networks --- does seem to be the thing of having relatives in other states, cousins and aunts they barely speak to, that they've only seen as children or like ten years ago.
And well, I tried that. And woah, hey, god the stuff that came out! I mean, not big huge revelations of family secrets. So didn't want to go that way and hello, plenty already. I don't need crap like that turning up in this almost the final act of the novel. Discipline! She says about a novel that was meant to be 50,000 words and is now --- *goes to add today's writing to the master document* --- just short of 150,000 words.
God, it made me tear up again just now. Good sign, I suppose and say again.
But I did like how it suddenly tied into Sean's own situation with his father. And this great sense of colour suddenly developed into a rather nice little line at the end with Sean lying in bed and looking up at the ceiling.
Funny how the writing mind can work on so many levels, of setting out the scene, trying to make it somewhat interesting in terms of visual and then following all the threads coming out, pulling in the real life stuff that could make it authentic and powerful, and then this quiet sly voice that murmurs underneath all this activity: "Good. This is moving him towards that point. Good. It's all working well. Mwahahaha."
Argh, I just scared myself.
Bit irritated I ran out of words just before tonight's goal. I haven't written for the past two, possibly three days so I lost my lead and had two thousand words to make it tonight. One thousand nine hundred is what I got. *grinds teeth*
But no, it's good I stopped then. And no, I'm not padding, that only annoys me. Especially when I know that I'll make that up quite easily when I resume tomorrow and get into the new scene. But no point starting it now cos it needs time and distance and a whole new mood and I still feel a little raw from tonight's writing.
Jesus, this novel. Every novel is a new lesson in how to write.
Camp NaNo wordcount: 14,250
Pages: 45.
Whole novel wordcount: 149,783
Pages: 476.
And yay, the Camp NaNo stats are finally working! Oh bliss. Oh ruthless motivation. Oh the defiance of "Grrr, I want that bar to be higher than the dotted line! Make it so, brain and hands! Make it, you puny human!"
Do better!
*lols at self, has some chocolate, and goes to watch a good old black and white fillum*
One of these days, I will do a non-writing post. I promise.