I feel like I've used the "Platonic story" metaphor before
The last version of my ongoing attempt to be a novelist, "The Hannenite Rebellion 7-31.doc", weighed in at 81,071 Words
The next, The Hannenite Rebellion 8-2.doc"*, is currently at 83,103 words, and I still really want to get this scene wrapped up before I go to bed. Which isn't likely, because I'm already pretty beat and I'm not sure how exactly the scene should end, but the idea is there. The idea of maybe getting the scene written, so I can work on one of the scenes I skipped over writing this one.
* I wrote nothing yesterday, but cut me some slack: I spent three or four hours mowing all the lawns. I also razed half an acre briers after walking into them, and dropped chemical weapons on two wasp nests after one of the fuckers got my ankle. I am in general terms a loving, gentle young man who is at one with nature, but those parts of nature which have pointy bits and the desire to embed them in my flesh will find me a Captain Planet villain with Inigo Montoya's overdeveloped sense of vengeance.
Two thousand plus words in a day. It's both heartening and disheartening. Heartening on the micro level, because, hey, that's a better day of writing than I've had in a long while. Disheartening on the macro because, hey, that's a fifth of the words I've written since March. I am capable of doing more, I know I am, and if I'm not I really ought to go into accountancy.
And then, there's the third voice, the one which whispers of easy outs, the lure of new worlds and mysterious characters. It's like the best scene in High Fidelity, where John Cusack explains the pull of the fantasy: the girl you're not with, the story you're not writing, is always better then the one you've got, because in your head there are no problems. You can see what the story ought to be, while the digital copy can be nothing but what it is: the sentences which lack the umph needed to bring a scene that worked home; the scenes that don't work at all, complete with BLOCK LETTERS reminding you to PUNCH THIS UP on Draft Two; the scenes which don't even exist, which you didn't bother to write because they hang on a backwards cascade of unwritten and half-written and scrapped scenes. Which is why it feels like you were the voice of sanity after you said "hang the continuity" and write two characters reacting to the death of one character when you have yet to kill her off yet, or describe the reaction to the first death. And of course you'll have to go back and fix everything, but at least now there's something there; even a broken thing is better than nothing at all.
It's the choice you have whenever you have a sudden good day: look at it as an aberration, or as a turning point. A last gasp, or a harbinger. It seems like an easy choice: who wouldn't want a month of two thousand, three thousand word days? But the decision isn't in making it: the choice is in living it. Living it even when you realize every scene you'd wanted to write is done, and you need to go back and insert all the bones.
I love the ideal of the novel: the sudden highs and heart-breaking lows, the thrill of battle and the hint of fleeting passions, the promise of redemption or the certainty of a grace that will never be obtained.
Which is why writing it, why envisioning the real thing and then trying to pretend you're doing more than drawing its shadow, is such a frustration. The story comes out as slow as syrup, and that itself is a hard burden. But knowing that what is coming out may never be what it should have been, that I'm turning maple syrup into maple-flavored corn syrup... that goes beyond an aggravation, and borders on a mortal sin.
But I'm keeping on. Because, no matter how flawed the story ends up being, I still want to know how it all works out.
De'ja vu seems to strike with remarkable frequently while writing midnight LJ posts