Stuck

 

Trimmed the dog, weed whacked (always more to do), walked to the store, no writing for several days. A pivotal scene on deck. No pot. No willingness to write. Hunting a fast housefly. Smoking too many cigarettes. Listening to a baseball game. Put too much creamer in my coffee cup. Had to pour it back in the carafe to dilute it. Now I have a whole pot of tan coffee, drinkable after fixing my error. Reminds me of Aristotle making a little mistake that screwed up all of Western philosophy, explaining the difference in loaves of bread (white, wheat, rye, fresh, stale) as "accidents" that didn't change the "essence" of bread in all examples of bread. In epistemology, it's called The Problem of Universals. Thomas Aquinas used Aristotle's theory to explain how bread could be transmuted into the body of Jesus when a priest said magic words. God allegedly changed the "essence" without altering the "accidental" appearance and taste of bread. Terrible theology, disastrous epistemology. Aristotle made a tiny little mistake.

 

Back to the story I'm working on, middle of the second act.

 

Here's the situation. Hansje had a crack-up, blamed herself for a little design error that very nearly killed the man she loves and severely injured the boss who risked his life to save the hero. Whether the boss will recover is a toss-up. He lost a hand and forearm, a candidate for terminal cancer. Cosmic rays go through lead, and a lot of people who live in space die from cancer. Whether the boss dies or not is unimportant. He might make it. Hansje's design error wasn't detected, everything tested good, and it was easily fixed. The boss foreshadowed it, impossible to build a new space vehicle from the ground up without some trial and error. Splendid teamwork and heroism to rescue her main squeeze, who forgave her instantly. The injured boss forgave her, no problem. The second flight of her machine was perfect, a splendid achievement, made it possible to repair a meteor strike that punctured the colony.

 

The question is whether Hansje was changed? A little lamb by nature, given to grumpy complaints and technically brilliant, romantically and sexually vulnerable, a perfect mate for the hero and crucial to the climax (for reasons that don't matter right now) how does Hansje handle hostile, somewhat natural bureaucratic opposition in another department, all by herself? She can't fold under pressure. Too small to bully anybody.

 

Good place to be stuck. She needs to exemplify thematic elements of courage, trust, and loyalty. Not something that I want to approach without being stoned. I can author See Spot Run scenes sober and straight, but not transformational ones. This is Hansje's moment to cross an emotional rubicon. If she can't do it or ducks it, the ending won't make any sense. So I know it has to happen.

 

Writing it is something else. Need dope to see souls.

A bigger hammer

Writing Escape! is kicking my ass big time. A few pages more is debilitating, each and every one of them. If I get three a day, it's a big deal, breaking down in tears when I nail it. Endless revisions for grammar, elegance, surprise, humor (probably too much of that) and sex scenes that make sense and teach people how it's supposed to be, when you're so unimaginative and simple that it becomes beautiful. That's the human condition in a nutshell among the folks who do highly skilled professional work —except Red, of course, a public menace, tall, strong, and buxom. I should be ashamed of Red.

 

I don't think shame matters any more. In any case, the story is so gigantic that I will be happy to see it finished someday in the distant future. I'll need a bigger hammer to do that. Pull out all the stops, glad to go forward, willing to swing hard, bounce it to pdf, see a clinker and thread the needle more closely. Rand was decidedly unhelpful. "A theme is the summation of the novel's abstract meaning. The theme of a novel defines its purpose." (The Romantic Manifesto)

 

I'm all alone, 300 years in the future, in a space colony far from Earth, orbiting the Sun in a big frisbee with characters I like and respect. A little conspiracy to wonder about, a murder or two, intersecting a love affair that went too far too fast, which happens if the chemistry is ideal. Temptation everywhere. The physical reality of space, deadly meteor showers, and collision course with an asteroid big enough to crush the colony and kill everyone.

 

Unfortunately, adventures aren't shit in terms of fine literature. Adolescent action adventure was appropriate for Chris and Peachy, because my theme for them was "the emotional life of a warrior." Close enough for government work, and I wouldn't change a diphthong. But the theme of Escape! is kicking my ass. I used Prager as a devil's advocate, an evil to defeat. "The heart is deceitful, not to be trusted," he says with a satanic grin, happy to destroy love.

 

Be that as it may, the grim truth is that pages do not write themselves. Sometimes it's war to focus a single line, an adjective, fighting for a moment in a character's inner life with the ring of truth. If I use the same word twice in a paragraph it's a disaster. Chandler said that style determined if a story was believable. Thanks a bunch, Ray.

 

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