Afternoon report
Tuesday, May 9th, 2006 08:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rolanniThe afternoon went a little pear-shaped. Found myself staring at nothing for long-ish periods of time, getting distracted in the middle of sentences, and whatnot. Tomorrow's read of this evening's writing ought to be a hoot. Sigh.
I've had folks here and there ask me where the book now tentatively titled Carousel Tides (formerly The Book Without a Name)"fits in." I've answered those folks when asked, but I thought I'd make a general posting, for those thousands of readers around the world who have been dying to ask this question.
The truth of the matter is that Carousel Tides, um -- well, see...it doesn't "fit in" anywhere. It's not under contract. It's not a Liaden Universe(R) book; it's a contemporary fantasy/mystery. I'm writing it purely and simply because I Wanna. It's something a little like therapy, helping me to recover stamina and a liking for my own writing. The Crystal books -- Crystal Dragon in particular -- were Plenty Hard for us to write (which, by a definition recently floated in another part of the forest, ought to mean that they're Stellar Work) and are proving to be Plenty Hard to have written, as well.
That being the case, I wanted to ...think about something different, and work on a project that wasn't fraught on any level. Too, I wanted to stretch the long writing muscles, which had gotten cramped with the stress of trying to make sure every sentence was perfect before moving on to the next.
This book is a muddled mess. I don't think I've written quite so glorious a mess since the first draft of Scout's Progress -- another book written to satisfy authorial whim. And it's OK that it's a mess. There's no hurry; there's no one to disappoint if it doesn't come out within the year. I can let it sit and cool for months -- years, if I want to. And that's kind of -- liberating.
Progress on Carousel Tides
I've had folks here and there ask me where the book now tentatively titled Carousel Tides (formerly The Book Without a Name)"fits in." I've answered those folks when asked, but I thought I'd make a general posting, for those thousands of readers around the world who have been dying to ask this question.
The truth of the matter is that Carousel Tides, um -- well, see...it doesn't "fit in" anywhere. It's not under contract. It's not a Liaden Universe(R) book; it's a contemporary fantasy/mystery. I'm writing it purely and simply because I Wanna. It's something a little like therapy, helping me to recover stamina and a liking for my own writing. The Crystal books -- Crystal Dragon in particular -- were Plenty Hard for us to write (which, by a definition recently floated in another part of the forest, ought to mean that they're Stellar Work) and are proving to be Plenty Hard to have written, as well.
That being the case, I wanted to ...think about something different, and work on a project that wasn't fraught on any level. Too, I wanted to stretch the long writing muscles, which had gotten cramped with the stress of trying to make sure every sentence was perfect before moving on to the next.
This book is a muddled mess. I don't think I've written quite so glorious a mess since the first draft of Scout's Progress -- another book written to satisfy authorial whim. And it's OK that it's a mess. There's no hurry; there's no one to disappoint if it doesn't come out within the year. I can let it sit and cool for months -- years, if I want to. And that's kind of -- liberating.
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