Today was my first day of vigilantly trying to keep my weekly schedule. Mon and Tues are writing, Wed is sewing, Thurs is Internet. It looks like weekends might be erhu, since my interest in playing is increasing.
Today—when I thought of the fact that I was going to write after work, I was filled with relief and happiness. This morning I woke with the dreadful feeling again. I wondered for the first time if that feeling arises because my writing is what I am supposed to do, and something deep within me knows that, and makes me miserable till I write. Because I definitely do not have that feeling when I write daily.
Today, I did not write. I edited the first twenty pages of Red Rose. After I am finished working on my stories every time, I feel like they are good. My post-apocalyptic stories, at least. I also got the idea for a new kind of romance. A post-apocalyptic like one. Setting romances in rustic scenes, like Amarillo, Route 66, Illinois, Kansas. Something deconstructed, mysterious, wandering, restless. They would be normal paperback romances. I don’t know why I cling to writing those, but I do. I feel like when I read the romances from a century ago, or three centuries ago, I feel the beat of those times in that romance just like I do in literary work. It is the same. Somehow I feel like that is what I should write, too. The romances, not the literary work. Maybe it is because I have an increasingly technical mind, I appreciate the formula, I want to refine it and fulfill it, rather than go out and make something totally unstructured.
My problem much of the time is that I can’t put an identity to my body of work. It has shifted in the past few years. It is not really like science fiction or fantasy I have read, but the emphasis is not on the romance, it is more a a gothic emphasis, discovery of past secrets.
Anyway, I feel more confident about Cambriel and Red Rose. Red Rose has a lot of revelance right now—it’s actually what is hot. It’s vampires and the Snow White fairy tale. That is an idea that could really sell. Cambriel unfortunately is so short now. I also sense as I am reading my writing that my prose is actually somewhat trite and uncomplicated. I want to take a closer look at that. I will leave things that require study for later and do what I know to do now. Right now I am editing for continuity and glaring errors, eliminating my overstatement, which I tend to do a lot. Cambriel is more interesting than Red Rose, but Red Rose is more intelligent. Cambriel, more romance and Red Rose, more science fiction/horror. The only thing I would really improve with Red Rose is the intelligence of the prose. With Cambriel, I sense I really need to bolster the story and give it a bigger identity. It’s a vagabond journey of sorts, not in keeping with the original Sleeping Beauty mythology. That bothers me, because I would like to see a parallel. Red Rose has an obvious Snow White mythology and the third book that I will write in November, The Empty City, has an obvious Beauty and the Beast mythology. Also, I don’t like the title Cambriel. It gets under my skin. I don’t know if I even like that for a last name. Maybe Cambria would be better. That reminds me of Percy Bysshe Shelley—not that he isn’t referenced plenty in the story already.
I thought of titling it The Awakening. I wonder how that would go. Too simple? I don’t know.