My Old Flame

I have plans, as all writers do.

One of those plans involves learning how to eef. Another involves learning to do a good impression of Peter Lorre, as in the second half of this wonderful old Spike Jones song.

Another of my plans is to write a novel in which the protagonist has experienced so much music in his life he has a nervous breakdown and becomes unable to hear music. This song, one of my favorites from good ol' Mr. Jones, would be the one that breaks the camel's back. I don't know why. It just sounds like a good idea. Either that, or the breakdown will either occur or be cured at the Bar J Wranglers. I don't know why on that, either.

Speaking of plans, I've been mulling over the novel -- Considering How to Run. I have not re-read it. I've purposely not re-read it because, when I re-read a passage a few nights ago, I thought "Wow! This is good." It may sound odd to have a writer say that's a bad sign, but it is. It means I'm still too close to it, too in love with the rhetoric and language. So I've got to stay away from it for a while longer.

That doesn't mean I'm not thinking about it. I realized that as I tried to sew two stretches of writing together into one novel, there are elements that I developed in the latter half that I'm going to have to allude to in the first half, so they don't come as a complete surprise to my readers. Not that I'm giving things away. Just character-building exposition that developed in the second half that also has to be rounded out in the first half.

What fun writing is. I might be tempted to say this song brings to mind a planet with fifty moons. But that would be too Dr. Ronald Chevalier of me.

This week, I've been reading Niel Hancock's Squaring the Circle, the last in his Circle of Light series of books. They're old fantasy. I can see in him some of the quirks and hiccups I've got in my own writing. That's a good thing. It tells me that maybe, just maybe now, I might have the writing chops to get published, if I can find an agent and a publisher. So there's hope.