Wednesday, May 18, 2016

Writing and Landvaettir

This is from facebook. Why use a post only once?
It's a bright, lovely day outside. I have exercise this morning and a grocery run this afternoon. Aside from that. I'm going to work on writing. I lay in bed last night and worked out plot problems. Now I have to hope I can remember the solutions. I'm going to have go through the story after it's done and fill in emotions and motivations. Right now I mostly have an outline of the action, with some ideas of why people act the way they do. I have to explain my hero/villain.

I figure I will use the Iceland landvættir in the final magical battle. These are the four spirits that guard Iceland. They are on the Icelandic coat of arms and present-day Icelandic coins. A dragon, a griffin (or eagle), a bull and a mountain troll. They ought to be impressive when conjured up.

I ended meeting friends at the local coffee shop, while Patrick did the grocery shopping. After the friends left, I worked on the current story. I am pushing ahead as quickly as possible and don't intend to type the scribbled first version until it's done. I'm afraid if I type it, and thus read it over, I will decide it's awful. The energy I have going now will vanish. I'm not sure I'll use this technique -- a handwritten first draft -- again, though I used it for decades. What I usually do now is compose on the computer, then print out sections and edit on paper, then input the changes and make more changes as I input. So it's a looping process: I write, then go back and revise, then go forward again. It means I never read the entire story until it's done. Then I print it out and make final revisions on paper. This means I don't give up in the middle.

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