Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Henery Higgens is stuck in my head

My Fair Lady is one of my favorite movies, ever. I am prone to the classics.
I know all the songs and I sing along in bad tunes. But recently Rex Harrison has been singing one song in my head.
Right now he's chanting in my head. "By Joe, I think she's got it!" Over and over. But I have been watching Family Guy for too long and Rex Harrison looks like Stewie Griffin in my head. That alone brings up so many issues about my sanity.

Evolution has happened again, and I think I got it right this time. That's why Stewie is screaming at me with Rex Harrison's voice and Audrey Hepburn is staring at me as if I stole her show.
After my Bikini post I began to seriously think about my plot and what was wrong with it. And then this crazy idea popped into my head, as many of my ideas are.

Writing a novel is a funny thing.
I had never really understood about books and documents being a living thing.
But the bible and other religious writings speak to the people that are devoted to them. We are told in school that the Constitution is a living document, it changes, adapts and supports our country and foundations with it's words so elegantly scripted.
My novel evolves. It lives in a Frankensteinish sort of way. Even though I know what direction I want it to go, the writing dictates how it gets there. Things I desperately want to happen, and things I want my characters to say just don't work. They wouldn't do that or they wouldn't say that so a different direction I go. I follow my characters, they lead and I just write in their wake.
My story wants to survive, it hasn't given up on me and I am not about to give up on it.

And boy did I really go a different direction.
I started a whole new rewrite, a whole new perspective, a whole new beginning in a completely different part of the story line.
For the first time I love it. It feels right. That all the crap that I have written before was just clarifying back story. Setting tone and direction. Giving me the foundation to write the story that is interesting and cryptic adding a whole different element I had never thought about including before. Now there is intensity and purpose. The adventure starts right away. And then this really weird thing happened. I'm not sure how I feel about it.
I actually wrote a romantic scene and it was good, better than good. It was great. My sister even liked it. (That is saying something. She was so stinking cute. I gave her one version and asked for an opinion and she didn't really like it and she totally felt bad about it. I told her an honest critic gets books published. Telling me what I want to hear doesn't. So I rewrote the version and let her read that one and she liked it a whole lot better.)
Is it perfect no? Not yet. Is it a whole hell of alot better than anything else I have written? Bet your bottom dollar it is.
I no longer feel trapped by my stupid brain and my small computer. (Which needs a new battery. My power cord is my life line right now.)
I feel an evil laugh coming on, but I will spare you.
Some day soon I will shut Stewie up in my head and have a manuscript to send out and then maybe, just maybe I will walk into a book store and there it will be, my book.

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