Dodged a Migraine Bullet

[swestrup]

Had a great birthday yesterday. Thanks everyone for the well-wishing. It was very much appreciated. Promised hugs will be collected as soon as possible, oh yes!

I ended up overindulging, and blew all of my birthday money on taking taxlady and I out for breakfast, supper and desert. I hadn't expected to spend that much, but I had forgotten just how expensive eating out has gotten. Still, it was completely worth it, as I was in dire need of a non-carb-counting day. This should hold me until the last week of december, as I don't count carbs between solstice and new years. At least, it will hold me if my nose stops insisting that it can smell hot buttered popcorn, when I know its lying.

I found myself staying up late last night and I finally realized that I just didn't want the day to end. So, I dragged my self off to bed, kissed taxlady good night (who was already in bed, reading), and was soon asleep. I slept in to make up for forcing myself to be up late and as can sometimes happen, it triggered the beginnings of a migraine. I was in the middle of making my second cup of decaf when I realized that the rapidly-increasing pounding in my head was an oncoming migraine. I quickly switched my alonge to real coffee and washed it down with some 222s (aka AC&C).

It seems to have worked, as the pounding is now receding, but I'm about to go and have a second caffinated espresso, just to make sure. I want to get a bunch of writing done today, to make up for goofing off on NaNoWriMo yesterday, and a migraine would not help.

The Sunday writing jam is already underway downtown, but I'm obviously not there. Its okay. My two experiences with the mini-jams on Wednesdays are that I really do write better alone and in the quiet of my office than in a group with other people. Besides I get a backache if I sit in those chairs hunched over my laptop for too long.

Its odd. Most folks doing NaNoWriMo have to deal with their inner critic preventing them from writing. It keeps telling them its not worth doing, or its not a real novel or things along that line. The writing jams are one way to help overcome that. My inner critic never objects to me writing. It just doesn't want me to ever show the result to anyone, ever.

Now, I have some legitimate concerns along those lines. I've never been in some (okay, most) of the bizarre romantic and/or sexual entanglements I'm writing into my story. However, some of my friends have, and have told me about them in confidence. I've done my best to disguise where my various inspirations have come from, and have rewritten them to change many details, but I worry that I may not have done a good enough job and should I ever make this NaNoWriMo novel public, some of my friends are going to recognize themselves in one or more characters and situations, and not be pleased. (No character in the novel is supposed to BE any one of my friends, but several have character traits borrowed from multiple friends of mine, as I often find it easiest to invent a character by saying, "this person looks roughly like X but they talk more like Y and have W's likes and Z's dislikes.")

Now, my rational self tells me that I'm worrying over nothing. I've done my best to mix-up, change and disguise things, and I don't think I've portrayed any characteristics accurately enough so that someone would decide that they were the base model for any particular person in the novel. Still, it worries me that should I ever let anyone see this there will be some awkward moments where someone says something like: "So, this character is supposed to be ME, isn't it? And you've written me in as the vicitim of tentacle rape!" or worse yet "OMG! You wrote about me and the donkey! No one was ever supposed to know!" (Disclaimer: There is no actual tentacle rape or sex with donkey's in my novel. Yet.)

I think that a large part of my reluctance is actually my inner-critic not wanting me to show my work to the world, but disguising it as concern that I may hurt a friend (something that has far more weight in my head than any mere desire to avoid the embarassment of self-publishing garbage.) Now, a number of friends have asked to see the novel so far, and I've been gratified at the interest, but until I've worked out these issues in my head, I'm keeping it under wraps.

There is also the separate issue of showing someone a half-done work. My experiences in the past with that have been fairly bad, as it seems that folks only ever comment on the known problems (even when I provide a list of known problems I plan to fix along with the half-done work), and never point out any other areas that need work. I expect that once I've done an editing pass over the entire story, I'll be far more willing to show it to the world, but of course that requires the entire story to be written first, and at the rate I'm going, That won't be until 2009.

Comments

[azrhey.livejournal.com]

Well, IMO, inspiration has to come from somewhere. Everyday life, friendships, etc.

I think that as long as you don't carbon copy a single person down to little details it should be all good, non?

Making a patchwork of several people is normal I think.

[thothmeister.livejournal.com]

If you don't plan on anyone else ever reading your book, then concerns about reactions are moot.

If when you finish you do want to let someone read it, then use the First Reader technique, where only that person you choose gets to read it. I would recommend your FR to be someone neutral to any situations; they can tell you if anything written could hurt someone else. Then rewrite said offending section before anyone else reads it.

This bypasses the internal critic until that first draft is done.

[sps.livejournal.com]

That's interesting. I don't think I'd ever thought of this method of constructing people. I think I've always just used the extra people already living in my head ;).