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Two things that are hard
Aug. 30th, 2006 11:52 pmFirstly, attend social events in a language that isn’t your own. I went to a Tupperware party hosted by my neighbor tonight. My German is good, but I still lack the finer points of the language, especially in speaking (as opposed to listening), and then there’s the whole range of subtleties, of meaning something that you don’t actually come out and say, that I don’t always pick up on. There were a number of blanks in the evening, where the conversation mutated to discussions of say, obscure houseplants, complicated further by a mix of Frankish (very hard to understand) and Austrian (mostly easy to understand, but still different from what I’m used to). It was good for me, but also exhausting. Nice people, though.
Secondly, starting a second book. It’s quite like learning a third foreign language. You finally get a second language down, you can talk to people and they understand you, and you think, hey, I can do this! I can learn languages! And then you start all over again, and you realize that pride = nothing, and that you are totally at the bottom again, feeling stupid and frustrated. That’s how I feel trying to write another book. How come I just can’t get it off the ground? It should be easier this time around! Partly I’ve learned just how important beginnings are, and that is freaking me out about my new beginning, and partly I think I’m feeling a bit disloyal to my first characters. I don’t want the same characters in every book, just with different names, but in some ways I’m having difficulty giving them up. I’ve got one solid story lined up and another one whose mood I caught while walking in the woods the other day (and it takes place right here; immediate settings always seem to help me escape writers’ block because I can just take a walk and write about what I encounter—with a little imagination, of course). But getting inside them—that’s hard. Hopefully once school starts, and most of my kids are attending, I’ll have a schedule and can get into the writing more easily. I write better when I can count on a regular opportunity. I manage to rope the muse and drag it back with me that way. The random schedule of waiting around for a quiet moment, or waiting for the muse to catch me just doesn’t work.
Secondly, starting a second book. It’s quite like learning a third foreign language. You finally get a second language down, you can talk to people and they understand you, and you think, hey, I can do this! I can learn languages! And then you start all over again, and you realize that pride = nothing, and that you are totally at the bottom again, feeling stupid and frustrated. That’s how I feel trying to write another book. How come I just can’t get it off the ground? It should be easier this time around! Partly I’ve learned just how important beginnings are, and that is freaking me out about my new beginning, and partly I think I’m feeling a bit disloyal to my first characters. I don’t want the same characters in every book, just with different names, but in some ways I’m having difficulty giving them up. I’ve got one solid story lined up and another one whose mood I caught while walking in the woods the other day (and it takes place right here; immediate settings always seem to help me escape writers’ block because I can just take a walk and write about what I encounter—with a little imagination, of course). But getting inside them—that’s hard. Hopefully once school starts, and most of my kids are attending, I’ll have a schedule and can get into the writing more easily. I write better when I can count on a regular opportunity. I manage to rope the muse and drag it back with me that way. The random schedule of waiting around for a quiet moment, or waiting for the muse to catch me just doesn’t work.
