Writing in your head

Traveling is so good for writing. Especially when you're on a bus all on your own. Well, the bus was full of other people going to Frankfurt (3 hour trip), but I was in charge of no one. I brought Fairest, by Gail Carson Levine, and enjoyed it very much. One thing reading does for your writing is let you get the whole story in one fell swoop. It makes me take another look at my pacing, and realize I don't have to agonize for months over one chapter--get to the action, satisfy the reader, move on. It makes me imagine how my story would look set on real, bound paper. It gives me hope.

Then there was all that time to myself just to think! Mostly I thought about the relationships in my book, because that's consistently something I really, really want to get right, whether it's between siblings, or parents and children, or people in love, or even enemies--I want them to be complex and strong and interesting--and true. Not true in the sense of "life is really dreadful, so let's make sure to go for gritty shock value." True in the sense of strengths and weaknesses and choice and consequence and yes, hope.

I jotted down bits of conversation on the bus, and now I'm fighting between typing some of it up, or pulling out The King of Attolia. Hmm, how much sleep do I actually need tonight, anyway?