This is Christo.
He moved in last week. He’s raided the refrigerator and has generally made himself at home. At least at home as he’s likely to be anywhere.
He’s been filling me in on his back story, and the woman in his life — who is not Natalie.
Well, give him time. He’ll figure it out eventually.
Keep good thoughts for us. We’ll be working together this week while I’m in Missouri visiting friends and going to an art retrospective.
Stay tuned.
Those of you who have been here a while remember when I was reading Twyla Tharp’s The Creative Habit.
I blogged about it a lot and probably sold quite a few books for her along the way. I still find myself going back to it again and again, thinking about the current book or about the books to come or just about being creative.
As Seb has now gone on his merry way, I needed to go back to the beginning — to ideas and inspiration and suchlike — the flotsam and jetsam out of which, eventually, a story will appear.
Often that starts with characters. Sometimes with a situation. Rarely with a plot (sometimes there never is a plot, or so it seems). Occasionally with a place.
This book started with names. In a conversation about our family history that I had with my cousin a week ago, lots of names appeared. Most of them disappeared again back into the family pictures and stories and whatnot, and will doubtless appear again when next we talk.
But two stayed. Two said, “I have a story.” They weren’t the people we’d been talking about at all. But they shared their names. I wondered if they would stay around, tell me their story, or if they would drift off again. Some do.
These aren’t going anywhere. They’ve moved in, settled down and are raiding the refrigerator even as I write. He’s every bit as hard-edged as I need him to be. His mother’s Greek. His father’s missing. But he wasn’t Greek. He might have been Portuguese. My hero has a soft spot for only one woman — the heroine’s mother. He doesn’t know the heroine exists. Yet.
The heroine knows he exists. She’s never met him. She’s bound to run into him. Our house isn’t that big — and we only have one refrigerator. And then there’s her mother who has plans of her own.
The new box is filling up. I don’t have a location yet. Some big city. Maybe SF. Maybe Seattle. Maybe NYC. Maybe London. Maybe LA. I haven’t done an LA story in years. Still thinking. I think I’d like an ocean nearby. LA is sounding more and more likely.
This actually is fun.
Check back in the coming days and you can meet my hero.
This business of ‘no revisions’ has freed up my time. From waiting for the other shoe to drop, suddenly they’ve been neatly put away in the closet and I am allowed to get on with my life.
Weird.
Pleasant, of course. Don’t get me wrong. I love not having revisions. But weird all the same.
It’s giving me time to go visit with friends I haven’t seen since Christmas. It’s allowing me to actually read books written by other people in the middle of the day. It’s given me the luxury of saying, Why not? when someone suggests a last minute, Why don’t we do thus and such?
I could get used to this.
But I probably shouldn’t. I should just get on with the new book. I’m giving it serious — well, sort of serious — thought. I get bits and pieces as I think about other things. Or I get glimmers of ideas that might work. It’s sort of interesting, this watching myself pick over pieces of flotsam and jetsam and evaluating them. I’ve never done it before. Haven’t had the time to do it.
Is this a good thing?
Who knows? But I’m enjoying it.
By the way, pictures have not been loading on my blog since sometime on the weekend. So if they start showing up, you’ll know the problem is fixed. They’re there. But they don’t get up on the site. And today nothing much is loading. Hmmm.
