Other books

One of my biggest problems in writing is that I want to write something else. No matter how much I love my current book, other ideas intrude. Of course at the time they seem like the greatest idea that's ever been had, like it would be an absolute crime not to go write them right away, now now now!

I am trying not to do this. I'll go write excited notes about a thing, but then ideally come back to my current one true love. No cheating on your book!

Today BLDGBLOG just wrecked my ability to do that by posting about two different books that are such great inspiration for that book I've put on the back burner that I'm hopping up and down to go write that right now. Jeez!

I don't usually use other books when writing MY books. Is that weird? I don't really do research except for bits of information--where is this town, and are there mountains nearby? what is the law on x?--and I don't like to let other fiction have too much to do with my own because of my chameleon nature.

But these! One is Camus's The Plague. The other is The Last Town on Earth. Both deal with walled and quarantined cities in ways that are absolutely right exactly about what that sad neglected book is about.

It's not that I haven't tried to write it. It just never quite worked, whatever I did. I wrote it as a comic book! Didn't work. I wrote it as a novel several different ways! Got a couple chapters in and it was apparent each time that that wasn't working. It's SUCH a great idea, I know this. I know it's going to become something amazing at some point. But I have some kind of problem with it and I'm not quite sure what it is.

The Plague might have given me a clue, though. And The Last Town on Earth gave me another piece of the puzzle.

I wonder if books that aren't working are missing pieces, like engines that will work for a bit then sputter out if they're missing something they need. You can duct tape a metal disc over that hole in your carburetor (I have done this and driven a thousand miles that way) but probably it's not the way to get there with your sanity intact.

The images these books gave me, the insights into how to solve my story problems, are making me completely wild to write it RIGHT EXACTLY NOW, so I'm going to do it anyway even though I'm sort of against that or whatever. And I have seven papers to grade. But I can grade them later on, sheesh, when this book isn't whanging on the inside of my brains, trying to get out. Sometimes you have to let the other book get its turn even when it's not next in line!