Comparative reading

 

It's no secret that I love nonfiction more than fiction, but I read a lot of both. But nonfiction is addictive. I also like to pair books at times, because I think better about both books if I have something to compare and contrast. In school, from a very young age all the way through college, when I wrote compare and contrast papers, I was must happier, more productive, and highly creative. Even the short essays got remarks. Often this leads me down rabbit holes and I can stay there, what my friends call, "Janie is gone deep diving." Sometimes it is not pretty and I might stay gone a long time. I can't say that aging has helped this. But it hurts my writing and also my fiction reading. I have learned how to break up these obsessions but when I was going through my personal papers this last week, the ones on writing, I saw the highlights of my deepest loves in literature and history and had to admit, I do have have favorites. It must be noted that when I was very young, in my early years of college, I knew I would never be what I call, an "academic bee." While we need them in our lives, I do not have that kind of personality and avoided the idea of specializing, which meant I would be a teacher of some kind but not a tenured one and not one who specialized in one subject. Basically that is what happened. I also began writing around age thirty, encouraged that I could pay bills with it and then just tutor so I could stay home. Laughing. There I could garden and paint while doing all the other things I HAD to do. Oh well. I like reading a lot. I like learning. It may be a "the great escape" but who really knows. And certainly it's too late to care. So back to Eliot.

For example, with this book on George Eliot, I am pairing White Heat, which is about Emily Dickinson. But they are related and they have a deep connection in how women chose to live their lives, via their own times and geography. And I am going to compare and contrast them as I read, while noting every issue I can on women prior to 1973, when women got Roe vs Wade. Something like this is fun for me. I find it just as entertaining other people do long TV shows like Game of Thrones, etc. Eliot and Dickinson had a lot more in common than I ever really understood before I went looking.

Other things. Still reading Dracula. I love it.

I am working on The Ambitious Fairy Project, writing on the story at a slow pace while I type in my long, long timeline and do the calendars. I finally chose the year 1876. I like to ground my fantasy in some kind of reality. But it's alternative history really. I have definitely cheated on some things. Mostly bathrooms and barbwire. Laughing. Two things essential to this story. It's strange to create a story like this and somehow make it related to issues today. I hope I can pull it off.

TRYING TO HAVE SOME FUN.

Crazy Janie is writing a big novel.

 

Last night, as I finished organizing the last of my papers so I can finally keep up with all my writings, notebooks, poems, sbort stories, letters, and so forth, I realized, with this terrible sinking feeling, because I am no longer in my teens, 20s, 30s, even 40s, etc. that I cannot do it all. One of my sons asked me to write out what I still needed to do while writing forward on the novel. I made a list. And then we all laughed. So, let me be very clear, the novel I am writing now, this version is settled.

I don't want to rehash the medical and mental side of why this novel is so challenging but I do have a vision challenge and this novel is beyond my skill set, so to speak. My doctor even used AI to specifically choose a page background color (custom greenish gray) in Word to use where I would have less eye strain. The fact that I wrote all my notes and novel in cursive has not helped. We are all laughing again. It hurts to write here. My eye is very light sensitive.

I cannot do it all.

I know I cannot do it all.

I need help.

I need to read less. I need to be on social media less.

I chose the image of Crazy Jane by Richard Dadd for several reasons. I am a big fan of Dadd, 19th century mental health is part of my novel's geography, and I feel a bit crazy at the moment. It may be crazy to a degree in writing this novel. I often feel it is. It is all outside my normal skill set. I have had to educate myself to attempt it. I've been failing at many things my entire life. I will always have more failures than successes. But I could just retire completely and do nothing. 

I can quit gardening. I can give up painting. I can read less, a lot less. I don't need TV or films. But I don't believe I can give up walking or writing. I will die doing both, even facing going blind.

P.S. Edited on the 6th. I am still reading, but I have absolutely no schedule anymore. I can put a book down and not even come back to it. The same goes for social media. I just let myself off the mental, self-imposed ritual of both. I do believe I was ready for this, that this disdain for having something to say online is about what I know as reality. I never was a content provider. I just played, and play is what I want to do. I want to play at everything really. Time is running out.

Pinning down the Plot and Threads

 One of the things I do before I get into the final work of the novel is "going through my plot and making sure all my plot points are right, that I have unity, that I have characters properly placed in the narrative, that the threads are in the right places to cross and meet, that I have the right amount of tension vs the amount of interiority and character building."

 I really write character driven novels since I came out of the romance genre. I was one of the first historical romance writers to use a lot of fantasy and paranormal elements in my fiction. I love the fantasy genre but I tend to like writers like Patricia McKillip, Naomi Novik, Alix Harrow, Robin McKinley, Susanna Clarke, and Erin Morgenstern. Angela Carter is an influence. I really don't write trail rides anymore.

The challenge I faced with this story was how to write a big story, with characters that had huge backstories, and do it small. Why? Because this is a character driven story and I am not an epic fantasy writer. Plus I hate flashbacks. Just writing versions of this book and throwing them away taught me what I could not do. And maybe how to write the closest version to what I imagined in my mind. I had to let go of a lot of things and yes, people. I had to learn how to write differently than any other previous book I had written or worked on. 

It's been a wonderful challenge for me. When I start working really hard on it in a few weeks, I am going to be updating a little here and for the most part, disappearing. I don't know right now how to write this novel and the next one while doing social media. I just don't.

I've had to think about writing in ways I never thought about it throughout the years. I've had to read many novels and other books. I've had to do lots of research for this novel, too, because the heart of it is true to the setting, the legal laws, and much of the folklore and magic systems that make the foundation of my own mythology. It's full of literary allusions and that sort of thing, too.

Well, I finished the song list, which is also a plot list, but nobody knows how that works but me. But you can see how I manipulated Syd Fields. Laughing. Everything is really balanced out. I am sure to change things as I build the new parts but hey, it's got a strong set of bones to work with and I'm settled.

I am reading both Dracula and The Sound and the Fury now. I am going to try to do some Dracula and reading updates soon. I am still going through writing papers. I need to type in timelines, too, as well as finish my calendars. I have changed the year 3 times, and some of the things are historical. Time is an important element of this novel, so is memory. I can honestly say this is the best heroine I have ever written. I write boys and men well, but I have had weaker heroines. I believe this is due to my personal life. My best friend in high school was a bisexual boy. I gave birth to boys, I tutored mostly boys. And when I studied history, it was mostly about war and warriors and soldiers. It's crazy to think I was a feminist all my life and what some of my friends called radical. But I grew up in a very conservative place and I was very progressive so I did not really meet a lot of girls I liked or could identify with growing up. Only my mother. Laughing. Most of my research books and reading for the last ten years has been making up time with women. I read mostly women now. And have spent a lot of time on the law concerning women and then other gender studies. It has made me a better writer. I do have two sisters, but their world view and mine are not the same at all. My older sister is terribly sweet but we don't see the big picture the same or even read the same books anymore. Once upon a time we did. But I outgrew those authors long ago.

Time is real. You cannot stop time. You cannot defeat time. But you can step away and live with hope.

“...I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire...I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all of your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.”

        — William Faulkner

             The Sound and the Fury

It's October and Halloween Time.

 

(Edited Sept 5) I am still reading Dracula, but at a much slower pace. This will mostly likely be the only outside WIP reading I do the rest of 2026. I just cannot do it all anymore..

Today, I began my October reading journey. I have planned to read Dracula, three chapters a session a day, stop, reflect, and then write my thoughts in these small black, dotted paged notebooks. Before I began the book, I read some critical essays on the publication and history of Dracula. I suppose that makes my Dracula journey ten  sessions instead of nine. It's ideal to spend at least two weeks (14 days) on a book like this, instead of 14 hours. It gives the reader those spaces creatives like Shelley and Brian Molko talked about, time to reflect and think and experience the wonder of reading.

There were times in university when I did not have this privilege.

Recently I've been reading great writers' essays on writing, and many of those books speak to the privilege and necessity of reading. Some of these authors were very clear, in their own way of course, that you look to your time, your needs, and your personal pleasures when reading. So I asked myself, due the vision crisis I faced last year, what books were important to me and why. October seemed like the perfect time to read a couple of Gothic books, vampire books in specific, two books, written very differently, with two kinds of vampires, and essentially different themes, though both are definitely hallmarked Gothic fiction.

My children would be surprised that I did not choose The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice, which is usually read every other year in the Halloween season. I believe The  Vampire Lestat is Anne Rice's finest piece of fiction, the story of the young, restless, and shallow French aristocratic boy who became a perfectly Romantic and soul-searching vampire after enduring a bad beginning. If you have not read the novel, you probably don't understand why I called Lestat a boy. Well, he was barely 20, emotionally about 12, could not read at first, had no occupation, was neglected by his family, and failed at every attempt to grow up. Then out of nowhere, he was made a vampire by someone who didn't even explain to him what was happening. Bad beginning. There was a streak of conduct disorder in this boy, resentment toward his father and brothers, toward his own personal failures and boredom. He loved his mother, who was not fit to breed children, much less one as sensitive and needy as Lestat. His childhood Anne Rice understood well, and this is what drove Lestat through several versions of himself. The need to understand the world, the drive to share, the hope to love. One of my favorite scenes in this novel is when Lestat literally has a panic attack when he realizes he can die, and if he dies, he won't even know it. It was dramatic irony and sort of funny. The Vampire Lestat is really a coming of age novel. The fact that no one who writes scripts for either TV or film understands this is bewildering to me. Also utterly disappointing.

So the second book I chose is The Quick by Lauren Owen, a book I love. It is a book steeped in the Gothic tradition of the late 19th century, a perfect companion to Dracula, the story of a young woman in search of her lost brother who has fallen in with a terrible lot of vampires. The novel really sizzles when the author takes it to the streets of London and the reader meets all sorts of characters who are now vampires. One of them is so inspiring, because it's my favorite idea, one I wrote years before I read the novel. A young girl who is a vampire. It is not Anne Rice's kind of child vampire at all, more like my idea of what it would be like for a child to be immortal, wild, free, determined, and hungry all the time.

Until next time....

It seems all my books are about Dragonslayers slaying TROPES!

 My big news for the end of September are exciting for me as a writer. 

First, and I say this with hope that I have few medical issues from this day on, is that I have finally settled on what the novel, Bee Fly Crow (working title of The Ambitious Fairy Project) is, meaning few changes will be made now except in word choice, not structural choice. This work should have been done last year but was not and it took me roughing things out, writing by long hand, putting scrapes on notebards, dictating, even making oral recording to get all this story down to where I could actually look at the whole and know what it is. I am so happy. That basic rough work is done. I suppose this is equivalent to a good rough draft for some writers, though my book is planned and I write with intent for theme, micro-clues, easter eggs, you name it. 

Second. I  have read more of my research books and now it's just cleaning up my notes. My big ambitious fairy novel took lots of reseach and at times, it was just overwhelming and I felt really vulnerable. I have never written a book with this much research, including long time lines and calendars and yes, loops of time. I can only imagine what this will do to copyeditors. Laughing. 

Third: I wrote some good drafts for short stories, including two very strong ones that are related to my novels and a third that is related to the novel, Dracula. BTW, I start reading Dracula tomorrow with notes as I go. Which leads me to my next big thing, I am writing a vampire novel and the working title is Dragonfly. It's a revised and yes, basically rewritten version of an old novel, so much so, that I hardly recognize it except for some basic plot events. Very excited I love historical novels set in the South. SO it's a favorite.

Fourth, I have picked all the books I am going to read until I finish my novel and send it off. Many have been read once or twice. But I will type up notes. I feel so accomplished. I feel good that I have a plan, not too rigid and some of it is fun, with art projects. 

FINALLY: Personal news.

Yard is mowed and edged, now weeded. Halloween decorations in house up, and, I have one stack of writing related papers to organize. I will have to type up timelines, loops, and diary entries as I write onward. But hey, I know what they are! That is over half the battle.

I will also be blogging, just for me, it seems, but who cares. I will not be on social media for at least two weeks and am gradually going to wean myself from daily social media all across the Internet. I just cannot do it anymore. It makes me ill.

Then the best for last:

People, I have subverted every trope I could squeeze into my work. It is beautiful to do such things at this point in my life. Subverting tropes is my new goal. To be honest, I am killing tropes. Killing them dead.

A Welsh Prince

 

Alan Lee from Pwyll Prince of Dyfed (The Mabinogion), Medieval Welsh Tales, 1982