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No, not a bizarre sex joke. I mean, I know I sometimes make *nudge,nudge* jokes about which stud nugget I have locked up in my basement, but I don't have a basement. And really, a sex slave would just be another person I'd have to clean up after.

Perhaps I've said too much. ;)

Seriously, though. By "men in the basement" (or perhaps "persons in the basement") I mean my subconscious. They do the heavy lifting on stories when I'm not thinking about them. In fact, NOT thinking about a story obsessively is a necessary part of my process.

In both of the larger things I'm working on now, I had an issue. in one, it was about how to tell a particular part of the story without putting myself to sleep, much less any poor readers who might wander in by accident. In the other, I had the bones of the plot all mapped out, and thought I knew exactly what was going to happen, but for a few niggling details that wouldn't quite fall into place.

I banged my head against both of these situations, even wrote sections of both stories in a few different ways trying to connect the dots. Trying to force it.

Within a day or two of giving up in disgust, a few interesting things happened. First, I was pouring myself a glass of water. I do that several times a day, actually, so it's not a big deal, but I was thinking about the water, and the glass, and trying not to splash. From absolutely nowhere, I realized that I'd written a certain planet as a dwarf planet, kind of an overgrown asteroid, which meant that its gravity would be much less, solving an issue I had anticipated (and totally gotten stuck on) in the next bit. The basement folk had already laid out the solution in part I'd written earlier (and already published so, wow, it will *really* look like I knew what I was doing when it comes out) but the memo hadn't gotten all the way to my conscious mind.

The other thing was a face and a name that came to me just as I woke up day before yesterday. A germ of an idea that solves all my problems with the shape-shifter story, including titles for all three books in the series. Five FREAKING months I have agonized over it, after three months of trying a couple different re-writes, and Oh, a hundred thousand words circling the drain. The Basement Folk were just waiting on me to let go if it. Once I got it out of my worry machine long enough, the story elves polished it up and left it on my freaking pillow.

Oh, GOD, how I loves them!
Mood:: 'embarrassed' embarrassed
There are 13 comments on this entry. (Reply.)
 
posted by [identity profile] deadcat-vagrant.livejournal.com at 07:47pm on 17/12/2008
Gotta love them fornits, huh? ;)
 
posted by [identity profile] asatomuraki.livejournal.com at 10:14pm on 17/12/2008
Fornits? Is that what they're called? But yeah. Gotta love 'em.
 
posted by [identity profile] deadcat-vagrant.livejournal.com at 11:03pm on 17/12/2008
The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet, a long short story by Stephen King. Discusses the concept of little people that write novels for fun, called Fornits... also is a good story breaking down how someone can go absolutely BATSHIT and not even realize what's happening... or perhaps isn't batshit after all. It's left ambigious to which it actually is, which I like.
 
posted by [identity profile] asatomuraki.livejournal.com at 02:20pm on 18/12/2008
Oh, YEAH! King is a master at that sort sort of story. Kind of a creepy thought, though.
 
posted by [identity profile] deadcat-vagrant.livejournal.com at 05:09pm on 18/12/2008
Little bit creepy, but still one HELL of a story. It's in the Everything's Eventual collection.
 
posted by [identity profile] asatomuraki.livejournal.com at 08:50pm on 18/12/2008
I read that! (I think...) I'm surprised I didn't remember. Heh.
 
posted by [identity profile] deadcat-vagrant.livejournal.com at 12:44am on 19/12/2008
Well, 1408 kind of grabs your attention more than most... :)


And I was wrong: Ballad is in Skeleton Crew, not Everything's Eventual. Eventual was Riding the Bullet.
 
posted by [identity profile] asatomuraki.livejournal.com at 03:01am on 19/12/2008
Okay, then. If I've read Skeleton Crew, it was twenty-five years ago, so I guess I can be forgiven for not remembering. ;)
 
posted by [identity profile] deadcat-vagrant.livejournal.com at 06:20am on 19/12/2008
Give it a new read, especially if you're going through a writer's block point. The character is so much more sympathetic that way. :D
 
posted by [identity profile] inyadreems.livejournal.com at 08:55pm on 17/12/2008
Send a few of those guys over here when you're done with them.
 
posted by [identity profile] asatomuraki.livejournal.com at 10:13pm on 17/12/2008
Sure! As soon as I figure out how...
 
posted by [identity profile] archaeologist-d.livejournal.com at 11:27pm on 17/12/2008
I could use a few myself.

I've found that if I make an idiot of myself and complain in public (ie LJ) about how I'm blocked, writer-wise, suddenly I start writing again.

Basement folk, indeed.
 
posted by [identity profile] asatomuraki.livejournal.com at 02:21pm on 18/12/2008
It's one of those weird mental things where trying to hard just squeezes off the valve. So to speak.

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