on breaking rules

One of the traditions in the mystery canon is that the protagonist be a solitary figure, fighting to right the wrongs of society alone. To uphold this tradition, whenever the main character is in danger of becoming involved in a serious romantic relationship, the love interest is almost always disposed of -- either killed, sent away, or in some other way made unavailable to the protagonist. There are exceptions -- Spenser and his long-time girlfriend come to mind -- but most of these occur in the 'cozy' category, where husband-and-wife teams abound, and I spend a lot of time barfing over those.

However, I can't bring myself to do this in my story. I am absolutely infatuated with my love interest character, and I want him to be an ongoing presence in the series. The storyline almost begs for him to have to leave the country, or disappear, and part of me thinks if I had any literary guts, I'd make that happen; i.e., if I keep the love interest I'm wallowing in my own fantasy world instead of telling the story as it should be told.

I'm certainly questioning some other traditions, most notably the 'male pursuit' meme, which is and always has been absolute horse shit. The female characters in every mystery I've ever read are always relentlessly pursued by men, usually because of their extreme beauty, spunkiness and 'independence.' Ha! As if! In real life, women pursue men most of the time, and so it will be in my book.

So why am I gnashing my teeth over the other thing?

making soup

Or something. I've decided that's the best way to describe my writing process. Actually, soup's not quite accurate. It's more like a reduction sauce. Only it's not a sauce.

OK. There's the central story line, that's the main ingredient, like a big hunk of meat, right? Then I have a bunch of scene ideas, secondary story lines, character sub-plots, etc., that I just throw into the pot with it, willy-nilly. I stir everything around a while, then start taking stuff out. What's left (hopefully) is the nicely-flavored story line, with a few succulent side dishes.

What it looks like in reality: I sit down, write a scene in a sort of stream-of-consciousness way, then go back and comb through it, which seems to consist mainly in removing stuff. Then I start the next scene. That seems to be the way I do this writing a book thing.

Of course, I wouldn't be doing any of it without the road map I finished a couple of weeks ago -- I'd have no idea what scene came next. Right now, I'm just enjoying the hell out of the work, and I'm savoring that, because I know it's just a phase. Next week I'll be gnashing my teeth again.

'real life'

I haven't posted here in a while because my Real Job has intruded upon my writing, and so I'm devoting any writing time that becomes available to the book.

Last week, I didn't do ANY paying work at all, I spent the whole week more or less writing, and now my (paid) professional reputation is suffering. I let things go, put them off, and now I'm swamped and scrambling madly to get things done on time, which is something I have prided myself on, in the past, for never doing. That pride, indeed, wenteth before this fall.

So now I'm trying, instead of devoting whole days to writing and then whole days to doing my Real Job, to do half and half. Write for half the day, do Real Job for half the day. What I wouldn't give for a suitcase full of money.