The Muddle
January 1, 1970
October Newsletter from the desk of Karen BrichouxContents:
*News
*Article: The Muddle
*What I’m Reading
News:
*FALLING INTO THE WORLD is a November RT Bookclub Top Pick in mainstream fiction! Sheri Melnick wrote that the book “Draws the reader into the story and never lets go.” If I ever meet Sheri, I’m going to thank her for making my day. My month. What a great way to start magical October.
*If you would like to be added to my snail-mail mailing list to receive a postcard informing you of upcoming releases (this amounts to one postcard a year and is the only thing I will send you), send your address to email@karenbrichoux.com Please put “mailing list” in the subject line. The amount of spam lately is making it difficult to figure out what is legitimate e-mail (this goes for all e-mail). I try to always respond when I receive an e-mail (even if it takes a few days), so if you don’t get a reply, I probably didn’t get your e-mail.
*Article: The Muddle
My father used to have a book on writing (a book that was left behind during a cross-Pacific move and that we’ve never found again--it would help if we could remember the author or title) that outlined various plot possibilities. My father’s favorite was “Get your hero up a tree, throw rocks at him, get him out of the tree.” I am currently at the point in my draft where I’m lobbing great big honking rocks at my poor hero.
It seems like this would be the easy part of the book, right? It isn’t. This is the part of the draft I call “the muddle.” It’s right after the middle of the book; right where the hero stops reacting to all the stones I’m throwing at him and starts acting. But how do I make that transition? Things have to build. Things have to happen. Conversations have to take place. And the whole thing is just a confused, smelly mess.
Have you ever stepped into a swampy area? One of those places where water sits on top of mud and rotten vegetation year round? Well, the muddle smells a lot like it smells when you disturb all that rotten muck. It stinks. The best I can do is acknowledge how bad the muddle smells. As I’m writing through the muddle, I chant over and over, “This stinks. I know it stinks. It stinks so badly my neighbors are going to all move away. But this isn’t permanent. This is a draft. Once the story is finished, I will rewrite it. It will probably still stink, but right now, the smell isn’t my problem.”
It’s taken nearly eleven novels (published and unpublished) to reach the point where I can continue writing the draft and not get hopelessly bogged down in the muddle. Notice that I don’t say I don’t get bogged down. I get bogged down. But I don’t get hopelessly, helplessly, don’t-write-for-weeks-depressed bogged down. I know that if I just keep writing pages every day, I will finish the draft; then, miraculously, the muddle will turn into a puddle during revisions. And stepping into a puddle is a lot more fun than stepping into a swamp.
*What I’m Reading:
Sadly, nothing has changed in my reading life--I’m too busy writing to read except for the books we’re reading as a family. Right now, we’re on Harry Potter IV. Other than that, all I’ve been reading is Science News, the newspaper, Fine Gardening, and a few paragraphs a night from an excellent book called START WITH THE SOIL, which is about organic gardening.