…I’m in trouble deep! Oh, Madonna–another hit song, another controversy. Love her or hate her, I think everyone can agree we’ll never see another artist/star like her. She literally changed the world in so many ways–and IMAGINE how conservatives got upset over a young woman who owned and flaunted her own sexuality…those videos are all so tame now, and even then the haters missed the point of most of them. (Google the controversy about her “Like a Prayer” video, and then actually watch the video. It’s about racism and doing the right thing.)
So here we are on Friday morning in the Lost Apartment and all is well. Sparky has been fed and is now curled up under my desk. I slept very well and a little bit later this morning, and feel pretty well rested from a good night’s sleep. I have a meeting on-line in a few hours, some work to get done, and lots of chores to do. I also need to do some reading and writing, and order some things to be delivered. I am going to try not to leave the house this weekend, if at all possible. I want to finish a newsletter and get it sent out tomorrow morning, too. I did wind up getting a bit tired in the afternoon, and had errands to run after work. Traffic heading uptown was absolutely horrible, but with proper a/c in the car it wasn’t terrible. I picked up the mail, a prescription, and a few things at the grocery store–I cut it back because we were in a heat advisory and I didn’t want to have to deal with getting the wagon and so forth, figuring I’d just pay to have it delivered today or tomorrow. What can I say? I’m old and there was a heat advisory called that lasts until tonight at eight, I think. YIKES!
I’ve been listening to Fleetwood Mac and Stevie Nicks records in the car, and I finally decided to make a Rumours playlist, my own mix of the record’s line-up. I’ve always thought it was wrong that “Silver Spring” wasn’t included on that album, and I knew exactly where it belonged: between “Go Your Own Way” and “The Chain,’ replacing “Songbird,” which I replaced “Oh Daddy” with, and added “Fireflies” after “Gold Dust Woman.” This playlist is perfect, frankly. That is exactly where “Silver Spring” belongs, and the three songs all play into each other, like they’re finally in the right order. I also realized that “Songbird” wound up where it is because it was the final song on Side One of the record. and it was a nice mellow way of getting you up to flip the record over. I can’t believe it took me this long to make said playlist, and despite almost fifty years of listening to it in its original order, I don’t expect to hear “Songbird” when “Go Your Own Way” fades out.
The lovely thing about my weekends now is that I have so much free time on them now that I don’t feel like I work very hard on them now, but manage to get things done. It feels like I am being lazy, honestly, but then I am like, but look at what you got done! I’m still adjusting to the last twenty years or so of being insanely busy. It’s kind of nice when your to-do notebook doesn’t have a lot of things in it to do, isn’t it? I am going to make a list just for today–it’s so satisfying to cross things off, it pleases me to no end–so I can make sure to stay on track. I also have a short work week coming up; I’ve taken Thursday and Friday off for my birthday next week. Huzzah!
As for this weekend, I am going to try to get stuff done while relaxing. We’ll see how that goes, but I do want to get Chapters 1-4 checked for continuity issues, the files updated, and work on an strong outline of the first four and get some character work as well. I may work on some short stories, and I may get going on some organization of thoughts for the next Scotty, which will be called New Orleans Nemesis. (I’ve always loved the word nemesis, and I am excited to be using it as a title.) I have some amorphous thoughts rolling around in my head–thoughts that include the pirate Dominique Youx, the German Coast slave rebellion, a prized jewel from the past, the murder of one of Scotty’s ex-friends, and Scotty’s past haunting him yet again.
And the Saints are back for the preseason tomorrow! GEAUX SAINTS! I cannot believe it is almost football season…and on that note, I am going to get cleaned up and going on my day. Have a delightful Friday, Constant Reader, and I will be in the morning. See you then!
Monday morning, and the shopping days left till my birthday are slowly but surely getting crossed off my calendar. Yesterday was a lovely relaxing day at home; I did some on-line shopping (ordered a new pair of glasses from Zenni; we’ll see how they work out once they arrive; I may order a few other pairs to be more color-conscious; and yes, I know how weird that is for me–I didn’t get the fashion gene that most gay men seem to be born with, and so I’ve never really cared much about clothes other than their function–especially glasses
) and then spent some time doing the fun part of writing: thinking about the book(s).
I love that part. I actually realized yesterday that I was flying without a navigator (as usual), which is probably a mistake. I hadn’t spent any time really thinking about the story of Mississippi River Mischief and how it would impact the characters and how they interact with each other, etc. I had some basics down; I knew how I was going to start the story and open the book, and what I was going to include in it–I also recognized that another subplot is too big a story to be included in this book, and so I had to put it to the side for now, for use at a later date in a different book. But beyond that I hadn’t really thought much about it, and that was problematic for me and would inevitably cause problems for me down the line as I struggled to write a strong first draft. I also realized that a lot of what I was writing was going to take place outside of New Orleans, and yes, I know it’s anal of me, but my fictional Louisiana was far too amorphous. My work has always centered New Orleans and I’ve always been a stickler about getting that correct–I know I’ve made mistakes, I got Orleans and St. Louis Streets reversed in one book, or example– but over the course of forty-odd books, inevitably parts of some of them had to take place outside New Orleans. (I had, oddly enough, no qualms about completely fictionalizing the entire state of Louisiana for the most part outside of the metro area.) And being anal, I realized I had no real “map” or idea of what fictional parish or city or plantation was where and what names I’d used where and so on and so forth. And yes, I know it probably doesn’t matter–no reader would ever take the time to go through all of my books and try to piece Greg’s fictional Louisiana together and point out contradictions and errors, but it would bother me knowing that it was a mess outside Orleans and Jefferson parishes.
Something clearly had to be done.
So, I spent yesterday afternoon doing Scotty research–namely, checking every book I’ve ever written with scenes that take place outside of the metro area and try to assemble all of those places into a coherent and cogent “world” of Louisiana, strictly of my own making. I did allow myself to get sidetracked a few times with research into other projects, current or upcoming (the Great Hurricane of 1915, and the legend of Julia White were Internet wormholes I happily went down yesterday; I think a story I am going to write for an anthology call will be based in these two events), which is always a delight; Louisiana and New Orleans history are literal treasure troves for thoughts and ideas and so forth (another wormhole: the German Coast of the Mississippi River) and also humbling at the same time, because these wormholes always remind me how little I actually do know and understand about New Orleans and Louisiana.
Revisiting old books–especially Scotty ones–inevitably bring back memories of the time period in which the book was written, where the idea for it came from, what I was trying to do with it, and so on and so forth…not to mention how the character himself has changed and grown along with my writing styles and skills. It also reminds me of other things, too–plans I used to write the books, ideas and thought processes for the characters and their futures, and so on; things I had forgotten over the passage of time. I also sent the pdf of Jackson Square Jazz to my iPad; so I can slowly start copy-editing it so I can put up the ebook on Kindle at long last–there was also a part of that novel, part of Scotty’s long-forgotten past that only appears in this particular book that I want to circle around back to for this one. There are, I suspect, any number of sub-plots and character arcs that have been left hanging within the series over the years, and I don’t think it’s such a bad idea to reread the entire series again from start to finish since I am writing another book in the series. Obviously, I love Scotty and he is a part of me, and I don’t have a hard time slipping into his voice again (one of the things, I think, that makes writing a series a bit easier than writing a stand-alone–or starting a new series–is that ease of finding the character’s voice again. I’ve written eight Scotty books now, it should be easy to find his voice again), but there are a lot of other things I need to revisit and remember from the previous books in the series, so as to avoid continuity issues and things like that which plague me constantly.
For the record, the books I had to consult to map out my fictional Louisiana included not only Scotty books, but Murder in the Arts District (Chanse), The Orion Mask, a pseudonymous book or two, and some short stories. If A Streetcar Named Murder indeed becomes the launch of a new series for me, I’ll need that fictional map of Louisiana for that series as well–I’d already brought up one of my fictional parishes in the text of Streetcar, so…
I also reread the first four chapters of something else that is currently in progress to also kind of sort of make sense of it as well (and a good thing, too–I had two completely different sleazy gay dive hustler bars in the same neighborhood in two different chapters; easy enough to fix of course, and another continuity issue). This is going to sound weird–what else is new with one Gregalicious–but I am writing another book at the same time as this Scotty; I am sending a chapter a week to a friend, kind of like a serial novel, but I had not gone back and reread what I had already written on it (hence the two sleazy gay hustler bars in the same area of the fictional city) and so it went off the rails slightly (I suspected it was doing so and even remarked on it when I sent the email with the most recent chapter attached), and I am going to have to go back and clean that all up before proceeding–because it’s too big of a mistake to leave in the draft for correcting in another, later draft (plus, it will bother me to no end knowing those big mistakes are there), so I think I am going to have to make those fixes before I write Chapter 5–which is a good thing, because I am not really sure how to write chapter 5 or what to do in it; revisiting and fixing the first four chapters is always a good idea in these situations.
The problem with not outlining is because sometimes you get stuck.
We also binged a lot of The Sandman last night. What an extraordinary show–the visuals are absolutely stunning (I keep thinking how visually breathtaking it would be on the big screen), and the costumes, the art and set design, everything is just stunningly perfect, and the stories themselves (as well as the over-arcing storyline) are depicted and acted and written beautifully. This is the adaptation of the series I always wanted to see but never dared dream we would get; Paul and I are both just completely blown away by its brilliance (I also loved that Cain and Abel, from the old comics House of Mystery and House of Secrets, are a part of this universe; I loved those comics back when I was a kid–note to DC: make an anthology series of both of those comics, please.) We only have three episodes left, but by the time we finish this show–probably Wednesday, given how our weekday evenings seem to go–there should be some other amazing shows dropped for us to watch–I am particularly looking forward to The Serpent Queen; I’ve been asking for a Catherine de Medici series for years and now we are getting one that seems to embrace and encompass her manipulation and dedication to the acquisition of power, and of course House of the Dragon looks like it could be very fun, and other shows will be returning soon as well with new episodes.
So, overall it was a great weekend; I cannot complain. It was productive–perhaps not as productive as I would have liked, but I do feel like some seriously good work was done this weekend, and that’s all that matters. I have some work-at-home duties today–trying to decide whether to run errands today or on the way home from work tomorrow (on the way home is currently winning the debate in my head), and about the only real disappointment in the weekend was not being able to make time to read.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again later or tomorrow; depends on when I finish writing these other blog posts that are more essay-driven than the norm.
Queer and Loathing in America 