Keeping the pump primed….

A bit of dialogue from Bull Durham:

Crash Davis: I never told him to stay out of your bed.
Annie Savoy: You most certainly did.
Crash Davis: I never told him to stay out of your bed.
Annie Savoy: Yes you did.
Crash Davis: I told him that a player on a streak has to respect the streak.
Annie Savoy: Oh fine.
Crash Davis: You know why? Because they don’t – -they don’t happen very often.
Annie Savoy: Right.
Crash Davis: If you believe you’re playing well because you’re getting laid, or because you’re not getting laid, or because you wear women’s underwear, then you are! And you should know that!

There are two main reasons I’ve been posting more tersely here of late. First, because Daily Life has been unusually busy the last week-and-a-half. Last weekend we were out of town for four days (more on that to come!), and then we were out of town again yesterday (for the Rochester Lilac Festival, more on that to come!). I had a special project at The Store that required me to go back in for a few hours at night in addition to working my usual shift. Guy Gavriel Kay, my favorite living author, had a new book come out (and I still haven’t dug into it much, but that’s on the docket for later today). Other books needed finishing and returning to the library. I cooked dinner a bunch. My mother needed some stuff carried from here to there, or from there to here. Doggos needed walking. Episodes of The Repair Shop (more on that to come!) and Letterkenny (more on that to come!) needed watching. And more!

Second, and more importantly, I’ve been on a streak regarding the work-in-progress (or ‘WIP’, as writer-folks refer to them), the unusually frustrating fifth book in The Song of Forgotten Stars. And as our hero, perpetual minor-league catcher Crash Davis, tells us in the movie: “A player on a streak has to respect the streak.”

This book has been frustrating in ways that are unusual to me. The problem hasn’t been that I don’t know what happens next; the problem has been that I do know what happens, but I’ve struggled to figure out how to write it. There were structural difficulties that I had real problems un-knotting: in this book, as in the last couple volumes in this series, my main characters are all living their own stories, but their own stories interconnect and influence one another, because they live together and that’s how these things work. It’s that interconnectedness that has been my sticking point. But starting two weekends back, I actually started moving the ball forward again.

Which meant that I had to respect the streak.

So, on days when I knew there would be little time for writing amongst all the other things I had going on, I prioritized the novel over this space (and also social media, where I’ve also been posting lightly the last few days). I’m not sure how things will go moving forward, but…well, we’ll see! I’ve got some other plans on the horizon that I intend to spend time ironing out this week and next weekend (Huzzah, three-day weekend!), so, onward and upward!

Another short observation about the current WIP: as noted, this is the fifth book in this series. The Song of Forgotten Stars is planned to be nine books long, and I’ve got quite a lot of the larger story mapped out in my head or in notes. (By “quite a lot”, I mean, well, “some”.) There are things that I know will happen, but I don’t quite know how those things will end up happening. Some of these things I’ve known would happen since I was writing Stardancer back in 2011 and 2012, while others have come up in my head since then.

The interesting thing is that here in Forgotten Stars V, I am for the first time writing scenes that I envisioned two, three, even four books ago, all the way back to the beginning. It’s surreal, knowing that I’m finally reaching a point now there I knew years ago what was going to happen, is happening. I’m writing scenes that I envisioned a long time ago. It’s like finding signposts along the way that were only ever ahead of you, only…now, they’re here.

Time now to wrap up this post, because the streak ain’t over and I have to respect the streak. Back to writing!

(Oh, and in case anyone asks just because in the movie Tim Robbins thinks he’s on a streak because he’s been wearing Susan Sarandon’s underwear while he pitches, no, I have not been wearing…oh, forget it.)

Oh, and this is not the first time I’ve referred to this bit of dialogue during a writing-induced blogging slowdown….

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