Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Place Holders

Place Holders

Sometimes I feel creative and crank out a bunch of crap. Other time I don’t feel like writing at all and force myself….some of my best stuff has come as a result of forcing.

Most of the time I have a fairly good idea of the quality that is being produced. The first time through I try and keep the keys hopping but at the same time try and make it as good as I can. The Muse usually feeds me some pretty fair stuff and the problem is keeping up….Sometimes the ideas come so fast from the fire hose that it is impossible to worry about quality and it’s a mad effort to just keep up…When this happens I resort to “Place holders” for ideas.

A Place Holder is a paragraph that catches the thread of the idea and some chunks of the fabric the muse casts in my direction. The concept is that later I will come back and there will be enough there to recall from the context the germ of the idea. It is better to proceed at a leisurely pace and paint the entire picture while it is fresh in mind but that is not always possible. The next best thing is using a place holder. If you don’t have an anchor point for the thread of the notion the muse leaves with you it is probably going to be forgotten.

For example this next chapter will have a scene with Isabella…She will be thinking about her husband and how she plans to deal with the False Believer Issue (FBI). She is worried on one level (a tactical concern) about a question that most women would find troubling….her husbands fidelity….But she is also caught up in an Operational concern (The FBI) that is part of a Strategic issue….The Jewish Issue. See an earlier blog for the three levels of writing.

Then there is a scene with Brother Bernardo and Consuelo….There scheme to corrupt the King is proceeding well and it is time to show the reader how a typical Novitiate is compromised and how that fits into the grand scheme of things.

Finally there will be an example of parts of the corruption process that have yet to be covered….This will lay the groundwork for Benvolio and Maria and their efforts to save Teresa.

Writing the Battle scene was a difficult undertaking as was the Corruption of King Ferdinand. I will leave it to the reader to assess the relative success but the Chapter I am currently facing will no doubt be every bit as much a challenge.