The Book of Masks Homepage

When Gears Grind

Tomorrow will bring this branch to a suspension point; I'll have some commentary on it here on the blog.

For now I'll remark that these chapters have been surprisingly hard to write. I don't know why. I know the characters, and I knew the direction I wanted to send things. But there were lots of little places where I just got hung up, where I just didn't want to write my way thru. The place where Will, as Andrea, goes in to the school for the first time, for instance. I came right up to it and my imagination said "Nope," and shut down for a couple of days.

I think it was because I needed something to happen there, but there was nothing to happen. A lot of BoM is devoted to portraying "what it is like" to be someone while being someone else, so there's a need to dwell in moments of real life. But if there's nothing happening in that real life, if there is no goal to draw the characters along, then there's nothing to draw the imagination along either.

On Friday I'm going to start publishing a commission, one I need to start working on today. I hope I can get it to a stopping point before the end of the month, when I'm scheduled to go off of BoM for sixty-two days.