Anatomy of a Slack

I decided to officially stop working on a story when I finally figured out the reason I'd unofficially stopped.

The story's set about twenty years in the future, in a world where Washington and New York got a little more beat up in 2001. Baby boomers are all pretty well past retirement age, and those who could, have squared themselves away in planned retirement communities of varying qualities. Plenty of laws have been tweaked to benefit this age group. Meanwhile, most traditionally upper and middle class people of working age have indentured themselves to large companies -- my main character worked for a large supermarket. Through a series of coincidences, she is able to take and pass a standardized exam that rewards her with a college degree -- most of the traditional universities have folded up shop and gone completely long distance and online.  My main character's degree piques the interest of a lone wolf in the top brass of the grocery chain, and he ends up basically making her a henchman in the company's interests.

There's plenty more. Plenty of planning, plenty of sidestory, and I even know how it ends. But I stopped around page 50, just as the Svengali was about to ask my main character to prove her loyalty to the company for the first time. I'd been chugging alone just fine. Then bam, that hits and suddenly cleaning the house, reading books, playing video games and staring at the wall are a hell of a lot more enticing.

I chalked it up to my lame inertia and general sad sackiness, until I started something new. Sure, there's still plenty of lame inertia to blame. But the new thing made me realize that part of the reason I stopped working on the old one? Is what I call the Vanilla Sky Syndrome.

I saw Vanilla Sky for the first time on DVD. People I trust told me that I'd love it, and they were right. But ten seconds after I hit the eject button, I thought: Why did the main character have to be male? Answer: Women don't get epiphany roles like that without being oppressed into the ninth circle of hell first or written as bitchy or evil to start with. Ever. In twenty seconds' time, I went from loving the movie to being ambivalent.

Looking back, I realized I'd done it to myself. I had a female protagonist who would be twisted by a male antagonist. She would have to overcome that oppression to reach the next level, which still wasn't sufficient reward. It's not a bad story, not at all. But at this particular time, it's not one that I really want to write. I suppose eventually, I could do what I wanted to do with Vanilla Sky and swap Tom with Penelope. But Search --> Replace doesn't really cut it when you want to give major characters sex changes.

And there were some other factors, too.  Tone was a perennial problem with the project, to the point where I was wandering around saying Master of the Obvious stuff like "Shouldn't writing be fun sometimes? For example, when it's supposed to read fun?" to people who I'm sure couldn't have cared less. I was grinding out pages I was sure sucked and then treating IM requests like vacation. Worst of all,  after fifty pages there were no sections that I was secretly pleased with, that kept me going. Not even a paragraph, or a description. Nothing. Forget fear...for me, that's a mindkiller.

So, I spent six weeks being warned. And maybe I'll get back to it someday -- I've done that before and succeeded, believe it or not. The new thing is about a family. It's set about three years ago. One of the main characters is pulling me aside and bitching about another character, which is great. Writing or not, I do love me some bitching.

Comments

[The Sanity Inspector]

Too bad about the stilborn story. Maybe if you changed the stereotypical Evil Corporations to something like the Church of Scientology, or Wahhabist Islam--things that smarting off about really will get you in trouble--something might develop. Good luck with the new story.