Old people having sex
I’m not talking about real life, here. We know old people don’t stop loving each other in real life: I’m 51 and my love life is better now than ever before. I’m talking about fiction.
Can you handle ‘love in old age’ between your pages, whether or not they get between the sheets? Does it depend on genre? Or is the entire topic simply a turn-off for you? Honestly, can you only deal with love and sex when both bodies are still smooth and shiny?
I’m very interested in the potential for great love, growing and developing over many years, between characters who age together in a story.
This delightful vid of Low vs Diamond’s Heart Attack is exactly the kind of thing I mean.
My WIP Quarter Square involves an immortal and her repeatedly reincarnated lover. On the surface, her looks stay the same while she watches him age during life after life, while, in terms of real age, she is truly ancient but he never gets beyond 70 or 80-odd.
How old can a fictional character be, before you get a little sick in your mouth at the merest hint of body fluids being exchanged? 30? 40? 50? 55? Can I get a 60 from anyone?
Do you think your own age might affect your response to this subject? I’m sure I wouldn’t have been freaked out at the thought of two fictional oldsters getting it on when I was a young reader, but I know some youngsters (many youngsters?) are. If you were, once, do you still feel the same way now you’re a bit older?
Talk to me.
NaNoers, what’s your favourite bit so far?
Jacob, my friend (and role model for one of my characters)
Here’s mine:
I’m not a small man, but when the wolf reared up he dwarfed me. I guess he stood six and a half feet tall and weighed three hundred pounds. And he wasn’t shy about leaning his whole weight on me. In fact, I suspected there was a fair degree of dominance in this, and I had no intention of challenging his status. Right there and then, he was the boss of me. It was all I could do to control my bowels, never mind anything else.
What’s yours? Raw as you like. Post ‘em here. 
This morning, the world feels a safer place
Our planet having survived eight years with the single most dangerous man on the planet living in the White House and surrounded by seriously sinister fuckers, the world feels to me like a safer place today.
Thank you, USA.
I love my American friends. I’m proud of you.
Symbolism
At the end of my navy career I spent two years paralysed in various hospitals and nursing homes. I didn’t know what would happen to me and it wasn’t the best time of my life.
In one nursing home, there was a tree right outside my upper floor window. I had no idea what it was and really didn’t take much notice of it. Until, one lovely summer morning, it flowered. A nurse told me its name: magnolia.
I fell in love with that tree. To me, magnolias will always represent beauty and hope.
Why “Free” …Isn’t
My friend (and non-fiction project collaborator) Jane Chin has broadcast a thought-provoking vlog in which she describes how offering free information and assistance to people online led to some of them feeling they “owned” her
and she has blogged suggestions for ways to avoid this situation.
These wise words apply to writers of all flavours as well as to entrepreneurs.
Outlining the NaNo-novel
My simplified structure is as follows:
POV character 1 : narrator : 36 middle-length scenes (done)
POV character 2 : action man’s mentor and our provider of social & political history : 12 longer scenes (done)
POV character 3 : action man : 20-30 short scenes (10 done so far)
The narrator and the mentor have their own dramas going on while they focus most of their attention on the action man’s progress, and the implications of his progress. Their dramas will escalate into action when all three storylines converge at the end.
I’m behind schedule after a kidney infection hit me at the weekend and I lost a few days, but I’m back on the job now and will catch up by the time NaNo starts on Saturday.
How are your preps going?
Pssst… Help Zette. Pass it on.
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Right now, she needs some help.
Holly Lisle is waiving commission on several courses (which I recommend) and books on her site, and all the money (minus PayPal fees) we spend on these resources will go directly to Zette.
Click this button to see how you can help Zette (and pick up some goodies for yourself).
Writers write
After a week of struggling through bad pain, today my world exploded into very bad pain. I can do nothing more than crawl back into my bed and swallow mind-numbing painkillers.
But I must do more than that, because there’s a novel outline half done and waiting for me to complete it before NaNo starts next weekend. I suppose I could just let it go.
No, I can’t do that. I just can’t. I’m compelled to keep going. If I’m not a writer, then what the hell am I? I write because I have to write. It’s what I do. It’s what I am.
So I’m crawling back to bed with my dictation machine. The painkillers can go swallow themselves until this outline is done.
Parallel Worlds
Here are two interesting concepts for research:
A BBC Horizons programme that introduces String Theory, Super Gravity, the 11th Dimension, Membranes, the M Theory, the weakness of gravity, the Singularity, the Big Bang, and so much more… to get to the idea of multiverses.
And an excellent conversation taking place in the comments to this blog post, all about promoting your book online – which, let’s be honest, is an alternative reality for some authors.
Plotting: Day 1
Yesterday I plunged into the Pre-NaNo Outline Marathon at Forward Motion. I’ll be doing that all this week, while writing associated blogbits for light relief and reading Holly Lisle’s Scenes Clinic for inspiration.
My rough calculation for number of scenes I need is:
50,000 words @300 words (1 page) per average scene = 170 scenes required
Before I started plotting scenes, though, I needed to simplify a complicated POV situation. Not because the storyline is ridiculously complicated, but purely for my own benefit while I’m plotting.
I have five POV characters, although the main story thread will have one of them (the narrator) channeling two of the others into his POV via telepathy. The fourth and fifth POVs will form the alternating storyline, which I plan to write when the main storyline is finished.
So I’ll outline each of the main storyline’s three POV characters one at a time this week, then mix their scenes in together before I start first-drafting during NaNo.
Yesterday, I did 27 scenes for the narrator.
