Day 19: Let Go (ala that song in Garden State--I refuse to Google it)
Words written: 4,895
Legs shaved: Zero
I believe that I have to kill off the killed off sister. It doesn't work. As much as I want there to be some other thing---some deeper psyche issues for the main character, the dead sister card is not going to hold up. Especially not the dead sister found by main character. Or not found by main character, but dead nonetheless. It's too pat and I don't understand it, and any time I try to write a scene with the sister, it's all invention. Fiction is invention, but I can invent what it's like to be a nurse without being a nurse way more authentically than I can invent a sister. I can empathize my way into nursing. I can write around that and find information and talk to nurses. I don't yet have the power to invent a sister who is dead and who the character feels responsible for. More importantly, it doesn't support the tone and it doesn't explain the tone. The narrator is glib, blunt, damaged--but to offer this loss as the reason for her vice is way too simple. Let there be some mystery to it--she can posit a reason, but the reason doesn't have to be one like you'd find in a movie of the week. The reason is because she's vulnerable, fallible, human, coping.
Legs shaved: Zero
I believe that I have to kill off the killed off sister. It doesn't work. As much as I want there to be some other thing---some deeper psyche issues for the main character, the dead sister card is not going to hold up. Especially not the dead sister found by main character. Or not found by main character, but dead nonetheless. It's too pat and I don't understand it, and any time I try to write a scene with the sister, it's all invention. Fiction is invention, but I can invent what it's like to be a nurse without being a nurse way more authentically than I can invent a sister. I can empathize my way into nursing. I can write around that and find information and talk to nurses. I don't yet have the power to invent a sister who is dead and who the character feels responsible for. More importantly, it doesn't support the tone and it doesn't explain the tone. The narrator is glib, blunt, damaged--but to offer this loss as the reason for her vice is way too simple. Let there be some mystery to it--she can posit a reason, but the reason doesn't have to be one like you'd find in a movie of the week. The reason is because she's vulnerable, fallible, human, coping.
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| Useful information that you can read if someone drowns in the coffee shop. |
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| Ilse made this. It's Chap eating my pen! |
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