{"id":1626,"date":"2015-03-09T19:52:37","date_gmt":"2015-03-09T23:52:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/noelfigart.com\/blog\/?p=1626"},"modified":"2016-12-06T14:29:42","modified_gmt":"2016-12-06T19:29:42","slug":"astride-the-border","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/2015\/03\/09\/astride-the-border\/","title":{"rendered":"Astride the Border"},"content":{"rendered":"

I really need to buckle down and finish \"footofthrone\"<\/a>Astride the Border<\/em>, the end to At the Foot of the Throne.<\/em> Nope, it’s not going to be a trilogy, and frankly the two “books” are really one novel. Not that I have the slightest idea what to call it as a single work. Possibly it could keep the original title, though I expect as the plot of the second story unfolds, one would question that as a good one. *grin*<\/p>\n

I actually have the book notecarded and some 65,000 words written on it, so I’m really more than halfway there. Just a matter of getting a writing schedule and applying butt glue. Since my other big Life Goal is pretty physical, this is really a pretty good counterpoint to that. You know, the whole “healthy mind in a healthy body” thing. (And my son, yes, I’d love to read your essay on that very subject you did for school!)<\/p>\n

Here’s the thing. I’m not in love with the characters. Oh, this is much better fiction than I usually write, being only an egg in the learning process. But no, I don’t love these characters the way I love others I have come up with, but no-one has ever seen.<\/p>\n

This isn’t to say that the work isn’t good. The reason I don’t love the characters?<\/p>\n

They’re too real. I frequently want to yell at them for being stupid, or knock them upside the head for being foolish and prideful, or blind and selfish. I can’t look up to or be enamored with them because they’re too real and flawed.<\/p>\n

This isn’t to say that anything I love has to be perfect. I love plenty of people, but I know of no perfect ones. It’s just that for the most part, no, I wouldn’t really want to be close to or trust any of these characters. No, not even Marra. Seija, maybe. Sometimes. When she isn’t being thick as a yard of lard. And okay, Berat, but he’s shamelessly based on a real man I was missing at the time I came up with the characters.<\/p>\n

So for now, I need to come up with a realistic writing schedule that takes into account the other stuff I do. I may wimp out at 500 words a day. But slow and consistent gets it done better than fits and starts of Heroic Effort.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I really need to buckle down and finish Astride the Border, the end to At the Foot of the Throne. Nope, it’s not going to be a trilogy, and frankly the two “books” are really one novel. Not that I have the slightest idea what to call it as a single work. Possibly it could … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Astride the Border”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-at-the-foot-of-the-throne","category-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1626"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1626\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2202,"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1626\/revisions\/2202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}