Notes on Writing Fast

I should hit the ostensible halfway mark on AVALON BURNING in the next week or so. Writing every day isn’t new to me by any means but writing at this pace and in such immersion every day (except Monday, which is Podcast Day) is something I haven’t tried before in any structured way. I’m enjoying the hell out of it and I’m learning some interesting and surprising things:

• Abandoning my usual deliberateness and constant on-the-fly revision I find that my style doesn’t really seem to change. My phrasing and rhythm and idiosyncrasies are in the marrow now it seems and not some affectation layered with deliberate forethought or slathered on after the fact. I find this reassuring, as it simply verifies for me that this is how I write now.
• I find that despite the stated goal of pushing on I still need to stop a few times a week to reread what I’ve done so that I don’t lose sight of details or continuity, foreshadowing and momentum.
• I’m startled how much of the novel really is there the first time out.  Subtext, planted themes and imagery, hints and payoffs. It’s gratifying and a little creepy that the book entire really does seem to be already lodged in my head.

I did take the time to do some research on hyenas. Lions can kiss my ass. Hyenas friggin rock.

Some weird details and surprises that have emerged in the narrative:

• Centaurs have a violent reaction to coffee
• Centaurs pinstripe their didgeridoo/spears
• I am about to make downtown Los Angeles one scary-ass place to be (can we take the “it already is” comments as read?)
• I am in love with Avy. (She was a minor character in ELEGY BEACH and is the protagonist of AVALON BURNING.)

I am heading down to Los Angeles this weekend to visit friends. Part of my mission is to run around Universal City Walk with a camera and a legal pad and take my usual frantic and maniacal notes. It’s gonna be fun to Change-ify City Walk because I just hate the place. I used to teach there. Perhaps the most surreal thing about it is that there’s a UCLA Extension campus there, fergodsake.