I’m not sure I’ve ever been so productive. I’m managing to record two chapters a day of History Maps Book 1: UI and upload them to my beta reading group. At least one – possibly two – of them are listening every day, too, almost keeping pace with me. This is a great incentive for me to stay on track.
Today’ reading the chapters, which were both to some degree autobiographical and Maybelle-focused, I’m worrying (again) that the sub-plot is taking over from the main plot. The thought occurred to me, not for the first time, that I should rename the series NPD In Action, or similar, to be fair to any future readers who might be expecting some, you know, history maps – in a book called History Maps.
But two chapters back, there was one that was almost solely devoted to the history of a certain local building and it certainly keeps being mentioned. The project is obviously continuing. And yes, I guess some of my readers will be more interested in the development of the History Maps way more than whatever is going on between the people involved, but I dunno. I sit down to write and whatever comes out, comes out.
Yes, I want the History Maps project to be real and that is and was my main motivation in writing the series. But yes, obviously also, there is unresolved stuff in my brain about dealing with narcissists. I didn’t plan it, but writing Maybelle was pretty cathartic.
There’s a question in my mind about whether I should rewrite the whole thing, now that I’m reading it out loud from a more objective viewpoint, 3-4 years after I first wrote it, and try to tailor it more to what the bulk of my readers might expect it to be, but I was listening this weekend to the amazing Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, giving the first 2022 Reith Lecture, in which she said something like, “I always advise authors not to think about their readers when they’re writing.”
Hmm. I wonder if there’s a transcript. I want to quote her exactly….
This is it:
“And when I teach fiction to young people, I tell them that as
well, which is do not think about anybody because you’re going to
censure yourself and your story is then going to be false. I think in
particular fiction, literature storytelling, if we’re going to participate
in it, I think that we have a huge responsibility to the truth. And so, if
you’re not willing to kind of live up to that responsibility to the truth,
then you really have no business writing fiction.”
I am tempted to censure my story. And if I did – she’s right – it would risk being false.
But I don’t want to offend anyone. Especially people who are dear to me. There are a couple of characters in my books that do come close to the bone.
Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Is it?
Hmm. My characters are usually compilations of people I know, people I’ve heard of and people I imagine. There are snippets of recognisable chunks of actual persons in them. What author could honestly say otherwise? One of my daughters recognised in the character Amy, her preference for eggs cooked “sunny side down”, for example.
Urkh. I think some others might be more than a snippet though. And this probably does need to be fixed. Ideally, without sacrificing the truth.