Still Here

I think I overdosed on introspection during November and early December. I haven't been posting this past week or so because there really hasn't been much of interest going on, internally or externally.

The one notable thing I have to report is that my creative juices have been flowing again on my novel, largely as a consequence of LJ conversations I've been having with _storyteller_. As some of you are aware, that story is a continuing sore spot with me. Part of me wants to just let it go, as a project whose time has passed. Part of me can not bear to leave it unfinished. I've been working on the ending again, and finally realized that the big problem has been with Richard, the last significant character in the story. Although mentioned at other places in the book, he doesn't come 'onstage' until the final thirty pages or so, and his choices are the driving force behind the last big conflict -- but I don't know him well enough to understand what he wants, so all of the choices I've made for him have been arbitrary, motivated more by what I want my heroine to do/experience than what is authentic for Richard. So of course everything I've written has ended up ringing false.

I'm still figuring him out, but I'm beginning to get the sense that he's going to turn out to be the one person in the story who doesn't want what just about everyone else does: control over the lands which have been occupied and fought over through the rest of the book. And if he doesn't want them, what does he want? Vengeance against his sister, who was complicit in the death of their father? Or just to escape again, to return to the place that has become his home and leave this perverse little community to its own devices?

There are other episodes to write, gaps to fill in the existing narrative, but until I figure out Richard Montgomery, I can not finish the story.