I’ve been stalling since the spring on writing the last four sections of The Tome.
Oh the irony. I’m 90 thousand words in and I can’t get the final 40 thousand written.
I’m not choking. I’m ruminating.
I’ve been poking at the next section for a couple of weeks now. Making good progress even. Almost 5 thousand words of a projected 10 thousand done. The next scene is a heart breaker. It’s three-quarters of the way through the book so I suppose this is the pivotal scene of the entire damn novel.
Incidentally, I finally figured out who my main character is. Hint: It’s the dead one.
Next up on deck is writing this scene and it has to be good. No pressure at all. The main character sings a song to her great love who is going off to war.
She sings The Parting Glass.
So of course, me being the immersive sort I can’t just read the lyrics. I have to hear the song.
Over and over and over again.
So I start with a classic rendition. The Clancy Brothers are wonderful. It’s beautifully sung but not quite what I was looking for. It’s a bit slower than someone would probably be singing to a live audience in a bar.
Then I moved on to my version of a classic. The music is really good and Shane is enunciating well but he sounds like a bored teenager who’s just doing what he’s told. It’s very flat emotionally. Phoning this one in perhaps?
The character I have singing this song is female. So I started poking around for a version in a feminine voice.
This is female and sweet but Bea’s voice is stronger. She has a classically trained voice.
Getting closer. Beautiful but to folksy.
Three voices but otherwise perfect.
Stop stalling and start writing!
Listening to this on replay I realized that I’m trying to write a scene that contains one of the worst moments in my character’s life.
I’ve had those moments.
Deaths.
Too many.
Divorce.
It sucks to be human and therefore fallible.
Miscarriage.
We never got to meet.
The one that tops them all though is having to take my nephew’s body from my sister’s arms and give him up to the hospital staff.
A part of me will always be trapped in that moment. Living it over and over again as if it were a fresh wound.
I would never wish that level of agony on anyone.
That’s the level of pain I need to tap into in order to write this scene as it should be written.
No wonder I’ve been avoiding it.
Isn’t there some housework to be done?
Wow! What a great song/benediction. I really feel you are coming to the point of your work here, and it is powerful. Roll with it and birth through the pain. Have some Tullamore Dew on the rocks!