my book, kant and draco (but not kant/draco, omg there's a thought)

[lobelia321]

I'm currently writing chapter 5. No, or is it chapter 4? Fuck, I don't even know the proper chapter outline by heart but anyway: today I wrote 1,300 words on the chapter I am currently writing. Which makes a total of 5,324 words since 5 April when I started on this chapter. That's better than nothing!

As FlyLady keeps saying: progress not perfection.

Speaking of perfection, today I was reading about Immanuel Kant (whose surname in German is gratifyingly homophonic with the English word for vagina, how I love it). Anyway, Kant thought that beauty was incompatible with perfection because beauty is disinterested and without purpose. However, perfection is measured against something that ought to be like this: a statue of a human figure is deemed perfect, for instance, to the extent that it fulfills criteria of what a human figure should be like. We have to have some notion of what is perfect in order to recognise something as coming up to that standard. But, so says Kant, beauty doesn't work like that, it doesn't strive to fulfill some standard or match up to some criteria.

How this relates to FlyLady I cannot fathom at this precise moment in time but there we go: LJ as free play of assocations.

I'm stumped, however, in my HP opus. I've reached a characterisational impasse. What on earth is this Draco actually like? And why on earth would he get obsessed with a muggle? And what conflicts would there be in his head over that? I'm stuck.

What do others do when stuck on a character issue? When the character you thought you knew so well (your Sue!!) has landed himself in a very thorny and complicated situation and your head is bursting from figuring out all the nuances of his reactions and you can't even bring yourself to write one line of dialogue because you can't tell what the fuck he's going to say, and in what tone of voice, and using what register, and doing what with his hand at the same time?

What do others do when stumped?

I know some of you conjure the 'muse' and have him whisper into your ear but how does that work in practice? What do you do to make that muse sit there for any length of time and whisper sense? And if you have no muse, what else do you do?

Comments

[phineasjones.livejournal.com]

this whole 'muse' thing seems a little out there if you ask me. i'm not the writeriest writer around but when a charcater suddenly befuddles me, i go read some passage of canon which features said character prominently. which is tough in hp for anyone who is not harry, ron or hermione. but i still find it helpful to look again at things they've said and how they've said them and such.

my $.02. :)

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Ah, the saviour of the fanfic writer: canon! Thanks for this tip, it is what I've done myself in the past but it's funny how you forget these little things when stumped.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

P.S. It doesn't help that my knowledge of HP is not nearly as fluent as my knowledge of lotrips was.... I have to riffle!

[phineasjones.livejournal.com]

somewhere out there in the wide world of the internet, there exists searchable text files of the books. which would be incredibly handy for things like this. alas, i have no idea where to find them.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I know. lazlet once sent me the downloads but they crashed my computer or something. I have one for Order of the Phoenix. But the problem is that my love for the canon is, how shall I put it, less than overwhelming. So even just getting off my bum and searching for the books on the childrens' shelves or clicking my way through to some pdf-file defeats me.

But anything to get a fic going, right?! I do have the copy that Laz gave me of OOTP sitting on my desk, at my fingertips. Heh.

[brightest-blue.livejournal.com]

Oh, if my Sue gets stuck, I just start writing dialogue until I get to a point where I can say ah-ha! back on track. Some of that dialogue has even made it to the final draft because it opened up a window into the characater I might never have contemplated otherwise.

As to the beauty/perfection thing, aren't they both rather subjective? Beauty more so, but even perfection doesn't mean the same thing to everyone. Like my little cottage. It's perfection for me; just the thing. 70% of my friends would say, "how could you possibly live in this tiny, ancient thing?" My response is, "how can you stand that overpriced McMansion?" Perhaps Kant was aptly named. :-)

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Kant says that beauty is entirely subjective but for perfection there are standards. That's what Mr Vagina says, anyhoo.

Thanks for the advice! It's the 'don't be afraid to write crap' advice, isn't it? The sort of 'write through the pain' advice? I flinch from putting that kind of advice into practice but it is probably very good for me, right? It feels right but I flinch, anyway!

OK, now to bed but tomorrow I will write crap! I shall set the timer and write 15 minutes of rubbish dialogue!