• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
Regency Romance Novels

Regency Romance Novels

  • Blog home
  • Something about me
  • Privacy Policy
  • Contact me
  • Website >

Progress…

July 1, 2010 By Cari

Sometimes progress is a small pile of pencil shavings. It might take a stretching of the imagination, but you could change the world with a freshly sharpened pencil. You could use it as a weapon and put out the eye of an attacker. The villain starts wearing an eye patch which engenders sympathy and kindness from strangers and soon makes friends with people who aren’t remotely villainous. He (though it might be a she) reforms their evil ways and goes to clown school where they meet someone in need of pirate Vaudeville act. The villain takes along his pet budgie and is such a success he’s soon a TV star making millions of people laugh. An unhappily married couple watch the show and that night make love instead of war. Nine months later the woman gives birth to the person destined to discover that rocks are the untapped energy source which will make oil redundant. All because you sharpened a pencil.

Yesterday I finished reworking Chapter 26 of my book, Dancing the Maypole. All I have to show for four weeks of effort is a small pile of shavings, but I have great hopes that my sharpened characters will keep telling me how their story unfolds and soon I will finish a book. My book might then make someone laugh. That reader might have a good day and impulsively befriend someone who’s shy and lonely who’s then emboldened to start a disco club for shy people that allows them to dance behind white silken banners that hang from the ceilings. It starts a new underground craze for shadow-dancing which is soon “discovered” by Madonna. She makes shadow-dancing a world wide phenomenon renewing her disco-rock career without the need to live vicariously through her daughter. She earns so much money she can afford to adopt a whole country and enables all the people to get an education and one of them discovers the genetic mutation which enables people (at the cost of a cheap procedure) to look 18 their whole adult lives. Unfortunately, all the old movie stars have to face the fact that they really do have a shelf life and not because they’re old. Yes, we’re all sick to death of seeing the same faces in every other movie, but they go on to develop talents they didn’t know they had and to lead happy healthy lives free of fame addiction. Madonna ends her singing career at 60 causing mass hysteria among her loyal fans, but her absence from the music charts allows new talent to fill the airwaves and saves her eighteen year old daughter the embarrassment of having a 60 year old mother who dresses like she wishes she could travel back in time to 1985 and sing ‘Like a Virgin’ for another thirty years. Large groups of shy people, having overcome their shyness, work hard to make their dreams come true reinvigorating the economies of the world and ending the depression the authorities insist on calling a quadruple dip recession. All because I finally finished Chapter 26.

It could happen…if I learn to remember one simple fact.

There is no Nobel Peace Prize, no blue ribbon, no satisfaction guaranteed in pushing a dead cow up a hill. How long does it take me to figure out I’m traveling in the wrong direction? Sadly, until I run into a wall that I can’t push over, climb over or dig under. Of course there are only three options (unless you have a jet-pack strapped to your shoulders or a rocket between your knees); back, left or right. Walls are simple things. They’re not Macro Economics taught by a professor who couldn’t teach to save a bank; it’s a wall. I know what to do when I hit a wall. It’s just that I have a really hard time recognizing when I run into one. I can hear you thinking, “I’m not surprised, this Cari person is a nincompoop!” but can that really explain why I bang my head against the immovable barrier for so long? Why do we come up against barriers and not realize they’re barriers?

It’s because they’re camouflaged!

I keep banging my head because all my mental walls are painted with realistic 3-D murals that look like they’ll take me somewhere I want to go. I see the vista I want to see. I see the story going forward how I assume it’s going to go forward. I envision what I think will happen in the story and then start shoving my characters (hence the sensation of pushing a dead cow up a hill) in the direction I think they should go. It doesn’t work. I couldn’t push a dead cow even one inch why do I sit here and spend weeks trying to push one up a hill? No don’t answer…I know you think I’m a nincompoop.

Now if I can learn to recognize a wall and remember that when I run into one that I, not the wall, have to be the one to change direction…I too might change the world!

Filed Under: General

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Sariah says

    July 3, 2010 at 11:29 am

    I am a great believer that simple things like a smile to an unknown person can make a difference. Simple encouragement to friends – thanks for helping, your hair looks great can change a person’s day! Yes your blog can make me smile, laugh or be interested in something I would not otherwise seen!!! Thanks

  2. Cari says

    July 3, 2010 at 4:56 pm

    @Sariah
    Thank you for your lovely comment! You’ve made my day and it needed remaking (I started to write about it, but I decided if I continued I’d end up writing a comment twenty pages long) 🙂

  3. Victoria says

    July 19, 2010 at 8:49 pm

    I also enjoy reading your blog, looking at the pictures you take, (Goblin’s pics too). When you and your characters settle your differences,(Goblin not included)it will turn out just great. You all just need to come to an understanding. You direct, they act and if one of them has a problem, ask them what they suggest and after mulling it over remind them of the delete button on your p.c. Thanks, Victoria

  4. Cari says

    July 19, 2010 at 9:20 pm

    @Victoria
    Thanks for your moral support. It’s much appreciated! I’ve tried reminding my characters about the delete button, but they know they have the upper hand. I think I have to delete 10,000 words of Once Upon a Wager (three whole chapters). I don’t know if they’re right which means they’re probably wrong.

    I think I need to stop beating my head against another wall and bite the bullet. Today I’ve been working on Dancing the Maypole doing some rewriting and psyching myself up for chapter 27. I should just start it…if the characters spit in my eye…better spit than a rock. I SO want to be finished with these stories, but maybe I’ve been waiting for some missing pieces of the puzzle…may they fall out of the sky onto my desk soon.

    PS the Goblin was on holiday this past week and I did get some lovely shots…I’ll share some in a few days. 🙂 I got my brain cooked at the beach. I had sun cream in the car and then forgot to put it on. That was dumb. I think I’m still recovering. I keep dreaming about chickens. It could be worse!

Primary Sidebar

Recent posts

  • Changes…
  • I’m alive … I think…
  • Spring Cometh…
  • The First Day of November…
  • Romancing the Stones…

Categories

  • A Companion for Life
  • A Short Story
  • Book Reviews
  • Dancing the Maypole
  • Feeling Creative
  • General
  • Ghost stories
  • Guest Bloggers
  • History Notes
  • I've been taking photographs
  • I've been thinking
  • King John
  • Louis et Francoise
  • Lucky in Love
  • Museums
  • My Regency Romance Novels
  • Once Upon a Wager
  • Redeeming A Rake
  • Regency Notes
  • Sharing
  • Taming the Shrew
  • The Curse of Love
  • The Hired Wife

Archives

  • May 2018
  • July 2017
  • March 2017
  • November 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • June 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • January 2016
  • September 2015
  • May 2015
  • February 2015
  • November 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • June 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • June 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • August 2009
  • July 2009
  • June 2009
  • May 2009
  • April 2009
  • March 2009
  • February 2009
  • January 2009
  • December 2008
  • November 2008

Copyright © 2023 Cari Hislop