Heads Will Talk

I think we all end up writing somewhat to the beat of our actual lives, but I've noticed something the last couple of days. I've been struggling with Hibernaculum still, mostly because the more I try to untangle the ending the more frustrated I become, and the less effort I want to expend on doing so. Which is somewhat ridiculous, considering how much I love these characters and there's already one hundred and seventy five thousand words here. Quitting now is rather...self-defeating.

But then, taking control of things is not something that comes naturally to me. And ever since this year began, I've been called again and again to take control of things and in general? I've failed miserably. At the moment work has put me in the position of "control" again, which I absolutely loathe, and I am completely out of control in terms of what I am eating; tonight I exercised to the point of throwing up just to take back some of what I ate. And what does that have to do with my writing, considering between work, eating and exercising myself to exhaustion (and laughing myself sick over the Beastie Boys' new video), I haven't written anything? Well...

Yesterday, when I was still on the long weekend and therefore had time to write, I had the characters start to do something odd on me. Luchandra did it first, on Sunday, but Aleksandr followed suit -- they took control. And it's truly odd in that this story? Is a lot of talking heads. I'm not an action writer by nature -- The Juniper Bones is as close as I get, although that "action" is usually Eliot getting his ass kicked; in his and my defense, it's not always involuntary on his part -- so words are the weapons of choice, so to speak (CURSE YOU, CHRISTOPHER WALKEN). But it made me realise that a lot of my deeper issues with this story's ending came from the fact that neither Luchandra nor Aleksandr were doing anything. Which, given their situation, was not unusual. But for the story to have a point...they had to stand up. They had to take control. They had to fight! For the right! To paaaaaaaar--

...yes, we can see where this is going. Goddamn rappers!

But my point, as I said, was about taking control. And the fact that both Aleksandr and Luchandra are doing that gives me some hope, even as I get ever more frustrated by the tangled web I've woven here. I just want to finish this damn thing. And I suspect a large part of that is to do with the fact that if they can take control, maybe it'll teach me something about control in my own life.

We can but hope, I suppose.