Insanity

crazy in four volumes

Einstein defined insanity as repeating the same action over and over while expecting a different result.

I am thissssss close to reviving a story I started when the Twin Towers were still standing. My manuscript shelf holds three and a half binders full of it. Two of the main characters appeared in a recent short story, and the mortal history of one—Darius Wolfe—is right now being unearthed via the voice of his eighteenth century bride.

Why are these characters reemerging now? I’ve written a ton of new characters over the years. Fixed Fire bumped this series off the map and cruised into 6.5 volumes before stalling on Reijo’s romance (aaaaarrrrggghhhh). I wrote three FF novellas. I have played with angels, centaurs, and hit men. I even have a couple of other FF novels in mind. Lots to write, little time to write it. Right?

Here’s the thing. Every time I reread the urban vampire series, I think, yep, it needs work, but it’s good. Damn good. Pretty damn good, in fact. This might even be the one that cracks the market.

Okay, maybe not the last. I write, after all, for myself and not the market. I had finished with Julian in the nineteenth century and wondered if I could write something less Anne Rice-ish and more Laurell Hamilton-ish. I loved Hamilton’s Anita Blake series to the end of Obsidian Butterfly; after that, regrettably, it got too pornographic even for me. It was my first urban fantasy read and it inspired me to write one of my own.

It doesn’t even have a title. I just call it “the Cassandra series”, like it’s an android model from the classic Star Trek episode I, Mudd. Cassandra is the voice, the main character, and more like me than anyone else I’ve written. It’s her story, told in her words, and as I’ve said, even I think it’s a goodie.

But it needs work. Big work.

While writing Calista’s story—and the similarity of female names has not escaped me—I’ve been pondering how/where to begin reworking Cassandra’s story. The sheer volume of work involved is daunting and I doubt it will be much fun. I look at the first chapter and can’t see how to write the scene differently, but the scene must definitely be rewritten.

Then a little voice said to me, “Blow it up and start again.”

What?

“Blow it up and start again. You know the characters intimately. You know the plot by heart. 

The rest is scenery. Blow it up and start again.”

Holy $***. I can do that. It’s true. I do know the characters intimately. I know their relationships and how they work (or don’t work). I know the premise, the plot, the outcome. I’ve been fretting about reworking the whole thing, but the guts are fine. All the things that I like about it have not changed in fifteen years. It’s the same story; I am simply free to tell it a new way. A better way. It will be better because I’m a better writer. My style is more mature, more refined, than it was all those years ago. I can give these characters life with a capital “L”.

And isn’t it funny that the Faulkner quote has so recently come to my attention?

It’s the people, the human heart in all its conflicted glory, that make a story. Not the setting, not the timing, not the exterior finish. Those things, I can change. The rest must be left as is.

So, with that in mind … BOOM!