After a true and real fight with Microsoft Word which just decided on its own to change the way I view the pages I am writing, I was finally able to beat the crap out of the keyboard and write FOUR chapters of the book this weekend. I wrote one chapter yesterday, and I wrote three chapters today. I'm really getting into this book, and I would not be surprised whatsoever, if I ended up writing the dang thing in less than a month like I did "Of Kilted Pleasure", but not for the same reason.
I wrote the romance novel in less than a month because I thought I was going to be hired soon, and I wanted to get it published before that happened. I'm going into training tomorrow with my claims adjuster career, not employment, but training, but after having the intense training I will be hired. It's just that I'll be working over 60 hours a week when I am finally hired. So, in some ways, it's the same, but the reason I think I could end up writing the book in just a few weeks is because it is just flowing out of my head and into the computer.
Dang!! I sat down to write the second chapter thinking OK, I think I want to say this, or that. Then, before I knew it, the characters started talking to each other, and they made up stories, and decided things that I really couldn't disagree with. It was all I could do to keep up with them; my fingers were hitting the keys and my mind was thinking out loud in about six different voices! Posh said this, MacRae rebuts, then the good doctor comes into the mix to agree but throw in a scenario. I was all over Wikipedia looking up every serial killer's personal psychosis to determine which one or two of them could fit my characters!! FUN TIMES.
I found a few really gnarly killers who I had never heard of, and of course, I wanted to spend time reading all I could about them. I just had no idea. I know it's something we all live with; people standing next to us in the grocery store could be a wanted-and-hunted preditor. It's just that I wanted to put two and two together a bit slower with "Pinball" but it doesn't seem as if I'm going to have that right. These characters want nothing else but to be alive, to stand up on their own, and speak! OK, that's my cue! I'm their voice. I have to go where they want to go.
It's kind of funny really, because I love writing, and what I do when I'm not typing out the story, is I'll sit in my big chair with a dog or two, and I'll literally put a pen to paper on a clipboard to think of things I want the next chapters to include. I go to the latest (or one of) Erle Stanley Garner books I've been reading, or a recent Wilson's Tales of the Borders perhaps, and I'll find something fun to start the conversation, and just build it from there. These books never fail me. I take what I read, I rewrite, add to it, mix it around, and make it my own. There's nothing new under the Sun, so why try. I think someone once said there are only so many storylines out there, the rest are a combination of these. That makes sense.
The science of psychology will be strong in this novel. The characters exhibit it, they discuss it, they run from it, and they create a good dose of it. I named it Pinball because the murderers (there are several but two in particular) will have similar experiences in their lives which could have caused their manic behavior. I'm by no means claiming it, and there will be a good disclaimer at the front of the book as well, so no one thinks I'm claiming to be a medical expert. Pinballs are bounced around, they are shot back and forth. They experience life from a defensive mind rather than an offensive one; they believe what they are doing is justified when it is clearly not.
One character will have had pinball experiences and NOT become a serial killer. He will not become harmful, so why is he different, why did his life not fall into the pattern that the other did? Was it love? Was it Christ? There was a reason. The book will not be a book of faith by any means, but we can't escape the fact that when a person is grounded in a worldview, they tend to act in what is their accordance with pleasing their Superior Being. In the case of Eoghan MacRae, that Being is in fact Jesus; and of course, His Father, God.
I'll describe the brain matter as it is described in medical journals, but I won't be giving it verbatim, and I won't be crediting anyone in particular probably. I may mention that so-and-so said or believed, but this is not a medical book, it is a novel, and it should be understood that it is 100% fictional with tidbits of truth to keep it functional and interesting. In other words, I may say they ate a hamburger with extra pickles, but I don't have to credit the maker of the burger or the farmer who grew the cucumbers. It is what it is.
OK, well, I have to go to bed and get ready for tomorrow. It's going to be an amazing day. I'll be studying auto policies and what happens after a claim! Woot!! I'd love to say that work is as intriguing or as interesting as writing is, but I would be lying through my fingers if I did.
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