The novella is changing rapidly and soon will be unrecognizable from its initial storyline. That's fine. I've been through this process so many times, nothing surprises me any more. I've learned to trust it. But this is why I don't outline and do a lot of planning. It commits to something too early in the chaotic reality of the creative process. I like to go with the flow and change direction and eventually find myself going somewhere.
I'm doing more than the usual amount of reading, mainly about recent changes in the pop culture that have (thankfully) passed me by -- but I need to know more about them than I do.
Two major changes in my protagonist. Remember, the initial idea here was two old farts resurrecting their 60s folk group. That's gone, I think -- but the book begins at a funeral for one of them, the group already resurrected but playing in retirement centers, not raising hell. The central thread now appears to be the son of one of them wanting to get the old guy into a rest home and the old guy, and his buddy the protagonist, resisting -- but in fact, the old guy is into some eccentric things and the issue of his competence is not easily answered. At any rate, back to changes in the protagonist -- he's going to be seeing a shrink, having a hard time after the death of his wife of 50 years. So I will have vignette chapters at the shrink's office. As therapy, the shrink suggests he write ... he wrote folk songs in his youth ... and he'll write some poems (some of the very ones you'll find in my book, nothing like recycling). A central theme, how do you find meaning in a culture that has passed you by when your personal connections are gone? Tend your garden, Voltaire says, but what happens when the garden has gone to weeds?
At any rate, the action also involves Internet porn, which the buddy is into, but the amateur collegiate "volunteer" variety, much more interesting from a cultural point of view and totally out of their own youthful experience ... which will lead into the "hooking up" college culture etc ... in a way, this becomes a fish out of water story, the two old dudes trying to make sense of it, keep one of them out of a rest home, and the protagonist find meaning in a world without his wife, which was his rock. Lots of layers, as usual, and the trick is to keep the plot brewing and engaging, suspenseful and comic, so the themes can blend in while the reader isn't looking, which is what I call the Durrenmatt strategy of storytelling.
At any rate, soon, maybe today, but soon, I need to get back to writing chapters. Of the ones I had, only two are salvageable. I'm sticking with the vignette structure, ala Mrs. Bridge.
My working title remains Sodom, Gomorrah and Jones -- a title I like so much, it's what kept me going when so much was changing I wondered if I had a story here at all. I do. I definitely do. But it's still evolving.
