I am trying something complicated - in the same way that I'm trying to fuse character and scene, I'm trying to fuse two genres: ghost story and spy thriller.
Its early to be so ambitious, but its the way I approach my writing with intent. I read a good part of Kings "On Writing" and one of the phrases that stuck was:
"You can come to the act with your fists clenched and your eyes narrowed, ready to kick ass and take down names. You can come to it because you want a girl to marry you or because you want to change the world. Come to it anyway but lightly. Let me say it again: you must not come lightly to the blank page".
It took me an hour to read through the drafts, highlighting and editing. I cut them up, rearranged them, stuck them to my wall, and then tore them all down again. I did a brief mind map last night, rewrote it, plotted this morning, defined the character history, why he is where he is, what he wants, and what the action is, 99% of which I didn't put into the draft. Then I spent three hours rewriting it again.
Voila, coherence. Not enough atmosphere in the right places (so, yes, I'll write it again, and probably again) but a coherent and consistent sequence of events. Nothings really too out of place.
As an aside, one of the comments my tutor made on "Amicus" was that the "vampire" was at times a socio-path and ended up as a business man. Exactly my point - I wanted a socio-path, not a vampire. And I want spooks, not ghosts. And I want a history that unites these things. Han Soe is a philosopher who writes ghosts stories in Burma. Ghost films were banned in Burma from 1960-2005. Ghost - spook - ritual, I want to unite it all. Mwuahahahahahaha.
Shit, I'm tired.
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