But not so you could tell by looking. Between more frantic bouts of writing, I celebrated my dad’s birthday. Which primarily consisted of spending the afternoon making a truly epic pineapple chiffon cake. I wish I had pictures. It is amazing. Understand that my relationship with cake is a volatile one, especially where cakes using fruit are concerned. And let’s not even talk about whipped egg whites. It gets ugly. So my joy at having it turn out perfect is reasonable.
The story keeps twisting on me when I least expect it. It isn’t about what I thought it was about. Not at all, really. So there’s going to be a lot of back-filling to make it work. Also, my second main character started out consisting of a whole lot of nothing, which has been a mixed blessing. Because I allowed him to just sort of show up and eat snacks while I worked, I have this interesting and unexpected, charmingly unbalanced relationship developing. But now I have to let the reader see that the emotion is there when the narrator does not. I’ve never messed with unreliable narrators before. Or not so much unreliable as really slow on the uptake.
I love writing in first person for short stories, because I can afford to play around and mess with perspective without facing a nightmare when it comes time to edit. I don’t think I have the courage to try it for something longer. I have in the past and it was more than I could handle. But on something like this, it’s so nice to relax my control a little and just go along for the ride, instead of having to play god all the time.
JOYCE SULLY :: Why Not Wonder 