Quiet Lately

I've been busy doing random stuff - bought a car, been working nights for a guy on vacation, been rereading Gibson's second novel trilogy (Virtual Light, Idoru, All Tomorrow's Parties).

The Gibson stuff is odd. I remembered it as having more plot than it does. There's a lot of character and a lot of texture and backstory, worldbuilding if you will, but the actual plot is pretty light. And a really striking thing is that he has bad guys in the first and third books that are almost identical (supremely skilled killing machines who wear long coats and have deep smile creases down each cheek). Looking at Gibson's author photo on the back of the third book, I wonder if he didn't model both of them off of himself.

Of course, as usually happens with any author I like, reading his books makes me want to write something like it. I've got vague glimmerings of an idea taking place in Korea, but civ, not military this time. And I'm thinking of using TiddlyWiki to develop it and keep track of all the random pieces. I might also use it to keep track of all my World of Digger stuff.

I still haven't started rewriting the novel. As soon as I finish this third Gibson book, I'll reread it and make notes, then either construct the Wiki to try to find deeper connections between pieces or start rewriting scenes. Things I know I need to do include:

• strengthening point of view
• stronger, clearer character development
• research details and insert into text - for instance, one character is a Czech and curses at one point in his native language - right now, the MS just says "Czeching damn!" every time, which is evocative, but not what I actually want him to say
• Get consistent with stuff I changed my mind about during the draft, like whether Digger's powers work perfectly or not