I need to write so much. And to publish. I start a stupid story to get it out of my system and suddenly it becomes so deep that I myself can't manage it anymore. When I started writing "Wall of Sunset" a few months ago, I started from the end, with the female lead basically asking for an assisted suicide and getting it. Then there's the Transformers saga, where the two Elitas, who are virtually the same person, give Ratchet totally opposite instructions about what to do, should she be presumed dead. I guess it reflects my doubts and ideas about this topic. Now an innocent plot device in "Wall of Sunset" is turning into a very complicated essay about the treatment of prisoners of war. The Intelligence man was almost the bad guy of the story, so much that I was worried about the Allies turning out worse than the Nazis. Now I'm thinking (only thinking, but it's driving me crazy because I must work!) of a dialogue between him and a British officer - there they are, in the back of my mind, discussing in raised voices over all my other thoughts - and damn it, I've realized he has a point: you can't explain away the mysterious death of a prisoner with "It's war". His mistake probably is insisting about it RIGHT THERE AND THEN, on D+4 in the middle of Normandy, when MAYBE the Brits have something else to do, but in principle, he's right. He is obnoxious, jealous of younger officers and holier-than-thou, and anyway my sympathies go to the fighting men, but he's turning into much more than a token troublemaker. I'm still looking for that "pause" button in the brain... |