It's time to start focusing on the third volume of A Place of Safety -- Home Not Home. This is where everything comes together...but how much together, I have no idea, yet. There's a lot I've built up about Brendan's life that could use closure, to use that vile cliche. And it has to happen in a city coming apart, thanks to the hunger strikes.
Why is his father so difficult to understand? The man was violent, but Brendan's had indications none of that started till his birth...even as his Aunt's noted the arguments between his mother and father were ongoing before he was born. How is this reconciled?
And his father's semi-fame as a storyteller and singer. I have an idea of how to reveal that for whatever truth there is to it...but why didn't he share the stories with his children except when he was too drunk to do so?
There's the silence of his uncles concerning Bernadette and Aunt Mari, until the latter makes contact with them, again. And his brother, Eamonn, managing to keep himself strong while imprisoned in the H-Blocks, now in line to join the hunger strikers when another dies. Where did that strength come from, since he was not known for it?
The list goes on and on and I want to make it all understandable, relatable, if not fully explainable. It all has to lead to the ending to make it work...and, of course, I'm nervous about it. Nervous? Scared shitless, really. What I have now is only just over half the length of the first two volumes, and I want it ready by mid-October.
Am I setting myself up to screw it up? I don't know. I just know I need to push and write and then trim back to where there's nothing left to trim of what I've overwritten.
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