11.19.07
Reaping What I Sow
As noted on the Twitter feed last night, I came up with a title for the current NaNo, here at about the halfway point through the plot. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the name of my next work (until I decide something else works better): Harvesting Blueberries.
The title came about due to blueberries coming up on two separate occasions in the course of conversation within the book, as well as having some relevance to a handful of plot elements (to give the most obvious one, troubled children = “blue berries”, but that’s a superficial connection– there are more, now that I think about it). Also, some interesting facts about true blueberries: they’re native to the northeast United States (the story’s set in Pittsburgh), they’re harvested throughout summer (the story takes place in late August), and the plants resist fire well, regenerating quickly after wild burns (the story centers on the recovery of a handful of abused gifted children in an experimental foster home). There are other species of berry that are indeed blue, which are native to Europe, but a genuine blueberry has white flesh with blue skin, while other species are blue throughout. It might seem a little pretentious to try to assign too much meaning to the title at this point, but it just fits, based on what I’ve written and what I have planned.
Besides, I like blueberries. And the title doesn’t seem to have been used for a fiction book yet anyway. So, hopefully, this will work out.
I’m trying to make sure it doesn’t turn out to be too sappy or overly saccharine; it’s really, REALLY easy to throw easy pitches to the protagonists in a story that centers on child abuse. Someone I spoke to yesterday afternoon remarked that it was unusually dark subject matter for me, and to be completely honest, it really is. I’d just finished the description of the extent of the abuse on the primary victim, and it made me uncomfortable even writing about it. That’s a fascinating thing about being a writer; I can see such a horrifying thing in my mind, and I know that I have to work through my revulsion and document it as clinically as a coroner and as poetically as a reporter. Knowing that that’s what I have to do doesn’t make it any easier, mind you, but it does give me the resolve I need to actually do it.
And it also inspires me to beat the f#%$ out of anyone who would dare raise a hand in true anger against a child. Which can’t be a bad thing, really.
Aaaaaanyway. That’s that, really. Catch you gys tomorrow.