This post is entirely dedicated to fangirling.

I just wanted to show off my new icon. This is the art for Kakita Hideshi, one of the new Crane personalities in The Heaven's Will. I played some part in his creation, and thus I was very pleased when Troy Graham was given the art--I've been a fan of his work for some time. This morning I asked him if he would make me an icon for here, and--TA DA! Isn't it wonderful?

Writer's Notebook: Details, Details, pt 2

I was cleaning out the corner of my living room where a pile of books, a box of cassette tapes, and several stacks of CDs were engaged in an embrace that could only be described as unholy when I discovered my copy of The Bacchae of Euripides. Now, one of the problems I face in trying to clean my apartment is that a great deal of my clutter is composed of books, and I simply cannot touch a pile of books without picking up at least one of them to flip through. You can imagine what this does to my general efficiency.

Anyway, I flipped through the Bacchae (I have the translation by Donald Sutherland published by the University of Nebraska Press, btw), and found this in the translator's notes:

Why does Cadmus not leave with Agave? How did Ino and Autonoe get back into town? Why is Cadmus exiled? Who will bury the hero? These questions are perhaps very small-minded, but Euripides is not the man to rise above them.

I grinned a little when I read this because, really, I am in Euripides' corner in this. When I write, I need to have all the little questions answered, in my mind if no one else's, and I tend to become fretful if I can't answer a question to my own satisfaction. How did X know about Y? Why was Y in Wherever Mura? The ur-answer is "Because my plot demanded it," but there needs to be a level of answer above that, one that is linked into the story-world itself.

Deciding when to put all of this into the story is something I struggle with. Sometimes I don't put something in because it seems too minor to waste wordcount on. Sometimes I start to put it in and then rip it out because it is dull to write--and if it is dull to me, how much duller is it going to be to my reader? On the other hand, I know that there have been times when I thought something was obvious, and at least some of my readers have disagreed. I know I will never communicate with all my readers perfectly, but--how do you find the sweet spot? What is the calculus of Readers Bored VS Readers Confused?

I don't know. I'm not sure I'll ever really know--I am a close, careful reader, and I think that handicaps me in dealing with the question. I can catch details other miss, but I can also read too much into details meant to be mere window-dressing. More casual reader might not get all the information, but they chase fewer red herrings. Scylla and Charybdis--those Greeks knew more than they knew they knew.