Thoughts

Well, I've finally given up on doing my own taxes.  For the last ten years, I've always been able to do them myself, but now things are just getting too complicated for me.  Time to let the experts handle it. 

There are a lot of strange tax issues wrapped up in being a writer.  For one thing, there are the taxes related to your foreign sales.  Some countries let you fill out a waver and prove that you're paying taxes in your home country, which--via tax treaties--lets you get away without paying income tax in the foreign country.  Other places force you to pay taxes on your foreign income to that country, but then in the U.S. they allow you to take the amount paid as credits on your income tax here.  Then, there are all of the messes having to do with self employment taxes, exemptions for business expenses, and a whole lot of other hoopla. 

Other than that, my life has been rather serene lately.  My job (so to speak) for these few weeks is to read books--and not just any books, but ones I have loved since I was a youth.  That's rather remarkable to me still.  It has been a very peaceful experience, though the stress of trying to finish a book that millions of people are waiting to read looms back there inside of me as well.  Completing this work is going to be like no other project of which I've been a part.  Always, writing and reading were similar--yet separated--activities for me.  While writing, I am fully in "creation" mode.  While reading, I'm in "experience" mode.  Yet here, with the task of writing Book Twelve laid before me, creating and experiencing become muddled.  For once, when I read a work and think "oh, I wish that this would happen" it is possible to MAKE it happen.  However, I know that I must hold myself to the rigors of character and story, doing only what is functionally appropriate for the story.  Still, there is hope.  If I want a face-to-face meeting between certain characters, there is a chance that it will fit with the plot.  If I wish for a certain world aspect to get a little more explanation, then there is opportunity for that. 

This project is not 'mine' for it is much larger than me.  And yet, I've always said that the strength of novels as an entertainment medium--as opposed to movies or other forms of expression--is that a novel can better reflect the vision of a single person.  That can be good or it can be bad.  However, in no other popular entertainment form can one person reasonably be in charge of every aspect and piece to the degree that one finds in novels.  This leads to a completeness of vision in the medium, I think.  My job in this case isn't to create that vision, but to 'catch' the same vision that Mr. Jordan had, then shepherd the final project so that it best reflects what he would have wished of the book.  I feel that it's very important for the integrity of the book that it not have a schizophrenic vision--mine voice must blend with Mr. Jordan's, so that different passages will not fight with one another or stand out.  The story comes first, the experience that the reader has. 

So, I read and find myself saying "I wonder if I could make this particular thing happen?" That is followed with "is that what Mr. Jordan would do?"  Finally, I come around to "What is best for the story?"  And I think that last one stands the most tall.