The backstory is at least as important as the present-day storyline (unlike Saturday, which is more clearly the story of one day, with flashbacks). It's just that in the structure I've set up, it sort of needs (I guess I should be careful with that word) these parallel threads running through it. Part of what I want to do is incorporate the backstory more seamlessly instead of turning on a clunky flashback switch, while making it clear to the reader what's happening. Besides, any way I structure it, even if I just tell the whole story from the beginning straight through and abandon all my too-clever tricks, what happens in the "present" would still be the climax this is all leading up to -- so I have to work that out and resolve it somehow, no matter what.

I used to be better about advancing the various storylines and dealing with how they interact with each other, but I've gotten lazier about it lately. I also have a vague idea how the pieces are going to join up, but I need to actually try them out that way and see whether it actually works the way I thought it would, or if I'll learn anything new in the process. (It sort of reminds me of a high school science project where my partner and I were doing a presentation on plate tectonics, and we painstakingly cut out little oaktag outlines of the continents so we could put them together and show how it all used to be one land mass. Needless to say, they did not fit together so neatly, not even South America and Africa, even though on the map they look like they should.)

--ich sage nicht, was ich will, sondern was die Sprache will--
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