The White Lily (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thewhitelily) wrote2007-05-02 10:51 pm
thewhitelily) wrote2007-05-02 10:51 pm
Entry tags:
Fools End
Well, April is over. It’s been over for a couple of days, but I’ve been busy at work and for some reason I've been otherwise avoiding my computer. ;)
The last thousand words came out in a lump about twenty minutes before I had to leave for my grandmother’s birthday party, and I’m all done with massively optimistic writing challenges for another month. Hurrah, hurrah, but I'm a little bit tired of writing, for the moment. I'm planning to take the next few days, at least, to relax a bit.
Shifting Sands is… definitely not finished. And no, this is not as bad as it sounds – it’s not such an epic that it will require a Wheel of Time-style ten million words to finish it off – it’s just that with the Gary Stu Incident, along with a couple of other plotlines I couldn’t quite work out well enough, and a number of characters who spent the entire month rocketing from one extreme to another in my head, and the whole plot thrashing from side to side, making things happen in totally unexpected and inconsistent ways… it’s ended up looking a little more like a choose-your-own-adventure story than anything else.
In addition, I’ve decided that the plotline I’ve been worried about – the one wandering around on the other side of the desert with no reference to anything else – would be better told as a separate story. So I’ve got… half of two books, and a universe that rocks more than I could have possibly imagined. The idea of how my magicians do battle… and the potential consequences and conflicts and strengths and weaknesses and goals that gives various characters and plotlines is still geeking me out.
I will be returning to Shifting Sands. I don’t know how much of what I’ve written this month will turn up in a final story; it’s been more of a whirlwind tour through the universe in my head than anything else, filling out the corners and connecting it all together, trying out the possibilities with alternate versions of the same thing from different angles. I need to work out one consistent path through, I need to work out what happens, and I need to turn an awful lot of inner monologuing into actual action. I have much more faith that I will eventually return to Shifting Sands than I ever did for Return to Sender – mainly because the first step of breaking up the whole before reassembling it has already been done – but it’s going to need some serious plotting work with note cards and shuffling and brainstorming and…
I’d happily keep going with it this month, at a slightly less frenetic pace, but there’s something else weighing on my mind... you all saw me affix the “Do Not Resuscitate” sticker to Return to Sender’s laboratory table, didn’t you? Well, it seems that even without my worrying about it, it’s been managing pretty well breathing by itself. Not only that, but… well, we had a thunderstorm the other night and, not long after lightning had struck the street’s transformer, I found it sitting up on the slab, looking around, and asking if Igor was its mother.
And I’m just going to leave that metaphor before it gets any worse. Those who’ve read Return to Sender will probably recognise the main character’s voice – it seems I’m getting into his skin already. In any case, Return to Sender will return. The fact is, it hit me about half way through April, when I sat down toprocrastinate actually read the whole thing again for the first time: it actually has got potential in there. It needs a lot more than just oiling of the squeaky bolts, but it'll get there. ;)
In any case, you can all expect to see some more re-examining, re-plotting, re-angsting, and re-writing coming soon, starting with the currently half-written Mega Post Of Death in which I talk about not only the reasons it sucks, but the reasons it’s worth saving and the ways I can mitigate the former while extending the latter.
Hurrah for getting one step further towards novel completion, even if the path there is remarkably circuitous!
The last thousand words came out in a lump about twenty minutes before I had to leave for my grandmother’s birthday party, and I’m all done with massively optimistic writing challenges for another month. Hurrah, hurrah, but I'm a little bit tired of writing, for the moment. I'm planning to take the next few days, at least, to relax a bit.
Shifting Sands is… definitely not finished. And no, this is not as bad as it sounds – it’s not such an epic that it will require a Wheel of Time-style ten million words to finish it off – it’s just that with the Gary Stu Incident, along with a couple of other plotlines I couldn’t quite work out well enough, and a number of characters who spent the entire month rocketing from one extreme to another in my head, and the whole plot thrashing from side to side, making things happen in totally unexpected and inconsistent ways… it’s ended up looking a little more like a choose-your-own-adventure story than anything else.
In addition, I’ve decided that the plotline I’ve been worried about – the one wandering around on the other side of the desert with no reference to anything else – would be better told as a separate story. So I’ve got… half of two books, and a universe that rocks more than I could have possibly imagined. The idea of how my magicians do battle… and the potential consequences and conflicts and strengths and weaknesses and goals that gives various characters and plotlines is still geeking me out.
I will be returning to Shifting Sands. I don’t know how much of what I’ve written this month will turn up in a final story; it’s been more of a whirlwind tour through the universe in my head than anything else, filling out the corners and connecting it all together, trying out the possibilities with alternate versions of the same thing from different angles. I need to work out one consistent path through, I need to work out what happens, and I need to turn an awful lot of inner monologuing into actual action. I have much more faith that I will eventually return to Shifting Sands than I ever did for Return to Sender – mainly because the first step of breaking up the whole before reassembling it has already been done – but it’s going to need some serious plotting work with note cards and shuffling and brainstorming and…
I’d happily keep going with it this month, at a slightly less frenetic pace, but there’s something else weighing on my mind... you all saw me affix the “Do Not Resuscitate” sticker to Return to Sender’s laboratory table, didn’t you? Well, it seems that even without my worrying about it, it’s been managing pretty well breathing by itself. Not only that, but… well, we had a thunderstorm the other night and, not long after lightning had struck the street’s transformer, I found it sitting up on the slab, looking around, and asking if Igor was its mother.
And I’m just going to leave that metaphor before it gets any worse. Those who’ve read Return to Sender will probably recognise the main character’s voice – it seems I’m getting into his skin already. In any case, Return to Sender will return. The fact is, it hit me about half way through April, when I sat down to
In any case, you can all expect to see some more re-examining, re-plotting, re-angsting, and re-writing coming soon, starting with the currently half-written Mega Post Of Death in which I talk about not only the reasons it sucks, but the reasons it’s worth saving and the ways I can mitigate the former while extending the latter.
Hurrah for getting one step further towards novel completion, even if the path there is remarkably circuitous!
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When are people allowed a read? (By June? That's... when I'm going to have time. *headdesk*)